North Korea’s Marshall Plan

Thanks to a reader who forwarded this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Yale Professor Michael Auslin the other day. It ought to be one of the most-discussed articles about North Korea of the year, making it especially unfortunate that you can’t see it without a subscription, except for those excerpts I will publish here. It proposes developing a civil and financial plan for the reconstruction of North Korea, and then publicizing those plans to the North Korean people. The idea is to get them thinking about other options for a better future than the one they face now.

Such a plan shouldn’t presuppose an invasion of the North. Rather, it should be seen as a means of putting nonviolent pressure on Pyongyang. It would show the long-suffering North Korean people that the world stands ready to help rebuild the shattered country if they are willing to rise up and overthrow Kim’s dictatorship. To this end, word of the plan needs to be spread among North Korean émigré communities and broadcast widely by the U.S., so that it penetrates into the Stalinist state.

The cost of such a reconstruction exercise would not come cheap. The world would have to commit enough to show the North Korean people the seriousness of its intent — perhaps $100 billion, or two-and-a-half times North Korea’s estimated current annual GDP. But that would be a small price to pay to promote peaceful change. The monies could be supplied by the U.S., Japan and South Korea, the countries arguably most threatened by North Korea’s missiles, and with the most to gain from a democratic, unified peninsula.

Auslin doesn’t acknowledge that this sort of joint planning with South Korea for the North’s reconstruction is sheer fantasy, at least until Roh Moo Hyun departs for the dustbin of history. Auslin also tries to assuage Chinese and South Korean nightmares about floods of refugees:

The fund would be used to provide humanitarian relief and short-term economic stabilization. It would also lay the foundations for long-term economic development. Funds would be used to expand electrical and telecommunications networks, upgrade medical facilities, purchase energy resources and consumer goods and downsize the military. They could also be used to organize government departments that would handle local and national planning. Longer-term use of the monies would include building schools and establishing consumer and light industries, with South Korean and Japanese help, in order to put North Korea on the road to eventual participation in the global economy. The funds would also go toward guaranteeing the salaries of top military officials, effectively sidelining them during tenuous post-collapse days. International NGOs could provide services crucial to the establishment of civil society.

By improving living standards in North Korea, these stabilization measures should convince many North Koreans to stay in their country after the fall of Kim’s regime. The flight of millions of refugees to the South needs to be prevented; otherwise South Korea’s nightmare scenario will come true and discourage it from leading reconstruction efforts in the North. That means retaining some emigration controls in post-Kim Korea. However, free movement could be allowed for those needing medical services, parents separated from children in the South, and students attending universities abroad.

Of course, China is also interested in using North Korea to distract American power, so that’s only a partial answer to why China isn’t ready to pull the plug on Kim Jong Il yet. Furthermore, China is not keen on finding itself bordered by a fledgling democracy with a burgeoning population of Christians, along with such unsavory social forces such as drug abuse, prostitution, and banditry.

Auslin’s proposal also addresses another issue that we’ve debated here: how America can preserve its influence in Korea after the departure of most of its ground forces. By following Auslin’s advice, we’d involve ourselves deeply in the financial and contingency planning for the North’s reconstruction by earmarking funds, equipment, and some personnel to purify water, serve meals, treat the sick, and reestablish essential services. In other words, the United States should identify responsible South (and ultimately, North) Koreans who are likely to hold positions of power in the Korea of tomorrow. Because the government of today’s South Korea is so dysfunctional, we should at least consider doing much of this planning on a quasi-governmental basis. If we don’t, China will.

I would offer this mild criticism: Auslin seems to expect a bit too much from this plan alone, since the overthrow of Kim Jong Il will not be completely nonviolent. There just isn’t a sanitary way to clean up a place as psychologically tortured as North Korea. At some point, some more directly subversive information will have to be added to catalyze what we can only hope is a volatile situation. So will guns, preferably untraceable ones. Kim Jong Il will not depart the scene without bloodshed. In Auslin’s defense, he doesn’t really say that his idea by itself will send Kim Jong Il into exile, and a number of the issues I raise here are probably beyond the scope of his piece.

While this will probably not achieve the results the author appears to expect, a plan for the reconstruction of North Korea is an essential part of any sensible policy toward North Korea.