War with North Korea would be as crazy as some like to think North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is, Prof. David Kang said in a speech last night at the Top of the Hop.
Contrary to popular belief, the current crisis of U.S. and North Korean diplomacy could very well be only the most recent iteration in a 50-year exercise in the politics of distrust -- and not a serious call to arms, Kang said.
In December, North Korea publicly repudiated a 1994 agreed framework by moving to restart its nuclear arms program as well as demanding that the U.S. guarantee its security before it discontinues its nuclear programs. In the prior agreement, the United States was under obligation to build two nuclear reactors for energy production in North Korea in exchange for nuclear disarmament.
The agreement was intended to lead to the United States guaranteeing the security of North Korea, but plans went astray and the reactors were being built four years behind schedule.
"It's no surprise that we are back where we were in 1994 when we signed the accord," Kang said.
Nuclear capabilities would not directly threaten the United States; rather, the technological expertise could be sold to other rogue nations or terrorist groups like Al Qaida, Kang said.
"They might be able to hit one of the Aleutian islands in Alaska -- but we don't care," Kang said.
North Korea claims to need nuclear weapons to defend against a foreign attack, which Kang said was the central question for U.S. policy: does Pyongyang actually feel threatened by America?
"If not, if they're not threatened, then you really have to worry what this guy's thinking," Kang said.
Rumors lend substance to these concerns that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is, in fact, crazy. He has been the subject of imaginative rumors since the North was hidden from international eyes following the Korean War, one of which asserts that he owns the world's second largest pornography library.
"When we think about North Korea, we know so little of what's going on there that it's very easy to get swept away in hyperbole," Kang said.
In spite of the rumors, the 50 years of peace in the Korean peninsula are testimony to the fact that the North Korean leader is not a madman, Kang said.
But it has been a tense peace. A product of the Korean War, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea is one of the most tightly guarded borders in the world. One million soldiers, including 40,000 Americans, patrol the zone with 6,000 tanks and enormous artillery stores.
This does not necessarily mean that the DMZ is a "tinderbox," Kang said.
"I think the evidence shows that both North Korea and South Korea have been very careful to make sure it won't get out of hand."
In fact, the DMZ serves as a potent deterrent in the peninsula, as military action would risk the lives of millions on both sides of the border. Even without nuclear weapons, North Korea is still capable of destroying Seoul, South Korea, with its current stock of conventional weapons.
While the North Korean army is staffed by over one million soldiers, South Korean and U.S. forces dwarf them in every other respect, and a war would ultimately prove fatal for the North.
"What you have really is a North Korea standing like this," Kang said as he crouched with his hands brandished as pistols," saying, 'Bring it on.'"
In light of these facts, both North Korea and the United States would be unlikely to seriously consider waging war.
"War is not an option," Kang said.
Kang maintained that pacifism was in no way an endorsement of the Kim Jong Il's "really repugnant regime."
Compared to the size of the$10 trillion U.S. economy, North Korea barely tips the scale at $18 billion -- less, in fact, than New Hampshire's economy.
Addressing economic weakness has been a bright spot in the overwhelmingly dark North, which barely puts out a flicker of light at night in satellite photos. Kim Jong Il's regime has started to institute economic reforms that have resulted in a more less centralized economy.
These could be steps toward normalized relations between the United States and the North. Although an armistice was signed in 1952, a peace treaty ending the Korean War has never been officially adopted.
