Pyongyang may be trying to tell us something

If the aim is to persuade North Korea to change, demonising it as an international pariah may not help, writes Sholto Byrnes

South Korean soldiers inspect as their North Korean counterparts stand guard during a reunification rally in the border village of Panmunjom at the DMZ in North Korea this week. Dita Alangkara / AP PhShow more

The two Koreas have thankfully stepped back from the brink. The North had objected to the South broadcasting propaganda from loudspeakers by the border, and ordered so serious a mobilisation of forces in retaliation that the Pentagon reviewed its plans for defending the South in the event of an invasion.

After days of negotiations, however, South Korea agreed to turn off the loudspeakers. They had been silent for 11 years – until two of its border guards were maimed by landmines it said had been planted by the North. The North, in turn, expressed “regrets” for the incident, and said its troops would stand down.

Relief all round. But it seemed all too much like yet another instance of a conflict that dates back to the country’s division after the Second World War (into Soviet and American zones) getting dangerously out of hand.

The Cold War ended 24 years ago and the handful of states that are still Communist are mostly nominally so. But somebody, it would appear, forgot to tell the North Koreans.

Even beyond the grave, the writ of the country’s founder, the “Eternal President” Kim Il Sung still runs in “the Hermit Kingdom, the most isolated country in the world, an outlaw nation, an exporter of terrorism, part of the ‘axis of evil’”, as CNN put it with typical American understatement.

The standard narrative is that this is a country impoverished by its cruel and capricious leaders, Kim, then his son and now his grandson. More importantly for the rest of us, it is one that manages to maintain the fourth largest army in the world and that, terrifyingly, possesses enough weapons grade plutonium for six nuclear bombs.

If only, says the consensus of international opinion, China could still rein in a pariah state, albeit one that could, just could, start a nuclear conflict if they got out of bed the wrong side one morning.

But do we ever stop to consider the North Korean point of view? As a colleague put it to me: if you’re treated as an outcast and threatened by the world’s only current superpower carrying out joint ventures with the South Koreans, you might well feel more than a little paranoid. And you’d probably want to keep those nuclear weapons on standby too.

I have no brief for the North Korean regime. But if we dismiss it as consisting solely of bellicose madmen who cannot be reasoned with, then the chances of ever turning this precarious ceasefire (the two countries are still technically at war) into a sustainable peace are next to nonexistent.

It is worth trying to comprehend how they see a stand-off that has lasted over 60 years. And according to officials, they feel very misunderstood.

They say that they have been working for unification, and re-entry into the community of nations, for decades, and that great progress was being made under President Clinton.

The Agreed Framework between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was signed in 1994. Under this, the North said it would freeze and then remove its nuclear weapon capabilities in exchange for oil and new reactors that could not be used to manufacture warheads. There were setbacks and suspicion on both sides, but the process was continuing when George W Bush succeeded Clinton in 2001.

A year after taking office, however, President Bush declared North Korea to be part of the “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address, and the spirit of cooperation swiftly dissipated. “Bush destroyed everything. That is not our fault,” one official from the North told a gathering I attended earlier this summer.

The North Koreans say they want reunification on the basis of a low level federation, and that after seven decades of having different systems, that of one cannot be imposed on the other – similar to how Germany was reunified in 1990 (although that was with the consent of both sides).

South Korean President Park Geun-hye is keen to discuss reunification as well. She called last year for “a unified Korea that is free from the fear of war and nuclear weapons”, and for more exchanges to begin to “narrow the distance between our values and our thinking”.

The North Koreans, however, blame the US for putting obstacles in the way. “The US has left no stone unturned to prevent unification,” I was told. They also point to a lack of consistency on the part of America and South Korea. “Every time there is a change of regime, they change their policy.”

Few will have much sympathy for the North Korean regime, but it is surely worth considering how it views itself and how it sees those who seek to influence its behaviour.

If the aim is to persuade it to change, one has to ask whether demonising it as an international pariah actually closes off that possibility.

After all, there used to be another pariah state in East Asia – and in November, Myanmar is due to hold what will be the most free elections since 1960, the last before the military took over. Change there came not from outside pressure but from within.

Can we imagine North Korea ever following suit? If so, I agree with a Council on Foreign Relations verdict on Myanmar’s transformation: “Helping, rather than determining, is probably the best” concerned observers can do. And that starts with at least listening to what the North Koreans have to say.

Sholto Byrnes is a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia