The TV camera focuses on Kim Jong-un. “Fellow countrymen, I am determined to make sure that you have not endured your many sacrifices in vain,” he says. “We have forced the world to notice us and respect us, and now we need to translate that achievement into food, clothing and shelter for our long-suffering population.
“Today, I am ordering military storehouses opened. We will distribute a million tons of war-reserve rice to our citizens, who need to eat well because we have a huge task ahead transforming what almost every countryman realizes is a sick and broken economy..
“We cannot afford to waste our energy and resources on antagonizing other countries. Thus we will shrink the military. We welcome assistance from international institutions and from other countries, including especially our East Asian neighbors, whose highly successful economic models we will adapt to our needs.
“We are prepared to negotiate with our Southern brothers an agreement for each side to drop its claims over the territory of the other. We must postpone discussion of Korean reunification until we can close much of the enormous economic gap, which currently makes it virtually impossible for Northerners and Southerners to contemplate living together as equals under a single government.
“In exchange for appropriate assurances of non-intervention and the withdrawal of sanctions, we are prepared to halt development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and shift our resources to programs that will peacefully advance our economy.”
Unbelievable, right? The preceding is from my imagination, but illustrates the magnitude of change that might be involved in a truly strategic shift by North Korea’s ruler.
That’s relevant, now that even such respected commentators as former US State Department senior officials Robert Carlin and Joel Wit claim we’ve already seen change this week that’s “serious,” and “more than just a tactic.”
In what headline writers excitedly described as an “olive branch,” Kim’s representatives met on Tuesday with their Seoul counterparts to discuss issues, starting with an agreement that the North would participate in the Winter Olympic Games next month in Pyeongchang, South Korea. More talks are expected.
Don’t be distracted. Having covered and studied North Korea for 40 years, I feel comfortable saying that its long-term strategy since the Korean War ended in stalemate in 1953 has been and remains to persuade the United States to remove its troops from South Korea and withdraw its security guarantee.
Then, as defectors who have worked in sensitive military and political positions have repeatedly testified, when an appropriate opportunity presents itself, the North intends to conquer the South – regardless of the Southern population’s preferences.
What we are seeing – the North’s recent demonstration of nuclear might followed by a charm offensive aimed at South Koreans – is simply a tactical move within the same old strategy. Both Americans and South Koreans need to understand this, and bear it in mind even as they seek to use talks to calm tensions and avert outright warfare.
Concessions that the North will demand include reductions in mutual US-South Korean defense measures, especially annual training exercises that keep the two countries’ militaries working as a team.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has long been predisposed to engagement with the North, but even US President Donald Trump, who had threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, has indicated he is willing to go along to some extent.
Trump agreed to Moon’s proposal to postpone joint exercises during the Winter Games. He tweeted last Thursday that “talks are a good thing,” boasting that his own firm approach had made them possible.
The idea is to use the threat of WMD beyond the Korean Peninsula to hasten the exit of the Americans who now protect the South. ‘Get out and we won’t bomb Los Angeles’ – that’s the message North Korea has been sending
North Korea’s nuclear weapons are intended partly to deter a “decapitation” effort by the US and/or South Korea to take Kim down. But Pyongyang’s weapons of mass destruction also fit its overall strategy. The idea is to use the threat of WMD beyond the Korean Peninsula to hasten the exit of the Americans who now protect the South. “Get out and we won’t bomb Los Angeles” – that’s the message North Korea has been sending.
South Korean opposition leader Hong Joon-pyo was quoted by Yonhap News as saying on December 27 that North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missiles “are designed to block US participation in a war when the North makes an attempt at unification by force.”
Defectors have previously testified that the North Korean military contemplated use of WMD to take South Korea. One, Lee Chong-guk, a former sergeant assigned to the Bureau of Nuclear and Chemical Defense, said his superiors had boasted of having enough chemical weapons to wipe out the South Korean population. It would be impossible to make many Southerners adopt the North’s ideology, he said senior officers told him – so most would have to die.
But let’s return to the scenario outlined above. Why is it such a stretch of the imagination to imagine Kim taking a major step to shift his impoverished country into the mainstream of Asian economic tigerdom – a move that would garner approval from virtually every other regional player, even Pyongyang’s main ally, Beijing?
One big reason is the fact that the Kims are a dynasty. The youngest member feels compelled to uphold policies promoted by his grandfather Kim Il-sung, whom Josef Stalin installed as founding ruler in the 1940s. Kim Sr went on to squeeze out about as much success as the communist model was capable of producing before the 1970s, when his economy began to lag noticeably behind that of its capitalist foe to the south.
Seeking legitimacy and popularity, the grandson has modeled his public persona on the grandfather, from clothing to hairstyle to girth. (And, some say, even facially, via plastic surgery.) If he admitted that Grandpa’s ideas are irrelevant and useless today, he may wonder, what would be the basis of his own demand to be revered as something like a living god?
Even if there isn’t actually a manual for training up-and-coming Kim dynasts, there might as well be. Consider a key fact: They don’t study any variety of economics that, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, would be considered even remotely valid in more than a handful of countries.
Kim Jong-il, the middle member of the dynasty, ruled from 1994 to 2011. He had been a political-economy major at Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung University in the 1960s. But defectors familiar with the curriculum have said that what those studies entailed was celebrating the wonders of communism and rejecting the evils of capitalism.
Kim Jong-il found showmanship more interesting. For his entire career his focus was on propaganda. Persuade the workers to work harder? Forget about raising pay when they do well. Inspire them, instead, with movies or stage musicals that extol patriotism and diligence.
Toward the end, the middle Kim came to understand the importance of material incentives. But – probably for the same reasons that keep his son in the family harness – Kim Jong-il never brought himself to overturn his father’s socialist rules.
It’s probably even more important that Kim dynasts are taught that winning over South Korea is all. Coming in second – surviving for a while, but losing in the end – is not acceptable.
Army First Lieutenant Lim Yong-son, after his 1993 defection, passed along to me a bit of army lore regarding a time after Kim Jong-il was promoted to marshal. His father, Kim Il-sung, asked a couple of senior officers what would happen if war broke out and North Korea lost. “We would never lose,” they replied.
“But what would happen if we did lose?” Kim Il-sung asked his newly marshal-ranked son.
“If we lose, I will destroy the world.”
“You’re very brave, and it’s good thinking. You’re definitely talking the way a marshal should talk!”
Professors of political-military strategy reportedly tutored Kim Jong-un. Whether or not he privately recognizes flaws in the system he inherited – and it is true that he has made minor changes – he has left it largely in place throughout his six years in power.
Kim doesn’t need to be a thinker to maintain North Korea’s steadfast policy emphasis on inspiring a US exit from South Korea that would leave the South more open to conquest. In contrast to Trump’s fraught band of newbies in the White House, a number of veterans serve Kim
He’s also, like his father, more of a showman than an economic thinker. Much of his domestic expenditure has gone on showcase projects, complete with entertainment and recreation facilities, to impress outsiders and please the top elites in Pyongyang.
But Kim doesn’t need to be a thinker to maintain North Korea’s steadfast policy emphasis on inspiring a US exit from South Korea that would leave the South more open to conquest. In contrast to Trump’s fraught band of newbies in the White House, a number of veterans serve Kim.
Kim Yong-nam, an 89-year-old specialist in foreign affairs, for example, is the official head of state, the one who greets top foreign dignitaries. He was already in charge of foreign policy when I made my first trip to Pyongyang in 1979. He invited me to lunch and for five hours attempted to persuade me and, via my paper, Washington officials, that the US should withdraw its troops.
North Korea has claimed that its nuclear weapons are necessary for survival. Kim Jong-un clearly wants the world to believe he would use them to defend his rule. His minions point to Iraq to illustrate the perils of denuclearization. Saddam Hussein is dead. So are his sons.
But Iraq, as a country, still exists. North Korea with its artillery and other conventional weapons was successfully deterring attack long before it developed nukes. Simple fact: The country could be far better off without Kim or his nukes.
The key to understanding why nukes are necessary for the Kim regime’s survival is the fact that it persists in scheming to take over South Korea, instead of focusing on peaceful development on its side of the border. Probably it would take a new regime, headed by a Korean Deng Xiaoping, to change this long-standing strategy.
Robert Ferrin yes I agree with you there, America loves to talk about sporting democracy around the world but everybody knows they support dictators and monarchies as long as they are using the US dollar and buying their weapons, there is no such democracy in Saudi Arabia, they be had people more than Isis, they are repressive towards women, treacherous when it comes to how they treat gay people but you watch the day Saudi Arabia drops the US dollar and edges closer to Russia and China will be the day that America brings ‘democracy’ to Saudi Arabia and calls them out on supporting terrorism just like they have done to when they dropped the US dollar in support of China.
ooh, excuse me, how afraid should we be? red level? orange level? or yellow peril..ups I mean yellow level?
Bradley K. Martin Wow
Most of these comments confirm what I’m saying: North Korea has pulled the wool over the eyes of an entire generation of fools.
I’m no expert, but I found trhe article well written and persuasive. It has certainly evoked visceral reactions from readers, and for that reason alone presents a valuable contribution to discussion of the issues.
Instead of analyzing the North Korean strategy, the author should have pondered on the policy of USA in Korea. USA is a serial aggressor, invader and murderer. Since the end of the Second World War, USA has invaded and/or bombed dozens of countries, has murdered more than 20 million people, and has destroyed trillions of dollars of infrastructures. In the field of destruction and killing, this is unparalleled in the history of mankind. What are the American soldiers doing in Korea? USA may spin and twist the matter in order to portray itself as a benevolent country, but the fact is that USA is invading Korea. No country would willingly accept the presence of 30,000 foreign soldiers inside its territory. With its 30,000 soldiers in South Korea, USA holds South Korea hostage and uses the South Koreans as human shields, just like the infamous murderer, Ghengis Khan, used to do with his prisoners. Now that North Korea is a nuclear power with ICBMs that can strike any city in USA, USA must put an end to its invasion of Korea. USA must remove all its soldiers and its military equipment out of Korea. Otherwise, USA is putting at risk the lives of tens of millions Americans.
Hmm we do try and fight the good fight,we create stable democracies, utter bullsh*t, was Nam Libya Syria Afghanistan,Cambodia where we slaughtered a few million "the good fight" was the dictators we installed in S.A. and "the U.S. trained and financed death squads we sent there to slaughter women and children the good fight" Iran and a few other countries spreading lol democracy,you my friend are a grade A neo-con and the sooner this country gets rid of that thinking the better off we will be disgusting.!!
To claim that Iraq and Libya still exist is ingenuous. The leadership (ownership) class that prevailed prior to western intervention is gone. The Kim dynasty has to draw a lesson from that.
There is no US military complex.
For all your deep and insightful analysis there is one thing which escapes you and that is a clear and unbiased view of America and the west.
Heal your western wound and stop allowing yourself to feed the anti western slant so you can see us in a new light.
We are good people and we live in a very very complex world. Empires competing for power has always existed everywhere. From Asia to the Middle East to Europe there have always been empires. And there have always been wars.
In modern times there have been wars too and in these wars many sides have fought and died. We have been a big part of it. Go back to the times of Ghengis Kahn, or the Ottoman empire, Persia etc etc… this same history has overspilled into our modern day world.
Why hate and blame westerners for it?
Would the Arabs have destroyed the Jewish when they arrived in Jerusalem after the holocaust?
Of course they would have.
Would you then have an anti Arab streak?
The fact is the we do try to fight for a good cause and yes sometimes it is a dirty fight but we aren’t the only ones to play dirty let’s face it…
Do you want us now to bow down to China and say okay we humbly allow you to lead the way?
And if we did, how long would it be before China began using its military to enforce its will upon others?
At least as it is now, the western standard for the world of creating stable democracies who pose no threat is a good ideal, even if it isn’t as simple and clear cut as that.
Imagine if our enemies stopped fighting us and said yes we welcome your aid to become stable and reformed democracies.. Wouldn’t that be nice?
But it isn’t as simple as that either.
In anycase we are no worse than any other people on this earth and we do stand for something good.
We may seriously mess up sometimes in our foreign policy but nobody is perfect in an extremely complex world. Try to remember the good in us again and drop your wounds and biase.
North and South Vietnam became Vietnam.
East and West Germany became Germany.
Why not North and South Korea just be Korea?
We should leave them alone let them do as they please.
Maybe the U.S. needs to think for once about the legitimate aims of people whose primary goal is to get American troops and bases out of countries belonging to other people. Such people can be dangerous adversaries. Osama bin Laden comes to mind. The U.S. did exactly what he expected and will never extricate itself from the quagmire.
Hmm that must have been written by his handler for its 99% propaganda,there’s no peace agreement with N.K. because we refused to sign one,Bush and his neo-cons destroyed the agreements that Clinton made with N.K. and one thing you can bet on is that if the U.S. is or becomes involved in these talks then they are doomed to fail,for the U.S. will never give up its spying on China and Russia and Korea is one of the empires outpost…
A load of crap. Kim must know that his country might be able to conquer the South, but could never force the South Koreans to accept his regime. So, he probably has given up on that plan. Now, that he has a credible nuclear force, he will try to seduce the South into a peaceful coexistence relationship. Kim will give guarantees of never attempting to invade the South, of offering the South the protection of his nuclear umbrella, of partially opening the northern market to southern products and, in exchange, Americans are told to leave. Reunification will be something for the 22nd century, or later.
Brad : you may forget that KJU studied in Swiss elite boarding schools and that his dad scrapped any traces of socialism in NK constitution.
KJU isn’t only boosting building of rockets but also food production, malls, middle-class.
It’s also well known that SK intelligence tells numbers of BS, NK deffectors interviewed sometimes 10-15 years later confessed they had been briefed to tell BS to the public and life fas not as terrible than MSM say.
Actually, MSM have became totally Orwellian and dear Brad, you participate to this!
Now it’s pretty easy to prevent NK invading SK : it’d take only 6 month to SK to go nuclear too!
In fact, they should do so and simply expell US troops, so should Taiwan and Japan too and they can also create an alliance with Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philipinnes would China bully them, and here we have balance in the region and just let the Yankee go home!
Oooopss, sorry Mr. neocon, it’ll ruin your imperialist dreams!
What, USA ain’t necessary? They can do without? Their answer is :
Yes we can!!!
So we can in the EU!
Hey, 85k US troops?
EU cumulated forces = 1.8 millions militaries, 2000 fighter jets, France alone is the 3rd nuclear power, the total military budget is €223bln, 2nd after USA and it’s twice the Russian military in man power and air-forces, so, LMAO, EU doesn’t need USA too, except to… ruin good neighbourhood with Russia!
Maybe is it high time for USA to mind its own business…
thank you mr u.s. neocon!just another way of promoting a war with the north. in other words no use ever of talking ,lets just get to it and annhilate the pennisula washington has its agents all over!!!
Another article for idiots.
It’s only partially the nukes. The main reason North Korea has not been destroyed is all that artillery pointed at Seoul.
" Don’t be distracted. Having covered and studied North Korea for 40 years, I feel comfortable saying that its long-term strategy since the Korean War ended in stalemate in 1953 has been and remains to persuade the United States to remove its troops from South Korea and withdraw its security guarantee."
40 years wasted, even the Japanese people want the US to go home…
I am not sure this speech is a change of strategy from North Korea. It might have been the strategy for decades for those who is deprived from the truth by “Western” Main Stream Media (MSM). Anyway, CIA is now hiring employees that speech Korean and have some knowledge about North Korean history and culture. In my humble opinion it is and advantage to figure out what the perceived enemy talks about before starting WW3.
North Korea TODAY is unlikely to have rockets that can go through all the layers of security to hit the US mainland, they are working 24/7 to get the technology. For sure US bases in South Korea is in firing range for multiple types of ordnance, so it easy to understand the US concerns.
Important US handle this “situation” carefully. With all these war plans, war games, analyzes, rhetoric and propaganda videos the North Korean soon see ghosts in daylight. This makes mistakes and wrong judgements more likely than unlikely.
The latest is the Q (New Nostradamus) rumor; “US is in – Defcon 1”, it most likely has increased North Korea’s paranoia and could have triggered actions that could have thrown South Korea under the bus and in worst case contaminated large part of North Asia, including parts of China and Russia.
Who is Q or Q-annon? I have seen theories Q is the POTUS, Member of the POTUS administration, Q is an AI program, or a crazy aunt with internet access, hidden away in a basement. What is scary is that Q’s puzzles have gained a lot of credibility. The “Alice in Wonderland” (a book used by Scientologist and other who use Mind Control) could indicate this a Mind Control operation using the fancy MK “Eagle” or MK “орел” in Russian technology. The Trump administration should urge all to only listen to official statements from the administration. There are more enough problems with the alphabet soup (NSA, FBI, CIA), so we not need any trouble with the alphabet (Q, B).
Anyway, the new “Sunshine political statements” gives hope for peace, but do the US want peace? The US was hoping to use North Korea to make China the new villain. To impose Chinese sanctions, to sell US protection, and weapons in Asia. “Bibi” Netanyahu need the fear of sale of North Korean nukes to Iran for his annual fundraising tour in the US, a Red-carpet event, applauded "North Korean style" by all the compromised US politicians (frequent guests at Jeffrey Epstein parties, Dome of the Rock Solomon’s Temple and massage parlor), and the US military complex.
The writer is out of date and live in a different era.