North Korean soldiers on their way to a construction site on the banks of the Yalu River.
As for China, as long as North Korea only thumbed its nose at America, Beijing could afford to ignore it. But now Kim is also starting to lead China up the garden path, and that doesn’t sit well with Beijing. China’s foreign ministry described the test as “disgraceful.” The media reported extensively about how angry China’s leaders were, and in various chat forums people were actually allowed to criticize North Korea, a practice usually regarded by the Chinese government as sacrilegious. "No wonder North Korea is bankrupt,” wrote one author, Ye Yonglie, in his blog. “Atomic bombs are expensive.”
North Korea “can either have a future or it can have these weapons,” said Christopher Hill, the American negotiator at the recent six party talks which convened to discuss North Korea’s atomic ambitions. But unlike the case of Iran, there is no talk as yet of military intervention. In Washington recently -- especially with the congressional elections a mere three weeks away -- there has been a feeling of “confrontation fatigue.” The Pentagon has even withdrawn 30,000 US soldiers from South Korea and sent them to Iraq.
“The United States of America doesn't have any intention to attack North Korea or to invade North Korea,” said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bluntly last week. The White House let it be known that simply possessing the bomb will not necessarily be regarded as a serious threat -- but passing it on to terrorists will. It looks as though President George W. Bush is using the issue to steer policy towards a new doctrine. If North Korea, Iran or another country smuggles the bomb, or parts of it, to al-Qaida, there will be a price to pay. But only then.
Last week, the UN Security Council began discussing sanctions against North Korea. The 13 wide-ranging measures included travel restrictions for high-ranking Pyongyang officials, an embargo on luxury goods (which would only affect the nomenclature: at the beginning of the 1990s Kim Jong II was thought to be Hennessy Cognac’s most important private customer), and above all restrictions for ships and airplanes carrying technology into South Korea.
But how can this surreal regime actually be punished any more? The measure which has hit Kim hardest so far was North Korea's exclusion from the international foreign currency markets -- a sanction levied by the US treasury on Sept. 23, 2005. That was four days after a joint declaration, in which America and North Korea agreed that as soon as Kim gives up his nuclear program, both sides would “guarantee sovereignty and normalize relations.” Kim, who tends towards paranoia anyway, saw this series of events as definitive proof that the US were simply pushing for regime change in North Korea. Washington on the other hand claimed the timing was pure coincidence.
No collapse but definite deterioration
But the “KFR,” or the “Kim Family Regime” as American officers in South Korea call the North, is now suffering from a severe dollar shortage. Millions are lost through drug trafficking, counterfeiting and money laundering. According to South Korean and Chinese experts, who have the best insight into the shadowy empire, North Korea may not on the brink of collapse, but there are increasing signs of deterioration. Kim depends on a small elite which can either prop him up or bring about his downfall. In North Korea this elite is mainly made up of the generals who enjoy the preferential treatment they in the form of luxury goods such as cars and DVD players -- paid for in hard currency.
With 1.1 million soldiers, statistically the country has the fourth largest army in the world. That sounds impressive, but it isn’t. The army’s equipment is pathetic and their conventional weapons outdated. Because fuel is in such short supply, fighter pilots are only allowed to fly for two hours a month. Food rations are so meager that whole units live off cabbage and other vegetables. The troops are grumbling but given Kim’s ingenious spy system, revolt is hardly an option.
In fact there is not much of a state this regime is capable of building up. Dictator Kim has just one dream left: being unassailable and self-assertive thanks to the atomic bomb. "Totalitarian regimes close to demise are apt to get panicky and do rash things. The weaker North Korea gets, the more dangerous it becomes," writes Korea expert Robert Kaplan in the American magazine Atlantic Monthly.
The last emperor?
So what will happen if the Kim Family Regime collapses? According to American experts, North Korea’s potential for anarchy is every bit as great as that of Iraq -- and the danger of weapons of mass destruction turning up in North Korea is much larger. Apart from the bomb, Pyongyang also has a terrifying arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.
Kim has what Saddam didn’t have.
China and South Korea are the least interested in the collapse of North Korea. Should that happen, a large chunk of the 23 million people living in North Korea would head south, and another group would take the northern route over the rivers Tumen and Yalu into China. There is a good chance that North Korea would soon be empty.
But for the US, which has 30,000 soldiers stationed on the 38th parallel, the situation would be a nightmare. “The regime in Pyongyang could collapse without necessarily its army corps and brigades collapsing,” Colonel David Maxwell, chief of staff of US Special Operations in South Korea, told the Atlantic Monthly. “So we might have to mount a relief operation at the same time that we’d be conducting combat ops. If there is anybody in the UN who thinks it will just be a matter of feeding people, they’re smoking dope.”
Indeed, since the nuclear test, America is being forced to rely on Chinese goodwill more than ever -- and on China's ability to prevent anarchy in North Korea. According to secret service reports, China has thousands of defectors from North Korea on standby, ready to quickly infiltrate the country if necessary. The aim? To set up a Beijing-friendly regime. China is also interested in taking over the economically important area around the Tumen River, the region where most of North Korea’s natural resources can be found -- such as graphite and brown coal -- as well as a number of harbors.
For years now the Chinese leadership has been setting an economic example for Kim. It is no coincidence that, during one of his secret state visits to China, Kim visited the stock market in Shanghai, the computer firm Lenovo and the southern special economic zone of Shenzhen. Kim gave in, slightly. He has allowed a private market to open in Pyongyang, although it is only open two hours a day. More than ever, China has to support Kim’s regime with rice, fertilizer, oil and diesel. South Korea regularly exports food and cement. But when famine or natural catastrophe strikes, the West steps in.
Just how this Absurdistan runs internally is hidden from the outside world. All we know about Kim is that he is passionate about films. His adoration for Elizabeth Taylor is notorious and he apparently can’t get enough of James Bond. It is said that there is a documentary about “the Last Days of the Ceauºescus” which he watches repeatedly. Nobody knows, though, what Dear Leader is still capable of.
The starving and freezing North Koreans are light-years away from Kim’s world. They are fighting for sheer survival. Their neediness has forced them to develop other talents: Pensioners breed pigs and chickens on their balconies, farmers trade rice, cabbage and eggs on the small street markets, people set up soup kitchens in the their flats. The cause of this misery, according to Kim’s propaganda machine, is not Kim himself, his regime or the planned economy. It is the fault of the Americans, he says, who want nothing more than to wipe this hard-working and peace-loving people from the face of the earth.
By Erich Follath, Andreas Lorenz, Georg Mascolo, Gerhard Spörl, and Wieland Wagner.
Translated from the German by Damien McGuiness
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