We join the rest of the world in strongly condemning North Korea’s launching of an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) said to be “capable of hitting any part of the world.” The country, which is formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), launched the rocket in violation of international law and in defiance of the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council which, on at least three occasions, had forbidden it from developing such weapons.
The development of those weapons is forbidden because in the world’s best judgment, they are threats to international peace and security. For one, they are bound to trigger a nuclear arms race in the region at a time the world is striving to control nuclear proliferation. They also constitute a danger to the peace of the Korean Peninsula, if not the entire region.
Viewed in a global context, the consistent defiance of the Security Council by the DPRK with no visible sanctions seems to indicate that the idea of collective security on which the UN system was founded has become ineffective, if not meaningless. The sanctions regime which the UN imposed on the country seems to have served more like an incentive than a deterrent. The result is that within the last six months, the DPRK has tested forbidden weapons 10 times. The recent successful ICBM test is the 11th. The country has finally succeeded in building and testing its dream weapon, the ICBM, in fulfillment of its ambition to be able to target the United States, which it regards as “the sworn enemy of the Korean people.”
It needs to be understood that the North Korean crisis is a product of the Second World War. At Japan’s surrender, two allied powers carved up and controlled the Korean Peninsula: Russia got the North and the United States got the South. Soon, the two allies fell out over their opposing ideologies and the Iron Curtain or Cold War descended on the peninsula. The positions of the two former allies soon hardened to the point where the North invaded the South, inviting the armed intervention of the United Nations in what is now known as the Korean War (1950-53). An armistice was negotiated in 1953, meaning that technically, the two sides are still at war 64 years after the guns went silent. The two Koreas went their different ways with the South, one of the so-called Asian tigers, prospering stupendously, while the North was mired in miserable poverty and cult hero-worship.
Now, the Americans have found themselves in the peculiar situation in which their military might have been completely impotent in compelling a weak, impoverished state to do their bidding. It is a classic demonstration of the limitations of military power. There is a general agreement that President Kim Jong Un may be homicidal but certainly not suicidal. In other words, he is unlikely to hazard a first strike. His obsession with nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them is purely a protection against America’s unspoken but suspected intent of ‘regime change’ in North Korea. It is also beginning to dawn on the United States that China is unlikely to help very much in compelling the DPRK to behave.
We think the United States and, indeed, the world require a new strategy to deal with North Korea and, perhaps, the most useful would be to reverse course and try direct negotiations with Pyongyang, a weak, poor country that craves attention, recognition, normalisation of relations, and a peace treaty with the United States. Again, it is all clear that blood is thicker than water and the Koreas would rather unite under one country than continue the fool’s game of perpetual warfare. We believe that if in Vietnam, the North and the South could reunite, and in Germany, the East and the West could be one country after decades of estrangement, the Koreas could and have for years shown signs that they could reunite as one country.
The test of wills has gone on long enough. We think it is time for the United States to rethink the North Korean question and do the world a favour by setting in motion a process for a comprehensive peace in the Korean Peninsula, including the reunion of millions of families that have been split asunder for more than 70 years.