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NEWS & LETTERS,
January-February 2003
Our Life and Times
Behind the nuclear crisis in Korea
by Kevin A. Barry By the end of January, the crisis over North Korea
seemed to have eased, but was by no means over. In a deft series of moves in
December and January, this small totalitarian state, so weak economically that
its own people are starving, had managed to put the U.S. on the defensive,
essentially forcing it to back down. On Dec. 23, the Kim Jong Il regime announced that it was
removing seals on its nuclear reactor at Yongbon that had been installed in 1994
by the International Atomic Energy Commission. This action, which made possible
the production of nuclear warheads, was accompanied by warnings of an
"uncontrollable catastrophe" should the U.S. intervene. Initially, the Bush administration announced that if
North Korea did not back down, it would impose sanctions that would lead to its
"economic collapse." But even this was a retreat from the Clinton
administration policy that had threatened an immediate military attack were
those seals removed. In the coming weeks, the U.S. sounded still more cautious,
even announcing that it would delay a UN Security Council vote on the matter.
Meanwhile, negotiations continued. How could tiny North Korea have gotten away with plans
that could result in the manufacture of five to eight nuclear warheads by May 1,
this in open defiance of the world's sole superpower? One reason was that South
Korea wanted nothing to do with a U.S. policy of confronting the North, for
which it could pay a horrific price. Even without nukes, massive North Korean
artillery installations just across the border from Seoul could level that city
of 10 million. Decades of U.S. imperial arrogance toward South Korea,
including the recent acquittal (in a U.S. military court) of two soldiers who
had run down and killed two teenage Korean girls, had created a deep antagonism,
especially among the youth. They tend to remember decades of U.S.-supported
military regimes, like that of Chun Doo Hwan, perpetrator of the 1980 Kwangju
massacre, rather than the horrors of the Korean War of 50 years ago. During those long years of U.S.-supported authoritarian
rule, South Korea industrialized at breakneck speed, creating a corrupt group of
monopoly capitalists with close ties to the military and alongside it, a large
and disaffected working class. Worker and student resentment of the big capitalist
firms, the U.S., and the local military establishment was a major factor in the
election of Roh Moo Hyun to the presidency, also in December. A lawyer who began
his career defending labor and student activists, Roh made clear that he would
not be a lackey of the U.S. With Japan, let alone China and Russia, also counseling
caution, the U.S. found itself isolated in the region. However, it is doubtful
that alone stayed the hand of the U.S., especially at a time when the Bush
administration has embarked on a unilateralist policy of permanent war. Nor
could fear of loss of life have been the main factor, at a time when U.S.
"defense" intellectuals have reached the chilling conclusion that a
"small" nuclear war between Pakistan and India would not be so grave.
(NEW YORK TIMES, Jan. 19, 2003) What was undoubtedly also at work in restraining Bush was the fact that northeast Asia has a productive capacity in capitalistic terms of nearly $6 trillion per year, when one considers the annual output of Japan ($4 trillion), South Korea ($381 billion), and China ($1 trillion, much of it centered in the hi-tech and industrialized Northeast, near Korea). This total is far greater than that for India and Pakistan combined ($2.3 trillion), or even the Middle East, or Western Europe. And most of that northeast Asian productive capacity is within easy range of North Korean missiles. |
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