DONâ€™T PANIC!

by baynardwoods on Jun.02, 2010, under Commentary

Is war with North Korea inevitable?

By Andisheh Nouraee

Long-time readers of this here â€œnewspaper columnâ€ know its author/typist is moderately obsessed with North Koreaâ€™s English language propaganda site, Korean Central News Agency.

KCNA is a fascinating and freaky glimpse into the brains running the worldâ€™s most totally totalitarianisticalicous totalitarian regime.

For the uninitiated, KCNAâ€™s stories come in only four flavors.

Caustic criticism of the regimeâ€™s enemies (actual May 26 headline: â€œJapanâ€™s Moral Vulgarity Slammedâ€)

Fulsome praise of Kim Jong-Il and his family (a May 20 story about Kimâ€™s visit to China described him as â€œa great man who left sacred footprints on the vast Chinese land.â€

The excruciating, mundane details of the dictatorâ€™s daily schedule (actual May 17 headline â€œKim Jong Il inspects potato farmâ€

Inexplicably odd cultural stories that canâ€™t possibly have relevance to actual North Koreans, much less to the foreigners at whom KCNAâ€™s English is aimed (ex. A May 26 story headlined â€œOkryu Restaurant Becomes More Popular for Terrapin Dishesâ€)

Adding to the wonderment is the fact that KCNAâ€™s storyâ€™s are written in stiff, stilted language suggesting its authors learned English without ever having an actual conversation with a native speaker. Ex. â€œSuch act is nothing but a deliberate and premeditated provocation aimed to push the daily aggravating inter-Korean relations to the brink of war.â€

Iâ€™ve been visiting KCNA in recent days to see if it might reveal any clues what the heck North Korean military leaders were thinking when, on March 26, they torpedoed the Southern Korean ship ROKS Cheonan sailing near South Koreaâ€™s maritime border with North Korea. Iâ€™m also curious to see if the site reveals anything about North Koreaâ€™s desire for, or fear of, a war against South Korea and the U.S.

Despite losing 46 sailors in what no one disputes was a completely unprovoked, surprise attack, South Korean (and by extension, U.S.) leaders have resisted the temptation to make a crappy situation even crappier with pointless tough talk. Nevertheless, when an international report confirmed beyond any doubt that North Korea was responsible for the attacks, South Korea was obliged to respond.

On May 24, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak announced his country was closing South Korean sea lanes to North Korean ships. The move cuts-off one of the only economic feeding tubes nourishing North Koreaâ€™s persistent vegetative state of an economy. The South also announced it would resume propaganda broadcasts to the North. Kim Jong-Il and his regime are terrified of these broadcasts. They remind his subjects that, just over the militarized border in the South lies one of the worldâ€™s wealthiest and dynamic countries. Sixty years ago, it was Africa-poor. Today, itâ€™s people have jobs-n-freedom-n-stuff while North Koreans are starving prisoners of a Stalinist regime where dissidents are tortured and murdered, children starve to death, and women cram leaves into their pants to catch their menstrual flow.

Simultaneously, South Korea is moving to get the U.N. to impose new, more punishing sanctions against the North. Chances are China would block any new sanctions. Even so, the move pressures China to rein in North Korea as much as it can. China wants to be a grown-up country. Giving diplomatic cover to Kim Jong-Ilâ€™s insane regime isnâ€™t consistent with grown-up behavior.

I hope Iâ€™m not wrong, but Iâ€™m confident that South Korea and the U.S. will be able to avoid war with North Korea. Despite North Korea threatening that South Korea â€œwill perish in the flames kindled by themselves,â€ itâ€™s clear from KCNA that North Korea doesnâ€™t want war either. Luckily, South Koreaâ€™s president, like our own, doesnâ€™t seem very interested in angrily talking his way into a war. Again, I could be wrong, but it looks like the grown-ups arenâ€™t taking North Koreaâ€™s crazy-bait.

talkback@columbiacitypaper.com

By Andisheh NouraeeLong-time readers of this here â€œnewspaper columnâ€ know its author/typist is moderately obsessed with North Koreaâ€™s English language propaganda site, Korean Central News Agency.KCNA is a fascinating and freaky glimpse into the brains running the worldâ€™s most totally totalitarianisticalicous totalitarian regime.For the uninitiated, KCNAâ€™s stories come in only four flavors.Caustic criticism of the regimeâ€™s enemies (actual May 26 headline: â€œJapanâ€™s Moral Vulgarity Slammedâ€)Fulsome praise of Kim Jong-Il and his family (a May 20 story about Kimâ€™s visit to China described him as â€œa great man who left sacred footprints on the vast Chinese land.â€The excruciating, mundane details of the dictatorâ€™s daily schedule (actual May 17 headline â€œKim Jong Il inspects potato farmâ€Inexplicably odd cultural stories that canâ€™t possibly have relevance to actual North Koreans, much less to the foreigners at whom KCNAâ€™s English is aimed (ex. A May 26 story headlined â€œOkryu Restaurant Becomes More Popular for Terrapin Dishesâ€)Adding to the wonderment is the fact that KCNAâ€™s storyâ€™s are written in stiff, stilted language suggesting its authors learned English without ever having an actual conversation with a native speaker. Ex. â€œSuch act is nothing but a deliberate and premeditated provocation aimed to push the daily aggravating inter-Korean relations to the brink of war.â€Iâ€™ve been visiting KCNA in recent days to see if it might reveal any clues what the heck North Korean military leaders were thinking when, on March 26, they torpedoed the Southern Korean ship ROKS Cheonan sailing near South Koreaâ€™s maritime border with North Korea. Iâ€™m also curious to see if the site reveals anything about North Koreaâ€™s desire for, or fear of, a war against South Korea and the U.S.Despite losing 46 sailors in what no one disputes was a completely unprovoked, surprise attack, South Korean (and by extension, U.S.) leaders have resisted the temptation to make a crappy situation even crappier with pointless tough talk. Nevertheless, when an international report confirmed beyond any doubt that North Korea was responsible for the attacks, South Korea was obliged to respond.On May 24, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak announced his country was closing South Korean sea lanes to North Korean ships. The move cuts-off one of the only economic feeding tubes nourishing North Koreaâ€™s persistent vegetative state of an economy. The South also announced it would resume propaganda broadcasts to the North. Kim Jong-Il and his regime are terrified of these broadcasts. They remind his subjects that, just over the militarized border in the South lies one of the worldâ€™s wealthiest and dynamic countries. Sixty years ago, it was Africa-poor. Today, itâ€™s people have jobs-n-freedom-n-stuff while North Koreans are starving prisoners of a Stalinist regime where dissidents are tortured and murdered, children starve to death, and women cram leaves into their pants to catch their menstrual flow.Simultaneously, South Korea is moving to get the U.N. to impose new, more punishing sanctions against the North. Chances are China would block any new sanctions. Even so, the move pressures China to rein in North Korea as much as it can. China wants to be a grown-up country. Giving diplomatic cover to Kim Jong-Ilâ€™s insane regime isnâ€™t consistent with grown-up behavior.I hope Iâ€™m not wrong, but Iâ€™m confident that South Korea and the U.S. will be able to avoid war with North Korea. Despite North Korea threatening that South Korea â€œwill perish in the flames kindled by themselves,â€ itâ€™s clear from KCNA that North Korea doesnâ€™t want war either. Luckily, South Koreaâ€™s president, like our own, doesnâ€™t seem very interested in angrily talking his way into a war. Again, I could be wrong, but it looks like the grown-ups arenâ€™t taking North Koreaâ€™s crazy-bait.
talkback@columbiacitypaper.com

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1 Comment for this entry

Petter
June 2nd, 2010 on 4:56 pm
Historyless post, their threats or threats of response is neither unpredictable, erratic or something new. It’s the same kind of threats they came with during the former leaders regime during the talks leading up to the Agreed Frameworks. A kinda policy and rhetoric developed while they had American nukes directed at them from South Korea which was by all accounts a very militaristic dictatorship till the late 80′s with their first free presidential elections in 88′. That that’s hasn’t changed aren’t that strange as the world never really engaged them or promised them anything better, US agreed to pay for two light water reactors and provide them with those by 2003, but never lifted any economic sanctions or established any healthy economic ties. NK is stuck in the Cold war both on rhetoric and practice. US removed the nukes in 91 from SK, but diplomatically the situation which had been improving reversed after 2002 when it became clear the US wouldn’t finish the reactors, deliver any fuel oil and everything the North did to destroy their own chances after that. It’s still a territory whose sovereignty isn’t respected. It’s not about rewarding NK for bad behavior it’s about bringing them into the world and world market, without it all they have is their own internal economy, exports to China, difficulty having normal trade relations with other countries, where they need to hide even legitimate businesses behind fronts, and their weapons export to Asia and Africa. They couldn’t care less in financial or economic terms about the Kaesong industrial zone, exporting 50-100 Scuds would make them more money then the 40 000 people with purely slave wages just 3-13% of South Korean wages. Kaesong aren’t even a single percent of their low amounts of largely none existing exports. Kaesong was a product of trust and cooperation not economic benefit of the few elite and well off North Koreans. South Korea has a lot more to loose from it. For North it’s just a peace of land, it’s the South Koreans which have built the buildings, bought the equipment and so forth. For North Korea it aren’t worth that many millions of dollars. North Korea is starving dispute fairly large commercial food import, they run huge deficits to manage their own economy, are reliant on food aid which from the South Koreans already had been withdrawn. They can’t be punished as they are already punished every day, there’s no more to take away and the light water reactors promised to them weren’t free, they promised to stop developing and operating their graphite moderated reactors in exchange, as well as full compliance with NPT including not enriching uranium. Look at Libya instead, there the world did engage, economic development and investment by western economies did take place and so on. They got something out of complying with the world and the world even ignores that the political situation in itself hasn’t changed just because their diplomatic relations have. That the military has first picks aren’t any reason to deny North Koreans food, the military service is compulsory and the more food there is the better, even if it finds it way out into the illegal market at least it feeds people and lack of funding of WFP just makes the issue of transparency worse as they can’t have any staff overseeing where the food goes. SK would starve to death without massive imports too. But they were allowed to engage in the world market so they no longer need aid to fill that gap. NK aren’t so cut of from the rest of the world by choice. If NK starts doing what the world wants it’s only reasonable to assume they are stopped being punished, the problem is that they already did that and was just punished even more by doing what US wanted. If they got nothing to gain and nothing to loose why wouldn’t they go against their arch-foe? They must still be going on living. Of course there will harsh language against countries which they have no diplomatic relations with, just like theres even harsher language against NK. But no one takes offense by criticism from North Korea, NK takes great offense by threats made towards them. But as long as they aren’t engaged this language will just reappear one after another. NK don’t want to be left out in the cold. Politics won’t change if peoples lives over there don’t change. They need to be able to travel abroad, study abroad, have legitimate foreign investment and they would welcome diplomatic relations with anyone wishing to establish them. They want a peace treaty with the US and SK. They know and are trained that their situation needs to change and wants nothing more then to make their country better. They want access to markets and they know their stalinist distribution of food and goods aren’t working.

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