Go to Key Stories

Koreas' Ills Compete for Attention

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 6, 1998; Page A10

SEOUL—Remember North Korea?

For the past two years, when the world thought about the Korean peninsula it usually thought about the North: starving children, an unpredictable Stalinist regime suspected of making nuclear weapons, a million-man army posing a constant threat along the world's most heavily fortified border.

But in recent months, the world's focus has turned almost exclusively to South Korea. The economic meltdown in the world's 11th-largest economy has stolen the headlines. The historic election of longtime dissident Kim Dae Jung as president two weeks ago has eclipsed speculation about how North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is affecting the geopolitical balance in the region.

Most analysts say the situation may be a silver lining to South Korea's economic pain. Despite fears among conservatives here that instability in South Korea might tempt the North into belligerence or even military aggression, most analysts agree that the crisis has done the opposite. Relations between the rival Koreas are more calm and free of vitriol than they have been in months.

"North Korea needs help from the South," said Ahn Byung Joon, political science professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. "Like it or not, the South is still the only country that can provide them with large-scale aid. My hunch is that they don't want to give the impression that they are interfering in South Korea's domestic problems."

Some here think North Korea is simply confused. The workings of the international stock, bond and currency markets that have crippled South Korea are a decidedly foreign concept in North Korea's insulated, state-run, socialist economy.

South Korea also remains far ahead of North Korea by every economic measure. When North Korea observes South Koreans still eating well and enjoying world-class industrial production despite their country's distress, many analysts say, North Korean leaders must wonder: What's the big problem?

"I don't think they know what to make of it," U.S. Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth said in an interview. "For a long time, they were kind of puzzled by all this. I don't think there was a broad understanding of what was going on."

The intense focus on South Korea has given North Korea a chance to step out of the international spotlight for a moment. That takes some pressure off Kim Jong Il at a time when many fear that severe economic distress in his country could lead to dangerous instability.

At the same time, famine-stricken North Korea probably has more food available now than it has had in months. The fall harvest, while meager, is helping to keep starvation at bay. Large shipments of food aid from abroad arrived in the North between August and October, further bolstering the food stocks. Analysts agree that North Korea's food supply will be drastically low again in a few months as stocks are depleted, but for now, North Korea's belly is relatively full on a diet that is "Spartan but adequate," according to one observer.

North Korea also received something of a Christmas present when the election of Kim Dae Jung signaled the impending end of the administration of President Kim Young Sam, who is hated by the North Koreans. Kim Dae Jung, while still a strong advocate of military deterrence against the North, is seen as far more moderate and more willing to engage the North Koreans. It is telling that North Korea's state-sponsored propaganda machine is still howling insults at Kim Young Sam but has been relatively quiet about Kim Dae Jung.

North Korea did not directly refer to Kim Dae Jung's election until its official New Year's statement, carried as an editorial in the official state media. The comments were predictably negative but lacked the usual enthusiastic Seoul-bashing. The editorial reiterated old demands that South Korea drop its tough stand toward North Korea and added, "No change can be expected from the mere alternation of governments and presidents in South Korea."

The editorial offered this unusually optimistic comment: "The New Year 1998 is a historic year in that the Korean nation will open an epochal phase in reunifying the country in an independent and peaceful way."

Overall, North Korea has been oddly quiet and well behaved lately. There have been no military provocations along the Demilitarized Zone and none of the gloating that might have been expected about South Korea's humiliating economic crisis. Even the loudspeakers along the DMZ that hurl North Korea's propaganda southward have gone largely silent at a time when typically they would have been used to rub salt in South Korea's wounds.

"They've done a bit of crowing over the situation down here, but not nearly as much as they could have," a U.S. official in Seoul said. "They've been far less noisy and obnoxious than in any previous election. Personally, I think it looks like they are preparing to get more engaged with the South."

Indeed, on Dec. 9, in the middle of South Korea's financial disintegration, North Korean negotiators sat down with American, South Korean and Chinese officials for the first substantive peace talks in 40 years among the key parties in the Korean War. The meeting was widely hailed as the best chance to achieve a formal peace treaty to replace the armistice that suspended the fighting in 1953. But most newspapers in South Korea played the story quietly on inside pages, and it drew little reaction from the people of South Korea, who were preoccupied with the financial turmoil.

"North Korea is just not what people are interested in right now," the U.S. official said. "For two years, no matter what the nominal subject of conversation was, it would always come around to North Korea. Now, it always comes around to the economy."

The looming question is how the current situation will affect the long-term relationship between the two rivals -- a matter of critical importance to the United States, which has 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea and key trade and economic ties here.

Given the secretive nature of North Korea, analysts say it is too soon to tell whether South Korea's financial problems will help or hinder prospects for better relations. Some worry that the problems eliminate a key incentive for North Korea to talk to the South -- money. North Korea desperately needs financial assistance, and South Korea has always been able to entice the North with its vast wealth and promises of help. Now that South Korea has little money to spare, will the North be as willing to talk?

Most here, though, say that fiercely proud North Korea may feel less intimidated now that South Korea is not so rich, making it easier to talk about possible exchanges.

One key test of South Korea's new economic realities will be its contributions to an international project to build nuclear power plants in North Korea. Under the terms of a U.S.-brokered 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to suspend its nuclear power program in exchange for two new light-water nuclear reactors and deliveries of fuel oil. The $5 billion project, funded largely by South Korea and Japan, aims to replace North Korea's nuclear plants, which produced large amounts of plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons, with plants that are far more difficult to use in weapons production.

Ben Limb, a top adviser to Kim Dae Jung, said the president-elect is "100 percent behind" the project, which is overseen by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization. Ambassador Bosworth, the development organization's former executive director, also said he believes South Korea will continue to meet its obligations to the organization.

However, a spokesman for Kim's transition team told the Korea Times newspaper last week that South Korea would ask the United States to pay some of South Korea's share of the project. "Our burden should be cut to the minimum in view of the current financial difficulty we are now suffering," spokesman Lee Jong Chang said.

"This is a temporary crisis; it is not a permanent crisis," Bosworth said. "In a year or two years, I think the feeling here will be one of greater self-confidence and a willingness to contemplate various kinds of economic ties to the North."