[Part 1 is found here.]

1991 was a year of many shocks for North Korea’s leadership. North Korea was already fairly unsustainable by this point on its own accord, but so many external shocks hit Pyongyang that it is a wonder that it survived this period at all.

First, there was what one reporter called “Pyongyang’s Gulf War Shock.” The Iraqi military, with which North Korea’s own forces shared many similar traits, disintegrated under the American onslaught of new aggressiveness, doctrine and technology. Pyongyang was indeed shocked at how easily Baghdad’s conventional, mechanized force was destroyed in 48 hours of combat by the U.S. forces.

Over night, North Korea’s vaunted conventional forces ceased to be both the dagger at South Korea’s heart and the safeguard for the regime’s survival. The U.S. military was no longer the post-Vietnam War paper tiger the North Korean leadership believed it to be. In effect, North Korea’s costly investment in its mechanized forces in the 1980s had been wasted (indeed, North Korea’s increasing construction of anti-tank barriers in the recent years confirm its growing emphasis on defense over offense).

Then another shock: Gorbachev was kidnapped by the plotters of the so-called Yanaev Coup. But the coup fared badly in the face of a few thousand demonstrators in Moscow (in fact, the authorities and masses in the periphery of the Soviet empire accepted the coup grudgingly, and the the coup plotters might have prevailed if they had persisted). Gorbachev was eventually forced to turn over power to Yeltsin. Communism was finally dead in Russia.

On top of these, China, too, began to improve ties with South Korea. Weakened economically and militarily, and abandoned by former allies, the impetus was on to accelerate nuclear weapons development (the original technology came from the Soviet Union in return for a promise to join the NPT* [see comments section for a correction]; but the program probably began in earnest around 1979-1980 with much infusion of Chinese technology). The program was now one of necessity — the survival of the regime, which had not been seriously threatened since the end of the Korean War.

If the nuclear program had only been about survival, the threat to the U.S. would have been minimal, perhaps even stability-enhancing. Unfortunately, what began as a tool of survival quickly became that of international extortion as well, as the resource-starved North quickly realized the bargaining power of its weapons program. As Don Oberdorfer puts in The Two Koreas, “There is no evidence that Pyongyang saw the nuclear program as a bargaining chip at its inception, but the record is clear that by the 1990s it had learned the program’s value in relations with the world outside.”

This is NOT to say that the outside world “gave” the North Korean program its bargaining value. Even without so many contributing circumstances, North Korea’s leadership would have realized this value sooner or later.

To repeat, North Korea’s nuclear program serves two larger purposes. First, it is foremost a guarantor of regime survival, a point made stronger by the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

Second, it provides a uniquely useful tool in attracting outside attention and as a bargaing chip.

Since the nuclear program is perceived to be the ultimate guarantee of the regime’s survival, my assessment is that the so-called Six Party Talks are doomed to a failure in the end. North Korea’s leadership will NEVER relinquish the only thing they perceive to be standing between them and American tanks in Pyongyang. Therefore, it is in their interest to delay, obfuscate, fudge and threaten — to play a game of cat and mouse to extract whatever resources they can, but WITHOUT giving up this deterrent at the end of the process. The most the U.S. will get is a freeze of the status quo, but only in return for massive economic assistance, diplomatic recognition and security guarantee.

And should the U.S. simply ignore North Korea and its “bomb,” North Korea’s regime will be tempted to leverage the fear of proliferation in order to force the U.S. to deal with it.

The Chinese will likely to be no help in this matter, since the impasse serves their interests as well. The continuing “host” status of China in the Six Party Talks has already raised its diplomatic profile and clout. The impasse also occupies the U.S. policy in the region and makes it less likely to support any Taiwanese move for independence.

The current left-leaning South Korean government does not seem to see the North’s “nuke” as much of an existential threat. Since it is 1) a deterrent of defensive nature and 2) an extortion tool, the feeling seems to be that it would be less destabilizing and less expensive to simply pay the North what it wants. This ignores two threats to South Korea the “bomb” poses.

First, the danger of an accident. It should be pointed out that the original technology North Koreans received from the Soviets was the very same used in Chernobyl. Even with the best of intentions on the part of the North, a serious nuclear accident from a secretive program in the North would have significant repercussions on the South.

Second, the danger of continuing mischief. Extortions have a way of escalating. If the South paid off the North, the price of continued “stability” is likely to rise. If rebuffed, North Korea may not push the nuclear issue again, but may engage in “conventional” mischief since its survival from external aggression is guaranteed with the weapon. In other words, the possession of nuclear weapons enables conventional aggression by nullifying the threat to suvival posed by a potential failure of aggression.

What then, is the U.S. to do about North Korea? There are two things.

One, the U.S. should sit tight. The presidential election in Decemmber 2007 may bring about a change in the character of the South Korean government. That change may not be very radical, but, especially with the rising concern over North Korean human rights (and continued unpopularity with the return on the monetary investments made in the so-called “Sunshine Policy”), may enable the U.S. to take up the following step.

Two, once the right domestic conditions are in place in South Korea, the U.S. should declare and enforce a quarantine of North Korea. China may object and Russia may demure, but with a willing South Korea and especially Japanese naval help, the quarantine would increase the strain on North Korea’s regime.

The only way North Korea’s regime would relinquish its nuke is if the possession of the weapon threatened the survival of the regime more than guaranteed it. Since war is not a serious option, the best remaining option is to enforce a quarantine, with or without Chinese assistance. Such a quarantine might not choke off North Korea completely due to Chinese and possibly Russian “gaps,” but it will increase the strain on Pyongyang’s ability to maintain control over the populace, something that the regime can ill afford.

As a side benefit, this kind of a quarantine would increase the profile of the Japanese self-defense forces in the region, an actual exercise of the oft-mentioned “Japan Card,” something that China desperately wants to avoid.

Should North Korea cave, on the other hand, it should be rewarded with diplomatic normalization with Japan (with the attendant economic assistance, aka “guilt money for Japanese colonialism”).

An alternative strategy, of course, is to pressure China to “open the gates” and let North Korean refugees escape en masse in a replay of the East German liberation episode (with the eventual disintegration of the regime). Unfortunately, the weakness of this strategy is that China is unlikely to cooperate without significant pressure being applied upon it. Perhaps a branching strategy of the quarantine (involving JSDF), should North Korea continue to be defiant, would be to rescind the quarantine in return for China’s acquiescence to let the refugees through unimpeded (provided, of course, that third countries agree to accept them quickly).

In tackling this sticky situation, it is instructive to note what economists have discovered: people are three times more fearful of loss (or pain) than benefit (or gain) of the same amount. While a carrot is useful, a stick is a far more efficient and efficacious lever (and this goes for both North Korea AND China).

As a corollary, the situation also begs reconsideration of the U.S.-ROK relationship. Though the term “divorce” is nowadays often bandied about, I have been opposed to it, because of the geopolitical conditions that would exist in the region “after North Korea.” Should the two Koreas reunited under Southern leadership, the continued (if reduced) presence of U.S. forces would stabilize the region, reduce tension and prevent an incipient arms-race between China and Japan. Such a presence is also likely to preserve the unified Korea’s capacity for independent action in between the two powers.

Yet, the continuing persistence of anti-Americanism, largely a symptom of inferiority (”little brother”) complex in South Korea is unlikely to abate. If anything, it will be fomented time and time again by those in the South Korean left every time there is an electoral contest there.

Since an outright divorce is counter-productive to regional stability and long-term South Korean interests, what is in order is perhaps a little trial separation. In other words, I have come to share Joshua’s view on the presence of USFK. The U.S. ought to withdraw a significant portion of the remaining ground elements from ROK, reduce and relocate what is left away from population areas (and minimize contact with South Korean civilians) and maintain only token air and naval elements.

In this day of popular politics, it is no longer effective to maintain an alliance if only the elites of the hitherto allied country seek to continue the relationship. A judicious reduction of U.S. military presence now would likely reduce tension with South Korean populace, increase appreciation for the military AND local economic value of having U.S. forces and likely preserve the alliance far more than continued large scale (ground) presence.

Lastly, there needs to be a serious update of the knowledge base of American policy elites regarding South Korea. Though by no means uniform, I find that a nostalgic 1970’s attitude to the relationship is distressingly common among American policymakers and their advisers. This attitude often takes the form of “The South Koreans need us for their defense” (increasingly, not really) or “Those ungrateful bastards, we bled to defend them in the past” (that’s great, but the return feeling is likely “That was yesterday. Today, it’s what the *&#% can you do for us”). Neither attitude is particularly useful in dealing with South Korea today.

South Korea’s power and importance in the world are not quite what many South Koreans seem to think they are; but neither are they as insignificant as what some American elites stuck on the Big Brother mode seem to think they are.