North Korea on the Brink , livre ebook

NORTH KOREA ON THE BRINK
North Korea on the Brink
Struggle for Survival
Glyn Ford
with Soyoung Kwon
Foreword by Gareth Evans
Pluto Press London • Ann Arbor, MI
First published 2008 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Glyn Ford 2008
The right of Glyn Ford to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN   978 0 7453 2599 6   hardback ISBN   978 0 7453 2598 9   paperback ISBN   978 1 8496 4247 7   PDF eBook ISBN   978 1 7837 1854 2   EPUB eBook ISBN   978 1 7837 1855 9   Kindle eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich
Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England
Contents
 
List of figures, tables and maps
 
List of abbreviations
 
Note on Korean names and words
 
Foreword by Gareth Evans
 
Preamble
1.
North Korea in context
 
Introduction
 
Northern exposure
 
Hypocrisy and democracy
 
Regional perspectives
 
European voice
 
Going North
2.
Drawing the Iron Curtain
 
Introduction
 
Geography
 
The Yanks arrive
 
Revolts, riots and invasion
 
Annexation and resistance
 
Rising nationalism
 
Kim enters stage left
 
Colonial consequences
 
The Soviets come and go
 
Gerrymandered elections
 
Pre-war war
 
Stalin says yes
 
Mao concurs
 
Who kicked off?
 
Civil war to cold war conflict
 
The process
 
Going for a draw
 
POWs
 
The end
 
Hangover
 
Winners and losers
3.
Kim’s Korea
 
Introduction
 
Divide and rule
 
Kim under threat
 
Then there was one
 
Leaving Marx
 
Economy takes off
 
Heroes of labour
 
Economic turbulence
 
Economic autarky
 
Economy in reverse
 
Welfare state
 
Alone abroad
 
Switching partners
 
Alternative to the Soviet bloc
 
Friends and foes
 
Reunification of the Fatherland
 
Kim’s legacy
4.
A life in Wonderland
 
Introduction
 
Building the nation
 
Shaping the nation
 
Controlling the nation
 
Juche culture
 
Manga mania
 
Bread and circuses
 
Games people play
 
National health
 
Equal opportunities
 
Crime and punishment
 
Coming out?
5.
Food, famine and fugitives
 
Introduction
 
Food and famine
 
Korea’s cry for help
 
Calling on the EU
 
Aid at what cost?
 
EU aid
 
Solving its own problems
 
Reform’s rhetoric
 
In our own style
 
Factions
 
Reading the signs
 
Kim 3
 
Flood of refugees?
 
Defectors’ world tour
 
North Korean Human Rights Act
 
EU talks about human rights
 
Things can only get better
 
Same country, two pictures
6.
WMD paranoia rules
 
Introduction
 
Team America
 
Military perception
 
WMD
 
Nukes
 
Framing an agreement
 
Nukes II
 
Nuclear club
 
Missiles’ reality
 
Born on the fourth of July
 
Star Wars
 
Comrades-in-arms
 
Security perception or reality
7.
Negotiating its place
 
Introduction
 
Traditional allies
 
Inter-Korea relations
 
Sleeping with the enemy
 
Broken promises
 
KEDO
 
Six-party talks
 
Back to square one
 
New partner for dialogue
8.
Changing regime or regime change?
 
Introduction
 
Kim’s regime
 
Nuclear crisis I
 
Nuclear crisis II
 
Reform rules
 
Reading the signs
 
EU: payer or player
 
Diverging interests
 
Possible solutions
 
Notes
Recommended reading and viewing
Index
Unless otherwise indicated all photographs are the authors’ own.
Figures, tables and maps
Figures
5.1
Change in rhetoric in North Korea 1980–2006
5.2
The number of North Korean defectors
Tables
3.1
Economic assistance from the Communist countries
3.2
Political classification system in North Korea by social origin
5.1
The number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea
7.1
Timetable of diplomatic relations between EU member states and the DPRK
Maps
 
North Korea
 
Korea’s surroundings
Abbreviations
ACF
Action Contra La Faim
APTN
Associated Press Television News
ASEAN
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
AWACS
Airborne Warning and Control System
BAT
British American Tobacco
BBC
British Broadcasting Corporation
BTWC
Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention
CARE
Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere
CFSP
Common Foreign and Security Policy
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
COMECON
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
CPSU
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CPV
Chinese People’s Volunteers
CVID
Complete Verifiable Irreversible Dismantlement
DMZ
Demilitarised Zone
DPRK
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
EBA
European Business Association
EU
European Union
FAO
Food and Agriculture Organisation
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
GNP
Gross National Product
HEU
Highly Enriched Uranium
HFO
Heavy Fuel Oil
IAEA
International Atomic Energy Agency
ICBM
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
IOC
International Olympic Committee
IT
Information Technology
KAL
Korean Air Line
KCIA
Korean Central Intelligence Agency
KCNA
Korean Central News Agency
KCP
Korean Communist Party
KEDO
Korean-Peninsula Energy Development Organisation
KEPCO
Korea Electric Power Corporation
KGB
Russian-language abbreviation for Committee for State Security
KMT
Kuomintang
KPA
Korean People’s Army
KWP
Korean Workers’ Party
LWR
Light Water Reactor
MAC
Military Armistice Commission
MDM
Médecins Du Monde
MIRV
Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle
MPS
Ministry of People’s Security
MSF
Médecins Sans Frontières
NAM
Non-Aligned Movement
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NDC
National Defence Commission
NGO
Non Governmental Organisation
NKWP
North Korean Workers’ Party
NMD
National Missile Defence
NPT
Non-Proliferation Treaty
OTA
Office of Technology Assessment
PATRIOT
Phased Array Tracking to Intercept Of Target
PBS
Pyongyang Business School
PDS
Public Distribution System
PLO
Palestine Liberation Organisation
POUM
Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Party of Marxist Unification)
POW
Prisoner of War
PVOC
Private Voluntary Organisation Consortium
RMB
Renminbi (Chinese currency)
ROK
Republic of Korea
ROKA
Republic of Korea Army
SEZ
Special Economic Zones
SKWP
South Korean Workers’ Party
SI
Socialist International
SPA
Supreme People’s Assembly
SSD
State Security Department
THAAD
Terminal High Altitude Area Defence
TMD
Theatre Missile Defence
UN
United Nations
UNC
United Nations Command
UNCHR
United Nations Commission on Human Rights
UNDP
United Nation Development Programme
UNICEF
United Nations Children’s Fund
US
United States
USS
United States’ Ship
USSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WFP
World Food Programme
WHO
World Health Organisation
WMD
Weapons of Mass Destruction
WTO
World Trade Organization
Note on Korean names and words
With introduction of a spelling reform in South Korea in 2000, new forms for some very common words transformed Pyongyang into Pyeongyang, Kumgang to Geumgang, and Kaesong to Gaesong. Some sources have moved to the new spelling, but the North Korean press and the international media generally have stayed with the old spelling. This book uses the forms most familiar to the English-speaking reader except for the words in quotations. Therefore, mostly the old version for the name of places is used. Most of the Korean terms are used following the North Korean style, for instance, Juche instead of Chu’che or Rodong instead of Nodong.
For Korean names, we followed the style of North Korea with the family names followed by first names and without hyphen in the first names. Examples are: Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, Kim Dae Jung, etc. Some names are given in a different form or order if they are already established in common usage such as Syngman Rhee. For the Chinese names, the standardised pinyin transliteration is used. Mao Zedong rather than Mao Tse-tung or Beijing instead of Peking. Japanese names are, however, likely to invert the name order (e.g. Junichiro Koizumi, Vladmir Putin).
Foreword
North Korea remains one of the most stubborn problems for the international community. Over the past 60 years it has defied regular predictions of its imminent collapse, survived the end of the Soviet Union, endured the death of its all-powerful leader Kim Il Sung and gained a outsized place among global concerns because of its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Even as its last few communist allies opened their economies and prospered, it has remained resolutely closed off to the world, a dark and little understood nation at the heart of northeast Asia. Its problems go back to its origins at the end of the Second World War when the Korean peninsula was split by Stalin and Truman. The legacies of that war persist in the region; a dead weight of history has blocked progress towards real peace and security.
Isolation has prompted decades of speculation about North Korea’s government, its intentions and the lives of its people. This has often taken on the most lurid tones: as an unknown quantity, it has always been possible for analysts to project their darkest fears onto the country. For decades, North and South Korea traded insults, lied about each other and stirred up the worst fears in their people. North Korea remains one of the most isolated nations in the world. Only a handful of flights leave its airspace each month, it trades only a tiny amount compared with it neighbours, and few of its people ever travel abroad. But since 1995, an increasing numbe