The China model of Korean reunification

Like Germany's reunification, essentially the annexation of East Germany by West Germany, Korean reunification looms as most likely, ultimately and largely entailing South Korea's annexation of North Korea. The awesome cost borne by West Germany for reunification has been instructive to South Korea, particularly in recognition that the material and ideological gaps between North and South Korea are far greater than those which existed between East and West Germany. A possible solution to the negative implications of cataclysmic reunificationmay rest in gradual reunification of the Koreas, with an interim industrialization of North Korea by South Korea, based on the model of the economic development zones in southeastern China; hence, the “China Model”. In such a scenario the investors in North Korea's gradual industrialization would be (primarily) the huge conglomerate South Korean corporations chaebol which seek cheaper labor pools abroad. Investment by such corporations, in cooperation with the South Korean government, and possibly supplemented by western and Japanese capital investment, would presumably raise levels of productivity and the standard of living in the economically and agriculturally ravished North. The North-South gaps would thus be gradually reduced as would the financial and other burdens South Korea would otherwise have to bear for cataclysmic reunification.     

China and Korea: The godfather,part three

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the People’s Republic of China, in dealing with the situation on the Korean peninsula, rules out North Korea’s imminent collapse and continues to stabilize the Kim Chong-il regime as a buffer against U.S. and South Korean advances. It suggests that Beijing has started to view short- or medium-term reunification on Seoul’s terms as a realist scenario and has been trying to influence the accompanying shift in the Northeast Asian power equation to its advantage. If this strategy succeeds, reunification would be brought about under Chinese auspices, with anti-Japanese or anti-American sentiments in both Koreas being purposely or automatically activated so as to promote a sense of national identity.     

Imperialism and Asia: A brief introduction to the literature

Abstract

From 1910 (formally, de facto earlier) until 1945 Korea was under extremely harsh occupation by Japan. During this period, when every component of Korean culture was cruelly suppressed, Korean women suffered specific oppression. Very large numbers of Korean women were forcibly driven into prostitution, both in Korea itself and throughout the Japanese empire. Many were forced into prostitution for Japanese troops in appalling conditions, often in the front lines, and many were killed in the trenches. Within general Japanese sexism, there was a specificity to the attempt to degrade and exploit Korean women. Certain aspects of contemporary Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) official culture must be understood as attempts to combat the legacy of this colonial past. The emphasis on “purity”—for women—which is articulated by both men and women in the DPRK is justified officially by reference to both the Japanese colonial past and the contemporary degradation of women in South Korea, which is usually attributed mainly to US and Japanese influences, such as sex tourism.     

Old and new Korean wars

Abstract

As I write this we have come off one week when it looked as if we might have another war in Korea, and the next week when peace broke out between Washington and Pyongyang as a result of Jimmy Carter's meetings with Kim Il Sung. This pattern of crisis followed by relaxation has lasted at least since the spring of 1993, when North Korea threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. During the entire period most Americans and especially our print and television media have demonstrated that they have no understanding of the terrible destructiveness of the Korean War—and therefore they easily conjure up a new one. Indeed, talk of a new war in Korea is casual and almost routine in the United States.     

An obsessed task: Prospects, models, and impact of Korean reunification

Conclusion Korean reunification is unlikely to be achieved in the foreseeable future; any policy that rests on assumptions that North Korea will collapse easily or imminently is dangerous. Precedents found in the international experience of divided nations suggest that systems with conflicting ideologies cannot be merged peacefully into a lasting unitary governmental structure. In the case of Korea, unification by absorption on the basis of two ideological systems as part of a unitary governmental structure. The impact of Korean unification on the regional structure of international relations will be mixed and uncertain, but the achievement of Korean reunification need not affect the stability of the region in any significant way. When the time for unification is ripe, the four powers will have no choice but to accept such a process regardless of their own anxieties and adjust to the new situation pragmatically without regard to narrowly selfish interests.     

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty in retrospect: The case of North Korea

Abstract

In June 1994 the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) tested a nuclear device, and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) announced its intention to withdraw from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a specialized agency of the United Nations. A brief look at the history of the effort to control the development and proliferation of atomic, and later nuclear, weapons provides some perspective on the actions of each country in 1994.     

The coming decade of change on the Korean peninsula: Implications for Northeast Asia and the United States

The next decade on the Korean peninsula will be one of dramatic change. With a nearly nonexistent economy and its people facing severe famine, the DPRK has no choice but to move away from its self-reliance policies towards another course of action—most likely leading to reunification of the peninsula. However it plays out, the changes in Korea will have important regional implications and impact U.S. military presence in Northeast Asia. Policy makers must formulate plans now for U.S. forces in the region during, and after, Korean reunification. Despite being in shambles internally, North Korea remains a hermit kingdom standing steadfastly against the tides of change and pressures from the outside world to become part of the international community. The Korean peninsula remains a potential, and very likely, international flashpoint as no formal peace treaty was signed after the Korean War—only an armistice agreement keeps the peninsula in a fragile military stalemate. With a badly broken economy, its people continuing to face famine, the threat to resume its nuclear program, and the recent missile firings over Japan, North Korea will likely be an international flashpoint sooner rather than later. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.     

A sinologist’s observations on North Korea

This report provides reflections on a one-week visit to North Korea in April 1989 by a China scholar who lived in Maoist China. It draws on meetings with American and Chinese specialists on Korea, and with North Korea scholars and Party officials. It compares Kim’s North Korea with Mao’s China in terms of agriculture, policy towards education and intellectuals, and the Cult of Personality; it discusses apparent tentative stpes in the North towards openness and reform, but recognizes the dilemma of understanding complicated forces for the against reform in such a short visit. Finally, the report outlines discussions with North Korea international relations specialists and a member of the Secretariat of the Korean Worker’s Party which welcomed the end of the cold war and improved Sino-U.S., U.S.-Soviet, and Sino-Soviet relations as favorable for peace in the region and Korean reunification. He is author ofAgrarian Radicalism in China, 1968–1981 (Harvard University Press, 1989).     

PARALLEL LIVES: A Conversation between Hwang Suk-young and Bao Ninh Two Veterans of the Vietnam War

Translators' Preface: The dialogue below is a translation of a conversation between South Korean novelist Hwang Suk-young and Vietnamese novelist Bao Ninh, who met in Seoul on 4 June 2000. Held a few days before the historic summit meeting between South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, the Hwang Suk-young/Bao Ninh meeting is probably the first such encounter between two major novelists of the Vietnam War from South Korea and Vietnam. The conversation first appeared in the South Korean weekly news journal Hangyoreh 21 on 22 June 2000. The translators would like to thank the editors of Hangyoreh 21 for their kind permission to reproduce the article here.     

What happened in Korea? Rethinking Korean history 1945–1953

Abstract

The Pueblo incident was a stunning reminder of the hysteria and racism associated with the word Korea in the U.S. In spite of Vietnam and the great changes that have taken place within American society, the U.S. government and the military had little trouble in resuscitating the spectre of “brainwashing” and torture. The most diabolical cunning was attributed to the Koreans, who had legally captured the Pueblo and its crew. But as though at the touch of a switch, the American media and much of the nation again began to call for blood as they had done in the years 1950 to 1953. It would be a mistake to underestimate the success of America's campaign of vilification against the Korean people and the Korean revolutionary movement. At times the phobia reaches absurd proportions.     

Syngman rhee: The pawn as rook the struggle to end the Korean war

Abstract

A quarter century ago, in 1951–53, while trying to end the Korean war, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations struggled to keep Syngman Rhee, the president of the Republic of Korea [ROK] , from undermining the negotiations, wrecking the armistice, endangering the United Nations forces, and extending the war. Often it was unclear whether or not he would abide by the armistice and whether or not he would leave the ROK troops under the UN Command, or imperil the UN forces by withdrawing his own. General Mark Clark, the American and United Nations commander in the last year of war, aptly summarized the problems, “I found myself engaged in a two-front diplomatic battle ... with the ... Communists and with ... Rhee [, and] the biggest trouble came from Rhee.” As Rhee's price for acceding to the armistice of July 27, 1953, he secured from the Eisenhower administration generous economic aid, continued military assistance, and a mutual defense treaty, which has endured to the present. Before the armistice, however, military and political leaders in both administrations seriously considered toppling Rhee and installing a more tractable government.     

Studying North Korea through North Korean migrants: lessons from the field

This article examines the use of North Korean defectors’ accounts as a source of information for studying the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Information from defectors fills a vital knowledge gap and improves our understanding of North Korean politics, economics, and society. Witness accounts and interview data collected from people who were born in North Korea but have since left have been widely used by journalists, government agencies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and academics. There are, however, serious methodological issues in collecting, organizing, and interpreting information derived from defectors’ accounts. Selection and demographic biases, power relations between researchers and interviewees, monetary incentives, and language barriers are among those issues. We propose focus group discussions and participatory observation as complementary methods of data collection to mitigate the shortfalls of relying on individual interviews.     

America's Korea,Korea's Vietnam

Atrocities committed by American soldiers against Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War have once again become an issue of public debate in the United States, yet similar actions by South Korean troops fighting America's war in Vietnam remain virtually unknown in the West. The Republic of Korea (ROK) dispatched more than 300,000 combat troops to Vietnam between 1965 and 1973, but after decades of enforced silence by successive authoritarian governments, Koreans have only recently begun to grapple with the ambiguous legacy of the Vietnam War for South Korea. In the spring and summer of 2000, testimonies in the South Korean media by Korean veterans of the Vietnam War revealed for the first time detailed, extensive accounts of Korean atrocities against Vietnamese civilians. These revelations, and the controversy they triggered within South Korea, bring into bold relief the role of Koreans in America's Vietnam War and the role of the Vietnam War in the political and economic development of South Korea.     

Economic changes during the Indian emergency

Abstract

North Korea (or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea—DPRK), more than any other industrial country, is a terra incognita in the Western consciousness. Most commonly it is abhorred as the embodiment of the irrational, the fanatical, and the threatening, and even among Western progressives it is dismissed as grotesque and/or irrelevant. Yet it is an important country and one that deserves close attention.     

Introduction to the supplement

Abstract

Today the American press focuses on what might be called the domestic consequences of United States policy toward Korea. We read about the troop withdrawal issue, the unfolding Korea Lobby scandal, and, perhaps, Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) activities within the U.S. The following supplement, however, reminds us of the far worse consequences of American and Korean policies for those who remain within Korea. It was the U.S. CIA which helped to set up the KCIA, thereby providing to the diffuse authoritarianism of the Rhee regime period (1948–1960) an organizational weapon which has kept Park in power through sixteen years of Korean dissent and upheaval: it is the south Korean people who continue to suffer the consequences. It was the Johnson and Nixon administrations which sanctioned what amounted to bribery, first to get the south Koreans to commit troops in the Vietnam War, and then to keep them there as Nixon and Kissinger prolonged the war. It was the Nixon administration which kept a conspicuous silence when Park in 1972 ripped up the old constitution, did away with even the fiction of procedural democracy, and instituted a frankly authoritarian regime.     

US Foreign Policy and the Korean War

Abstract

Sometimes called the “Forgotten War” because Americans pay so little attention to it, the Korean War was nevertheless a pivotal event in US foreign policy. Three themes will be integrated into this article as it analyzes Korean War policy. First, the Korean War heightened the debates and divisions among US foreign policymakers. If Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor helped to silence these divisions, then President Truman’s handling of North Korea’s 1950 invasion of South Korea helped resurrect them. Second, while foreign policy goals are generally assumed to drive the objectives of war in the classic Clausewitzian sense, the opposite frequently occurred in Korea as changes on the battlefield drove policy objectives of officials in Washington. Third, although the Americans, Chinese and Soviets all worked assiduously to keep the Korean War limited to the Korean Peninsula, the war had repercussions far beyond the Korean battlefield. Its ramifications were felt in Taiwan, Vietnam, Europe and in US defense expenditures as well.     

Introduction

Abstract

“The only thing that convinces people like Kim II Sung is the threat of force and extinction,” blasted U.S. senator John McCain as the nuclear crisis in Korea neared the flashpoint in early June 1994. His words rang out as the multilateral tension surrounding North Korea's nuclear program escalated after more than a year of rapid policy vacillations and fluctuating rhetoric. The United States threatened to seek sanctions in the U.N. Security Council, and North Korea vowed to treat any international aggression as an act of war. What is remarkable about McCain's war yearnings, however, is not their aberrance in the otherwise cool-headed world of international diplomacy, but their similarity to imperial declarations toward North Korea since the battles of the Korean War. It is a sentiment routinely echoed by the mainstream Western press.     

Chaebol and the Turn to Services: The Rise of a Korean Service Economy and the Dynamics of Self-Employment and Wage Work

ABSTRACT

This article examines the growing insecurity for the Korean self-employed who were once responsible for a large proportion of domestic service operations. Since the 1980s, changing regional and domestic economic circumstances, the restructuring of regional and chaebol manufacturing operations and liberalisation of the domestic service economy had led to enterprise diversification into the distributive sectors and the systematisation of the domestic service economy. Conducting a historical analysis of service sector development and decomposing the Korean Economically Active Population survey (1989–2011), this article charts the process of Korea’s distributive sector development and its effect on the self-employed. It argues that chaebol systematisation of Korea’s service sector consolidated the domestic economy after 1997 and exerted pressure on the country’s self-employed. Large businesses formalised the service sector, displaced the self-employed, and instead generated mostly non-regular wage work, proletarianising a significant segment of the service workforce.     

The North Korea Problem: Perspectives on the Nuclear Debate,Economic Reforms and Beyond

ABSTRACT

Despite a plethora of research on North Korea, understanding and managing the challenges posed by the country have long been complicated with no simple solution to put an end to this decades-long security and economic predicament on the Korean Peninsula. With the potential for international conflict, attention must be given to the converging messages emerging from the scholarly works reviewed in this article: Glyn Ford, Talking to North Korea: Ending the Nuclear Standoff, Van Jackson, On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War and William Overholt’s collection North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War? These works speak to the need to: take seriously the risk of nuclear war; consider the connectedness of the North’s decades-long security and economic reform dilemmas; and to acknowledge that the mistrust that is deeply rooted on all sides must be mitigated to bring peace. These books are published at a critical juncture of increased tensions following a highly publicised but remarkably short-lived effort at a breakthrough on the Korean nuclear issue, Pyongyang’s rapidly evolving security posture and its perennial domestic challenges. Each of these volumes provides valuable insights on these challenges for North Korea and internationally.     

North Korea's juche ideology: indigenous communism or traditional thought?

ABSTRACT

This article examines the content of North Korea's juche ideology by analyzing official texts in comparison with Confucian classics and new religious movements in South Korea. The comparison revealed a series of similarities that vividly demonstrate that juche ideas have absorbed core elements of Korean and East Asian philosophical traditions.