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Page 2 of 2
SPEAKING
FREELY
Kim
Jong-il's military-first policy a silver
bullet
By Kim Myong Chol
nuclear blackmail, have remained sane and
are overflowing with confidence of prevailing over
the US, and have rallied closer behind Kim
Jong-il.
Achievement 2: Successful
fight against isolation
Kim Jong-il's
military-first policy has splendidly broken
through the international isolation imposed on it
by the US and made the
Bush
Doctrine of nuclear preemption senseless.
CNN last September 13 quoted former
president Jimmy Carter saying: "And I also met
with General Gary Luck, who was an American
commander of all forces, South Korea, and American
forces in South Korea. General Luck told me that
his opinion was that more than a million people
would be killed almost overnight if North Korea
did respond to punishment of them. So I decided to
go to North Korea."
North Korea put into
orbit a satellite on August 31, 1998, three years
after the launch of the military-first policy. The
US responded with the Perry Report in October
1999, calling for North Korea to be accepted as it
was. This prompted European countries to rush to
seek ties with the DPRK despite its nuclear and
missile programs.
The DPRK established
diplomatic relations with Italy in January 2000,
restored ties with Australia that May, restarted
negotiations with Japan on establishing diplomatic
relations in August, had General Cho Myong-rok
sign the DPRK-US Joint Communique in October, saw
US secretary of state Madeleine Albright visiting
Pyongyang, established full diplomatic relations
with the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and
Belgium in January 2001, Canada and Spain that
February, Germany, Luxembourg, Greece, Brazil and
New Zealand in March, Kuwait in April, Bahrain and
the European Union in May, Turkey in June 2001 and
Ireland in December 2003. The DPRK has a permanent
delegation in Paris.
The DPRK has full
diplomatic relations with Canada to the north of
the US and with Mexico to its south. Those who
refuse to have relations with the DPRK are only
the US and Japan.
Achievement 3:
Positive growth
According to conventional
thinking, the North Korean economy is supposed to
tail off and eventually fall apart under the
weight of the military-first policy. All the
country's foreign-currency revenues are supposed
to be diverted to the military. Added to this are
financial sanctions by the US and UN sanctions for
the missile tests and the nuclear test. However,
this is not the case.
The Korean People's
Army (KPA), highly moralized, disciplined and
equipped with nuclear weapons, keeps the US forces
at bay, letting the North Korean population engage
in economic, socio-cultural and sports activities
without any worries about war. It is also playing
a crucial role in pushing ahead with economic
construction.
The Japanese Foreign
Ministry acknowledges that the DPRK has continued
to register positive growth rates since 1996, the
year after the launch of the military-first
policy. July 2002 saw introduction of landmark
socialist-type market economic practices, adding
spurs to the economic recovery.
Last
September, the Citibank group presented an
economic report on North Korea to US Secretary of
the Treasury Henry Paulson, noting: "North Korea's
economic reforms are probably broadly comparable
to those in China in the mid- to late 1980s. In
some areas, such as foreign-exchange-rate policy,
North Korea is probably already beyond the China
of the early 1990s. Actual progress in economic
reforms has been way beyond our expectations." It
concludes that "a foundation is there" for North
Korea to join its neighbors as rapidly growing
tiger economies. This is why "a few pioneering
economists, analysts and businessmen believe the
regime is taking tentative steps towards building
Asia's next tiger economy".
Particular
mention should be made of the fact that while the
Chinese succeeded in economic reforms only after
normalization with the United States, the North
Koreans have posted a dramatic economic recovery
by means of the military-first policy, despite
critical handicaps such as the continuing state of
war with the US and sanctions imposed by the
Americans.
Dr Kenneth Quinones notes in
the September issue of Japan's authoritative
monthly Sekai ("World"): "North Korea has grown
economically and [militarily] much stronger than
when [US President George W] Bush took over." The
Associated Press reported on November 4: "In the
midst of tensions over North Korea's nuclear
program, a Western company is there searching for
oil. Another just bought a bank."
Successes in national defense and the
economy have led North Koreans to make impressive
showings in international sports. In 1996, the
year after the launch of the military-first
policy, Kye Sun-hi won a gold medal in judo by
overwhelming Japan's Tamura Ryoko. The North
Korean female soccer team became the first Korean
team ever to capture a world title in that sport.
Achievement 4: Virtual state of
commuter marriage
For the first time in 55
years, the military-first policy helped Kim
Jong-il bore a great hole in the 38th Parallel
that the US had wielded the nuclear threat to
draw, separating the soil of Dangun Korea into
two. It resulted in great headway in North-South
Korean rapprochement and a virtual state of
commuter marriage and quasi-reunification for the
first time since the August 1945 liberation of
Korea from colonial rule.
The June 13-15,
2000, Pyongyang summit that ended with the June 15
Pyongyang Declaration was an obvious product of
the military-first policy in that it was prompted
by the Perry Report. Kim Jong-il's special envoy
General Cho Myong-rok visited Washington and won
the Bill Clinton administration's unequivocal
endorsement of the Pyongyang Declaration.
At the Pyongyang summit it was decided to
reconnect the railway lines across the
Demilitarized Zone. The DMZ is divided into a
northern 2-kilometer sector administered by the
KPA and a southern 2km sector administered by the
UN Command. In a bid to set up railway lines in
the southern sector, the South Korean Command
asked the UN Command temporarily to transfer
administration of the southern sector, but in
vain.
The South Koreans were on the verge
of losing any competence in implementing the
Pyongyang Declaration when the KPA intervened. A
KPA officer met with a UN Command officer at a
November 17, 2000, conference, and persuaded it to
transfer the administration of the southern sector
of the DMZ to the South Korean armed forces. It
was an open secret that many South Korean officers
praised the KPA intervention.
Kim
Myong-chol
is author of a number of books and
papers in Korean, Japanese and English on North
Korea. He is executive director of the Center for
Korean-American Peace. He has a PhD from the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Academy of
Social Sciences and is often called an
"unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North
Korea.
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say.
Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
(Copyright 2007 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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sales, syndication
and
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