Crisis in Korea

Tim Beal

Description

The South Korean warship Cheonan was sunk in mysterious circumstances on 26 March 2010. The remarkable events that followed are analysed by Tim Beal and woven into a larger study of the increasingly volatile relations between North and South Korea and US concern about the rise of China.



South Korea's stance towards the North has hardened significantly since the new conservative government came to power. Beal argues that the South moved quickly to use the sinking of the Cheonan to put international pressure on the North, even before the cause of the sinking had been established. The US followed suit by attempting to pressurise China into condemning North Korea. The media reports at the time presented an open and shut case of unprovoked North Korean aggression, but the evidence points towards the accidental triggering of a South Korean mine as the cause and South Korean fabrication to incriminate the North.



With the South bent on forcing the fall of the North's regime with US help and China unlikely to stand idly by, this book offers an essential guide to the key factors behind the crisis and possible solutions.
Foreword

PART I: KOREA BETWEEN THE DECLINE OF AMERICA AND THE RISE OF CHINA

Preface

1. Imperialism, Nationalism, the Division and Reunification of Korea

2. Korea and the Postcolonial World

3. The Collapse of the Soviet Union and North Korea's Arduous March

4. The Rise of China and the Decline of America

5. Obama’s Strategic Paralysis

PART II: BUILDUP TO CRISIS: THE CHEONAN INCIDENT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Preface

6. The Mysterious Sinking of the Cheonan, and the Official Investigation

7. Cheonan Incident: From ‘Smoking Gun’ to Rusty Torpedo

PART III: COLLAPSE AND TAKEOVER

8. Scenario Building: Failed Succession and Collapse

9. The Northern Limit Line: Keeping the War Alive

10. Military Exercises: Precipitating Collapse, Preparing for Invasion

11. The Siege: Sanctions, their Role and Effect

12. The Costs and Consequences of Invasion

13. The China Factor – into the Abyss?

Appendices (online)

Notes

Index

Sujets

• International Relations
• Political Science
• General officer
• South Korea
• Peace
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 04 août 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783714407
• Langue: English

Extrait

Crisis in Korea
CRISIS IN KOREA
America, China and the Risk of War
Tim Beal
First published 2011 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Tim Beal, 2011
The right of Tim Beal to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN    978 0 7453 3161 4    Hardback
ISBN    978 0 7453 3162 1    Paperback
ISBN    978 1 8496 4610 9    PDF eBook
ISBN    978 1 7837 1441 4    Kindle eBook
ISBN    978 1 7837 1440 7    EPUB eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
Contents

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Preface
PART I   KOREA AND THE POSTWAR GEOPOLITICAL TRANSFORMATION
   1 .
Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Division and Reunification of Korea
   2 .
Korea and the Postcolonial World
   3 .
The Collapse of the Soviet Union and North Korea’s ‘Arduous March’
   4 .
The Rise of China and the Decline of America
   5 .
Obama’s Strategic Paralysis
PART II   BUILDUP TO CRISIS: THE CHEONAN INCIDENT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
   6 .
The Mysterious Sinking of the Cheonan , and the Official Investigation
   7 .
From ‘Smoking Gun’ to Rusty Torpedo
PART III   COLLAPSE AND TAKEOVER
   8 .
Scenario Building: Failed Succession and Collapse
   9 .
The Northern Limit Line: Keeping the War Alive
10 .
Military Exercises: Precipitating Collapse, Preparing for Invasion
11 .
The Siege: Sanctions, Their Role and Effect
12 .
The Costs and Consequences of Invasion
13 .
The China Factor: Into the Abyss?
APPENDICES
The following appendices do not appear in the printed book but are available on the web at < www.timbeal.net.nz/Crisis_in_Korea >.
1.   Timeline
2.   Statistical Appendix
3.   Reports on the Cheonan Incident
Notes
Bibliography
Index
List of Figures and Tables

FIGURES
3.1
North Korea’s ‘Foreign’ Trade, 1981–2009
3.2
North Korea’s Major Import Sources, 1993–2009
3.3
North Korea’s Major Export Markets, 1993–2009
3.4
North Korea’s Trade with Japan 2002–2009: Strangulation by Sanctions
4.1
China’s Share of World Trade, 1950–2009
4.2
The American Trade Deficit with China, 1989–2009
4.3
Rising and Falling Stars: Foreign Registrations of US Patents, 2000–09
4.4
US Share of World GDP, 1940–2003
7.1
The Corroded Torpedo
III.1
Share of World Imports of Arms, 2000–2008
9.1
Northern Limit Line, Military Demarcation Line and the Demilitarised Zone
9.2
Measuring Policy Change: KCNA Mentions of the NLL over Two Administrations
TABLES
3.1
Direction of DPRK Foreign Trade, Selected Years, Major Partners
11.1
Child Malnutrition, 2002
Acknowledgements

No book gets written, and produced, without input from many people. This assistance comes in many forms; sometimes it is directly related to the book, in other cases it is rather a matter of long term support for the research and commitment that goes into writing. Debts, therefore, are boundless, and it is difficult just to identify a few individuals, leaving out the rest. Brevity however is necessary and I apologise to those I have not mentioned. Given the controversial nature of the book I should perhaps also apologise to those who are mentioned. Of course, any opinions expressed are mine and are not necessarily shared by others. Any mistakes are also mine alone.
I am grateful to Brent Efford for proofreading and to Tony Quinn for help with EndNote. Don Borrie, Peter Wilson, and Stuart Vogel, who share a commitment to peace and prosperity in Korea, have provided support over the years. I have a debt to many Koreans, North and South and in the diaspora but in particular to Chung Young Chul in Seoul who translated my first book on Korea, and might perhaps, be tempted to do the same with this one. My visits to North Korea have been facilitated by the Korea-New Zealand Friendship Society and I am very grateful for the insights, and friendships, these have provided. Most of what appears in a book comes from other books, and written matter in general, but actually walking the streets of Pyongyang and Seoul, travelling through both Koreas, gives an empathetic understanding that words alone cannot provide.
This book would not have been published without the support, encouragement and valuable criticism of Pluto publisher, Roger van Zwanenberg, and his team, specifically Alec Gregory, Tom Lynton, Jon Maunder, Charles Peyton, Robert Webb, and Jon Wheatley.
My greatest debt of all is to Ankie Hoogvelt. She criticised early drafts and laid the foundation for the index. She disagreed with much of what I originally wrote and this stimulated me, I hope, to do better. No doubt there are things in this final version with which she would take issue but that is in the nature of subjects which, by their nature, offer few certainties.
Preface

Korea is surprisingly important. It was Japan’s takeover of Korea which led it to war with Russia, and provided the first victory over a European power by a non-European one for centuries. The colonisation of Korea then led Japan into war with China and ultimately with the United States; that brought us, among other things, Hiroshima and the atomic age. The Korean War, which broke out in 1950, ended America’s post-Second World War demobilization and provided the impetus for the remilitarisation of its society and economy. This local ‘forgotten war’, as it has often been called, was the opening salvo of the Cold War, a war that, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, continues today in a different form. The Soviet Union has been replaced as the main challenge to American hegemony by the hydra-headed Islamist ‘global insurgency’, and by China. And America’s militarisation has proceeded apace, so that the US now accounts for half the world’s military expenditure: it is the major international seller of arms, and weapons look set to become its major export. The business of America is no longer business, but war.
Things that happen in Korea have repercussions around the world, and this is due in no small measure to its strategic location. The Korean peninsula is where Russia, China, Japan and the United States collide and interact. Significantly, in 1950 Korea sparked the first Sino-American war; there are warning signs, that 60 years later, it may produce the second.
On 26 March 2010 the South Korean corvette, the Cheonan , sank in mysterious circumstances. The ship, named after the South Korean city of the same name – which ironically means ‘heavenly peace’ – took 46 men down with her. The sinking was not a major catastrophe as these things go; in 1999 a North Korean ship was sunk in the same waters with comparable casualties, and trains, planes, ships, let alone tsunamis and earthquakes, frequently inflict far more damage. What was important in this case was the response of the South Korean government. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak set up a military investigation which included the United States and some allies, and excluded neighbouring China and Russia, and pronounced North Korea guilty. North Korea demanded access to the evidence and was refused. There is widespread scepticism within South Korea, especially among younger and better-educated people, about the military’s verdict, and both China and Russia have refused to accept it. Despite all this, Lee Myung-bak has used the incident to justify his hard-line stance towards the North and to increase tension on the peninsula. Indeed, there are strong indications, detailed in this book, that the South Korean government actually fabricated evidence in order to incriminate the North.
The Cheonan is not an isolated incident, but rather marks a further stage in the deterioration of relations between South and North since Lee came into power in 2008. Tension was further exacerbated by an artillery clash at Yeonpyeong Island in disputed waters off the west coast in November 2010. The relationship between the two Koreas had been improving over recent decades, and especially under the progressive administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, but under Lee Myung-bak it has plummeted.
Inter-Korean relations assume a particular importance because of the way they impact on global geopolitics. Foremost among these issues is the protracted dispute between North Korea and America. Since the 1960s, and with added urgency since the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea has been attempting to get the US to accept peaceful coexistence, to remove its military threat, and to lift wide-ranging sanctions that condemn the country to penury. The United States, for reasons of global strategy and the necessity to keep Japan and South Korea in an alliance against China, has baulked at this. Despite all the hyperbole, it apparently does not regard the North Korean nuclear weapons programme as sufficiently challenging to justify compromising more important objectives. The progressive administrations of Kim Dae-jung – famous for his ‘sunshine policy’ of engagement with the North – and Roh Moo-hyun tended to ameliorate the US position. Lee Myung-bak puts press