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Why North Korea Needs Nukes – And How To End That

 

Moon of Alabama –April 14, 2017

Media say, the United States may or may not kill a number of North Koreans for this or that or no good reason but call North Korea ‘the volatile and unpredictable regime’

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Now consider what the U.S. media don’t tell you about Korea:

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) — China proposed “double suspension” to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.

“As a first step, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises,” Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress.
…

Wang said the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is mainly between the DPRK and the United States, but China, as a next-door neighbor with a lips-and-teeth relationship with the Peninsula, is indispensable to the resolution of the issue.

FM Wang, ‘the lips’, undoubtedly transmitted an authorized message from North Korea: “The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it.”

North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again.

This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach that will eventually be able to reach the United States.

North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large yearly maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. The maneuvers have large negative impacts on North Korea’s economy.

North Korea justifies its nuclear program as the economically optimal way to respond to these maneuvers.

Each time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers, the North Korean conscription army (1.2 million strong) has to go into a high state of defense readiness.

Large maneuvers are a classic starting point of military attacks. The U.S.-South Korean maneuvers are (intentionally) held during the planting (April/May) or harvesting (August) season for rice when North Korea needs each and every hand in its few arable areas. Only 17% of the northern landmass is usable for agriculture and the climate in not favorable. The cropping season is short.

The southern maneuvers directly threaten the nutritional self-sufficiency of North Korea. In the later 1990s they were one of the reasons that led to a severe famine.

Its nuclear deterrent allows North Korea to reduce its conventional military readiness especially during the all important agricultural seasons.

Labor withheld from the fields and elsewhere out of military necessity can go back to work. This is the official North Korean policy known as ‘byungjin.’

A guaranteed end of the yearly U.S. maneuvers would allow North Korea to lower its conventional defenses without relying on nukes. The link between the U.S. maneuvers and the nuclear deterrent North Korea is making in its repeated offer is a direct and logical connection.

The North Korean head of state Kim Jong-un has officially announced a no-first-use policy for its nuclear capabilities:

“As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes,”

Kim told the Workers’ Party of Korea congress in Pyongyang.

Kim added that the North “will faithfully fulfill its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for the global denuclearization.”

During the congress, as elsewhere, Kim Jong Un also emphasized the above described connection between nuclear armament and economic development. Summarized:

After decades of emphasizing military strength under his father, Korea is moving toward Kim’s “byongjin” — a two-pronged approach aimed at enhancing nuclear might while improving living conditions.

The byongjin strategy, despised by the Obama administration, has been successful:

What are the sources of [North Korea’s economic] growth? One explanation might be that less is now spent on the conventional military sector, while nuclear development at this stage is cheaper—it may only cost 2 to 3 percent of GNP, according to some estimates. Theoretically, byungjin is more “economy friendly” than the previous “songun” or military-first policy which supposedly concentrated resources on the military.

To understand why North Korea fears U.S. aggressiveness consider the utter devastation caused mostly by the U.S. during the Korea War:

 

그림

 

Imperial Japan occupied Korea from 1905 to 1945 and tried to assimilate it. A nominal communist resistance under Kim Il-sung and others fought against the occupation. After the Japanese surrender in 1945 the U.S. controlled and occupied the mostly agricultural parts of Korea below the arbitrarily chosen 38th parallel line.

The allied Soviet Union controlled the industrialized part above the line. They had agreed on a short trusteeship of a united and independent country. In the upcoming cold war the U.S. retracted on the agreement and in 1948 installed a South Korean proxy dictatorship under Syngman Rhee. This manifested an artificial border the Koreans had not asked for and did not want. The communists still commanded a strong and seasoned resistance movement in the south and hoped to reunite the country. The Korea War ensued. It utterly destroyed the country.   All of Korea was severely effected but especially the industrialized north which lost about a third of its population and all of its reasonably well developed infrastructure – roads, factories and nearly all of its cities.

Every Korean family was effected. Ancestor worship is deeply embedded in the Korean psyche and its collectivist culture. No one has forgotten the near genocide and no one in Korea, north or south, wants to repeat the experience.

The country would reunite if China and the U.S. (and Russia) could agree upon its neutrality. That will not happen anytime soon. But the continued danger of an “accidental” war in Korea would be much diminished if the U.S. would accept the North Korean offer – an end to aggressive behavior like threatening maneuvers against the north in exchange for a verified stop of the northern nuclear and missile programs. North Korea has to insist on this condition out of sheer economic necessity.   The U.S. government and the “western” media hide the rationality of the northern offer behind the propaganda phantasm of “the volatile and unpredictable regime”.

But it is not Korea, neither north nor south, that is the “volatile and unpredictable” entity here.

Source

 

 

 

 

미국은 이런 저런 이유로 또는 아무런 이유없이 많은 북한인을 죽일 수도/죽이지 않을 수도 있다

그러나 미국 언론은 북한을 언제든 폭발할 것 같고 예측 불가능한 국가라고 부른다

고 미국언론은 보도하고 있다

이젠 미국 언론이 조선에 대해 말하고 있지 않는 것에 대해 생각해 보자

촤이나의 외교부장 왕이는 연례 인민 대회 중 기자회견에서 제3자의 입장에서

한반도에서의 다가오는 위기를 막기 위해

“Double Suspension이중 중지” 를 수요일 3월 8일 제안했다 – 3월 8일 신화사 통신

“첫 단계로 북한은 핵과 미사일 행동 (실험과 시험발사) 를 중지하고

그에 맞춰 한미는 대규모 한미 합동 군사 훈련을 중지한다” 는 것이다

한반도 핵문제는