North Korea – a beginner’s guide
“We have our own-style means and ways of merciless strike which are unpredictable and still unknown to the world,” threatens the Supreme Command of the Korean People’s Army.
“They have a nuclear capacity now. They have a missile delivery capacity now. And so, as they have ratcheted up their bellicose, dangerous rhetoric, and some of the actions they have taken over the last few weeks, present a real and clear danger,” responds the new US Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel.
So how much of a danger does North Korea pose, and how did we get here?
The Democratic Republic of Korea, or DPRK, as North Korea is formally known, was created when, after more than three decades of Japanese occupation, the Korean peninsular was divided at the end of WWII.
In 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea. The US and allied forces fought on the Southern side, while China and the USSR supported the North.
An armistice agreed in 1953 brought a cold peace. Both South and North Korea would like the peninsula to reunify but, like East and West Germany during the Cold War, they are separated by history, ideology and the world powers to which they are allied.
At the end of the Korean War in 1953, a demilitarized zone was created as a buffer. The DMZ has been described as the most heavily militarised and dangerous border in the world. The North has an army of more than one million troops, many stationed near the DMZ. The South has half the number, but they are not only better equipped but also backed up by 28,000 US troops.
North Korea is an idiosyncratic, hereditary, Stalinist dictatorship.
The “Great Leader”, Kim Il Sung, is sometimes described as the “Eternal Leader” although he died in 1994.
He was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Il, known as the “Dear Leader”.
When he died last year, his 28 year old son Kim Jong Un became leader.
North Korea is the most secretive and repressive state in the world.
Satellite photos show a network of secret slave labour camps. The book Escape From Camp 14 details the harrowing story of Shin Dong-hyuk, who was born in a labour camp and eventually escaped.
North Korea is probably the most backward country in the world. A night-time satellite photo shows it as a pool of darkness between the bright lights of China and South Korea – it has almost no electricity.
When I visited in 2008, people were clearing snow with sheets of roughly cut plywood nailed to sticks – they didn’t have shovels, let alone snow ploughs.
When I tried to approach desperately poor looking people gathering firewood, I was shooed away by government minders. Yet the people are told they have “nothing to envy” – the title of a book that tells the story of those who survived the famine in the 90s and fled to South Korea.
The famine, in which maybe a million died, was caused not by natural disaster, but by misguided economic policies which force North Koreans into collective farms, provide no inputs and force them to give produce to the state.
Despite its extreme poverty, North Korea has developed a nuclear weapons programme. “North Korea has the bomb but not yet much of an arsenal,” says Siegfried Hecker, a US nuclear scientist who has visited Pyongyang several times and in 2010 was taken to see their uranium enrichment programme.
Hecker says the North Koreans have enough nuclear material for six to eight bombs, but, although they have been testing missiles, do not yet have the capaibility to mount a nuclear warhead.
For the last decade, the US and other regional powers, including Japan, South Korea and China, have engaged North Korea in talks with the aim of persuading them to abandon their nuclear programme and to establish a real peace on the Korean peninsula.
In 2007, North Korea agreed to shut down a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, and went so far as to blow up the cooling tower. This week they said they were rebuilding the tower and restarting the reactor, a process experts say will take six to nine months.
Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich warned on Thursday that North Korea’s stance made resumption of nuclear talks all but impossible.
Typically, North Korea uses a circular negotiating strategy that goes from threat to compromise, refusal to talk and then some kind of weapons test.
The North Koreans are prone to extreme rhetoric.
“The U.S. and the South Korean military gangsters seeking to inflict a nuclear holocaust upon the peace-loving humankind are bound to perish in the boiling cauldron as they are the most barbarous Satans in the world,” read one recent despatch from the the North Korean news agency.
Kim Jong Un has described their nuclear programme as a deterrent – not an unreasonable point, as the US has never invaded or attacked a nuclear power. Nonetheless, even the Chinese, their closest ally, are reported to be concerned about the unpredictability of North Korea’s behaviour.
From 1998, the South Koreans adopted the “Sunshine Policy”, of engagement with the north, but the new South Korean President, Park Geun-Hye, says she will respond vigorously to any provocation.
The US is bound by treaty to defend South Korea. In the last few days, it has positioned two warships in the region, flown B2 stealth bombers over South Korea and said it will station a new missile system in Guam.
The Chinese have reportedly moved some forces towards the North Korean border – this might be to defend their ally in the event of war, but it could be to stop an influx of refugees.
The North Koreans are masters of the empty threat, but an accidental firing or a small incident could escalate, reigniting a conflict that has lain dormant but dangerous for more than half a century.
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