BBC reports that North Korea has ditched its nonaggression pact with South Korea and many other related agreements. It's hard to look into the mindset of the secretive (and somewhat nutty) regime--making it difficult to discern whether or not this merely a gambit to achieve better negotiating terms or a signal of the paranoid regime's intent to engage in small-scale armed actions. Or could this be the result of internal power struggles within North Korea's political system?
Either way, it's hard to see what benefit this will bring North Korea. In the 1990s and early 2000s it gained the South's sympathy as anti-American sentiment rose against American military bases in South Korea. Relations between the US and the South were frosty. Younger Koreans with little memory of the Korean War endorsed a "Sunshine Policy" that they hoped would lead to an eventual re-unification with North. This policy entailed a good deal of aid to North Korea, a country ravaged by famine.
However, the North's habit of saber-rattling to gain better negotiating concessions and the nuclear tests of 2006 largely soured these feelings of goodwill. The newly elected conservative South Korean administration of Lee Myung-bak is hostile to North Korea. It is hard to see how North Korea's continued immature and erratic behavior will lead to any positive gains for the regime. Granted, the nuclear trump card can generate a crude form of power and make the world pay attention. But it won't generate any real gains for the regime beyond pure survival. This, however, is probably enough for Kim Jong-il--no matter the consequences for the country's strategic position as a whole.
Comments