PEACE IN OUR TIME?

Why Kim Jong-il must go (Paul Nash, 8/23/03, Asia Times)

In order to understand better the gravity of this problem, I recently spoke to retired US Marine Lieutenant-Colonel James G Zumwalt.

Since 1994, Zumwalt has made 10 visits to the DPRK in an effort to help bridge the differences between the US and the DPRK. A veteran of the US-Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, Zumwalt now acts as a private consultant to foreign and domestic clients in exploring and accessing investment opportunities in global markets, especially those in emerging economies such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China, where he has successfully brokered infrastructure agreements. In 1991, then US president George H W Bush appointed Zumwalt senior adviser to the assistant secretary of state on human rights and humanitarian affairs. In that role, he conducted investigations into human rights violations in various countries. He received a Juris Doctorate degree from Villanova University in 1979 and the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from Mercy College in New York in 1991. [...]

Nash: Do you believe that there is any hope for a peaceful resolution to the current hostilities, or has the dispute already carried too far?

Zumwalt: Sadly, I do not believe a peaceful - and, more importantly, successful - resolution of differences between the US and North Korea is possible, absent a triggering event within North Korea that brings forward an enlightened regime willing to act more responsibly domestically as well as internationally. And, due to the tight and brutal control the current regime exercises over its people, I put a very low likelihood on such a change occurring internally. [...]

I think that any sort of "permanent solution" to the North Korean nuclear problem is simply not possible with a Kim Jong-il-led government or, for that matter, with any other similarly configured government without Kim Jong-il at its head. [...]

It is important too for us to decide the exact parameters upon which such a "permanent solution" is to rest. What I have outlined so far is strictly a permanent solution based on the inner parameters, ie, the WMD issue. But a decision must be made as to whether a permanent solution is to include the outer parameters, ie, should it address as well the brutal treatment of the North Korean people by its leadership? This is strictly a moral determination we must make. We know Pyongyang has already allowed 2 million of its citizens to die of famine, choosing to dedicate its limited financial assets to the development of its WMD program rather than agricultural reform. We know in North Korea, where rugged mountains leave only 20 percent of the land available for agriculture, some farmers are ordered to replace food crops, so critical in a country where nine percent of its population has died of famine, with poppies, so critical in a country where drug trafficking is a growing business to generate cash for military purposes. In Pyongyang we have a government with a long-established track record of total irresponsibility in caring for its citizenry. Do we have any moral obligation to help an enslaved people cast off their yoke of suppression or do we turn a blind eye, allowing millions more North Koreans to die quietly from their government's acts of omission and commission - all at the price of hoping to resolve the WMD threat posed at the outside world? More than six decades ago, England's prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, decided to negotiate with [Adolf] Hitler - a dictator of the same ilk as Kim Jong-il. Chamberlain returned to England, heralding he had achieved "peace in our time". History proved him wrong and the peace short-lived. Do we now buy peace in our time by accepting similar false promises from Kim Jong-il, knowing we are dooming the North Korean people to a life of continued hardship and suffering?

For this reason, before we embark upon any effort to achieve a permanent solution on the peninsula, we must first decide upon the parameters to be met. [...]

Nash: What can the US expect if it does become engaged in military conflict with North Korea?

Zumwalt: [...] A first strike by the US military would take the form of simultaneous hits against a series of tactical targets, along the DMZ and scattered elsewhere around the country. These targets will include military headquarters that have been dug deep underground in Pyongyang and elsewhere. Their destruction will disrupt all North Korean command, control and communications. As was Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il too will become a target of opportunity. The back of the North Korean military will be broken in a matter of weeks, if not days, as the army becomes totally disorganized and nonfunctional. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for it to launch an effective counterattack. Many North Korean soldiers will seek escape routes into the mountains and China. The country will totally collapse in less time than did Iraq.

It's long past time for Korea's post-Kim era to begin. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 22, 2003 9:50 AM