Korea's endless nuclear nightmare

Even as victorious North Korean troops surged into Seoul on June 30, 1950, nine B29 bombers armed with nuclear bombs began the long flight across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Guam.

Harry Truman, President of the United States, had signed a directive authorising a nuclear task force to stand by to use the bombs if communist forces took control of all Korea. It began badly: one aircraft crashed as it took off from the Fairfield-Suisan base, killing a dozen people and scattering radioactive material across the area. The long-term fallout has proved even more lethal.

South Korea commemorated the 61st anniversary of that war last week. Before it ground to a stalemate in July 1953, 1,37,899 of its soldiers had been killed in action, along with 2,15,000 North Koreans, 1,83,108 Chinese, 33,686 Americans, and thousands more from 15 other countries; 2.5 million civilians were butchered by the war and its grim handmaidens, hunger and disease.

Every day, the Korean peninsula lives with the fear that it could see new carnage. “The miracle on the Han river,” South Koreans call their fairy-tale economic success. For long, among Asia's poorest countries, their war-torn land is now the 15th largest economy in the world.

South Koreans hoped the miracle would heal history's wounds. In 1998, Kim Dae-jung, South Korea's former President, initiated a dramatic reconciliation process called the “Sunshine Policy.” He injected billions of dollars into North Korea's economy — as well as several million, credible accounts have it, into the personal accounts of the country's ruler, Kim Jong-il.

Kim Dae-jung won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts but storm clouds gathered not long after the ink dried on the citation. In 1999, naval clashes left at least 30 North Korean sailors dead. Then, in the wake of 9/11, the U.S. declared North Korea part of the “axis of evil.” North Korea responded by calling off talks, and adopting increasingly confrontational tactics.

Four years later, North Korea tested its nuclear weapons. The country conducted a second nuclear test in 2009, and accelerated work on long-range ballistic missiles.

Last year, North Korean forces torpedoed a South Korean corvette, killing 46 sailors, and then shelled the island of Yeonpyeong, killing four and injuring 19 — sparking off the worst military crisis on the peninsula since 1953. Furious, South Korea threatened retaliation — but neither it, nor its regional allies, nor the world's great powers, have proved able to act.

North Korean forces have long held a gun to South Korea's heart: the Seoul national capital area, the hub of the country's economy and home to almost half the country's 50 million citizens, is just 50 kilometres from the border. The North's conventional weapons, which include over 10,000 artillery and rocket pieces, could devastate Seoul, killing hundreds of thousands.

In addition, the country is believed to maintain an arsenal of over 600 Hwasong-5 short-range missiles with ranges of around 300 km, clones of the Soviet-manufactured Scud-B it obtained from Egypt in 1976. North Korea also has some 200 Rodong missiles, the model for Iran's Shahab-3 and Pakistan's Ghauri missiles, which can hit targets up to 1,200 km away.

Tonchang-ri, a new super-secret long-range missile test site, has seen a surge of activity. In January, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates publicly said North Korea could threaten the U.S. itself inside of five years. Experts are divided on just how close North Korea is to having a nuclear device light enough to be mounted on its missiles — but no one can take the risk it might already have one.

Put together, North Korea's capabilities allow it to pursue the kinds of low-level aggression seen last year — secure in the knowledge that its ability to target Seoul with conventional weapons, and threaten its allies with missiles, will deter large-scale retaliation.

Even though Kim Jong-il and his dysfunctional regime are often cast as insane, there is method in their apparent madness. In 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union saw North Korea lose its principal source of patronage. Following the death, in 1994, of Kim Il-Sung, the founding patriarch of the country and its ruling dynasty, 3.5 million people died in a famine called “the march of tribulations.”

Kim Dae-jung's government saw this as an opportunity: North Korea's economic need, it believed, could provide an opening to unify the two states. But North Korea's ruling élite understood that the massive asymmetry of economic power between the two states meant Seoul would have control of any new dispensation. In effect, the Sunshine Policy was an invitation to commit suicide.