The Vision Thing
The conventional wisdom about Kim Jong Il is that he is mercurial and enigmatic. While nobody knows what he wants, the thinking goes, his goal is probably to continue using the nuclear card as a way of extorting fuel and economic aid, plus other concessions -- a non-aggression pact, for instance. That assumption is based on a view of the PRK as a struggling, moribund regime that is primarily occupied with staying afloat.
But what if we're fundamentally mistaken? North Korea has been broadcasting for years what it wants: the departure of US troops and an end, voluntary or otherwise, to what it sees as a "puppet regime" in the south. What if the Dear Leader, far from being simply concerned with fuel deliveries, has a much larger agenda: pushing for the US to get out of Korea so he can secure "reunification" -- on his terms?
Consider what the North Koreans have recently achieved.
They have caused Washington to lose face, providing the spectacle of a tiny nation tripping up a large, and often obnoxious, superpower. Besides getting him prestige points for cunning, the diplomatic fiasco helps Kim Jong Il look like an apostle of national destiny and self-determination.
They have led the US into the position of being the bad guy, the spoiler of the promising "sunshine policy." That's partly thanks to our own bumbling -- a series of missteps, taken mostly in the service of unilateralist bluster. Now more and more Koreans think we're more of a problem than the police state up north.
As the situation escalates in danger, pundits such as as Robert Novak want the 37,000 US troops to depart. Why risk American lives, especially when they could rather be risked pursuing our policy in Iraq?
Yet if high-ranking defector Hwang Jang Yop is correct, that suggestion is tragically ludicrous.
"The presence of US forces in South Korea is a decisive factor in maintaining peace on the Korean peninsula," Hwang writes. "There is no doubt that a second Korean War will break out as soon as the US withdraws its troops from South Korea."
And Hwang should know. The former International Secretary of the Korean Workers Party was once a close associate of both Kim Jong Il and his father, the Great Leader.
Hopeful voices have pointed to North Korea's hesitant reforms as a sign that Pyongyang is eyeing the Chinese model -- gradually moving away from the command economy while maintaining political control.
That could be true. But nothing about that scenario rules out an invasion of South Korea once American troops are out and the US is tied up with Iraq. After all, if the Chinese model could work in the north, it could work in the south, too.
And the PRK has never recognised the government in the south. It regards itself as the only legitimate government of Korea.
Some may suggest that the regime could not possibly be nursing such ambitions; after all, it can't even sustain its own dysfunctional system. But that view reflects a Western, liberal assumption that economics drives politics, while in North Korea, Hwang notes, "politics dominates economics." Despite the growing hardship, the ruling elite has continued to consolidate its political power and military strength, with a view to its long-term agenda.
We think the Dear Leader's just trying to survive. But he may be playing to win.
3:03:22 PM 
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