A Second Korean War?

North Korea, I dare to say, is like a spoiled child, who, every time he senses that the adults around him somehow begin to ignore his presence, makes some annoying noise to demand their immediate attention until he gets satisfied. And we all know that sometimes a spoilt child can get very nasty.

Earlier this month, like many times in the past, the spoiled child did that again, and we should not have been surprised. Up to 180 North Korean soldiers entered the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a 2.5-mile stretch separating the two countries, where they set up mortars and aimed machine guns at its southern rival. Needless to say, the actions defy the 43-year-old truce forged after the 1950-53 Korean War, which permits no more than 35 soldiers per side to enter this Joint Security Area at any one time.

Technically, because a permanent peace treaty has never been signed, South Korea is still at war with North Korea, and whether relative peace can come about only depends on how its northern neighbor chooses to restrain itself. For the past decades, the Korean peninsula has never ceased to resemble a barrel of gunpowder which could blow up any time. Bordering upon each other are the two countries, both claiming to be the true representative of the Korean people, between whom there exists the widest and oddest gap imaginable given a homogeneous race and an identical language.

On one side, you have a rigid socialist regime with a failing centrally-planned economy and a totalitarian iron hand manipulating the whole nation at will; on the other side, you have an open capitalist regime, a successful free market economy and a democratic system guaranteeing people's rights and involvement in politics. Above all, shall we remember, this gap has been created in a mere span of 40 years, even less than one generation's lifetime! And yet, the dark shadow of a second Korean War, a disaster which could possibly wipe out the gap by just destroying everything, is always hanging over the peninsula like the sword of Damocles.

Is a war, like the one in the 1950's, indeed possible? At least on the surface, it seems very much like so. The communist leaders in North Korea, as is normally and rationally expected, are pretty stubborn and constantly keep themselves in a die-hard revolutionary mood. Being one of the most isolated countries on earth, North Korea probably still has not gotten used to the new world order as well as the modern ideas of science and democracy. With the ultra-enthusiasm and nationalism, first developed in fighting the Americans forty-five years ago, still lingering vividly in people's psychological mind-sets, it would make perfect sense for North Korea, if things really went that bad, to place its last bet on extreme methods and launch (or continue, to be exact) an aggressive assault at all costs. Since the country's crippled economy would let down its people and make them starve anyway, why not just mess up everything and see what happens?

Of course, it can be argued that whether North Korea would bravely take the risk of a full-scale war would, in a large sense, depend upon China's attitude. It is definitely true that China, being North Korea's long-standing ally, one last good-will supporter, and the only channel through which North Korea maintains contact with the outside world, has had a huge, if not dominating, impact on North Korea's policy-making. When the growth-oriented Chinese leaders helped South Korea obtain its separate seat in the United Nations in 1991, something which could have been a reason enough to provoke another serious dispute back then, North Korea, surprisingly, showed no resentment and remained silent. However, to hurriedly generalize such facts to arrive at a conclusion that China can shape North Korea's politics would be too rash a judgment.

An analogy could be made in China's own case. The former Soviet Union, always considering itself superior to all the other communist regimes, had embarrassed itself quite a number of times in China. For instance, when the Soviet Communist Party, in 1949, told the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to stop fighting and to negotiate with the Nationalists on how to divide China into two parts, the CCP turned a deaf ear and continued the civil war until it drove its rival totally out of the mainland. Therefore, in the Korean situation, due to the fact that it obviously involves the most unpredictable leadership of the contemporary age, it is really hard to say whether, in a severe crisis, North Korea would still keep the ties with China intact and be content with its current status as a little brother.

Despite the North Korean government's announcement on April 4 that it no longer recognizes the no-man's land dividing the two Koreas and that its troops began to stage military activities in the DMZ, the situation, to our relief, did not get immediately serious. Although the military leaders of both sides had called for the highest alertness of their armed forces, the international community has not viewed this somewhat routine violation from North Korea with particular alarm, and the United States downplayed the chances of a second Korean War. Let us hope that all of North Korea's reckless provocations were just for the purpose of pressuring the United Nations into holding peace treaty talks, instead of signaling to the world that it's going crazy. What will take place in the next few months or few years--how would North Korea take the initiative, how would South Korea respond, and what proper roles would China, America, Russia and Japan assume amidst this chaos--is going to be the focus upon which all the world's eyes will fall