Flashpoint Korea

S P SETH

The Korean peninsula is once again an active flashpoint. Indeed, 38^th parallel that underpins the 1953 armistice line, which ended hostilities, is not a peace agreement to end the war.

During the 1950-53 war, as the US forces appeared advancing towards China’s border, Beijing rushed its forces to face the challenge. Fortunately, an armistice deal was negotiated dividing Korean peninsula between communist North Korea under Chinese influence/control and South Korea largely under US influence.

By its very nature, the armistice deal is a temporary solution to halt military conflict until the two parts of Korea work towards peaceful reunification. This is proving illusory even after more than half-a-century.

 North Korea has since developed a small nuclear arsenal and is now busy putting together a missile delivery system to threaten its neighbors, South Korea and Japan, and possibly with its reach as far as the United States.

Efforts in the past, including negotiations initiated by China to include US, Russia, North Korea, China and Japan, and South Korea, didn’t make much headway. This was mainly because the US would like North Korea to freeze/dismantle their nuclear program first and then talk about political, economic and security guarantees.  Even the little progress made in the nineties fell through because the Bush regime didn’t trust North Korea carrying its part of the denuclearization deal.

Since then, their respective positions have only hardened. North Korea would only initiate nuclear denuclearization once it was convinced that the US and its allies were not working to overthrow the Kim family regime. In other words, the Kim dynasty is horribly paranoid that the US is working to destabilize and overthrow the regime.

And the proof to them is the annual joint military exercises between the US and South Korea, which Pyongyang regards as rehearsals, if not real military maneuvers, to attack North Korea. And it is about the time of the joint US-South Korea military exercises that Pyongyang goes on high alert with some dramatic nuclear and missile tests, as with recent four missile tests. Which, in turn, further raises temperatures in the US, South Korea and Japan leading to more UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea.

Here is where China’s role becomes critical. Beijing is critical of Pyongyang’s nuclear rattling and this time it has suspended coal imports from North Korea over its recent testing of missiles. It favours negotiations, a possible revival of six-power Beijing diplomatic parleys, which though didn’t work because of the irreconcilable position of both sides with deep-rooted distrust between them.

North Korea strongly believes that without its credible nuclear deterrence, backed by an effective nuclear and missile arsenal, it would have no hope of political survival.

For China, the Korean peninsula is its political and strategic backyard of sorts. During the Korean War, it fought to save North Korea’s communist regime both to ward off a threatened American advance towards its borders as well as to preserve it as a buffer against US control of South Korea.

 North Korea, however, remains a difficult customer even when overwhelmingly dependent on China as an economic lifeline. Even though it might fear the US more, Pyongyang is distrustful of China too lest it create an alternative power centre to the ruling dynasty.

Kim Jong-un, now ruling North Korea, had his uncle executed--supposedly his political mentor after young Kim took power—possibly because he was regarded as close to China.

Recently, his half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, once considered political heir to his father, was poisoned in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when about to take a flight to Macau, China, where he had been living in exile to escape from his brother’s targeting of his life. He apparently thought he would be safe in China, but Pyongyang found his transiting through Malaysia a convenient opportunity to get rid of him, which though has created a political crisis between the two countries. Malaysia is one of the few countries that had maintained diplomatic relations with North Korea.

As for China, if Kim Jong-nam was enjoying their protection it would find it hard to do anything as the murder occurred outside China. In any case, North Korea denies any involvement and indeed if the murdered person was Kim Jung-un’s half-brother. But it underlines the paranoia of the Kim regime that it is distrustful of even China that is its lifeline in so many ways.

All this time, China hasn’t been able to create a decisive political leverage within North Korea to control its erratic and dangerous policies. The murder of Kim Jong-un’s uncle, and recently of his half-brother in Kuala Lumpur, believed to enjoy some level of connections and patronage of the Chinese government would suggest that Beijing’s influence with Pyongyang is rather limited, if not tenuous.

Therefore, it is seeking to carve out a role as an ‘honest’ broker between the two sides urging them to de-escalate and return to diplomacy.  China’s Premier Li Keqiang, said at the close of the recent National People’s Congress session that the situation in Korea had become “quite tense—tension may lead to conflict, which will only bring harm to all the parties involved.”

At the same time, China is also rattled by the imminent prospect of installation of a sophisticated US missile defense system in South Korea at Seoul’s invitation as a defense measure against North Korea’s nuclear threat. China is seriously concerned at, what it perceives, a US-led regional effort (including Japan, which might also seek US THAAD missile defense arrangement) to contain/neutralize its military power.

China possibly can bring to bear more pressure on Pyongyang by further tightening the economic screws, but that has the potential of bringing down the Kim regime. However, in the absence of a carefully controlled political alternative for the Kim regime, which China apparently doesn’t have, Beijing would dread the prospect of chaos on its border with refugees from North Korea making a beeline into China.

It could also open the possibility, at some point, of East German kind reunification of North with South Korea, with the dreaded prospect of enhanced US strategic presence in the region. Considering all this, it is no wonder China wants to play the honest broker. But the problem is how to assuage Pyongyang’s paranoia and its belief that only an enhanced nuclear deterrence will save it from the enemy’s designs.

Against this backdrop, the recent China visit of Rex Tillerson, the new US secretary of state, is unlikely to make much headway.