Stop North Korea!: A Radical New Approach to the North Korea Standoff

PREFACE

Scholars write prefaces to make personal statements and to explain why they worked for years writing a particular book. My interest in the Korean civil war and partition has evolved as my family and I have gone native in Korea, living in this wonderful country for almost a decade now. However, my epistemological approach to scholarship was formed many years earlier.

Attending the private Breck School in Minneapolis from the eighth grade and Brown University as an undergraduate, I was exceptionally fortunate to be taught at an early age not what to think but how to think, to reassess how I know what I think I know, to think outside the box, to accept that learning often includes the process of unlearning, and to know that there are times when one must quietly sit still and think hard about a problem in order to grasp its complexity. I try to draw an algorithm in my mind—then on a piece of paper—and follow interacting contours of causation and probability whichever way they turn.

Important insights rarely arrive all at once. In academic research and analysis there is usually not one large aha moment, but many smaller instances of intellectual euphoria as the dynamics of a problem surface, often unexpectedly. But there are times when one reaches a breakthrough in understanding—similar to reaching a new plateau in learning a foreign language—when one feels as if everything is falling into place. Reaching deeper levels of learning and remarkable new integrative thresholds—and surpassing them—is part of the standard process of becoming an expert in anything, from auto mechanics to engineering.

There are no quick and easy answers to problems of complexity, and the solutions are often counterintuitive and paradoxical, and seldom conform to intellectual expectations or emotional desires. We must be patient, open-minded, logical, pragmatic, and sometimes imaginative in order to find and grasp comprehensive answers to difficult problems. But if you want something done quickly, money often simplifies matters—as readers will learn in this volume.

In order to benefit from this writing, you must possess some of the aforementioned attributes, or at least have the ability to appreciate them. This monograph was written for foxes, not hedgehogs; the nimble, not the feebleminded. I will not present another bland description of events or another ordinary history-laden political science perspective on the Korea problem. This will be different. We are dealing with matters of life and death, and the clock is ticking. There will be no sugarcoating, political correctness, careerist preening, or petty nationalist bias or intent; only a sincere attempt to find a way to reunify Korea before it is too late.

Several books on North Korea have captured the imagination of a great many readers by describing the pain and suffering, the intrigue of escape, and the jubilation of eventual freedom. These tales of heroism also tug at my heartstrings and inspire my research. However, this book does not offer another description of suffering and escape to freedom. I am a social scientist, not a journalist or storyteller. My goal is to appeal not only to your heart, but also to your head. Although I am deeply concerned about the 120,000 North Korean citizens presently interned in prison camps, and the two million children who struggle to survive on an inadequate diet, I am also concerned about nuclear proliferation and the geopolitics of the problem that potentially endangers many more lives.

A few years ago, I asked myself what is new and different from twenty years ago that is influencing the personal and geopolitical choices and disposition of affairs inside and outside North Korea. In answer to this question, I noticed that revolutionary digital technology, combined with financial globalization, was creating an international commodity boom; the resulting spread of cultural products has profoundly influenced the attitudes and aspirations of citizens inside North Korea, while the concentration of wealth and concurrent expansion of the global money supply—through corporate profits and the process of quantitative easing—has put an enormous amount of capital into play for the international investment community, and for geopolitical problem solving.

Extrapolating forward, without minimizing the effects of demographic and environmental change, it may be two critical factors—global finance and innovations in communication technology—that will play the most influential and determining roles in selecting outcomes in North Korea. To avoid obsolescence, political theory and foreign policy must submit to the changing times in which we live and adapt to the rapid evolution of these seminal forces.

To better grasp this insight, and the impact of technology, let us go back in time to the year 1450 CE, when the printing press was invented. It is unlikely that the foreign policy arm of the Holy Roman Catholic Church realized the enormous impact this would have on future claims to power and authority. Had the Holy See known at the time, it might have tried to destroy this innovative new technology, or to gracefully adapt to the fact that millions of profane books were about to be published for a growing urban middle class, and the Bible was about to be translated, read, and reinterpreted by the increasingly literate and curious late late-medieval masses. From this the Holy See might have projected the end of an era, the possibility of the Protestant Reformation, and perhaps even foreseen the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason.

There are indications we are in the early stages of a similar process today. The Internet may create a similar socio-political-economic revolution. This revolutionary technology is already changing who we are, what we think, and how we behave. But unlike in ages past, this process will not take centuries to play out. As we program our digital technology to perform tasks, it is programming us in the ways and means in which we live. Already our children would rather play on their mobile phones and tablet computers than at the park; they are being inured to complexity and learning in a nonlinear, more associative manner, clicking links instead of turning pages. The Internet has already fundamentally changed politics in democratic and communist nations.

Global business elites are no longer nation-bound, but interact with a multiplicity of peoples and cultures—along with the travelling youth, they are truly among the first world citizens. As individuals around the world adapt and co-evolve with their digital technology, institutions will also change. If we follow the general path of increasing complexity in economic and political organization, from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to nation-states, one can easily imagine the next level of human organization will entail more unified political-economic agglomerations and increasingly prominent supra-national political and economic institutions, perhaps eventually a world government and a global Constitution. Ironically, as this Leviathan grows in power, the Lilliputians will have more democratic or disruptive power to constrain its behavior.

We already have international non-governmental organizations, trans-national corporations, multilateral alliances, a United Nations, World Courts, the evolution from a G-7/8 to a more inclusive G-20, the World Trade Association, regional and hemispheric free trade agreements, and the noble imposition of moral and ethical codes of conduct embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Progressive modern forces have necessitated the popular adaptive formation of functionally appropriate institutions and more economically efficient, legally binding, and politically sensitive forms of human organization. The international system is evolving by increasing inter-human decency, financial diplomacy, and unified action in order to secure a more resilient global prosperity and prevent another world war.

In this regard, a global digital age may expel the Westphalian system, or rather, transpose a new world order of more aggregated inter-agreement over it. A readily enforceable international constitutional decree eliminating nuclear proliferation or mandating protection of our environment might lead to another critical step in the cooperative civilizing of our species and protection of our planet. To speculate further on this broad line of enquiry is beyond the scope of this monograph. Suffice to say, the challenges to domestic politics and international relations are evolving rapidly, as conventional wisdom becomes antiquated more quickly during the early stages of a worldwide technological revolution that is already fundamentally affecting domestic sentiment and elite fears in North Korea and in many other parts of the world. When material conditions change, so do behavioral incentives.

For me, the turnkey that opened the door to a better understanding of the Korean situation was incentives. After much hard thinking—trying to see how the internal and external pieces of the puzzle fit together—it dawned on me that incentives—not punishments—were the key in Korea. I came to realize that peaceful Korean reunification was possible, but could only occur quickly and through innovative statecraft and a cooperative smart power geoeconomic intervention.

It is apparent that everyone involved has an intrinsic incentive to see a mutually beneficial solution: the United States, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea; corporations involved in mining, energy, construction, technology, railroads, tourism and the transportation and automotive industry; impoverished North Koreans; international banks and the Bank of Korea. And after applying the reunification model I have designed, so too will North Korea government officials and bureaucrats, Pyongyang political and military elites, and finally, young Kim’s inner circle and even Kim Jong-un himself.

Most conventional scholars and experts from the US and South Korea present a narrow geopolitical perspective, but it seems obvious the future of the Korean partition is embedded in great power geopolitics. While most policymakers tend to be pessimistic about the future of US–China relations, I remain guardedly optimistic, since I expect nonmilitary factors may mitigate the effects of the security dilemma, and as the interests of China and the United States converge, they may compromise and cooperate to reunify Korea.

There are global leveling and unifying forces abreast today that will fundamentally alter inter- and intra-state relationships. The world is experiencing the initial stages of a digital revolution—an unusually rapid expansion of the global brain—along with an unprecedented concomitant economic and cultural globalization that is changing the nature of political power (and most everything else). While the extent of this global phenomenon is mind-boggling for us all, political science and international relations experts and the policy community are particularly under-equipped to understand such ubiquitous bottom-up change from their more constrained and parochial top-down pedagogical backgrounds. More humility, open-mindedness, and appeal to the insights of other disciplines would seem an intelligent adaptation in political science to the evolution of power in the early twenty-first century.

Unfortunately, many erstwhile political curmudgeons who control Korea policy in Beijing, Washington, and Seoul—and their army of obeisant mentees—seem to lack these connective attributes, and therefore continue expostulating tired old policies from the digital dark ages as North Korea remains in a Cold War time warp. As history marches on, these policy-makers are quickly becoming obsolete and a hindrance to solving the critical problems of our time. We need new disruptive policy innovations to solve some modern complexities; we need to think outside the box.

In the following pages, I will argue that we must pay for reunification by offering personal financial incentives to North Korean citizens, and especially large payments to the elites who have their hands on the reins of power; a friendly corporate buyout. At face value, one may think this a preposterous idea. But if readers are willing to suspend judgment, they may eventually find themselves astonished by how prudent and sensible this approach actually is, from a variety of perspectives, not the least of which is the alternative solution—military action.

This was my personal process; skeptical of my own idea at first, I kept discovering reasons this model might work, and eventually became convinced of this plan. In fact, I am not only convinced this plan could unify Korea in a short time, but that it is the only process through which reunification and denuclearization can occur in a managed and peaceful fashion before North Korea has the capability of landing a nuclear-tipped ICBM on American shores.

I have worked through every possible scenario that does not include the influence of this fund, and there is no other plausible permanent near-term solution to prevent North Korea from obtaining a nuclear missile, or that would prevent regional nuclear proliferation, or the United States from conducting its own unilateral preemptive military action. Although I am sure there is much I have left out of this rather unorthodox analysis, I am convinced Korea can be reunited through this Reunification Investment Fund, and soon I think you will be also.

This is not a polemic, but a well-reasoned work of social science.* Therefore, it must be read as such, carefully and skeptically, while systematically analyzing the basis and credibility of each argument. I have, however, tried to make this book interesting and imaginative within the constraints of a thoroughly social-scientific approach.

To begin this odyssey, imagine that you control a multi-billion dollar capital fund and North Korea is a large underperforming corporation. You see it is undervalued and want to take it over, but it is controlled by an old-fashioned board of directors—the Kim family and a small number of ultra-elites—who will not negotiate a deal. In this regressive situation it is logical to offer shareholders—the larger number of political and military elites, government managers and bureaucrats, and the general population—a higher price for their shares to convince them to overrule their board of directors.

How and why this friendly corporate buyout might occur is the subject of this book. We will close in on this goal chapter by chapter, and I believe readers will be convinced at some point that this cultural and economic approach has a chance to stop nuclear proliferation and unify Korea before it is too late.

Footnote

* An earlier manuscript of this book is twice the length and contains over 800 footnotes and nearly 1,000 bibliographic references.

INTRODUCTION

Left to its own devices, North Korea will soon possess nuclear-tipped cruise and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of annihilating its neighbors and endangering the American homeland. Its nuclear program is immune to diplomatic pressure because the Kim regime believes its survival depends on retaining a nuclear threat. In this volume I argue that denuclearization will only be possible through reunification, and I introduce a plan to achieve this result. I challenge the multi-billion-dollar trade and aid profits provided by Beijing to the Kim regime, which funds its nuclear missile program and keeps the state from collapsing. I also provide evidence showing this Sino–North Korea client-proxy alliance destabilizes the Middle East through arms exports, in flagrant violation of UN Security Council Resolutions. I discuss the credible possibility that if the Kim regime were to suddenly collapse, the People’s Liberation Army might sequester resource-rich territory inside a new buffer zone. Finally, I argue these growing dangers may lead to rational security adjustments, including nuclear proliferation in East Asia or a preemptive US military surgical strike on North Korea’s nuclear missile facilities.

Fortunately, after more than twenty years of policy failure, a new approach is suggested by dramatic ground-level changes inside North Korea. Two decades of cultural diffusion assisted by a revolution in digital communication—and its miniaturization—have informed citizens of the inordinately better life just beyond their border, and have created a new social context for political change. This peace model is based on the acknowledgment that this steady diffusion of information to elites and non-elites in North Korea has created modern aspirations for a better life and the preconditions for political transformation that have not existed before.

In response to this new opportunity, I have designed a $175 billion Reunification Investment Fund to offer this new generation of North Korean elites a safe, honorable, and profitable way out of a deteriorating situation. This incentive model is based on the realization that a steady diffusion of knowledge and information to elites and non-elites from over two decades has created modern aspirations for a better life and the preconditions for political transformation. This fund will serve as a platform for a G20-authorized effort, and private and multilateral cooperation, to unify Korea. By advancing US and Chinese economic and security interests, this model also extends a decisive opportunity to reduce US–China rivalry in the Asia-Pacific through pragmatic strategic compromise and cooperation in the peaceful management of Korean reunification.

This monograph is divided into three parts and ten chapters. Part one, Unity, is composed of four chapters that describe how unification can be achieved quickly. In chapter 1, Incentives can Reunify Korea, I introduce how financial incentives could unify Korea and outline a reward-based model for conflict resolution and a prospectus for underwriting a Reunification Investment Fund that could achieve this. Since the Bank of Korea has the most to gain, I propose that it might play an important role in underwriting a portion of this fund and/or insuring private investments. I also compare this peace model with the $50 billion incentive-based initiative introduced by Lt. General Shaul Mofaz of Israel, and assert that in a world of growing abundance, it is more likely that over the course of the twenty-first century a multilateral modernization of global foreign policy will increasingly involve more innovative geoeconomic statecraft and financial solutions to political problems. Although powerful strategic preferences exist for maintaining a Korean partition, the security calculus is rapidly changing due to the growing North Korean nuclear threat. I argue that as tensions mount there will be more urgency and willingness for private and public cooperation to reunify Korea.

In chapter 2, The Reunification Investment Fund, I introduce this $175 billion fund and provide details about its incentives and disbursal. I argue that there is some level of financial incentive that will impose insurmountable domestic pressure on North Korean political and military elites to acquiesce, and that an economic strategy that injects the persuasive power of money into the diplomatic process is necessary in order to overcome path dependencies that too often terminate in conflict. Since this fund offers a cost-effective positive-sum solution to the Korean problem that benefits everyone with something at stake in the region, I argue the United States, China, Russia, and Japan could lead the world in creating a more peaceful smart-power future, and that South Korea could bring these Leviathans together while securing its eventual place near the top. Finally, I assert that nothing would reduce great-power rivalry or contribute more to world peace and international security than resolving the Korean dilemma with empathy, strategic cooperation, and financial reassurance.

In chapter 3, Culture-Ready for Reunification, I discuss evidence of political, economic, and culture change in North Korea that suggests its weary citizens are ready to reunify and will be receptive to the substantial benefits promised in a Reunification Investment Fund. I argue that a number of factors, including crisis-driven marketization; more pluralist bureaucratic post-totalitarian institutionalism; proto-capitalist factions within the state bureaucracy and power elite; widespread corruption among public officials; the gradual weakening of the Juche, Suryong, and Songbun systems; and institutional failures combined with growing everyday forms of mundane resistance, suggests that an interlocking sequence of revolutionary social and economic change is taking place in North Korea.

After two decades of diffusion of outside news, culture, and information across the semipermeable border with China, almost everyone has an idea of South Korean prosperity. As the Kim regime denies its citizens access to the future, elites and average citizens are reaching a final threshold of dissatisfaction, even while the economy has marginally improved. I argue that soft-power attractions and hard-power payments may provide the smart-power incentives needed to tip the balance toward peace and reunification. However, due to the coercive security state, until a reason for hope comes along, people must wait for an angel to appear. This fund is that angel.

In chapter 4, Investing in a Peaceful World Order, I argue that global economic leaders would be wise to invest in a more cooperative and peaceful world order before fear and security competition lead to an unpleasant alternative. Regressing once again—as Europe did in 1914—to a destructive self-fulfilling prophecy is a realistic danger. I suggest how private entrepreneurs and public leaders might work together to raise the financial resources that would make reunification possible. In agreement with South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s assessment that unification would be an economic jackpot (daeback), I present a summary of sectoral profit projections in basic infrastructure, energy, minerals, rail, ports, roads, automobiles, tourism, and labor, and list several conglomerates that would richly benefit from unification if the Korean government were to award them with private resource ownership, construction contracts, tax breaks, etc. These economic privileges would be awarded as compensation for underwriting the controversial elite payment portion of the Reunification Investment Fund—$4 billion per year for seven years paid to political and military power elites. Since democratic governments cannot offer this money to North Korean elites for political reasons, I argue that private capital can and should make this investment because their profit margins will be enormous, and their financial contribution to reunification would be considered a wise investment. Additionally, millions of people would benefit, weapons of mass destruction will be eliminated, and perhaps a war averted.

Part two, Chaos, comprises four chapters that collectively consist of a warning that without Korean unification, dangerous entropic inertial forces threaten peace and stability in East Asia. In chapter 5, Growing Danger in East Asia, I assert that US–China security competition and the future of North Korea are inextricably intertwined, assess the perceived growing danger of China’s military modernization and assertiveness, and speculate that Beijing’s actions and inactions in North Korea may reflect its geopolitical intentions across the region. I review the debate among prominent international relations experts over what emphasis should be placed on China’s ascent, and I inventory its advancing symmetric and asymmetric offensive military capabilities. I argue that Chinese foreign policy currently promotes an atavistic Cold War anti-imperialist worldview, and that if it continues to behave as if the United States were its enemy, it may very well make this a self-fulfilling prophecy. Forty years of US goodwill toward China may be coming to an end. Therefore, I also introduce a military conflict scenario that includes the temporary collapse of the global economy and the impending threat of a mass insurgency challenging the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). To avoid such calamity, I recommend a joint solution to this security dilemma, beginning with compromise and cooperation between the US and China, whereby the US would agree to remove its troops from mainland Korea if China retracted its multi-billion dollar trade and aid package and supported the Reunification Investment Fund, and if unification occurred.

In chapter 6, North Korea Collapse Scenario, I recommend Seoul transcend its current ideological/political policy paradigm and adopt a materialist/economic approach before it is too late. I argue that if for any reason the Kim regime were to lose power and chaos ensued, the Peoples Liberation Army—the most powerful ground force in Asia—might use regime collapse to advance China’s political and economic interests by annexing resource-rich territory it already publicly claims is part of its historical legacy, while appearing to defeat the hegemonic forces of Western imperialism before its nationalistic domestic audience. Beijing could cite the 1961 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance as reason for its initial intervention, submit popular snap polls, and appeal to the international community with historical arguments of territorial sovereignty, as Russia has done in Crimea. Although this scenario is unlikely, it is a possibility—perhaps not today, but at some time in the future. Therefore I challenge Seoul to do everything it can to make unification happen before it loses control of the geopolitical situation.

Data included in chapter 7, Hostile Surrogates, reveals that North Korea’s fungible in-kind profit from trade and aid with China was $5.7 billion in 2015, or almost 95 percent of its $6 billion total military budget, and that this economic support has grown more than fourfold since Pyongyang’s first nuclear test in 2006. I assert that China currently uses North Korea as a proxy for its Cold War–era foreign policy, and that the international community should pressure China to abandon these relationships. My assertions are supported by evidence uncovering China’s overt and covert foreign policy agenda in the Middle East and North Korea’s weapons exports into this troubled region after direct Chinese involvement became too sensitive to sustain. Further documentation reveals this Sino–North Korean link is part of a chain of strategic relationships that destabilizes the Middle East and draws US attention away from the Asia-Pacific region.

I propose that the United States and its allies in the Middle East and East Asia make these hostile surrogate relationships an international security issue and impose pressure on Beijing to revise its policy and use its considerable financial leverage to reunify Korea. Given that China’s almost $6 billion annual in-kind trade and aid keeps the Kim regime in power, I conclude it would not be unreasonable for the international community to sanction China for its role in underwriting Pyongyang’s illegal nuclear, missile, and conventional arms transfers, and for continuing to support a regime that is violating numerous United Nations resolutions, including the development of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

In chapter 8, Nuclear Japan or Unified Korea, I argue that reunification may be the only plausible way to prevent rational security adjustments in Japan and South Korea that would lead to regional nuclear proliferation. Although the United States opposes nuclear proliferation in principle, Washington may have little choice but to strategically acquiesce to the security fears of Seoul and Tokyo and allow their nuclear balancing against Pyongyang and Beijing, and against each other. I argue that sixty-five years ago, when its frontline value was beyond reproach, North Korea was a protected pawn in the chess match of great-power rivalry, but now that it has invited danger into the region for China, it may be sacrificed for a larger strategic vision. Beijing may have to choose between a nuclear Japan and a unified Korea.

Part three, Choice, is composed of two chapters in which I conclude that China and the US may find it in their strategic interests to compromise and cooperate to unify Korea and pacify a potential flashpoint for confrontation. In chapter 9, US–China Security Competition or Strategic Cooperation, I discuss the basis for geopolitical leverage and geoeconomic power. I submit that Beijing’s intentions and Pyongyang’s actions cannot be separated; what transpires in Korea may provide an indication of what future to expect in the Asia-Pacific. I argue that while China’s military modernization is impressive, US economic leverage is more powerful. If the US and its allies stopped importing Chinese goods, financial panic might unbind the glue that keeps the CCP in power and holds modern China together. Seoul has strategic leverage to broker a deal between Beijing and Washington to work together to reunify Korea, thus relieving itself of exposure to several dangerous alternatives. I argue that by advancing Sino–US economic and security interests, this Reunification Investment Fund would extend a decisive opportunity for strategic compromise and cooperation to peacefully manage the reunification of Korea. I conclude that US–China security competition is counterproductive for both nations, while a new great-power relationship would be wholly beneficial, as the China Dream is gradually realized over the next several decades and the United States reassesses its role in the world.

Chapter 10, Review: Reunify Korea Now, is a brief summary of evidence and arguments. It postulates that the steady stream of information crossing the semiporous Chinese border into North Korea has fundamentally altered attitudes and perceptions. Multiple indicators suggest a critical threshold of domestic dissent has been reached, and people from all ranks would welcome unification under South Korean political leadership. And after decades of economic globalization—the easier, faster and cheaper flow of goods, people, capital and information—money is readily available to offer North Koreans a compelling incentive to reunify. Therefore, I propose the institution of a Reunification Investment Fund that would function as a platform for cooperation between private transnational institutions, public multilateral concerns, and great-power interests in the peaceful management of political transition. I argue that growing security concerns may convince China and the United States that compromise and cooperation are also in their mutual best interests. China could make re-unification possible by agreeing to suspend support for North Korea and help underwrite this fund, while the United States would agree to withdraw its military troops from mainland Korean pending reunification and the removal of nuclear weapons.

Although a nuclear-capable North Korea and the cascading devolution of great-power