Korean crisis

The mother (R) of South Korean marine Seo Jeong-Woo who was killed during North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong Island, cries in front of a memorial altar at a military hospital in Seongnam, south of Seoul on November 24, 2010.

DONG-A ILBO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Korean crisis stems from domestic discord, experts say
By Olivia Ward, Foreign Affairs Reporter

Published On Wed Nov 24 2010

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A deadly exchange of artillery fire between North and South Korea echoed around the world this week. But experts on the secretive North believe that a looming internal crisis, not military ambition, propelled the attack.

In Washington, Admiral Mike Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, said the uncertainty around the succession of power from ailing leader Kim Jong-il to his son Kim Jong-un was closely linked to the incident, in which four South Koreans, two soldier and two civilians were killed on the island of Yeonpyeong.

“(It’s) tied, we think to the succession of this young 27-year-old who’s going to take over at some point in the future,” Mullen told ABC television Wednesday.

Kim Jong-il is believed to be ailing, and perhaps dying, while the country is steered by his sister and brother-in-law. To smooth the succession, Kim Jong-un was moved up to the rank of general, and Pyongyang is promoting him as an inspired military leader. But at a time of economic crisis and starvation — which also affects the country’s million-strong military — the ruling clique faces the anger of a population hungry for bread, not military circuses.

“I think this aggressive and irresponsible behaviour is related to crises of food security, because they’re afraid of an internal coup,” said Andrew Natsios of Georgetown University, a former USAID official and author of The Great North Korean Famine.

“It’s about redirecting the attention of the military away from themselves, and having those guns pointed toward the South.”

North Korea has the highest proportion of 18- to 30-year-olds in the world signing up for military service. Some 40 per cent of families have sons in the military, one of the few employment options in a deeply impoverished country.

“During the last famine, in 1998, the soldiers were hungry. I interviewed some deserters, who told me their rations were ‘irregular,’ and they looked terrible,” Natsios said. “A study of the North Korean military shows that the average height of their soldiers is 11 inches shorter than the South Koreans. That comes from chronic malnutrition.”

The military are traditionally loyal. But when the famine killed close to 1 million North Koreans, rare uprisings took place.

“There were two attempted coups that we know about,” said Natsios. “There may have been a third.”

In the last month, he added, graffiti has appeared on buildings across North Korea, attacking Kim Jong-un. “The secret police were sent out to interview people and find out if they can match the handwriting. No (public) criticism of a head of state has ever appeared before.”

Marcus Noland, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, agrees that the artillery exchange was sparked by domestic problems.

“This is Kim Jong-un getting his spurs,” he said. “And it’s an attempt to rally people around a cause and distract them from problems at home.”

During the past six months, he said, North Korea’s economy has “accelerated in a negative direction. They are trying to repress the market and reconstitute the old system based on state control of the economy and people’s lives.”

Not just the poor are angry, Natsios says. The regime has also alienated North Korea’s elite, including members of the secret services.

“The currency shock (from last year’s revaluation) was the most destabilizing. The poorest people had no savings. But intelligence on the farmers’ markets that feed most of the country shows that it was the wives of party officials who were counting on saving money (earned there) to protect themselves from going hungry. When the currency reforms came their savings were wiped out overnight.”

Now Kim Jong-un will inherit a country that appears to be in the grip of its worst crisis in a decade.

“The good news is that after sinking a ship or shelling a fishing village, he may have established his bona fides,” said Noland. “The bad news is that if this is driven by internal politics, there is nothing we can do to make them stop.”

(toronto star)

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