Can anything be done about North Korea's nuclear threat?

• Author: Bandow, Doug

AFTER REJECTING demands from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to allow inspection of two suspected nuclear facilities, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Fears of a North Korean nuclear bomb, which had receded as Pyongyang allowed a half-dozen IAEA inspections over the past year, have risen to a fever pitch. Although the Clinton Administration so far has reacted with circumspection, demands for a military response are growing. There is no easy solution to the threat of a nuclear DPRK, but precipitous U.S. action could spark a new war that would endanger not only the 36.000 American service personnel presently stationed on the Korean peninsula, but millions of South Koreans as well.

The Korean War during 1950-53 was followed by a bitter mini-Cold War that lasted nearly four decades. By the end of the 1980s, the North found itself increasingly isolated internationally and falling ever further behind the Republic of Korea (ROK) economically. The violent collapse of monarchical communism in Ceausescu's Romania and West Germany's absorption of communist East Germany had proved particularly unsettling for the retrograde Stalinist regime in Pyongyang. With the cutoff of subsidized trade by China and the Soviet Union, officials of the DPRK no longer could deny their nation's economic distress. By December, 1991, officials of the two Koreas had held several meetings; South Korean businessmen were heading north to invest; and the two governments had approved a nonaggression pact and agreed to allow mutual inspections for nuclear weapons. The Korean political winter, it seemed, was over.

However, extensive saber rattling occurred in the North during the 1993 joint U.S.-ROK Team Spirit military exercises, and the Central Intelligence Agency warns that the North may have enough plutonium to develop one or two nuclear weapons. The ROK has suspended economic activities in the DPRK; Japan and the U.S. temporarily suspended discussions about improving relations with Pyongyang; and some Western analysts are calling for war--immediately.

Since their separation following World War II, the two Koreas have competed bitterly in the economic, military, and political arena. During the 1960s, Pyongyang's rigid command economy stagnated and the South's generally capitalist economy began to soar. Seoul outmaneuvered its rival in the political and diplomatic realms as well during the following decade. By the 1980s, the game between the two states essentially was over--the South was twice as populous, dramatically more prosperous, a serious player in international economic and technological markets, and one of the globe's leading trading nations. Only on the military front did Pyongyang retain a lead, largely reflecting the fact that America's security guarantee, then backed by a 43,000-man tripwire, made additional defense spending by the ROK unnecessary. As early as the 1980s, there was little justification for maintaining the so-called mutual defense treaty. South Korea was capable of overtaking the North's military capabilities with only modest increases in defense expenditures--had Seoul chosen to do so.

Today, the gap between the two nations is even wider. The South's gross national product is estimated to be 12 times that of its northern rival. Thus, North Korea would have to devote nearly its entire national production to match an expenditure by Seoul of little more than eight percent of its GNP. (Seoul currently devotes approximately five percent of GNP to the military.) Pyongyang lacks the hard currency necessary to buy spare parts for its tanks and other weapons, which probably contributes to the large number of broken-down military trucks visitors see throughout the capital city and its environs. The readiness and training of the DPRK forces is questionable--the regime gives its pilots little time in the air, for instance. The North's domestic transportation infrastructure is primitive and in disrepair; many military personnel spend their time performing public-works tasks; and the DPRK apparently never has conducted a combined arms exercise. Although a sudden onslaught by the North might succeed in capturing or destroying Seoul, which lies just 30 miles south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), even many South Korean analysts discount the likelihood of an invasion.

Given Pyongyang's mounting economic and diplomatic failures and the looming prospect of the South's reaching parity in conventional military capability, North Korea's only potential trump card is the development of a nuclear weapon. Pyongyang apparently has had a program under way for some time. Since the DPRK began its efforts when the U.S. still maintained tactical nuclear weapons in the South--they were withdrawn only in late 1991--it is possible that Pyongyang wanted the bomb primarily as a defensive weapon, although the goal of nuclear blackmail of neighboring countries can not be ruled out. As the North's allies, the former U.S.S.R. and, more recently, China, have recognized Seoul over the DPRK's objections, dictator Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il, the anointed successor, probably have come to believe even more strongly that an atomic bomb is perhaps the only means of...