[Column] North Korea’s opportunism

By Han Seung-dong, senior reporter for the Hankyoreh

It is the ruling elements in the U.S. and Japan who benefit the most from North Korea's recent missile launches. The moment satellites recorded a missile being readied for launch, these elements began calculating when would be the most effective time to let the world know, and then they leaked the information to the media when that time arrived.

When the mainstream media that speak for the class interests of the establishment in the U.S., Japan, and Korea begin to get excited and spread plausible theories of a "North Korean threat," tension escalates instantaneously. Rising tensions in East Asia rescue the Bush administration, which has lost points in Iraq, and helps it in its pursuit of military means to maintain domination, such as its proposed missile defense program.

Japan has been wrestling for regional domination with China since the end of the Cold War, and this "North Korean threat" is more than it had hoped to get from America. It needs this kind of threat in order to revise its constitution and rearm itself.

It is unclear whether the North truly developed any nuclear weapons, but even if it has several devices, it is still no match for the U.S. Indeed, the North would only invite a U.S. nuclear attack on itself. The U.S. and Japan know quite well that even if it were subjected to a preemptive attack, the North would have no means to retaliate, so do they really think Pyongyang is a genuine threat? Put harshly, the U.S. and Japan are having their way with North Korea.

There is one other thing that makes one think the North is being mocked and that as a result, the South is being mocked along with it. North Korea keeps demanding bilateral dialogue with the U.S., and when it is not getting what it wants, it turns to missiles or nukes because ultimately it wants diplomatic relations with the U.S. The ultimate goal behind the big to-do over nukes and missiles is to win approval from the American imperialism it hates so much. It criticizes the U.S. with its words, but by its deeds it is really begging for relations. It is a "deal with the devil," if you please, or a surrender to the Americans. Might the U.S. and Japan be acting so high-handed because they see right to the center of the North's strategy?

Maybe North Korea thinks that diplomatic relations with the U.S. and Japan will secure its survival and help it prevail in competition with the South. This obsession, which gives priority to relations with the U.S. even at the cost of "dealing with the devil," can be read as a consistently confrontational stance with the South, a country composed of the same Korean people. Ironically, this opportunist strategy is going to backfire if there is not cooperation among the Korean people in the truest sense of the concept. American neocons and conservatives are using "the North Korean threat" as the excuse they need to meddle in the affairs of the Korean Peninsula and in East Asia and to create confrontation between the two Koreas while increasing the South’s subordination to the U.S. and Japan. Right-wing Japanese conservatives want the same, and they want it more than the Americans.

The "deal with the devil" is going to backfire. The way to stop the cycle would be for pro-unification elements in the North and South to strongly ally themselves based on trust. Even if Pyongyang wants to go to Washington and Tokyo, it needs to go through Seoul first. Going to Seoul after going to Washington and Tokyo would mean the North thinks of "cooperation among the Korean people" as an effective means to achieve diplomatic relations with the U.S. As it stands, the North is going to continue to be played with by the U.S. and Japan and is going to effectively kill off pro-unification forces in the South. The North's opportunist capitulation to the U.S. and confrontational approach to Seoul is going to ruin things for both Koreas.