North Korea: Mitigating the Kims

Korea, during the long centuries when it was a united monarchy, was known as the "shrimp among whales," hemmed in by the more powerful states of Japan, China and Russia. Relatively weak, it has been able to maintain at least its territorial integrity by relying on the protection of one of its stronger neighbors.

Since 1945, and the division of Korea into communist and free zones, the north has become oddly isolated, with an unusually strict regime that denies its subjects access even to the most basic information about the outside world.

This poor, starving police state, dominated by three successive generations of Kims -- Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Un -- shows up as a black spot on the earth when seen from space, in stark and unelectrified contrast to the vibrant glow of South Korea, just across the no man's land of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.

Since the Korean War ended in 1953, with an uneasy armistice -- but no peace treaty -- North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- has undertaken successive waves of confrontational and seemingly bizarre behavior against South Korea, Japan and the United States.

From commando raids, to artillery strikes, to missile launches into the Pacific, to threatening invasion, to its halting, bumbling, but ultimately successful nuclear program, these unpredictable acts have drawn international attention to the otherwise inconsequential city of Pyongyang and its weird communist dynasty.

With every confrontation, the U.S. and its allies wring their collective hands, caution against additional provocations, huddle together for "frank and energetic exchanges of ideas" and then, in almost every case, provide to the North Korean regime food aid, economic concessions or merely the highly satisfactory triumph of the perennial risk taker who can boast of mere survival.

It is almost as if the world is in a high-level version of the childhood game of flinch; the North Koreans threaten to hit us, we react instinctively by ducking or bobbing out of the way of the expected blow, then they self-congratulate on their win.

The most famous example of their victory over us came during the 1990s, when the North Koreans threatened to develop nuclear weapons, only backing down after the U.S. and Japan offered to provide billions in civilian nuclear technology, food aid and petroleum. The results -- three North Korean nuclear detonations during the last decade -- point out the folly of this type of appeasement. Pyongyang's manipulation of the Six Party talks -- China, Russia, Japan, U.S. and both Koreas -- is notorious among diplomats, but yet these negotiations continued for years -- and might again be revived.

The solution, however, is not necessarily just a hard line refusal to appease North Korea, although that would be a good start. A key component to weakening the Kim dynasty is to take them less seriously.

Rather than speak ominously of "leaving nothing off the table" or "enforcing our treaty obligations to Japan and the Republic of Korea" whenever the juche-machine goes into blustering overdrive, the U.S. should ignore North Korea's words, refuse to be drawn into pointless talks with the regime, while remaining vigilant -- prepared to use maximum force but minimal publicity -- against actual incursions into South Korean or Japanese territory.

Silence on the part of the U.S. State Department, Defense Department and other executive agencies would make the North Koreans look even more foolish with their wild gyrations threatening war and support for global revolution against the Yankees. It might even be useful to provoke some anger north of the DMZ with jokes at the expense of this weak regime.

As a decreasingly inconsequential state, with an economy based on 1950s technology and 1940s ideology, North Korea desperately wants to be taken seriously by a world in which it matters only for the violence it can threaten.

While quietly reinforcing its military strength and ties to South Korea and Japan, the U.S. should meet the threats, apoplectic fits and inexplicable public displays -- like receiving Dennis Rodman as a key foreign leader -- with the disinterest appropriate in relation to a tiny nation that is 7 percent the size of our population, with an economy half that of Vermont's.

While North Korea does possess a large military, in all but a few classes of weaponry and training, its power is more apparent than real, outmatched by the forces available to South Korea, even without engagement by the United States and Japan.

North Korea has thrived on pretending to be crazy during the last few decades, generating behavior by the U.S., Japan and even China that has attempted to appease this devious regime.

The actual madness is continuing to provide aid and legitimacy to a regime that deserves no attention other than from our defense planners -- who should operate in secret -- and our comedy writers, who should give significant attention to the weak tyranny of the Kims, who have possibly engendered more patriotic fervor over fewer real achievements than any state in history.

Wayne Bowen, a U.S. Army veteran, received his Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University. He resides in Cape Girardeau.