NORTH KOREA: A land of no good options

WITH the United States and North Korea continuing to face off over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, pledges by South Korea’s incoming President,  Moon Jae-in, to bring about reconciliation by embracing a new Sunshine Policy and kick-starting the abandoned Kaesong Industrial Complex are being viewed askance – in fact, they seem already to have been disregarded by Kim Jong-Un.
North Korea has a single-minded determination to acquire ICBM capability, including the ability to strike the United States on home soil.
China’s words and actions in the imbroglio suggest frustration, while 12 current U.S. military scenarios generally assume a loss of half a million people within a day in the event of a North Korean attack on Seoul.
As the U.S. activates its THAAD missile system, neighbouring countries — including Japan, Taiwan, Russia and even the Philippines — watch with a mix of fear and trepidation . . .

The election of left-of-centre Moon Jae-in to the Korean Presidency on May 9 would elsewhere augur hopes of reconciliation — or at least a modus vivendi along the lines of détente and realpolitik.
Not on the Korean Peninsula, however.
Despite the professed intention of the new President to return to the Sunshine Policy that shone (or sunburned, depending on one’s view) across the Peninsula during the halcyon days of South Korean Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun (1998-2008), North Korea remains defiant.
It maintains an unwavering determination, despite a number of launch failures, to acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of striking the United States at home.

The U.S., in turn, is finally reaching the conclusion that diplomacy and “strategic patience” have run their course with North Korea (Trump’s unprecedented offer to meet Kim Jong-Un over aside).

In fact, the only consistency in the entire chronicle of North Korea’s drive to acquire ICBM capability has been a single-minded determination to do so.
It has resorted or responded to diplomacy solely to either parry or distract efforts seeking to thwart its nuclear ambitions, while simultaneously seeking to acquire concessions of one sort or another in any negotiations.
U.S. policymakers of all persuasions are now realising that North Korea, the only State to consistently and overtly threaten the destruction of the U.S. itself, is actively and persistently acquiring the means to do so — and is projected to have these means by 2020.
Already, there is speculation in military circles that North Korea may have the ability to strike Hawaii with a 20-kiloton warhead.
In contrast, without exception, each of North Korea’s adversaries and lukewarm allies continue to vacillate on the nuclear issue.
All will face the consequences when the inevitable day arrives for North Korea to credibly demonstrate that it can hit the U.S. Mainland.
Most likely, that will occur near the end of President Trump’s first term — or, with great certainty, on his watch should he be elected to a second.
Given North Korea’s determination and adroitness in refusing to negotiate away its ICBM programme, and the reluctance or inability (or both) of China and Russia to divert, halt or thwart North Korea’s ICBM ambitions, any course within the range of possible scenarios available to broker peace on the Korean peninsula — namely, diplomacy, Sunshine policies, blandishments, threats, or sheer cajolery — will merely be a waste of time.
Three scenarios now loom, all of them based on the highly probable assumption that North Korea will continue to drive toward ICBM capability until that mission is accomplished.
First, North Korea will leverage its nuclear capability to achieve some advantage, either through extortion or actual use.
Second, the U.S. will undertake a pre-emptive first strike to prevent such an occurrence, with unimaginable attendant uncertainties for all concerned.
Third, North Korea will remain content to rely upon its limited nuclear deterrent, with a very uneasy status quo (11,500km-range KN-08 v. THAAD) maintained, and tensions stretching into the foreseeable future.
Only Kim Jong-Un knows the likelihood of the first and third scenarios. Only Trump can answer for the second.
The question, then, is how the U.S. might respond to the North’s attainment of ICBMs.
U.S. military contingency plan OPLAN 5027 basically assumes North Korean aggression, while OPLAN 5029 assumes an improbable North Korean internal collapse.
Neither overtly takes into account, to any coherent degree, an attack or extortion by a nuclear-equipped North Korea that presumably would be prepared to deploy the ultimate weapon, whether on Seoul, Pearl Harbour or Tokyo.
Currently, 12 military scenarios are envisioned for an attack on Seoul. A loss of half a million people in the capital within a day is generally assumed.
The great new uncertainty is Trump himself, given that candidate Trump’s solution was to have both South Korea and Japan develop their own nuclear deterrence capability, leaving the U.S. clear of the fallout. Given his “America First” stance, Trump could well decide to quietly acquiesce to Kim’s demands and withdraw.
Conversely, he could harbour such anathema to “losing” that he lashes out, come what may.
As Asia security specialist Jonathan Pollack opined in an April 18 interview with Vox, this would result in a “very big war . . . on a scale that is unimaginable”.
In short, either U.S. option – withdrawal or war — would have epochal consequences.
Whether Trump has the patience to both accept the unacceptable and remain at South Korea’s side is likewise uncertain.
Incoming South Korean President, Moon Jae-in, is the son of North Korean refugees born during the Korean War. He became a liberal human rights lawyer who served as Roh Moo-hyun’s chief-of-staff.
His stated objective of restarting and then expanding economic co-operation endeavours with North Korea, such as the abandoned Kaesong Industrial Complex, while also using inducements for greater North-South co-operation through Sunshine Policy 2.0, are likely to be no more effective than they were the first time round under his predecessors.
A week prior to the South Korean election, North Korea announced its intention to continue its nuclear programme, even though Moon, who was promising engagement (or appeasement, depending on perspective), was the clear frontrunner.
Other questions raised by the implementation of a new Sunshine Policy — such as how it would play in Washington, and to what degree it might violate UN sanctions against North Korea — remain. China’s words and actions suggest its own impotence.
China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, informed the UN Security Council as recently as April 30: “The key to solving the nuclear issue on the (Korean) Peninsula does not lie in the hands of the Chinese side.”
In fact, China has been oscillating between attempting to coerce South Korea into rejecting U.S. deployment of its THAAD anti-missile system — by banning K-pop entertainers, closing or restricting Korean retailers in China, and discouraging Chinese tourists away from South Korea on one hand, while curtailing purchases from and energy deliveries to North Korea on the other.
THAAD is now up-and-running in South Korea, and Beijing’s actions have done no more than cause South Korea to diversify its trade flow away from a growing dependence on China.
This threatens to reverse Korea’s economic gravitation into a PRC orbit.
North Korea’s response to Chinese trade sanctions has been true to form. It denounced China’s “betrayal” for “infringing upon the strategic interests” of the DPRK, warning that “China should no longer recklessly try to test the limits of our patience”.
Ever since the December 2013 purge and execution in Pyongyang of Jang Song Thaek, Kim Jong-eun’s uncle, who was responsible for relations with China and himself a strong promoter of economic growth, North Korea’s relations with China have been frosty.
The implications for both North and South Korea of a continuation of the current status quo — culminating in a nuclearised North Korea on one hand, or a war of epic proportions involving surgical strikes which morph into mass slaughter — range from unnerving to catastrophic.
China’s options range from enduring continued U.S. pressure to act constructively to having a massive war on its 1,400-km border that sucks U.S. military power closer to the Motherland.
And as two of China’s major trading partners would be directly involved, with one devastated, the Chinese economy could be crippled in a worst case scenario, replete with the prospect of social and political upheaval.
Depending on the scenario, the ROK-PRC FTA, too, would either weaken or become moot.
Regionally, political risk calculations and insurance rates would skyrocket, and country ratings would plunge.
Japan is hardly likely to benefit from any of these scenarios, because, unlike Korean War I, in which it benefitted economically, a sequel would find Japan within range of North Korea’s missile inventory.
Naturally, Japan’s impulse to re-arm clearly intensifies under any of the likely scenarios.
 Russia, too, would not benefit unless it perceived opportunities to advance into Europe while the bulk of U.S. forces were embroiled on the eastern side of the Eurasian landmass. However this would create a situation potentially able to explode into World War III.
Likewise, India may find China preoccupied with a firestorm that would stretch well into the Yellow (West) Sea.
Taiwan, with growing ROK-PRC tension, would see a major competitor in the Chinese market weaken. And in case of war on the Peninsula, that competitor would be reeling for years.
Taiwan would, however, lose in terms of security if the U.S. found the cost of its East Asia commitments either mounting, with a continuation of the status quo, or exploding in the case of actual conflict.
Likewise, there would be negatives for the Philippines as the Chinese push their claims in the South China Sea — a bloodied U.S. would be less likely to rush to Duterte’s side.
In the years leading up to the First World War, Germany constructed, at great expense, a high seas fleet designed to cow Britain into inactivity in the event of war.
That fleet achieved the exact opposite, by driving Britain into the Triple Entente, which ultimately became the essential instrument of the German Empire’s destruction. This had epochal ramifications globally that continue to this day.
North Korea’s ICBM ambitions portend a parallel result: a war that the DPRK would inevitably lose, but that no-one would win (that is, be better off than before).
North Korea has well and truly earned its reputation as “the land of no good options”.

* Peter Sylvestre is Seoul correspondent for
     ATI Magazine.