Pacifying Pyongyang

...The North's leaders know they cannot survive without trade, and eventually large-scale investment, from the South...

...The conventional wisdom, consequently, is that if the North's leaders were foolish enough to invade the South, they could barely wage a war for a month...

...Radical students and many sympathizers have repeatedly shown their desire for national unity through demonstrations and occasional unauthorized visits to Pyongyang...

...The history of the Korean peninsula since the end of Japanese rule in 1945 is such that we have to expect the unexpected...

...It is difficult to believe nothing will ever happen to change this balancing act...

...President Kim Dae Jung's "Sunshine" policy may seem a gesture of appeasement, but there is much to be said for refusing to respond to every propaganda barrage—or even to the North's attempts to land spies in the South from minisubmarines and submersibles, as happened in September 1996 and June 1998...

...As for the United States, it is psychologically unprepared to wage a ground war that would cost American lives...

...The North Koreans have insisted the first Taepodong actually launched a satellite, but it obviously failed to go into orbit...

...The guide promptly reported the conversation to her superiors, who interpreted it as an attempt at espionage...

...South Korea appears more anxious than the United States not to challenge the North militarily...

...The fear is the North might stage a fanatic offensive that would thoroughly destabilize the South and expose America's unwillingness to engage in a ground war...

...Ten years later, the Japanese fended off the Russians...

...Maintenance of the status quo may be equally illusory over the long term...

...By encouraging trade, though, South Korea has helped prop up the regime in the North...

...The North might then turn to staging limited assaults on specific sectors—actions that would demand retaliation and result in a lengthy struggle...

...The South did demonstrate a willingness to defend itself, should matters come to that, by responding to the North's shots in the Yellow Sea incident...

...The United States could not realistically prevent the launching of a North Korean missile by wiping out the launch pad with a "surgical" air strike...

...Still, they were rewarded with more pleas to rerum to the bargaining table...

...The North, on the other hand, can no longer count on much support, if any, from its major ally, China...

...But it is undeniable that under existing circumstances Kim Jong II is not about to make one overdue concession— that is, family visits...

...My skepticism about this method of dealing with the North reflects observations going back more than a quarter of a century...

...is shipping in, too, during construction of twin nuclear reactors—the price the United States agreed to in Geneva in 1994 to get the North to stop building a nuclear warhead...

...And a Kosovo-style air campaign against North Korea is not feasible, since Pyongyang is capable of mounting a ground attack that could result in large-scale loss of life, both American and South Korean...

...Its timing was uncanny—or remarkably deft: The demarcation was announced just as negotiators from the United States and North Korea were about to sit down in Berlin in September to discuss averting the second missile test...

...In addition, by threatening the use of nuclear weapons or missile launches to extort concessions from its worst enemies, the North's leaders resemble gangsters demanding "protection money" from prosperous merchants...

...By placing a longrange missile on a launching pad, visible to U.S...

...No sooner had Kim Gye Gwan indicated the firing was off than former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, now a special envoy to North Korea, recommended a prolonged program for enticing the North to abandon its entire missile program, including the sale of missiles to Iraq, Iran and Pakistan...

...The truth is that nobody can realistically predict how long it will take for substantial change to occur either within North Korea or in relations between the two Koreas...

...Some recent warming between the two countries notwithstanding, many South Koreans would instinctively view Japan as a worse enemy than North Korea...

...In Moscow the North would find even less support, because these days the Kremlin wants to sell submarines and other military equipment to South Korea...

...I first visited Seoul in 1972, to cover the Red Cross negotiations that were supposed to lead at least to family visits and an exchange of mail between North and South Korea...

...In the South, concerns of a different sort cloud the issue of complete reconciliation...

...Or we could hear that Kim Jong II has ordered his troops to attack South Korean positions along the demilitarized zone...

...China, Russia and the United States may also find a divided Korea more in line with their interests than a unified peninsula closely allied with one or another great power...

...The South would also have to spend incredible sums in attempting to rehabilitate the North...

...The North has repeatedly called for withdrawal of the 37,000 American soldiers remaining in the South, but they do not pose much of a threat...

...They protect a relatively small, clearly defined area on the highway to Seoul, and probably could not hold up against a full-scale North Korean assault across the demilitarized zone...

...They need the oil the US...

...They, however, were referring to how much longer they believed the Pyongyang regime could last...

...Astonishingly, Seoul also agreed to again let carefully monitored tour groups visit Mount Keumkang in the North...

...spy satellites, Pyongyang seemed to convince the world it could unleash a warhead of mass destruction against targets as far away as Alaska and Hawaii...

...Last year I was in Dandong, the Chinese city across the Yalu River from Sinuiju in North Korea...

...As long as this elite is fed, it will have enough strength to control those who get by on whatever scraps they can find or beg or steal...

...The surgery could in the end be too bloody...

...Koreans living there who visited Sinuiju regularly to trade or look after small factories also spoke of "five more years...

...No one thoughtthe North was anxious to back up its bold words with military action...

...These are just enough to feed the several million people who serve in the Armed Forces, the Workers' Party and the government—sometimes all three—and their extended families and friends...

...policy is based on perceived military and political realities...

...In the summer of 1998 there was the cave at Kumchangri, where hundreds of workers were seen digging a mammoth hole in the ground that could have been used for constructing nuclear warheads in violation of the 1994 Geneva agreement...

...responds with talk about relaxing economic sanctions...

...Nevertheless, a questionable pattern has been established: The North raises the stakes by engaging in activities American spy satellites can spot, and the U.S...

...Next, there was the threat of firing a Taepodong missile with a much longer range than the one that flew over northern Japan on August 31 of last year...

...On the contrary, Beijing could be expected to hold back on shipping it weapons to discourage rash military adventurism...

...negotiator Charles Kartman and Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan showed once more how skillfully the North Koreans are able to blackmail the United States by brandishing the threat of a war Washington wants to avoid at all costs...

...Ironically, therefore, United States policy is in effect helping to ensure the survival of Kim Jong II's Stalinist regime as well as the permanent division of the Korean peninsula...

...Thatploy has worked to the advantage of the North's elite, but Pyongyang's intransigence has resulted in economic hardship and finally severe starvation for the rest of the population...

...Today, Tokyo in particular fears a strong united Korea...

...The images of starving children, of teenagers the size of eight-year-olds, of hospitals deprived of medicines and factories totally closed are too shocking to allow acceptance of the reasonable argument that the aid-givers are only prolonging the agony...

...Even if Northerners carefully avoided saying anything negative about their leaders, they would somehow indicate their suffering...

...It might not be difficult for him to arrange a few token visits after extended negotiations...

...The North can, and undoubtedly will, create a fresh crisis whenever its leaders believe the United States is lagging on significant concessions...

...And of course there is President Kim's effort to achieve some semblance of normal relations...

...The North has now arbitrarily set a new boundary there—a challenge to both South Koreans and Americans...

...But that is a dream that seems just as impossible now as it did in 1948, when the North and the South inaugurated their own governments after abandoning the idea of forming a unified country...

...mass visits would undermine his government...

...We could wake up one morning to a radio broadcast from Pyongyang announcing the appointment of a new "revolutionary council" and the resignation of Kim Jong II...

...But a substantial segment of South Korea worries that Seoul has made little real preparation for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who would be likely to arrive in the event of a peaceful rapprochement...

...Nevertheless, the rising level of invective from Pyongyang was alarming...

...Meanwhile South Korea, given its experience under Japanese rule, would fear Japan as an ally...

...The Japanese defeated the Chinese in 1895 for control of Korea...

...True, the Japanese have agreed on a set of support "guidelines," but their response to war in Korea is very difficult to predict...

...Nor can the United States rely on Japan, as it could during the American military occupation, for rear echelon support...

...All things being equal, the emergence of a neutral, unified Korea would be best...

...It is more probable, though, that the dictatorship in the North will somehow live on, thanks to handouts from the U. S., China and other countries, including South Korea...

...Nobody in Washington or Seoul, however, wants to test the theory...

...The latest trouble spot is the Yellow Sea, where South Korean ships sank a couple of North Korean patrol boats this past June...

...In fairness, it must be acknowledged that U.S...

...strength in the region is significantly less than it was at the outset of the Korean War...

...While Chinese leaders have their differences with the United States, they are far more interested these days in pursuing economic and commercial objectives than in sending "volunteers" to fight on the Korean peninsula, as they did when American troops reached the banks of the Yalu in late 1950...

...It is difficult to blame the United States or South Korea for playing into the strategy...

...Both want to avoid a war...

...They would probably not want the United States running the entire operation...

...North Korea endures as a beggar nation, despite the philosophy of juche (self-reliance) propounded by Kim Jong II's father, Kim II Sung, the North's president for 46 years...

...The agreement that emerged from the meeting between chief U.S...

...Additional countries would no doubt participate, but the economic effect of an end to confrontation and the signing of a peace treaty, even one that recognized two Koreas, could be economically catastrophic...

...Yet the reality is that Sunshine and other outside support is merely preserving Kim Jong II's rule and staving off what could be a much uglier confrontation with a regime driven by desperation...

...In conversations with refugees from North Korea in Seoul and in China along the Yalu and Tumen River borders, one gets a picture of an existence so painful as to have to end sometime soon...

...Although it may actually be as eager to avoid hostilities as the U.S., the North's strategy since the end of the Korean War has been to try to extract aid by approaching the brink of armed conflict without falling overthe edge...

...The division also serves the aims of other countries in the region...

...It seems cruel to suggest that the United States, South Korea and others should deny aid to the North to squeeze the regime there harder...

...Furthermore, a significant number of South Koreans have become so accustomed now to the phenomenon of a divided peninsula that they would prefer it to remain that way permanently...

...Sooner or later, as millions of long-separated relatives exchanged stories, certain truths would emerge...

...On September 12, it concluded six days of haggling in Berlin with a vague understanding that it would hold off testing another Taepodong missile in return for a clear commitment from the United States to ease trade sanctions...

...Donald Kirk, who has long been writing on Asian affairs for the NL, is the author, among other books, of Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung...

...With only about 100,000 troops at its Western Pacific bases, U.S...

...At best they might delay an invasion...

...The ultimate purpose of the Sunshine policy is to open the doors of the North for arange of activities, including the family visits and mail exchanges that were on the agenda of those 1972 Red Cross talks...

...At the time people believed that in "five more years" relations between the two countries would be much improved if not substantially normalized...

...Nor is China likely to provide much weaponry to North Korea...

...The threat was considerably more imaginary than real...

...For the same reason, Pyongyang does not want to permit normal mail service between the two Koreas...

...Washington seemed to be overlooking this point—and what it portends—as it took yet another step in Berlin to pacify Pyongyang...

...The Americans were almost frantic in their desire to talk the North Koreans out of what would almost certainly have been a harmless exercise ending in a splashdown somewhere in the Pacific...

...This despite an incident in which a South Korean woman was held and questioned for suggesting that a North Korean guide visit the South to see how refugees were treated...