Korea's Future and the Great Powers

3. Discerning North Korea's Intentions / Chuck Downs

3 Discerning North Korea's Intentions ChuckDowns A peculiar feature of political analysis concerning the Korean Peninsula is the debate over the intentions behind North Korea's proposals. Inductive logic alone would suggest that North Korea desires to extend its system throughout Korea, and the North's ideological commitment to a unified Korea under communist control has often been stated. In 1975, Kim II Sung wrote that North Korea's "objective is to carry out a people's democratic revolution against U.S. imperialism and fascist rule in South Korea, overthrowing the corrupt colonial and semi-feudal social system and setting up a people's democratic regime on its grave."l But that explicitly stated goal has been so elusive for so many years and appears so impossible today that analysts outside the regime often persuade themselves that the regime has disposed of it. The scholarly debate over the intentions behind the North's unification proposals rages-even though few governments have ever pursued an objective so consistently and openly as North Korea has in its struggle to bring South Korea under communist control, with violence if that would bring success. Both the history of the North's aggression and its ideological foundations reveal that violence is considered a legitimate, and indeed necessary, 88 DISCERNING NORTH KOREA'S INTENTIONS 89 means of extending communism. Leninism, which Kim II Sung called the "powerful weapon for all revolutionary people," posits violent revolution as a necessary stage in progress toward true communism. Lenin said that the existence of communist states side by side with capitalist states for a protracted period was "unthinkable" and "collisions" were "inevitable."2 Kim II Sung theorized that eventual unification under communism would progress through stages, with the final stage being a violent clash. He believed the people of the South would shoulder the major portion of the burden for the revolution against their leaders: "The South Korean people cannot expect to win genuine freedom and liberation," Kim asserted, "...except by sweeping away U.S. imperialism and its stooges and seizing power by revolutionary and violent means."] Naturally, he saw the removal of American troops as a necessary step in the process toward the Communist Party's success in the SOUdI: ''The peaceful unification of our country," he wrote, "can be materialized only after the U.S. imperialist aggressor army has been forced out of South Korea, and the South Korean people have overthrown the present puppet regime, and the progressive forces have come into power."4 Before the ultimate violent stage of Kim's theoretical revolution, North Korea sees the intervening periods of peace as opportunities to build up strength "to meet the great revolutionary event in full readiness."5 Peaceful gestures, such as talks with the South, are useful to help create an environment conducive to North Korea's longer-range objectives. North Korea has occasionally presented enticing proposals for unification that stir hopes and raise expectations. Patterns in this behavior, however , indicate that interests other than unification motivate the proposals. The North has rushed to conclude agreements with the South in order to reclaim control over the reunification issue when international initiatives were building momentum, especially in 1972 when the United States and China discussed their views on Korean unification during the Nixon-Zhou talks. It has made major proposals to take advantage of political instability and civil unrest in the South, from 1960 to 1962 and again in 1979 and 1980. North Korea has also generated North-South dialogue when it has needed to deflect international attention from acts of terror, following such attacks 90 CHUCK DOWNS as the 1976 Panmunjom axe murders, the 1983 Rangoon bombing, and the 1987 downing of Korean Airlines flight 858. This chapter will explore how North Korea's intentions were revealed in three such instances. In each of these situations, the North's proposals were designed to take advantage of specific opportunities. There is a pattern not only in the timing ofNorth Korea's pursuit ofdialogue, but also in the proposals themselves. When its control over unification measures was challenged by the momentum behind international initiatives, the North portrayed itself as an emerging anticolonialist nation struggling to maintain its sovereignty. It rushed to sign on to unenforceable arrangements, knowing it would benefit from illusory gestures and could not be held to compliance. During periods of political instability in the South, the North sought to portray itself as...