North Korea: Gesture of Detente

Two months after the succession in the North Korean regime following the death of Kim Jong Il and the accession of his son, Kim Jong Un, the Pyongyang government announced the temporary suspension of nuclear testing, long-range missile launches and uranium enrichment at the Yongbyon nuclear facility. After the announcement, the State Department in Washington qualified the measure as a modest first step in the right direction and announced the shipment of 240,000 tons of food to North Korea, which will arrive along with representatives from the International Atomic Energy Association, who will be in charge of supervising compliance with the moratorium.

As can be seen, this measure was produced in the context of an extended famine in North Korea, which happened as a result of the isolation and obstinacy that has characterized the Kim dynasty but also the blockade undertaken by neighboring South Korea and its Western allies, headed by the United States. After the economic embargo imposed by the West on Pyongyang in the 1980s in response to its nuclear program, only the governments of Seoul and Beijing continued to export food to North Korean territory. However, given the increasing diplomatic tensions between the two nations sharing the Korean peninsula, Seoul joined the blockade in 2008; and the North Korean population has [since] remained at the mercy of a harsh food crisis.

Therefore, in as much as the temporary cessation of North Korean nuclear tests is in itself good news — in that it implies the suspension of one of the principal sources of geopolitical tension on the planet and generates expectations of reconciliation in other fields, such as the commercial and diplomatic — it is a pity that the decision was a consequence of an action of multinational hostility against Pyongyang and not a negotiated exit from the old conflict between that government and its southern neighbor.

The moratorium announced yesterday moreover appears to be a very fragile settlement, in light of the long record of aggression and foreign intervention on the Southeast Asian peninsula—a record that has placed Seoul and Pyongyang under the threat of permanent war for the last six decades. At the end of World War II, the Korean peninsula was seized by U.S. and Soviet forces looking to end more than three decades of Japanese occupation, becoming divided shortly thereafter, in 1948, into two states that claimed sovereignty over the entire territory. Two years later, war broke out between the pair, and the Korean territory was used as a geopolitical chessboard for the two blocs that at that moment were contesting the world order: Washington was directly involved in the contest in favor of Seoul, while Moscow and Beijing supported Pyongyang politically, economically and militarily.

After a three-year period of confrontation that yielded a total death toll of over three million on both sides, an armistice was signed that left unresolved the issues of national reunification and of peace itself; it represents one of the most visible and anachronistic marks of U.S. interventionism in Asia.

On the other hand, insofar as it is true that attempts by any government to manufacture nuclear weapons are undesirable and dangerous for the peace and security of the region and the world, the North Korean nuclear program represents a coherent and even logical response to the historical siege imposed by the West, to the United States’ application of the doctrine of pre-emptive war in Afghanistan and Iraq (episodes that have fed Pyongyang’s pursuit of arms so that they may be able to rely upon deterrents against possible aggression) and Washington’s open support of the regime in Seoul.

U.S. interference in the region and its hostility toward the North Korean government has historically been a principal component of regional tension and a fundamental obstacle to peace between the two nations. Now, when Pyongyang demonstrates a gesture of detente toward Seoul and the West, in face of the superpower’s historical responsibility for the configuration of the Korean conflict, the least that can be hoped for is that they show prudence and diplomatic good sense — and take advantage of the occasion to promote, once and for all, a negotiation process that leads to the signing of a peace agreement. Otherwise, there will be no sustained and lasting stability in the region.