WE SEE THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

In the popular and scholarly culture of the United States North Korea has served as the ultimate pariah state time and time again. Yet little is understood about Korea let alone North Korea in the United States today. I too have a limited view of Korea and North Korea in particular.
This blog represents some of my efforts to think about that ever interesting and colorfully vibrant Korean peninsula!

One of my favorite images of the North Koreans is recollected from a childhood comic. A North Korean pilot flying a Russian Mig is blasting away at an American airplane. A beautiful red star is on the wing and the guns are shooting out fire. The North Korean Pilot grimaces and shouts, "Die imperialist warmonger!"

And that is the way they were actually talking then and perhaps now. "Die imperialist warmonger." I don't know what it was about that phrase that tickled me so much because I am certain I didn't have much of a clue about what a communist might be anyway. I suppose the evil communists got it in the end of that comic book. The same thing sort of happened in Korea but they sure did put up a hell of a fight until McArthur drove them back to the Chinese border, to the old Yalu river, eh?

Of course China then intervened and virtually drove McCarthur to the sea but American airpower and weaponry ultimately beat back the communists to the line that divides the Korean peninsula to this day. An armistice was signed and reunification plans scuttled, I believe by the American supported side, the South Koreans. Unlike Vietnam the puppet regime took hold in the South and ultimately evolved into something of a first world nation and republic at the beginning of the twenty first century.

North Korea is still largely run on the basis of a military machine or as a machine that feeds the military the necessary inputs to make the military work. This one-sidedness has maintained a military toughness, readiness and defense for the DPRK that cannot be denied. Of course millions may have starved in part because of this one sidedness.

Of course it is probably true that " Korea consciousness" has increased with a continuing diaspora of Koreans from the Peninsula as well as the continuing importance of Korea as an economic power with presumably important strategic importance to the less than robust superpower that still patrols the Korean Peninsula more than fifty years since the now
rejected armistice was signed. The rejection of this armistice may seem like a bunch of malarkey to the uninformed. The North Koreans are militarists and they have a military plan. For them the war is not really over and they are now more confident than ever that it is they who can in a dire sense prevail if pressed to use nukes. I don't know what they have in mind but a lot of Koreans live on starvation rations and this has been going on for decades. They may be planning to endure nuclear strikes for all I know. None of it makes sense to me but I'm trying to probe the minds of the allegedly inscrutable North Koreans. Korea has made enormous strides but the price has been especially high in the North due to food shortages and perhaps an anemic development policy. I only say perhaps because the militaristic emphasis would necessarily entail production cutbacks in other areas of the North Korean economy.

I am only aware by study of some of the crimes apparently and reportedly carried out in the Korean War. Since then North Korea has been something of a thorn in the side of a sort-of-empire, the American Empire and the American century was yet to be in its heydey.

Today, decades later North Korea has become a new nuclear power, capable of ruining any city with nuclear weapons for at least as far as Japan and perhaps the West Coast of the United States.

As a matter of fact I remember some discussion where Bush administration folks were testifying that North Korean missiles can reach the West Coast of the United States and this was a year or so ago.

With Obama in power the North Koreans are saber rattling and I am not sure what the United States may or may not be doing. The demand that North Korean vessels be boarded and inspected appears to be a new level of intrusion on North Korean sovereignty and a test of another effort to impose international demands on a sovereign nation. It could trigger a
nuclear war if the North Koreans are to be believed.

If the North Koreans seem insane to us it is because they have a radically different perspective from our own. They have a military orientation and a militaristic focus. This is their policy and their ideology and plans are based on the idea of developing nuclear weapons. Thus far successful, or appearing successful they may hope to sell their knowledge and or technology to others. So it could be their big revenue idea for the future.
Cutting off this revenue option might make them more defensive and aggressive. Does the regime go into crisis and get overthrown by internal rivals or does it go to war to press for a military solution to the Korean War.

I think it might be useful to model some of these scenarios just to see what the costs of different military invasions or attack scenarios might be.

So is Obama engaged in a form of dangerous brinksmanship or making a useful stand against the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology or both? If North Korea tries to reconquer the South, I kid you not, what then? Would the price of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons be worth the deployment of at least some such nuclear weapons by North Korea plus whatever their conventional plans may entail? It would be quite a mess!

Sabre rattling is to be expected because the whole investment or a huge investment of the North Korean regime has been the creation of this nuclear weaponry and unless you rattle your nuclear saber people might ignore them or even believe they don't exist. Do we have real proof of nuclear tests that led to nuclear fission? Is the shock pattern measured by seismographs consistent with that one big blip on the scale or more of a series of lesser shocks as in the detonation of conventional explosives? I am assuming these tests have been verified by nuclear science or seismographic signatures characteristic of real nuclear fission tests.

What if the polity in North Korea ends up wondering if the nuclear investment has been worthwhile? What if the polity decides that the nuclear deterrent is o k but that now, with that deterrent the party can attend to other economic needs and the welfare of the Korean workers and peasants. Economic and other social development should be possible with the deterrence of nuclear weaponry. Frankly, the Great Leader's son may be open to such ideas at some time of peace in the future.

Perhaps North and South Korea should engage in a truly revolutionary unification focused series of discussions culminating in the substantial unification of Korean economic and social activity. Perhaps South Korea could help North Korea build up its economic forces in exchange for the nuclear deterrent. Koreans should never use nuclear weapons against one another! Of course these weapons of mass destruction must be abolished as soon as possible Yet one could argue that a nuclear North Korea and a Nuclear South Korea might achieve some degree of stability on the Korean peninsula. Further a fully nuclearized Korean peninsula might be a deterrent to any threat against Japan or am I kidding myself?
In a similar vein, if Japan has nuclear weapons or warheads simply unassembled and not quite ready to go then they can assemble their hitherto secret nuclear weapons and let the whole world know that Japan too has a nuclear deterrent. Wouldn't that tend to create a credible deterrence that will keep the Japanese feeling more secure until we can rally all the nuclear powers to get rid of all or most of the weapons in some enforceable way? I don't see that unity necessary for universal nuclear disarmament on the horizon. Unfortunately, we may need to endure one or more nuclear wars before the nations of the world either exterminate themselves or recognize the necessity of universal nuclear weapons disarmament.