South Korea Must Prepare to Stand Alone

With American commitment wavering, South Korea must take charge of its own survival.

Photo by Alex Ko on Unsplash

The supporters of the Iran war tell us that the war is being waged for moral reasons, in addition to the security imperative of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. That’s if they bother to give coherent justifications. Trump has given many, often contradictory, justifications. Yet the focus on the Middle East comes at a cost, not just in financial terms but also strategically and morally as it pertains to East Asia, and more specifically, the Korean Peninsula.

All governments are evil to some degree, but there is no worse government than the brutal, dystopian dictatorship that runs North Korea. The Kim family treats North Koreans like their personal property. They undergo the most intrusive surveillance, and the regime perverts relationships, trying to get people to turn against each other. As of 1997, it was estimated the Kim regime had murdered a minimum of 710,000 North Koreans. These are innocent, unarmed civilians whose murder qualifies as democide.

There is no level of depravity the Kim regime has not sunk to. Everything is justified if it ensures regime survival. Kim Jong-un is particularly brutal, having presided over a purge that brutally murdered his uncle through a firing squad using anti-aircraft shells. His entire family and associates were then killed, including children. Kim also killed his own brother in 2017 using the VX nerve agent, which was rubbed on his face by two women who were tricked by North Korean agents into believing the whole thing was a harmless prank.

The Kims have their own caste system, called the Songbun system. It classifies every citizen using three main categories: core, wavering, and hostile. These designations are as terrible as they sound. Among the latter are the descendants of landlords who had their lands seized by the Kims’ communist revolution in 1948. These designations determine your success under the regime, including how much food you can access.

There is no individual innocence or guilt in Kim’s Korea. If your family member defects, then you are guilty too. It is impossible to overstate how evil the regime run by that little fat man is. This is why I believe America’s intervention in Korea in 1950, leading UN forces, was the last unambiguously good intervention by the USA. Life under the Kims is no life.

Of late, reports coming from North Korea are that the younger generations have been consuming more South Korean media than usual. They have been buying more South Korean goods in the black markets. They are also reportedly not as attached to the regime as some older Koreans. This has led to Kim executing teenagers for such petty crimes as watching South Korean dramas on their phones and other devices.

America deserves the world’s appreciation for rescuing the Korean people from being overrun by the murderous Kims and their totalitarian ideology. Thanks to the US decision, the world got to experience Korean culture, learn about and interact with Korean people, including their businesses such as Samsung, which had the biggest share of the global smartphone market until recently, when Apple overtook them, at 19% and 20% respectively.

Yet under Trump, the US is signalling that the Korean Peninsula is just not that important to America. South Koreans were alarmed to see Americans dismantling THAAD and Patriot missile batteries for use in the latest Middle Eastern conflict. THAAD missiles are used to intercept ballistic missiles just inside or outside the atmosphere during their re-entry phase, while Patriot missiles are more short-range. Both are needed to adequately defend against missiles and all other aerial threats.

To be clear, America did not take away everything, but it took away enough to cause concern, given how long these missiles take to manufacture and the demands from both Ukraine and now the Iran war. The US is failing to prioritise. It is focusing on the small fry of Russia and Iran and leaving the Chinese big fish to grow even larger. Trump has effectively abandoned the Obama-Biden Chinese containment strategy. Remember, he also exited the TPP during his first term.

The reason South Koreans are so worried is because this comes as Kim Jong-un launches the most significant ideological shift towards the South since the ceasefire was signed. Under the new hostile states doctrine, North Korea no longer seeks peaceful reunification with the South. Cooperation avenues have been closed, and dialogue has been curtailed.

Most disturbing is that, in February of this year, the Korean Workers’ Party was finalising this change by amending its party charter. This is higher than the North Korean constitution. In March, the North Korean People’s Assembly further confirmed this change and increased its military budget. Kim delivered an address labelling South Korea as the most hostile state. They then test-fired 12 short-range ballistic missiles, after testing cruise missiles from a new destroyer class.

These significant developments have largely gone unnoticed outside the peninsula due to the Ukraine and Iran wars. North Korea has refused attempts by South Korea to restart dialogue and, rationally, with America seeming less interested in the peninsula, President Lee Jae-myung has made moves to increase South Korea’s independence from the USA, both militarily and diplomatically.

Militarily, Korea is developing its own versions of THAAD and Patriot missiles. Korea is also making moves to become a nuclear threshold state by negotiating for the right to enrich its own uranium, ostensibly to power its new fleet of submarines. But this capability could also enable the South to enrich uranium for its own nuclear weapons. It has also increased its military budget by 7.5%. Much of this is going towards force improvement programmes, which would allow it to take over Operational Control (OPCON) from Washington by 2030. This would allow it to take control of its own military during wartime.

Diplomatically, President Lee visited China in January this year for a four-day state visit, the first visit by a South Korean leader since 2019. While the subject of the visit was mostly economic, with 15 memoranda signed, the underlying subtext was clear in the context of the other moves being made by South Korea: Washington can no longer be relied on. The only other power that can rein in Kim is China.

At a deeper level, the North Korean threat to South Korea will always exist as long as China feels it needs to keep Kim as a buffer against the US. The only way China can feel secure enough to allow the unsustainable North Korean economy to die a natural death is if the US leaves the Korean Peninsula and China is allowed to resume its historic role as hegemon over the Korean Peninsula. The only way South Korea can allow that is if it is able to defend itself against North Korea.

Trump pulling out more than a third of THAAD and Patriot missiles came at exactly the wrong time, showing extraordinary indifference to South Korean security during a time when the country was most under threat, possibly since the ceasefire was signed. The ramifications are going to be swift and irrevocable. South Korea will accelerate its drive for independence from the US and closer ties with Beijing, now with increased support back home.

It is funny that so many people think Trump is shoring up US power when he is systematically dismantling it. Just recently he humiliated the Japanese Prime Minister in the Oval Office by joking about why she didn’t warn him about Pearl Harbor. The question being asked was why Trump didn’t tell his allies about his attack on Iran beforehand. The implication is clear: he could not trust Japan, NATO allies, South Korea, and even his Five Eyes alliance partners, but he could trust Israel.

Trump doesn’t understand power. It is not just the ability to execute military operations. It is much more subtle than that, especially in East Asia, a region which has some of the most subtle forms of expression, and a history much longer than the US has existed. I support South Korea doing what it has to do to survive. If it can provide enough reassurances to China, hopefully China will allow it to reunify the peninsula under its control.

Yes, South Korea is a democracy, but unlike North Korea, China does not have the insecurity in its political system that prevents it from trading with democracies. Trade is only restricted when Beijing feels it has been insulted by leaders of those countries, as when the Japanese Prime Minister implied that Japan would be willing to defend Taiwan against China. Economically, China, Japan, and South Korea are closer to each other in terms of economic systems than they are to North Korea.

To collapse the North Korean regime should be relatively easy if China gives its tacit support. One of the other reasons China might want to do this is Kim Jong-un’s obvious attempts at diversifying his benefactors to include Russia. Not only did he send North Korean troops to fight for Russia, but Putin, not Xi Jinping, sent a congratulatory message after Kim’s “election” to the leadership of North Korea recently.

But nothing can happen until South Korea achieves strategic independence, including an independent nuclear deterrent, from America. The South must then make secret deals, using intermediaries in the North. There should be informal contacts with the key decision-makers, even if official contacts have been terminated. A deal could involve the following:

1. Elites getting land and shares in state-owned companies after the South takes over.

2. Kim Ju-ae, the daughter of Kim Jong-un, who is currently being groomed to be the next leader, being appointed transitional President after South Korea takes over. She is young enough for the South to control her.

3. The Northern military being converted into a police force for the North after the South takes over.

4. Kim Ju-ae being given a generous lifetime pension after leading the transition for not more than two years.

Then the next step would be China cutting off aid to North Korea. Southern intelligence services must simultaneously work on causing or fanning unrest in the North. Then China would close its border with the North and position troops on the border.

The South would then deploy its own troops to “stabilise the situation” and prevent the nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands. It is essential that those who control the firing of the nuclear weapons be given the most generous deals beforehand among all elites. The type of reunification must not overly burden Southerners. It must be in the form of a confederation, with the South just creating a legal environment that allows investment in the Northern economy. Northerners cannot be given Southern citizenship, and they cannot get Southern welfare, but they would be able to travel across the border freely.

After 20 years or so, both peoples may be ready to become citizens of the same country if they want to do that, or just continue as two countries with the same defence and foreign policy, handled by the South, and the same rights, but different governments.

The survival and prosperity of the Korean people adds value to all mankind. In a way, this is similar to the Persian people. These are some of the most brilliant people among all mankind when it comes to all facets of what makes us human: music, art, business, science, engineering, and philosophy. It is in all our interest if they don’t just survive, but thrive. In the Kim regime, the Korean people face an extinction-level event in a way that is not true of any other relationship between people and those who would govern them. The only thing standing in the way of probable disaster is South Korea. Everything depends on them and the moves they make.

Mpiyakhe Dhlamini is a libertarian, writer, programmer, entrepreneur, and associate of the Free Market Foundation. I write about personal finance and wealth-building from an SA perspective, South African and African issues, policy, politics, and anything else that interests me. The views in this article are my own and not those of any organisation I am associated with.