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Moon Jae-in’s vision for reunification means One Slave Korea

LAST DECEMBER, I PUBLISHED A SURPRISINGLY CONTROVERSIAL HYPOTHESIS that Korean War II would not be a conventional war, but is a hybrid war to alternately cajole and coerce South Korea into gradual submission to the North’s hegemony, aggressive implementation of a series of joint statements, and eventual digestion into a one-country, two-systems confederation. I argued that this plan would only work if a sufficiently submissive government in Seoul yielded to Pyongyang while going only so far and so fast as possible to avoid a domestic backlash among a population that was, at least until recently, deeply distrustful of Pyongyang. Rather than involving anything as implausible and dramatic as a North Korean occupation, this hegemony would be enforced by South Korean institutions, such as state media, the National Intelligence Service, and the riot police–with occasional assistance from the muscle of hard-left street thugs, like those who are blocking the THAAD sites now and preventing them from becoming fully operational. I argued that the historical conduct of both Pyongyang and Korea’s left also suggested that this plan was not only plausible, but no great secret. This is why I find the controversy to be surprising.

In that post, I made a number of predictions that would allow the reader to test that hypothesis. I argued that the first phase of this plan would involve the control of speech and thought. I also wrote, “If my hypothesis is right, watch for Pyongyang to make more aggressive demands to speed up the implementation of those Joint Statements by this time next year, maybe after the 2018 mid-term elections.” What I did not predict is how soon this would happen, for I could not have predicted things would happen as quickly as they are now. Since that post, both Korean governments have successfully assuaged a majority of Koreans through a “successful” Olympics and the announcement of an inter-Korean summit whose outcome is almost certainly foreordained, or else it would never be conducted in full view of the cameras. As I had also predicted, most of the foreign press was completely taken in by this and shows little sign of awakening. Update: Well, maybe there’s hope yet.

I have long argued that the Korean left is, in reality, illiberal, despite the distracting overlap of some of its policy views with those of western liberals (that the Korean right is illiberal goes without saying). My sense is that this argument mostly fell flat with liberals until very recently, when some of them were jarred by revelations that Seoul has tried to silence potential critics, both in Washington and in Seoul.

The release of Moon Jae-in and Im Jong-seok’s plan for the reunification of Korea is the latest grim validation of my worst fears for Korea’s future. If one applies only a little of the critical reading one should apply to all political propaganda, it almost inevitably charts a path to One Slave Korea. The questions it raises are existential for South Korea’s survival as a liberal democracy. How, for example, can Moon “resolve disagreements within our society,” when just months ago, that society was deeply polarized and demonstrably distrustful of Pyongyang and Moon’s plans to appease it? How can Moon hope to achieve this without taking control of the media and other influential institutions, applying heavier internet censorship, silencing defectors and other critics, and jailing his political opponents?** How can Moon put an end to political disputes and achieve “national homogeneity” to Pyongyang’s satisfaction without extinguishing freedoms that Pyongyang holds in open contempt and has made it its highest national priority to stamp out?

Perhaps because he has already made varying degrees of* progress toward all of those objectives. Of course any vision of homogeneity that Pyongyang would accept necessarily means extinguishing freedom of thought in the South. What else are we to make of the wealth of evidence that Pyongyang has never been more self-isolated or intolerant of dissent?

Contrary to predictions that South Korea’s “vibrant” democracy would never tolerate this, I doubt most South Koreans will object too loudly. For one thing, there’s nothing resembling an effective opposition to rally behind. For another, and as I’ve pointed out, Koreans and Americans have very different ideas of what “democracy” even means. To us, democracy is a structure of laws that safeguards the right of the people to rule from below, through the franchise and the peaceful expression of ideas. In our system, free speech is the right that defines and defends every other freedom. To Koreans, with their brief history of democracy, their long history of resisting authoritarianism, their acceptance of much more censorship than most Americans would tolerate, and their deep nationalist sentiment, it is raucous public protests that are the real hallmark of a democracy. But historically, many of the largest and most raucous public protests have happened in authoritarian states, not democratic ones. They are, just ahead of the right to bear arms, the last resort of people who have lost confidence in the structure of laws and their capacity to rule from below through that structure.

The end state of Moon’s plans isn’t even hidden anymore: a “new economic community on the Korean peninsula” that would necessarily involve massive tax increases and South-to-North subsidies, and a one-country, two-systems confederation with the world’s most tyrannical system of government. Whether all of this would precede the verification of the North’s disarmament is argued too vaguely and inconsistently to be inadvertently vague and inconsistent. Thus, it’s hard to say one way or another whether this would amount to a proposal to violate U.N. and U.S. sanctions on a massive scale, the expression of Moon’s aspiration to lift sanctions before the North fully disarms, an economic inducement for His Porcine Majesty to disarm, or yet another case of the great legal minds in this Blue House not bothering to read U.N. Security Council resolutions before making policy and promises. To be sure, Moon has paid lip service to sanctions, pressure, and denuclearization, but his mentor, Moon Chung-in, has revealed that under his vision, denuclearization would not necessarily precede sanctions-busting subsidies that would make denuclearization an effective impossibility, and guarantee that Pyongyang would retain nuclear hegemony over Seoul–to say nothing of its conventional, chemical, and biological threats. In any confederation in which one side has everything to lose and the other side has the means at hand to destroy that everything, it is easy to predict which side will emerge dominant. That’s why the sequencing of Pyongyang’s disarmament is everything.

But not to worry, Moon’s government says–Pyongyang has agreed to allow some U.S. troops to remain in Korea under this vision. Those of us with long memories know that Kim Jong-il said something similar during the 2000 summit. Those who’ve served within the range of North Korean artillery can clearly see why. The presence of 28,500 American hostages gives Pyongyang a coercive power over the United States that a full withdrawal would deny it. It also gives South Koreans a false sense of security as their government advances plans that might otherwise alarm them. This temporary acceptance of a U.S. presence will not include the presence of missile defenses that might blunt Pyongyang’s power to extort Seoul, or exercises that maintain the readiness and cohesion of the U.S.-Korean alliance. It will last only until the hard left seizes on some incident involving an American soldier at a time of its choosing, to orchestrate mass protests demanding a U.S. withdrawal. But these are not functions that serve U.S. national interests. We should declare our unwillingness to perform them, and it’s only fair to do so before South Koreans go to the polls. The most pragmatic way to do this would be to order a thorough and long-overdue review of the U.S. force structure in South Korea, and whether that structure should involve fewer ground troops, more defenses against missiles and artillery to protect South Korean cities, and removing as many spouses and children of service members as possible.

Again, I’m not oblivious to how conspiratorial it all must seem. But then, on what evidence do skeptics of this view believe that those who staff the top ranks of the Moon administration – men who are veterans of groups like Minbyun, People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, and Chondaehyop, with deep ideological and financial links to Pyongyang and a lengthy pedigree of violent anti-Americanism – have moderated their views? At some point, status quo bias must yield to what’s right before our eyes.

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* Previously said “substantial,” but on reflection, that’s probably an overstatement.

** Which isn’t to deny that some of them may be guilty, but when the first thing a new government does after taking power is to investigate and jail its political opponents, it should concern us for the same reasons why “Lock her up!” concerned us here in America.

Also, I edited this post after publication, but I almost always do that.