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Security and Politics on the Korean Peninsula: Constantly Changing or Forever Constant?Victor D. Cha *
Georgetown University
Overview of Events: Unification
The sight of Kim Jong-il and Kim Dae-jung embracing in Pyongyang was a cathartic event for Koreans, filling a void in the Korean psyche and national identity. Accompanying the display of raw emotion and joy at this event were, in no uncertain terms, Korean claims that reconciliation for their long-divided country was finally imminent. How close are we to Korea's holy grail?
Historical Controversies: The Consensus for Korean Unification
In the post-Cold War era, the spectrum of discussion about unification has ranged from "hard-landing" scenarios, in which the South absorbs an imploded DPRK (popular in the early 1990s), to the "soft-landing" scenario of a controlled process of phased integration. 16 Despite this range of views, there have been two tenets almost religiously accepted and common to all. First, unification must come through the independent efforts of Koreans, without interference or obstruction from external powers. Implicit in this view is that the major powers are fundamentally opposed to unification and seek to keep Korea down. Second, the division of the country since 1945 is an historical aberration for this ethnically homogenous 3,000 year-old civilization, and hence must inevitably end.
The first of these tenets, which has been an underlying principle of unification agreed upon by the two Koreas dating back to the 1972 joint communique and re-stated in every subsequent meeting including the recent summit, requires analysis. The notion of unification through independence (chajusong) is in principle unassailable, but in practice highly unlikely. This is less a commentary on the innate ability of Koreans than it is the curse of geography. The peninsula's location in Northeast Asia and Korea's status as a small power surrounded by larger ones make Korea geostrategically critical to major power interests. 17 One need only look at the past century, during which all the major powers (the U.S., Japan, China, and Russia) have fought at least one major war over control of the peninsula. Thus, as long as states vie for power and influence in the region, Korea will suffer the fate of the "shrimp crushed between whales." Put another way, Korea is simply too important for unification not to engage the interests of all the major powers. If the peninsula were located at the North Pole, unification through independent means might be possible, but its location makes major power interests an inherent element of any changes on the peninsula.
The complementary argument to chajusong is that all the major powers oppose unification. An opinion often espoused by Koreans, this view argues that the intentions of the major powers are to prevent a reunited Korea from upsetting the regional power balance, and that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, their grand strategies are dedicated implicitly to opposing or preventing unification. Koreans are so indoctrinated in this view that it has become an unquestioned fact, for which any evidence to the contrary is dismissed as aberrant or simply ignored. This is a terribly overstated myth. The major powers, in particular the United States and Japan, do not oppose unification per se. What they prefer on the peninsula is the "known" status quo to the "unknown" non-status quo option. The primary objective of each major power on the peninsula with regard to its own national security is to maintain stability. In spite of the militarization of the DMZ and the absence of a peace settlement, a strange form of stability has emerged since 1953 based on deterrence and the military stalemate. A suboptimal outcome, in the minds of all concerned with the peninsula, is still preferable to a change in the status quo that may lead in unpredictable and unpleasant directions.
In spite of these considerations, if the two Koreas were to begin a process of unification tomorrow, it would be wholly consistent with the interests of the U.S. and the other major powers to support this process without obstruction. This is because any actions to the contrary would undermine the other major objective of each major power with regard to unification: avoiding a united Korea aligned against it. Actively impeding or opposing a process once it got started would virtually ensure a united Korean state hostile to one's interests. The standard truism about major power opposition to unification therefore is too crude. While the impetus for changing the status quo is not likely to come from the major powers, Koreans can be assured that once they started the process themselves, the external powers would be obliged to support it. This would not be out of affinity, goodwill or loyalty (although these factors may be present), but because it is in their respective interests to do so.
The NIMT ("not in my time") Consensus
The second tenet of unification is that it is inevitable because division is aberrant. Ironically, though, the greatest ambivalence with regard to unification these days comes not from outside Korea but from within. Unification has always been the holy grail, but the enthusiasm for it has seen decided peaks and troughs over the past decade. At the initial end of the Cold War, the common view was that unification (whether through hard or soft landing) was only a matter of time given the collapse of the Soviet Union and the North's economic difficulties. The Kim Young Sam administration of the ROK in the early 1990s claimed that absorption of their Northern brethren was just around the corner. However, both the confidence and enthusiasm that typified South Korean attitudes at the time waned dramatically thereafter, for several reasons. First, few expected the continued cohesiveness of the North Korean regime. In spite of its economic difficulties, the end of Soviet and Chinese patronage, a leadership transition, and a variety of other potentially destabilizing factors, the regime defied all expert expectations and survived, thereby ruling out the "unification by default" scenario. 18 Second, a better understanding of the German case deflated Korean expectations in two ways. The comparative indicators did not bode well for Korea. For example, in the early 1990s, when talk about absorption was at its height, ROK GNP per capita was only 25 percent that of West Germany; moreover, the gap between the East and West German economies was much smaller than that between the two Koreas. While Germany's unification cost (estimated between $500 billion and $1 trillion) occupied only some 10 percent of the national budget, a low-end figure of $500 billion for Korea's unification amounted to over ten times Seoul's national budget. In addition, while West Germany was geographically larger and four times more populous than its counterpart, the ROK is 25 percent smaller in area and only twice as populous as the North, which presaged a relatively higher burden in infrastructure and social overhead capital (SOC) costs. Recent studies found that the costs of reconnecting just the main railways up the coasts of the peninsula would total nearly $9 , and those for bringing North Korea's SOC facilities to 1990 levels in the South would exceed $6 billion. 19 Moreover, what South Koreans saw initially as ill-advised mistakes by the Germans on integration policy, especially the one-to-one currency union, were soon to be seen as unavoidable given the need to accommodate a newly enfranchised East German electorate - a problem that a newly-united democratic Korean government would also face. Finally, while earlier assessments by government-supported research institutes in the South judged unification costs to be manageable, more objective independent studies subsequently put the costs in excess of $1 trillion. 20 In good part, these new estimates corrected for the biases and unforeseen consequences in earlier studies. 21 The liquidity crisis that hit South Korea in 1997-98 brought into stark and sobering relief the high costs of such an exercise and essentially deflated any remaining buoyant expectations about unification.
The newfound ambivalence toward unification is manifested in several ways. Popular attitudes have changed markedly. Pragmatic conditionalities have become an integral part of what was formerly a normative discourse on unification. While a clear majority of those polled before the financial crisis (1995) saw unification as a "must" for Korea, only 40 percent responded this way in 1999. 22 In part this is linked to generational change, as those who remember a unified Korea (albeit as part of the Japanese empire) die off. It is also linked to the North's famine-like conditions over the past few years, which only further magnify the anticipated costs of union. The result is that unification is no longer seen in the same "holy" terms. The discourse quickly turns to the added tax burden faced by Koreans and the vast pressures the Northerners will place on an already weak social safety net. A 1996 Sejong Institute poll found nearly 80 percent of South Koreans opposed to raising taxes to pay for unification. Moreover, given both the North and South's economic problems, the percentage that view unification as an outright impossibility more than doubled between 1995 and 1999 (12 percent to 26 percent). 23 Hence, while it is still part of one's Korean identity to yearn for unification in normative terms, a pragmatic "NIMT" ("not in my time") consensus has emerged. As one observer noted, "[Unification] is a goal recited with an understood wink. While virtually everyone in South Korea vows allegiance to it, few people actually want it to happen very soon, if at all." 24
This NIMT consensus is also apparent in government policy. A number of traits distinguish Seoul's "sunshine" or engagement policy with North Korea, including the persistence and consistency of the policy in spite of DPRK provocations, and the open-ended nature of engagement (encouraging all countries to engage with North Korea). 25 But what is most important in the context of this discussion is that it is the first Northern policy in South Korean history that does not explicitly enunciate a goal of unification, effectively taking it off the political agenda (in the South). The NIMT consensus was also reflected in the North-South summit. The language of the summit was rich with talk about national reconciliation and unification, but all of these references, while resonating normatively with Koreans, masked the mutually-understood reality that such an outcome was still a long way off. In fact, the two unification formulas referred to in the joint declaration (the DPRK Confederal Republic of Koryo and ROK Commonwealth) are both premised less on integration and more on self-preservation, with "one nation, two systems" as the common point of reference (see Addendum 1). 26
These changing attitudes affect how the U.S. should be thinking about future peace solutions on the Korean peninsula. Generally, solutions are situated along two axes: a continuation of the status quo, or a victory of one side over the other. However, the shift in Korean attitudes on unification means that we need to think about peace solutions on the peninsula as being increasingly non-zero sum in nature. Advancing from an armistice to a peace treaty is certainly requisite, but moving beyond that, possible peace solutions could include Korean coexistence and U.S. withdrawal or Korean coexistence with the United States remaining as a peacekeeper on the peninsula. There are other possibilities as well, but the point is that as rethinking on unification occurs, options for the U.S. military presence move beyond the two generally accepted options..
Overview of Events: The U.S.-ROK Alliance
Across a range of criteria that determine the functional success of a military alliance, the U.S.-ROK alliance has done well. 27 The alliance enabled the stationing of 37,000 U.S. troops directly at the point of conflict on the peninsula, which provided the South with an unequivocal symbol of U.S. defense commitment and deterred the North with its "tripwire" presence. The two militaries represent the classic example of an alliance operating under a joint, unitary command (the Combined Forces Command, or CFC) with a common doctrine, as well as with a clear division of combat roles practiced through frequent and extensive joint training. Host country support for the alliance has been strong. Arguably, the U.S. and ROK have evolved to fit the ideal definition of military allies, far more workable and efficient than the U.S.-Australia or U.S.-Saudi Arabia alliances and paralleled only by NATO and the U.S.-Japan alliances. 28 However, the unexpected congeniality of the North-South summit raised all sorts of speculation about the future of the U.S.-ROK alliance. If the likelihood of conflict on the peninsula has been eradicated by this new era of Korean peace (as some suggest), then what is the purpose of the alliance? Has South Korean tolerance for the burdensome structures of the alliance and its bases and training ranges waned in proportion to the euphoria generated by the summit? Has the summit created a division of interests on the peninsula with the South Koreans "decoupling" their peninsular peace from other issues of concern to the U.S. and Japan? In short, is the alliance increasingly a Cold War anachronism?
Theoretical Relevance: Alliance Interests and Alliance Resiliency
These are hard questions that the alliance must answer in the future, but the emphasis here is on "future." Excited observers drew an immediate and direct causal link between summit atmospherics and the obsolescence of the alliance. Perhaps the most disturbing reaction to the summit is that 53 percent of South Koreans polled said they now dismissed the possibility of renewed North Korean hostilities. 29 It appeals to Korean romanticism to think that the U.S. alliance becomes less necessary because of this bold move by the Koreas, but the fact of the matter is that the alliance is here to stay as long as the threat remains, and perhaps even beyond. The majority of South Korean security thinkers, including Kim Dae-jung himself, have gone on record calling for a security relationship with the U.S. even after unification. 30 Such strategic imperatives do not change easily overnight. Moreover, toasts, warm embraces, and photo-ops do not stop ballistic missiles, nuclear posturing, nor heightened tension in the DMZ. To believe that the summit's platitudes enable Korea to decouple itself from these large, substantive security concerns of Washington and Tokyo would be a grave mistake. In short, while complaints about the intrusive aspects of U.S. bases and training might heat up every time there are kind words between the North and South, the clear-headed among South Korean policy makers will not trade away the Eighth Army for positive atmospherics with Pyongyang.
Second, the argument that the end of the Soviet threat and, more immediately, the Korean detente have highlighted troubling disparities in U.S. and ROK security interests on the peninsula is not a particularly novel revelation. American and South Korean interests are indeed different, but this has always been so. Historically, ROK expectations regarding the credibility of its American ally's commitments have always been local in terms of peninsular security and the zero-sum competition with the North. On the other hand, the U.S. has always seen the Korea issue through the prism of its larger regional or global strategies. Differences emerged occasionally, but were managed well because the American Cold War strategy linked events on the periphery with U.S.-Soviet competition at the core, thereby causing the regional and local views to converge. 31
Where change from the past has occurred is in the increasing compartmentalization of security and political issues on the peninsula. Family reunions, economic aid, and cultural and sports exchanges are issues discussed largely within the context of North-South dialogue (as confirmed by the June summit). Nuclear proliferation concerns regarding North Korea are addressed in the context of the 1994 Agreed Framework and its institutional offspring, the Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO) led by the U.S., South Korea and Japan. The armistice and peace treaty fall under the purview of the Four Party talks involving the two Koreas (see web links), the U.S. and China. And North Korea's ballistic missile program and terrorism status are negotiated in bilateral U.S.-DPRK channels. These discrete and institutionalized channels for dealing with various aspects of security have clear benefits in the sense that improvements on any one of these channels can provide momentum for others (for example, the North-South summit's positive outcome arguably spilled over to the U.S. decision to lift some economic sanctions against the DPRK, and also led to Pyongyang's reaffirmation of its moratorium on missile tests).
The challenges are also clear. Compartmentalization, some critics argue, can make decoupling of issues within the alliance easier. For example, improvements in North-South relations provide Seoul the luxury of decoupling itself from Washington's and Tokyo's concerns regarding DPRK ballistic missiles and WMD. However, such an argument fails on three counts. First, there are clear overlaps in the groups dealing with issues on the peninsula, which makes decoupling harder (in particular, China and the U.S.). Second, decoupling only makes sense if there is no value placed on trilateral policy coordination among the U.S., Japan and South Korea as established by the Perry policy review. A precedent has been set through the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) that makes it as inadvisable for Seoul to spurn an interest in Tokyo's concerns on DPRK missiles as it is for Tokyo to withhold support for Seoul's efforts at consummating family reunions with the North. Finally, South Korean decoupling would be destructive to the entire engagement process in that it would undercut any hope of DPRK access to economic aid provided by international financial institutions in which Japan and the U.S. are the leading players. In sum, divergent interests between the U.S. and ROK are neither new phenomena nor symptomatic of an end to the alliance. Resiliency rests, as it always has, on the political ability to manage these differences well.
Endnotes
Note 16: For discussions of these scenarios, see Kihl 1994 and Foster-Carter 1992.Back.
Note 17: For the classic statement of these points, see Morley 1983.Back.
Note 18: For representative arguments in this debate see Ahn 1994, Eberstadt 1997, and Noland 1997.vBack.
Note 19: Reports released by the Samsung Economic Research Institute and the Construction and Economic Research Institute of Korea (CERIK) in June 2000 as reported in Joongang Ilbo 14 June 2000 (Jae-hoon Lee, "Required SOC for NK to Exceed $6 billion), and Korea Times 7 June 2000 ("Inter-Korean Infrastructure Projects to Cost W10 Trillion").Back.
Note 20: The "cost" of unification is generally defined as the amount of investment and capital necessary to bring DPRK production levels to within 40 percent of the ROK's over ten years. For initial estimates and evaluations, see Foster-Carter 1992. For subsequent reassessments that put the cost much higher, see Noland, Robinson, and Liu 1998, Noland 2000, and Goldman Sachs' calculations (reported in Washington Post, 19 June 2000). Back.
Note 21: These studies pointed out additional considerations that bolster estimates at the higher end. First, estimates on closing the gap between the two economies do not take adequate account of the additional burden when dealing with socialist economies. In most cases, the infrastructure and capital base that exists cannot be built upon (as often assumed by the estimates) but must actually be torn down and rebuilt, meaning even higher costs. Moreover, the availability of foreign investment and capital to finance these costs will probably not meet South Korean expectations because, at least initially, unification will be met with more unfavorable international risk ratings.Back.
Note 22: Choson Ilbo poll in Yung-bong Kim 2000: 2-3.Back.
Note 23: Yung-bong Kim 2000: 4-5.Back.
Note 24: Washington Post, 18 June 2000 (Doug Struck, "In the South, One Korea is Distant Goal").Back.
Note 25: See Hong 1999.Back.
Note 26: For an analysis of these two plans, see Koh 1994. Back.
Note 27: Alliances serve the purpose not just of providing for one's security, but doing so in an efficient and relatively less costly manner than would otherwise be the case (i.e., self-help). In this vein, an alliance's success is measured by the extent to which it: serves as a facilitator of power accretion and projection; operates as a unified command; enables common tactics and doctrine through joint training; promotes a division of security roles; facilitates cooperation in production and development of military equipment: and elicits political support among domestic constituencies. See Snyder 1997.Back.
Note 28: The -ROK alliance surpasses Japan in its possessing a unitary command, as well as NATO in terms of a clear division of labor and cooperation in the production of some military equipment.Back.
Note 29: Choson Ilbo-Gallup Korea poll (Korea Herald, 19 June 2000).Back.
Note 30: Seoul Yonhap, 30 December 1997 ( "Kim Dae-jung calls for Post-Reunification US Presence").Back.
Note 31: Such differences often surfaced when the refused to punish DPRK provocations in accordance with ROK expectations. In the cases of the Blue House Raid by North Korean commandos and the seizure of the USS Pueblo (January 1968), the ROK demanded harsh retaliation as these provocations were seen as tests of resolve on the peninsula. For the , however, the response was decidedly more muted because of desires to avoid actions that might open a second front in Asia. For details, see Cha 1999, ch. 3.Back.
Note *: Professor Victor D. Cha is Assistant professor in the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. He holds a Ph.D from Columbia University (1994); an MA/BA (Hons) in PPE from Oxford University, England; and an AB in Economics from Columbia College (1983).
He is the author of Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (Stanford University Press, 1999), which was the 2000 winner of the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Foundation Main Book Prize for best books on the Pacific Basin/East Asia, and a nominee for the 2000 Hoover Institution Uncommon Book Award. His articles on international relations and East Asia have appeared in Survival, International Studies Quarterly, Orbis, Armed Forces and Society, Journal of Peace Research, Security Dialogue, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Asian Survey, Asian Perspective, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Korean Studies, and Japanese Journal of Political Science.
Professor Cha is a former John M. Olin National Security Fellow at Harvard University (1992-94) and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University (1994-95). He has also been a two-time Fulbright Scholar (Korea, 1991-92 and 1999) and MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Dr. Cha serves as an independent consultant and lectures to various branches of the U.S. Department of Defense (Office of the Secretary of Defense), Department of State, and SAIC. He has appeared as a guest analyst on various media including CNN, Associated Press TV, Fox-TV, Voice of America, National Public Radio, The Diane Rehm Show, As It Happens, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, UPI, Mainichi Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Japan Times, Asia Times, KBS-TV, Choson Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo, Sisa Journal, Sin Tonga and Korea Herald. In 1999, he was the Edward Teller National Fellow for Security at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University and a recipient of the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award. His current research projects look at the future of American alliances; and globalization and military modernization in Asia. Back.
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