Sun, Jun 14, 2009 page5

• N Korea sanctions may be futile

  DESPERATE Because of a famine in the 1990s that killed millions and decayed industries, North Korea does not rely on international trade to boost its economic output

  • AP
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  Sanctions can hobble countries that have bustling global trade and whose leaders give higher priority to feeding their malnourished people than building a nuclear bomb.

  But that’s not North Korea.

  The UN’s new sanctions against North Korea to punish it for its latest atomic test are mostly a symbolic, feel-good gesture by the international community. The moves are unlikely to stop the Stalinist regime from trading weapons with rogue nations or hobble its already crumbling economy.

  The sanctions — approved late on Friday by the UN Security Council — toughened an arms embargo and authorized ship searches on the high seas in an attempt to thwart its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

  UNANIMOUS

  The unanimous support for the resolution reflected the international disapproval for North Korea’s defiance of the council after its second test on May 25 that heightened global tensions to a fever pitch.

  But even though its economy is in shambles, North Korea will likely be able to limp along, many experts say. In some ways, the nation’s financial failures help stoke its desire for developing and selling dangerous weapons. Without the ability to nuke Japan or hit Alaska with a missile, the country is just another foreign aid-addicted Third World economic basket case that can be pitied and ignored.

  “North Korea is so far behind South Korea in terms of the economy and military capability, and that trend is irreversible,” said Lee Woo-young of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “But a nuclear weapon is something that can put North Korea on an equal footing at very low cost and very effectively.”

  One sanction that will likely hit North Korea hard seeks to deprive it of financing and material for its weapons program and bans the cash-strapped country’s lucrative arms exports, especially missiles.

  Pyongyang is believed to earn between US$500 million and US$1 billion in arms sales a year, compared with its annual civilian trade of about US$3 billion.

  The provision most likely to anger the communist nation, however, deals with searches of cargo, and calls on all countries to inspect North Korean cargo at their airports, seaports or on land if the ships are reasonably suspected of carrying banned arms, weapons or the materials to make them.

  But North Koreans have proved to be wily traders in the past, and many of their customers may be nations like Iran and Syria that may not cooperate with UN sanctions.

  Much of the freight can also be transported by plane and one of North Korea’s most prized products — technical nuclear know-how — is safe in the minds, hard drives and brief cases of their scientists who can travel without restrictions and transfer their knowledge in person.

  The new resolution also calls on all countries to prevent financial institutions or individuals from providing financing or resources that could go to North Korea’s weapons program — a move that could damage the North’s already fractured economy.

  SHRIVELED

  North Korea’s economy shriveled up for several reasons.

  Disastrous economic planning and ill-conceived mega projects played among the biggest roles.

  One grandiose scheme involved mobilizing millions of workers to chop down trees on mountain slopes to create about 300,000 hectares of terraced cropland in the 1980s and 1990s.

  But the terraces weren’t properly reinforced, so when the summer rains came, they collapsed and the soil got washed away into reservoirs, rivers and irrigation canals — clogging up the waterways and creating a double disaster.

  Its economic woes intensified when the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries — huge sources of aid and trade — began crumbling in the 1980s and early 1990s. The crisis was compounded by bouts of severe flooding and crop failure, setting the stage for a famine in the mid and late 1990s that killed millions of people.

  “We got used to seeing dead bodies everywhere — at train stations, on the streets,” a saleswoman who survived the disaster and defected to South Korea was quoted as saying in a Human Rights Watch report in 2006.

  Oddly though, the famine has helped the regime survive, said Jasper Becker, author of the book Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea.

  “One of the reasons they get by now is that the population shrank by 3 [million] to 4 million during the famine,” he said. “There are fewer mouths to feed.”

  But Becker said North Korea’s industry barely functions because factories are outdated, dilapidated or have been stripped of their parts by starving people who sell scrap metal to China to buy food.

  “If you wanted to modernize the economy today, you would have to junk everything,” he said. “You would do them a favor if you bombed it into the ground.”

  A gleaming new factory park in the border town of Kaesong — run jointly with South Korea — has been a good source of hard currency.

  But a desperate North Korea demanded a fourfold increase in wages, and a 31-fold increase in rent on Thursday — which could end up dooming the lucrative industrial park.
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