Coping with North Korea - The Washington Quarterly

Copyright 1998
The Center for Strategic and International Studies
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Washington Quarterly
1998 Winter
Vol. 21, No. 1; Pg. 33

Coping with North Korea
Amos A. Jordan and Jae H. Ku

Amos A. Jordan is president emeritus and senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies and counselor of the CSIS Pacific Forum. Jae H. Ku is a research analyst at CSIS and Ph.D. candidate at the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

The last fires of the Cold War continue to smolder on the Korean Peninsula. About 1.1 million North Korean troops, more than 70 percent of them deployed less than 30 miles from the demilitarized zone (DMZ), confront almost three-quarters of a million South Korean and U.S. troops, ready to do battle. Although this face-off has existed for more than four decades, the increasing unpredictability of North Korea arising from a generational leadership transition and a dramatically deteriorating economy makes the present situation particularly dangerous. The United States could find itself plunged into another Korean war at any time.

Several recent developments, including a September 1996 North Korean submarine-launched commando raid on the South and an exchange of gunfire and mortar rounds between the two armies in July 1997, suggest that at any moment the tense confrontation could flare into large-scale hostilities. North Korea appears willing to back up its belligerent rhetoric with bellicose actions. Given its failing system, the regime may feel itself cornered and the weight of its floundering economy too heavy a burden to do less. One can conceive of a situation in which, to stave off a regime collapse or a military coup, the current power-holders lash out against the South. In short, the threat of chaos or another war on the Korean Peninsula remains very real, especially if the economic crisis and the looming famine in the North deepen. And that prospect is not at all unlikely, as the country's problems -- including the specter of mass starvation -- reach new heights in 1997 and are highly likely to further intensify in 1998. North Korea could well face a regime crisis in the next year or two that will threaten not only internal but also regional stability.

The North's Economic Woes

The North Korean economy suffers from the structural contradictions found in all socialist countries, but Pyongyang tells its people that these problems are the result of imperialist machinations and external shocks. After respectable growth in the 1960s and 1970s, the North now suffers from shortages of foreign currency, grain, spare parts, and oil; low international competitiveness, morale, and technology levels; and poor product quality, living standards, and production facilities. n1 Although its southern counterpart's economy has been growing at near double-digit rates, North Korea's economy has contracted seven years running -- an astonishing record of economic incompetence. From 1989 to 1995, according to Bank of Korea estimates, North Korea suffered a 25 percent decline in real gross domestic product (GDP). It is estimated that in 1996 the North's economy contracted a further 3.7 percent, which was on top of a decline of 4.6 percent in 1995. n2 With roughly half the population of the South, North Korea's GDP stands at only about one-twentieth that of South Korea's.

Massive floods in 1995 and 1996 greatly exacerbated the North's endemic and growing distress. The 1995 floods reportedly damaged almost one-fourth of the country's arable land, causing a shortfall of approximately 1.5 million tons of grain. n3 With food and foreign currency reserves already depleted, North Korea had no choice but to appeal -- with some success -- for international relief aid. Floods hit again during summer 1996; although not as severe as the previous year's, they reportedly damaged nearly one-fifth of North Korea's farmland, causing a further shortfall of 1.2 to 1.5 million tons of rice. n4 The bad news continued into 1997 with a severe drought: The estimated accumulated food shortage, according to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), is 2.3 million tons. n5

In response to UN appeals for food aid in 1996, the United States and its Asian allies agreed to provide new humanitarian assistance to Pyongyang, totaling $15.2 million -- $6.2 million from the United States, $6 million from Japan, and $3 million from South Korea -- but covering only a fraction of the WFP's $43.6-million request and an even smaller fraction of what North Korea needed to compensate fully for the poor 1995 and 1996 harvests. The donors made clear that further aid would be contingent on political developments, including the North's participation in the four-power peace talks (involving the two Koreas, China, and the United States) proposed by South Korea and the United States in April 1996.

In February 1997, following North Korea's unprecedented expression of "deep regret" to South Korea for the submarine infiltration and its commitment to a joint briefing on the four-power talks, the United States and South Korea pledged an additional $10 million and $6 million of food aid, respectively. Nevertheless, the pledges cover only a fraction of a renewed $41-million WFP request. South Korea has announced that it will consider providing substantial aid only after North Korea participates in the four-power talks. Starting in April, as evidence of severe North Korean malnutrition mounted, the United States sent an additional $15 million of food aid to meet the WFP's newest request of $95.5 million. The European Union has also been forthcoming, but South Korea has agreed only to permit private food shipments through its National Red Cross. n6 A major aid initiative from Seoul seems highly unlikely before South Korea's December 1997 presidential election. China's food aid and sales, which are quite substantial but hard to quantify precisely, are undoubtably inadequate to make up the overall shortage.

While North Korea haggles and sets unrealistic preconditions at diplomatic meetings, ranging from U.S. troop withdrawal to a bilateral U.S.-North Korean peace treaty that would cut out South Korea, international aid organizations and private relief experts warn that -- without further major aid -- 2 million or more Northerners, especially children and the elderly, could starve to death in the near term. n7 Because Pyongyang severely restricts the flow of information and the travels of foreign observers and aid monitors, especially Korean-speaking ones, and because its data are susceptible to manipulation in the case of harvests or are unavailable or incomplete on barter or purchase programs, it is impossible to be precise about any numbers. Nevertheless, the scanty October 1997 harvest clearly will carry the country only a few months -- about four, according to the Economist -- when a further massive aid appeal by the WFP can be predicted. n8

Declining Foreign Help?

Because North Korea has long purchased food abroad, in a sense the current economic crisis is basically a hard currency crisis. In this respect, important unofficial assistance already comes from Japan. In 1994, Japanese police officials testifying before the parliament stated that the Japanese Chosen Soren, Korean residents in Japan who favor North Korea, send $600 million or more each year to North Korea. n9 Korean-owned pachinko (vertical slot or pinball machine) parlors generate most of the money. But Nicholas Eberstadt's recent research indicates that the current flow of money from the Chosen Soren is probably not more than $100 million a year, far less than any prior estimates; he argues further that this decline has been the trend since 1990. n10 Eberstadt calculated that if North Korea actually received $500 million or more per year from pachinko, as rumors estimated, the country would have enough foreign reserves to purchase two million tons of oil and two million tons of maize to solve its fuel and food shortages. His research seems credible given the recent decline in membership in the Chosen Soren. n11

Adding greatly to its woes, North Korea continues to suffer from the devastating end to its subsidized trade and low-interest loans from the former Soviet Union and former socialist states of Eastern Europe. Juche, the official, all-encompassing "self-reliance" ideology of the North, was always partly fraud; the country long depended heavily on the Soviet Union and China for subsidized oil, grain, machinery and parts, and military goods. n12 Between 1987 and 1990, North Korea's imports from the Soviet Union averaged more than $1.7 billion annually; in 1991, these imports dropped to less than $600 million and by 1993 they had dropped still further, to less than one-tenth of what the Soviet Union was sending in the 1987-1990 period. n13 Not only did the subsidized imports disappear, but so too did export markets for the North's subpar industries. In a further blow, in January 1993, China stopped subsidizing oil exports to the North and demanded hard currency for its products. Overall, North Korea's foreign trade continues to decline, having fallen to $1.9 billion in 1996, nearly a 60 percent decrease from the high of $4.64 billion in 1990. n14 The resulting shortages not only of food but also of energy, spare parts, and raw materials are endemic; by 1996, less than than 30 percent of the North's industrial capacity was reportedly operational.

North Korea is caught in a downward economic spiral from which not even massive, continuing foreign aid can rescue it without substantial policy changes. As might be expected, its leaders have tried to avoid deep changes by tinkering with the existing system. They have apparently decentralized some decision-making, established or tolerated farmers' markets, permitted tiny plots for private cultivation, enlisted army troops as farm workers, and tried other limited palliatives. They have also initiated an opening to the world through a free-trade zone at Rajin-Sonbong, first established in 1991. But, because North Korea lacks the legal assurances investors demand, has only rudimentary financial arrangements for trade and investment and almost totally lacks physical infrastructure in Rajin-Sonbong, the results have been meager. Very little can be expected from the free-trade initiative in the next decade.

Yet, despite weak and merely anecdotal evidence that North Korea has embarked on limited economic reforms, some Western analysts remain hopeful that the country can emerge from its protracted slide. Robert Scalapino, for instance, recently noted that "the movement on various fronts is toward accelerated 'reform.'" n15 But the modest, halting steps signaled thus far clearly will not be sufficient to arrest the decline; yet more substantive reforms risk eroding political controls and undercutting Kim Jong Il's regime.

Political Prospects

In March 1996, Gen. Gary Luck, then-commander of U.S. forces in Korea, testified in a congressional hearing that the question was not "will this country [North Korea] disintegrate, but how will it disintegrate, by implosion or explosion?" n16 By December 1996, the outgoing director of Central Intelligence, John Deutch, predicted to the Senate Intelligence Committee that within two or three years North Korea would either make war, make peace, or implode. n17 In April 1997, Secretary of Defense William Cohen declared to U.S. troops guarding the DMZ, "We are very close to the finish line of seeing a united and free Korea." n18 With a cult of personality culture surpassing that of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, Kim Jong Il's personal status is a crucial determinant of regime stability. Unlike in modern nation-states, North Korea's regime legitimacy depends less on ideology or the government's ability to provide for the people than on the competence of Kim Jong Il -- and his ability to trade on his heritage. Since Kim Il Sung's death, the son has in fact skillfully wrapped himself in his father's legacy. With the political dynamics of the hermetically sealed society almost impossible to decipher, analysts have a difficult time discerning the wrap's success or the cohesiveness and overall competence of his regime.

Some have argued that the reclusive junior Kim retains complete command, while others have argued that he rules from a base of collective leadership. Although North Koreans now refer to him by his father's honorific of "Great Leader," more than three years after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il has yet to take his highest title of state president. Only in October 1997 did he assume the title of general secretary of the Korean Workers Party (KWP). The delays have led many analysts to speculate that the succession is not going smoothly, a power struggle is occurring, or Kim Jong Il's health is poor. A more likely explanation is that he has deferred elevating himself to the presidency and for a time to the general secretary position in light of the country's dire economic situation and the inadequacy of his policies to overcome the crisis.

In the meantime, Kim Jong Il has been diligently cultivating his key power base -- the military -- raising its status, elevating junior grade generals, and repeatedly visiting military posts. The recent deaths of Defense Ministers Ojin U (in 1995) and Choe Kwang (in February 1997), and of Vice Defense Minister Gen. Kim Kwang Jin (also in February 1997), provided Kim Jong Il timely opportunities to replace key figures of the first or revolutionary generation with his hand-picked generals.

Immediately following Choe's death, Kim Jong Il elevated a total of 21 junior-grade officers to full generals, many of them sons of the North's revolutionary elites. Although some analysts have argued that a power struggle has already begun, the recent reshuffling of top military leaders does not yet indicate such a struggle. Still, generational change is clearly occurring, and Kim Jong Il is placing his supporters in crucial positions. Just before the lavish celebration in 1997 of the sixty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Korean People's Army (KPA), Kim Jong Il promoted 123 generals, leaving the country with a total of 1,220 generals in all -- a staggering generals-to-soldiers ratio of about 1-to-900. n19

Although he has particularly cultivated the military, Kim Jong Il has also built strong relationships in the party and civil government bureaucracies. For more than two decades, Kim Il Sung consolidated his son's power by manipulating promotions within the bureaucratic hierarchy. The party apparatus controls career mobility in Communist states, and most of the party's top leaders -- the closed governing circle -- have three things in common: a "good" family background, a degree from a leading university or affiliation with "reputable" institutions, and experience in key government posts or the military, the latter two qualifications being
determined by the KWP. n20

Although analysts may question the competency of the system's alumni in terms of their ability to govern, thus far they have been unable to judge the cohesiveness of the inner circle. True, reports have circulated of various purges, coup attempts, and assassination plots, but these reports are difficult to document. Tong-a Ilbo in August 1995 reported that in January 1992, after the government uncovered an alleged coup d'etat plot to prevent Kim Jong Il from succeeding to the post of supreme commander of the army, it executed three senior officers, including a regiment commander, and ten officials from the State Security Department. In April 1992, also according to Tong-a Ilbo, the government found some 30 general-grade officers guilty of an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Kim Jong Il; two of them, the deputy commander of the Seventh Army Corps stationed in Hamhung, and Col.-Gen. An Jong Ho, deputy chief of staff of the Ministry of People's Armed Forces, were shot to death, but the others fled to Russia and sought political asylum. The newspaper further reported that, in December 1992, the government executed a general-grade officer from the General Guard Bureau and a small group of supporters of a coup attempt, and that in June 1994 the government arrested 10 officers from the Hanggon Military Officers' General School and burned them at the stake in the school grounds after the government uncovered their alleged plot to assassinate Kim Jong Il. n21 According to one report, one of the attempted military coups was attributed to Soviet-trained officers who favored reform. n22 Whether all these incidents actually occurred or happened precisely as reported cannot be confirmed.

Data on senior-level defections are more reliable, however, and there the evidence suggests that over the last year or so the center is not holding solidly. In January 1996 a North Korean diplomat, his wife, and an intelligence officer stationed in Zambia defected to South Korea. Hyon Chol Kyu, the diplomat's father and himself a KWP Central Committee member, allegedly defected to China. In May 1996 a North Korean scientist who directed acoustic research at North Korea's state science institute and a drama writer at the North Korean Central Broadcasting Station defected to Seoul via a Southeast Asian country. In February 1997 Hwang Jang Yop, Chairman of the KWP Foreign Affairs Committee, member of the Central Committee, and one of the 11 members of the party's Secretariat, defected to South Korea. Hwang's status as the leading architect of juche and his close relationship with Kim Jong Il -- having married Kim Il Sung's niece and having personally tutored the Great Leader's son when Kim Jong Il was a student at Kim Il Sung University and Hwang was its president -- made him by far the most important defector in a growing trickle of increasingly senior malcontents. Another defection, perhaps as important as Hwang's, occurred in August when North Korea's ambassador to Egypt, Chang Sung Gil, and his brother, Chang Sung Ho, a commercial attache in Paris, sought political asylum in the United States.

One might reasonably assume, therefore, that political as well as economic deterioration is accelerating in the North. An apparently growing disillusionment with the whole approach of juche reflects this deterioration. Five years after the replacement of Marxism-Leninism with "socialism with a North Korean face," recent polemics from Pyongyang suggest that an older theme may be supplementing or even supplanting juche; that theme, entitled "continuing the arduous march under the Red Flag," involves "absolute worship for the leader of the revolution and the spirit of defending him even at the cost of life and sharing weal and woe with him to the last." n23 This emphasis on the banner of the Red Flag may be Kim Jong Il's attempt to create an ideology based on personal loyalty to himself. On the other hand, according to Hiroharu Seki, a Japanese professor and personal friend of the ideologist Hwang, the North Korean defected after failing to evolve juche to include a new concept called "juche capitalism." n24

Because the juche ideology remains his father's most prominent legacy, Kim Jong Il will find it difficult to discard it entirely; harder still will be simultaneously taking a U-turn away from the country's command economy as Deng Xiaoping successfully did in China after Mao Tse-tung's death. Moving away from central control, heavy industry, and massive inputs to the military and moving instead toward economic freedom, flexibility, and marketization will inevitably create "losers." If Kim Jong Il chooses the path of deep reform, the military will most likely become one of the "losers" and thus could swing to support antireformist groups against him and his security forces. n25 And even if Kim decides to abandon juche and its accompanying baggage, evading a coup in the process, the resulting reform would likely come too late to produce the needed short-term economic upturn and political stability. In sum, the outcome of hunkering down, tinkering with the status quo, or beginning deep reforms could, sooner or later, be the same -- namely, the overthrow of the regime.

U.S. Interests

Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the U.S. objectives on the Korean Peninsula have been fourfold: to deter further North Korean aggression; to foster a democratic, economically viable South Korea capable of contributing to peace and stability on the peninsula and in the Northeast Asian region; to preclude development and possible use of nuclear weapons on the peninsula; and to facilitate progress toward reunification of the two Koreas.

The crucial first U.S. objective, deterrence of war -- specifically of North Korean actions that would lead to war -- is in the interests of not only the United States and South Korea but also all the regional powers. For the foreseeable future, the United States will require forces on the ground and in nuclear deterrence roles to maintain the uneasy peace. Although some in South Korea and the region (and in the United States) seek outright U.S. military withdrawal or tokenism, most analysts and governments agree that peace on the peninsula remains much too fragile to leave solely to the two Korean states.

Recently, Gen. John H. Tilelli Jr., commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, called for special vigilance against an unpredictable North Korea. "While North Korea's population is grievously suffering, due to its economic collapse, its military remains strong and capable. Let there be no mistake -- this military force poses a real threat to the peace and stability here." n26 Many observers believe that, despite ultimate failure, the North could inflict great destruction on Seoul in a very short time, as the South Korean capital lies just 30 miles from the frontlines. Underscoring this capability, this past February and March, North Korea conducted extensive military exercises along the DMZ -- in the process squandering valuable resources that could have been channeled to alleviate
its economic distress. More broadly, according to South Korea's National Unification Board estimates, "If North Korea reduces its military expenditures by five percent (300 million dollars) it could buy 1.9 million tons of rice." n27 The regime's unwillingness to provide for its citizens while its armed forces take an estimated 25 percent of GDP is a testament to how beholden it is to the military.

The United States accomplished its second objective on the peninsula -- fostering a democratic, economically viable South Korea -- far beyond and far more quickly than most Americans could have imagined. The South has served as a role model for many in the region and for other developing nations, in the process growing to be the world's eleventh largest economy. As might be expected, given the speed with which this evolution has occurred, the country has yet to surmount significant difficulties -- both economic and political -- but the South's achievements nevertheless remain extraordinary.

Achieving the third U.S. objective, precluding the development and possible use of nuclear weapons on the peninsula, remains a continuing struggle. Former South Korean president Park Chung Hee began a weapons program in the 1970s but aborted it at an early stage. North Korea has followed a different and complex path. Its program, dating from the 1970s, was well along and included producing and reprocessing bomb-grade plutonium
when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1993 uncovered the covert program. This discovery set in motion a tense period of interactions -- North Korea's withdrawal, later suspended, from the IAEA, threats of UN sanctions, reciprocal saber-rattling, and endless negotiations -- that culminated in an October 1994 Agreed Framework between Pyongyang and Washington. In the framework, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear development program, receiving in return two 1,000-megawatt (MW) light-water nuclear reactors -- which are less proliferation-prone than the two (50 MW and 260 MW) gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors it had under construction -- as well as 500,000 metric tons of heavy oil per year until the new nuclear power plants come online. But a cycle of improving and then deteriorating North-South relations has frequently held the implementation of the Agreed Framework hostage.

Apart from further North Korean provocations, opposition to the Agreed Framework in the U.S. Congress may also jeopardize the agreement's implementation. Congress only reluctantly agreed to fund the program for 1996, providing $23 million of the $25 million the U.S. administration requested. Currently, both the Senate and the House bar funding for the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) if North Korea fails to make progress on a number of issues including North-South dialogue, honoring of the Agreed Framework, and the 1992 North-South Joint Declaration on denuclearization of the Korea Peninsula. n28 If a hostile or skeptical Congress fails to fulfill U.S. obligations under the Agreed Framework and the resulting KEDO, which is managing its implementation, both South Korea and Japan, as well as eight other KEDO donors, will likely end their participation, dissolving the Agreed Framework and -- probably -- North Korea's freeze on its nuclear program.

Under the circumstances, which include the possibility -- as reported by U.S. intelligence sources -- that North Korea may already have sufficient nuclear material from the spent fuel from its existing small reactor to build two weapons, it is essential to maintain the framework and KEDO. n29 Also essential, the IAEA must remain undeterred in inspecting all nuclear sites, including sites earlier forbidden for inspection because North Korea
has chosen to call them "military complexes."

The fourth U.S. objective, to facilitate progress toward Korean reunification, has slipped into a lower priority. Watching the cost and problems of German reunification and local public opinion polls, Seoul has decided that accelerated reunification may not be the ideal goal. Nevertheless, reunification is inevitable, and it may occur much more rapidly than most people anticipate or want. If North Korea implodes -- a fair probability -- rather than muddles through somehow or manages a "soft" economic landing, the process of becoming one state will likely be a precipitous one. Some in South Korea and the United States say "the sooner the better" and urge steps to bring about North Korean political disintegration, but a precipitous collapse could very well lead to hostilities. A more promising route would be regime overthrow, which is quite likely and probably advantageous to all except the Kim Jong Il clique. Such a scenario differs greatly from state collapse and chaos, which are neither inevitable nor in anyone's interests. In any case, both the United States and South Korea should begin planning in earnest for the reunification that may well come sooner rather than later.

A sudden collapse of the North Korean state would put China in an especially difficult position. Collapse leading to a reunified Korea will not ensure a united Korea favorable to China. Moreover, the buffer state, which China had underwritten with blood from 1950 to 1953, would no longer exist. An implosion could also lead to intractable refugee problems on the Sino-North Korean border. An explosion would put China between a client North, which the combined U.S.-South Korean forces would certainly destroy, and an economically important South. Furthermore, the overwhelming U.S. presence needed to execute the war effort would undermine China's decades of efforts to constrain and minimize U.S. presence both on the Korean Peninsula and in all of East Asia. Therefore, China's policy in the short- to mid-term will undoubtedly be directed to maintaining division of the peninsula. To this end, it will likely continue to give the North diplomatic support and just enough assistance to keep its economy and government afloat -- if the latter is possible. In short, China will be no help in forwarding reunification.

A North Korean collapse or a military conflict on the peninsula would pose intractable problems for Japan as well. A collapse leading to thousands of sea-borne refugees entering Japan would pose serious security problems, especially if fleeing refugees include elements of the KPA. A northern attack on the South would force Japan to clarify its obligations under the U.S.-Japan security alliance, a feat that Japan has thus far not been able to accomplish for domestic reasons relating to the Peace Constitution. Therefore, in the short-term, Japan's policy, too, will be to seek the status quo on the Korean Peninsula. Over the longer term, however, Japan will want to avoid criticism that it seeks precisely this result -- continued division of the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, to enhance its regional and world power status, Japan may work to smooth over historical antipathies on the Korean Peninsula by welcoming a united, democratic Korea.

Conclusion

Events in North Korea, already moving fast, may well accelerate dramatically over the next year or two. The disintegrating economy threatens people at all societal levels. Decades of mismanagement of a structurally flawed Communist system and damage from floods and drought have created an unsustainable situation. Only a massive infusion of relief aid and economic assistance can sustain the regime in the short- and mid-term; only deep economic reforms, coupled with continuing economic aid, can sustain it in the longer term.

Understandably if self-destructively, however, North Korea has been unwilling to take the deep reform route and open up its economy and society. To do so would mean the "contamination of its citizens with bourgeois culture" and the inevitable undermining of juche and the cult of personality from which the regime derives its political legitimacy. Yet Pyongyang's chosen alternative -- hunkering down and staying the juche-command economy course while tinkering with shallow reforms -- clearly has proven and will prove grossly inadequate. Crippling shortages of all kinds, especially an endemic shortfall of two-plus million tons of grain and the specter of mass starvation, have backed Kim Jong Il into a corner. The present situation is untenable. We cannot define the point at which economic distress will trigger dramatic political change, but at some not-too-distant point -- in the authors' estimation likely before the century's end -- that change will surely come.

Political developments in the Korean Peninsula have profound implications for the United States and the entire Asia-Pacific region. For that reason, the United States, South Korea, and Japan need to consult regularly at the cabinet as well as subcabinet levels and begin planning for jointly managing various scenarios of North Korean regime change, state collapse, or breakout. The U.S. administration and Congress must also work in concert in proceeding with the Agreed Framework that is so essential to keeping the nuclear genie in the bottle and advancing the prospect for North-South accommodation. In all these measures, it is imperative that the strategy and tactics of the United States and South Korea be harmonized and coordinated.

While preparing for the likelihood of peninsular turbulence and further Northern confrontational behavior in the near term, the United States and its allies need also to keep focused on the longer term challenge of inducing positive change in Pyongyang. Building on the opening produced by generous aid and on the early successes of KEDO in promoting direct, nonideological communication, we should pursue every opportunity for North-South dialogue -- with U.S. encouragement from the sidelines. In particular, we need to encourage interaction with the North by the private sector and nongovernmental organizations and seize every opportunity to build economic interdependence and to foster sports, cultural, and other exchanges. In short, the United States, South Korea, Japan, and other allies need a comprehensive strategy that goes beyond deterrence and nonproliferation -- essential as those are. We must, through this strategy, continue to offer the current regime and its successors an opening from the blind alley in which they -- and thus the rest of us -- are now trapped.

Notes
n1. "NK's Technology Level is 10-20 Yrs. Behind SK," COMLINE News Service, February 9, 1996. These are referred to as "three shortages, three lows, and three poors."
n2. "Grim data from Seoul underlies Pyongyang's crisis," Reuter, July 9, 1997.
n3. United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs Report, "UN Consolidated inter-agency appeal for flood-related emergency humanitarian assistance to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, 1 July 1996-31
March 1997" (New York: UN, June 1996), p. 1.
n4. Saki Ouchi, "North Korea needs more food aid, says prof," Daily Yomiuri, August 22, 1996, p.3.
n5. Liz Sly, "N. Koreans Surviving on Leaves, Tree Bark; Widespread Famine May Be Just Weeks Away, UN Warning," Chicago Tribune, March 19, 1997, p. 22.
n6. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, April 15, 1997.
n7. Bruce Nelan, "The Politics of Famine; Millions in North Korea Face Starvation. But Everyone Insists on Playing Cynical Games with Their Lives," Time, August 25, 1997, p. 50.
n8. Economist, October 4, 1997, p. 45.
n9. Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, "Pinball Wizards Fuel North Korea," Washington Post, June 7, 1996, p. A25.
n10. Nicholas Eberstadt, "Financial Transfers from Japan to North Korea," Asian Survey 36, no. 5 (May 1996), p. 524.
n11. In November 1995 a Japanese intelligence official reported that the remittances to North Korea from the Chosen Soren had "decreased greatly" since the death of Kim Il Sung. Eric Croddy, "Chuche: The political economy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," Jane's Intelligence Review 8, no. 6 (June 1, 1996), p. 271.
n12. One estimate of North Korea's dependence on other countries, for example, indicated that in 1993 it obtained about 75 percent of its oil, 88 percent of its cooking coal, and 72 percent of its substantial food imports from China. Gordon Flake, "The Global Notion of the North Korean Economy and the Role of South Korean Large Enterprises," paper presented at The Sixth International Symposium, Seoul, Korea, p. 5.
n13. Nicholas Eberstadt, Marc Rubin, and Albina Tretyakova, "The Collapse of Soviet and Russian Trade with the DPRK, 1989-1993: Impact and Implications," Korean Journal of National Unification 4 (1995), p. 97.
n14. Flake, "The Global Notion of the North Korean Economy," p. 3; see also "North Korea's Trade in 1996 Down 7.3 PCT," ASIA PULSE, March 19, 1997.
n15. Robert A. Scalapino, "North Korea at a Crossroads," Essays in Public Policy (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution, 1997), p. 6.
n16. Robert A. Manning and James Przystup, "Starve North Korea -- or Save it? Right Now We're Doing Both," Washington Post, June 23, 1996, p. C4.
n17. "Korea's twin crises," Economist, February 22, 1997, p. 42.
n18. "'Free Korea' is close, says U.S. defense secretary," Agence France Presse, April 10, 1997.
n19. "North Korea's Rattles," Asiaweek, April 25, 1997, p. 8. For comparison, whereas North Korea's ratio of generals to soldiers is 1 to 900, South Korea's is about 1 to 1,260; the U.S. ratio is 1 to 1,612.
n20. "Biographical profiles of North Korean figures," Sintong-a, Seoul, January 1995, pp. 210-278; in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, May 6, 1995.
n21. "Tong-a Ilbo reports on military coup attempts against Kim Jong Il in nineties." BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, August 21, 1995. For more information on some of these alleged coup attempts, see Ilryo Shinmun, May 21, 1995, p. 9.
n22. "NK Leadership Remains in Quagmire with Power," COMLINE News Service, March 6, 1997.
n23. "DPRK Urges Nation to Stage Final Campaign to Finish 'Arduous March' Victoriously," Korean Report, no. 318 (January 1997), p. 1. It is ironic that the pace of deification seems to match the speed of the country's deterioration.
n24. "South Korea, North Korea: Japanese Professor claims Hwang pursued 'Chuche Capitalism,'" FBIS-translated text of Chung Ang Ilbo, February 24, 1997, p. 2.
n25. If the military decides to mount a coup, other members of Kim Il Sung's family could serve as figurehead, such as the two sons of Kim Jong Il's powerful step-mother (Kim Pyong Il and Kim Yong Il), or an uncle (Kim Yong Ju) who in the 1970s was believed to be a possible successor to Kim Il Sung. See Ken Gause's essay in Jane's Intelligence Review, October, 1995.
n26. "U.S. commander in S. Korea warns North Korean military still a threat," Agence France Presse, April 22, 1997.
n27. "Seoul says North could feed its starving, but that it will send more," Agence France Presse, April 30, 1997.
n28. Edward B. Gresser, "Congress and the Korean Questions," a paper presented at the Center for Strategic and International Studies-Korean Institute for National Unification (CSIS-KINU) Conference, September 9-10, 1997, p. 7.
n29. Kenneth Brower, "North Korean Proliferation -- The Threat to the New World Order," Jane's Intelligence Review 6, no. 8 (August 1, 1994), p. 376.

　

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