North Korea: Enough is Enough

The North Korean regime has now murdered ROK soldiers, shelled a South Korean island, and built hundreds of new nuclear centrifuges. It continues to send arms to Syria and Hezbollah all the while assisting Iran in its missile programs. Are we surprised?

We should not be. Pyongyang has a pattern of behavior. They create a crisis by engaging in some murderous activity. They then blame the government in Seoul. They further blame the United States. They then claim usually very quickly that a major improvement in relations can be accomplished “in principle.” A deadline is then set for the US and Seoul to take the actions necessary to achieve such a breakthrough, such as the US dropping its “hostile policy” or “withdrawing its troops” from ROK.

Pyongyang then demands negotiations but front-loads the agenda with a demand for “preconditions.” Negotiations if they begin are then drawn out. Then blame the US and ROK for the negotiations being drawn out. In order to attend future meetings, they then demand a major concession or compensations, or both. They claim the US and the Republic of Korea must make concessions to bring things bank to the status quo. And unless such concessions are made, they threaten to go back to step-one, threatening further war-like actions, all the while blaming others for the possible consequences. And for good measure they find some American dupe to write about all the moderates one can find in Pyongyang with whom we can negotiate. This is the North Korean ten-step program.

Fortunately, these negotiating tactics are well known by now. Early on in the administration, the US Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton, and the US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, both, quite correctly, said the US is not going to make any further concessions and provide compensation to Pyongyang as a result of its continued murderous behavior. That continues to be the right approach.

But more is needed. The KPA long term strategy is to reunify the peninsula under communist rule. Fomenting internal strife within the ROK and pushing for US troop withdrawal are means to that end.

We should fully deploy all 54 previously planned missile defense interceptors in Alaska. Our Aegis navy-based missile defense program should be accelerated as well. The ROK should deploy significant missile defenses and deploy its own long range offensive missiles. American forces on the peninsula should be augmented and modernized.

But more importantly, we should unplug the DPRK’s economy from the rest of the world. Just as we shut off their access to international banking at the end of the Bush administration, we should do so again. We should also give China a choice–it can trade and invest in the United States, including selling its company shares on our stock exchanges, or it can continue to subsidize, support and prop up the regime in Pyongyang, but it cannot do both.

Just as the Iranian sanctions law as approved by Congress does with respect to Tehran (although the option to fully enforce the statute is up to the administration), we should pass similar legislation to help bring down the North Korean regime, including putting it back on the state-sponsor of terrorism list.

It is time for us to choose as well. We should actively work to bring down the regime in the North, just as Reagan did with respect to the former Soviet Union. Enough is enough.

(Dr. Huessy studied at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea in 1969-70. His Korean host and mentor, Professor Hahm Pyong Choon, was Secretary General to the President of the Republic of Korea and professor of law at Yonsei University. While on a state visit, he was murdered by the North Koreans in 1983 in a terror attack in Rangoon, Burma).