In this image provided by a local resident, smoke rises from South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island near the border with North Korea a week ago.
The South Korean government appears determined to take a tougher line with North Korea after last week’s shelling of South Korean territory. The South Korean defense minister has resigned in disgrace; the president has promised to send additional troops to the island bombarded by the North. But a firmer stance falls well short of a willingness to go to war. Even without U.S. support, the South would almost certainly crush North Korea in armed conflict. But war could nonetheless lead to significant civilian casualties in the South. The geography is unfortunate. Seoul, a city with more than ten million inhabitants, is within artillery range of North Korea.
The South Korean leadership is also very nervous that war could bring down the regime in Pyongyang. A collapse in the North could prompt an immediate refugee crisis, as millions sought to escape to the South. This concern also explains much of Beijing’s worry about U.S. or South Korean military action against Pyongyang; the last thing China wants is hundreds of thousands of desperate North Koreans attempting to cross the Yalu River.
A collapse in the north could also precipitate re-unification of the two Koreas. Leaders in Seoul are acutely aware of its potential costs. North Korea is a very poor country, with a per capita GDP of roughly $2,000. In contrast, South Korea is now a wealthy country with a per capita GDP of $28,000. The price — financial and social — of integrating North Koreans into the South would be staggering, representing a far greater challenge, in relative terms, that the reunification of Germany in the early 1990s. The recent Wikileaks document dump apparently includes details of discussions between Seoul and Washington about a possible reunification of the Koreas following a collapse in the North. Frankly, it would be astonishing were the two countries not engaged in such discussions. Neither the United States nor South Korea, however, appears eager to hurry along the reunification process.
The reasons for increased North Korean aggressiveness — last week’s shelling follows an attack on a South Korean warship in March — remain opaque, as befits one of the most isolated and closed regimes in the world. It may represent an effort to ease the transition of leadership from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il to his son, Kim Jong-un. It may merely be an attempt by Pyongyang to gain regional and international attention. Or it may be the first step of a North Korean gambit to secure additional financial assistance from the South.
The U.S. response to date has been measured. Washington has shown solidarity with its South Korean ally by sending an aircraft carrier group into the Yellow Sea and by going forward with a joint naval exercise. In general, Washington should defer to Seoul on the scale and speed of any response; it is the South Koreans, after all, who have the most at stake. We should also continue to put pressure on Beijing to rein in its erratic ally in Pyongyang. But Washington should recall that we, too, have every interest in avoiding conflict on the Korean Peninsula. The United States is already stretched thin militarily by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The international economy remains fragile; an outbreak of conflict in one of the world’s most economically important regions — Northeast Asia — could rattle markets and defer what appears to be an already shaky global recovery.
The regime in Pyongyang is surely one of the most odious in the world. Its treatment of its own citizens is appalling. Its international behavior is reckless. But our options in dealing with it are severely constrained; for all its talk about North Korea as part of the “Axis of Evil,” the Bush administration never took military action against North Korea. The Obama administration remains similarly cautious. “Wait and see” may not be the most original and exciting policy in the world, but in the case of North Korea it might just be the best.
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.