Treating North Korea as parents treat children

By Kim Woo-jung

A child having a temper tantrum can be as noisy as a wet hen and no one can settle him or her down. This occurs when parents do not discipline their children adequately.

North Korea is like a troublesome child and countries that try to deter the North are like parents. Understanding that North Korea's nuclear tests aim at safeguarding its regime while threatening a global nuclear nonproliferation regime, this wrong parenting should change.

To keep its regime intact, North Korea will do anything, including breaching global nonproliferation agreements. In fact, North Korea has ignored all the global pacts related to nuclear disarmament, including the Treaty of Nuclear Non-Proliferation.

Such behavior renders the nonproliferation obsolete and is evidence of the failure of nearly 20 years of the world's diplomatic efforts to deal peacefully with North Korean nuclear tests. Thus, to keep the nonproliferation objectives intact, more positive policies need to be implemented, including constant negotiation, stronger sanctions, and preparation for preemptive strikes.

Diplomatic negotiation is the first step in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear tests because it will help nations grasp what North Korea wants from threatening the world. It is most likely that North Korea is using the weapons for two purposes. Internally, keeping the weapons helps consolidate dictatorship by making citizens look up to their ``charismatic” leader who is a force to be reckoned with within the global community.

Externally, North Korea seeks interest by exporting weapons technology and get financial aid from other countries while pretending to renounce nuclear weapons. With this in mind, the world should clearly show how keeping nuclear weapons do more harm than good to North Korea as the global society can cut completely on financial support and strengthen sanctions of not only arms trade but other trade. This will hit the impoverished North Korean economy and might even cause revolution within the country that eventually threatens dictatorship.

If the negotiations do not work, the United Nations Security Council should come up with extensive sanctions to cut all aid to North Korea until it disarms itself. The measure is reasonable since according to a Congressional Research Service report written by Larry Niksch in 2010, between 1998 and 2008, about the half of financial support South Korea offered to the North was used for nuclear weapons development programs.

If China takes the lead in cutting aid and trade to North Korea, the country is likely to abandon nuclear weapons because it depends on China for 70 percent of its trade. Currently, China is hesitant in aiding North Korea because the armament of the country is strengthening the U.S. influence in the Asia which blocks China's chance to have greater impact on Asian countries. Indeed, China has been blocking oil pipelines when North Korea acted against its will. Along with China, the world should cooperate to stop aiding North Korea until it shows respect to the global nuclear nonproliferation regime.

Nevertheless, in case diplomatic and financial sanctions fail, the last resort is to launch a self-defensive preemptive attack by states that are threatened. This means destroying the nuclear weapons when there is a high possibility that North Korea uses the weapons. It is seen as a preventive attack to minimize casualties in case actual the detonation of atomic bombs occurs. Currently, Israel is threatening Iran with this measure and it has shown effects. Israel manifested that it will attack Iranian nuclear facilities before they advance to the point where they become immune to air bombing. Consequently, the Iranian government stated it open some nuclear facilities to IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) for inspection. This implies how preemptive attacks change actions.

North Korea equips itself with nuclear bombs to safeguard dictatorship and this makes the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, the promise the world should keep seem obsolete. Thus, diplomatic consensus, additional sanctions, and preemptive strikes are possible solutions to safeguard the nonproliferation regime. The world should be reminded of this firm goal and not be deceived by North Korea anymore like it has been for the past 20 years.

The writer is major in Korean language and literature in Chung-Ang University. Her email address is woojung213@naver.com.