North Korea: 'A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

No sooner had contorted analyses begun of North KoreaÕs sudden welcoming of a projected visit by Japan Prime Minister Koizumi to Pyongyang than there were new reports of Òghost shipsÓ off Japanese waters. They follow a brief but bitter interception by the Japanese Self-defense forces of North Korean intruders earlier this year. And, significantly, Tokyo says it is determined to raise one of the sunken craft -- even though it created a small diplomatic hassle with China in whose Òeconomic development watersÓ it went down. The Japanese for years have been winking at Korean intrusions and unexplained corpses washing up on their Japan Sea beaches. But this latest feint comes just as apologists and optimists around the world were saying the notoriously erratic North Koreans may have turned a new leaf.

Once again the North Koreans appear to be defying scrutiny.

It wasnÕt difficult to understand what was at stake for them in the invitation to the Japanese politician [whatever his reasons for accepting].

The economy of the 20-odd millions in the North is a total shambles. Resources have been drained away to the military and to heavy weapons production to such a degree that it has led to a permanent energy shortage, even in the show-place capital. Not that it seems to be a major concern of the Communist bigwigs and military, it has brought perennial starvation for hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

Its sales of missiles, technology ø perhaps even chemical and biological weapons Ñ to pariah states in the Middle East, to Pakistan, and even Egypt, must be as most weapons sales at least partially on the cuff. Remittances from the blackmailed 1.5 million Koreans and Japanese ethnic Koreans had a crimp thrown in them since the Tokyo police moved in on the bankrupt Chongryun [General Association of Korean Residents in Japan] credit association The Japanese then raided Chongryun, functioning as a semi-official embassy, presumably to break PyongyangÕs notorious ties to the Japanese criminal underworld of gambling, and, increasingly, drugs.

Under pressure from critics of his ÒSunshine PolicyÓ of buying off the North, lame duck South Korean President Kim Dae Jung has had to cut back on SeoulÕs gifts.

The ballyhooed projects of rebuilding the rail connections from South Korea through the Demilitarized Zone so that North Korea could tap into Seoul's flourishing trade with China and Russia are still pipedreams. Reports from Pyongyang say there is the beginning of some kind of imitation of the Chinese model, that North Korea has begun the painful process of allowing basic commodities prices [when they are available] to rise to black market prices.

Orthodox Communist states until they collapse, of course, thumb their noses at economic considerations. Waste and unrelieved shortages are part of a system that allocates resources to the stateÕs strategic needs, whatever the suffering of the population, or for that matter however it twists the economy. Still there comes a point øas it did in the Soviet Union and its post-World War Ii model, East Germany ø where the circle cannot be squared.

Our Dear Leader Kim Jong-pil would seem to be in charge of all this madness. He even dallies on his occasional somewhat mysterious trips abroad, apparently to show his lack of concern for internal security ø the latest to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in MoscowÕs Far East. But one has to ask if perhaps Western analysts are giving too much credence to the theory that a consciously directed Pyongyang sleight-of-hand is at work. Could alternate threats, violence, and sweet talk to its South Korean, Japanese, and American interlocutors not be an expression of contradictory currents inside the regime which cannot be rationalized ?

There are signs of erosion. Despite repressive measures that Stalin would have envied, North Koreans have been escaping and hiding among their fellow ethnics in North China ø apparently as many as a hundred thousand. Their presence ø and growing sophistication in using dramatic political asylum tactics in Beijing for the few who have made it to South Korea ø is an embarrassment to the Pyongyang-Beijing relationship. The flow is a trickle. But still with the kinds of controls that foreign visitors and resident diplomats marvel at ø they were perfectly obvious to this observer a decade ago when he visited øit does suggest that cracks may be appearing in the North Korean monolith.

The question for American policymakers, of course, is what to do with this monster ø which as State Dept. Assistant Sec. John Bolton pointed out succinctly Ñ is still delivering weapons of mass destruction to AmericaÕs enemies in the fight on terrorism. It is a conundrum with which Winston Churchill best described the Soviet Union more than a half century ago.