Guilt-tinged follow-up

Well, it's more than just guilt for having returned to my sentence-long posting ways, but I do feel some context is necessary. That and the fact that Financial Times limits unregistered visitors to three articles a month (!), meaning that maybe some of us couldn't even read the article in the first place.

The latest out of Pyongyang is, as I eluded to before, not good. The DPRK has cut off all communications with Seoul, called its army up, and is apparently planning a test launch of one of its hilariously named Taepodong-II missiles. Last December, as a prelude to all this nonsense, North Korea cut off all overland travel between the North and South and shut down the "special economic zone" that existed as one of the DPRK's only real economic connections to the outside world. Why? Well, the answer, as in all things North Korean, is who the fuck knows. Some have speculated that Kim Jong-Il recently suffered from a stroke, and the country is clamming up in preparation for a transition of power (possibly to one of his sons). Others, and I count myself among them, see this as a continuation of the last couple decades of negotiations between North Korea and the international community, with North Korea throwing out some more sound and fury for leverage's sake. Not a good thing at all, but hopefully an understandable one.

The history of the North Korean nuclear issue is long and complex, with lots of dates and agreements, but it has followed a fairly steady diplomatic pattern (discounting the whole Axis of Evil thing) since the early 90s. North Korea, who says its interest in nuclear power is purely peaceful and entirely in keeping with juche, the national ideology of self-reliance, accepts some arrangement of international aid and energy in exchange for IAEA access and admittance to the NPT. Then, the IAEA notes a discrepancy, or a lack of cooperation, or something mysterious. The international community puts some degree of pressure on Pyongyang to acquiesce, North Korea reacts in a very hostile manner, and we all wet ourselves a bit. The CIA concluded in 1994 that North Korea possessed some degree of nuclear technology, and while it is unclear as to whether the Taepodong-II can deliver an atomic payload, it is believed to have a range of 4500 km, which is, according to Google Earth, just shy of Alaska. Adding to all this, North Korea may actually have tested a small nuclear bomb in 2006 (it's been suggested that it was a fake, or even a failure).

Anyway, my cautious and underinformed take on the whole thing is that the DPRK has been very clever in using the leverage it has as international crazy person to get what it wants. They've gotten very very good deals in the past when they've gone to the negotiating table - annual shipments of oil from the United States, aid from China and South Korea, the ability to keep their nuclear power program, etc. - and they may see the threat of nuclear weaponry as the ultimate way to prevent the collapse of their regime from the outside. The trick, though, is that this stuff works well because the actor that could have the most influence, China, only ever puts real pressure on North Korea to comply with international demands when the threat hits a high level of intensity (like in 2006). If (and this is a big if, I understand) China continues its peaceful rise on to the international stage, it may become less and less tolerant of North Korean antics, especially if they constantly have to ratchet up the aggressive posturing to get any attention. In such a theoretical scenario, things could easily spiral out of control, at which point we might actually just find out what the DPRK's been working on out in the garage for the past 30 years.