No to UN sanctions against North Korea

Roh should partake neither in PSI nor in sanctions

On October 14, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for sanctions against North Korea. As we had expected, military options were not included among the punitive measures. This is primarily due to the Bush administration’s inability to fight another war in another front.
Immanuel Wallerstein, during his recent visit to South Korea, really hit the mark when he said:

“The US is facing an enormous military, political, and psychological problem regarding Iraq. This is the number one concern for Americans at the moment.
“Realistically speaking, the US has neither the political nor the military energy to intervene or to generate conflict in regions outside Iraq. As regards the Korean Peninsula, there’s not much the US can do, other than taking ‘verbal actions’ such as issuing condemnations”.

The recent publication of Colin Powell’s biography aroused concern as to whether Rumsfeld’s quoted remark that “the goal of the US is the fall of the NK regime, not dialogue with Kim Jung-Il” was indicative of the Bush administration’s future response to NK’s nuclear test. But such hard-line attitude of neocons towards NK is nothing new. More interesting is the fact that the Bush gang, including Rumsfeld himself, failed to achieve anything it wanted regarding NK over the last few years.
Bush tried to paint the resolution as a success by saying it showed “the world is united in our opposition to its [NK’s] nuclear weapons plans.” But beyond opposing NK nuclear weapons, the resolution only revealed disagreements between Russia, China, and the US on how to respond.
Moreover, it also revealed the sheer impotence and hypocrisy of an administration that had invaded a country on the basis of fabricated intelligence that it possessed WMDs, but couldn’t do anything about a country that proclaimed to have WMDs and even detonated one.

UN sanctions – a proven means of mass murder

Although the Security Council resolution does not include military measures, it does include severe economic sanctions designed to strangle NK. Economic sanctions will worsen the lives of North Koreans who are already suffering under a regime that value weapons over living standards.
The UN has a record of killing 1 million Iraqis through 13 years of economic sanctions. Half of those Iraqis were children.
This time, the resolution included “luxury goods” on the list of banned items, to give the impression that they were targeting NK ruling elites, not ordinary people.
However, the clause that prohibits “other items, materials, equipment, goods and technology … which could contribute to DPRK’s nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related or other WMD-related programmes” could be stretched to mean anything.
As Yeon-Cheol Kim (Professor at Korea University) points out, “determining dual-use items is usually vulnerable to arbitrary judgment.” For instance, the argument that rice could be used as military rations persists over a decade after South Korea began supplying rice to NK. Petroleum could easily power military equipments such as missile-carrying trucks. Other essential goods for modern life – machinery, electronic devices, chemicals, etc. – could just as well be classified as dual-use items.
After the nuclear test, the Grand National Party hissed that “the money we gave NK to pay for sand ended up in the army”, but the argument (that cash flow into NK finances WMD development) could be applied to all forms of economic transactions. Indeed, the UN resolution bans provision of money, as well as nuclear weapon and missile-related material, to NK.

Economic sanctions will only hurt ordinary North Koreans

The actual impact of sanctions will depend, to a certain extent, on how China implements them. The Chinese authorities are unlikely to enforce sanctions too hard for fear of causing chaos in NK, but nevertheless they feel they have to “take necessary countermeasures.” They have already erected fences along the border to contain a possible wave of defection that might be triggered by sanctions.
China has a record of cutting its supply of crude oil to NK early in 2003 as a way of pressuring NK to come to the tripartite talks in Beijing. This was done despite the fact that NK depended entirely on China for its petroleum. In 1994 China closed the Dandong Customs Office, its principal trade route with NK, demanding Pyongyang accept nuclear inspections.
According to a study, the increase in Sino-Korean trade between 2000 and 2004 boosted NK’s growth rate by 3.5% annually (Yung-Hoon Lee, ). A reduction in Sino-Korean trade will deal a serious blow to the NK economy.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization estimated that NK would suffer an absolute yearly shortage of 42 tons of food, even with imports and humanitarian aid. Imagine what might happen when economic sanctions are added to the equation.
Article 8, clause f of the UN resolution also calls for maritime vessel searches which, if seriously implemented, could lead to accidental military clashes. NK stated it would consider sanctions a declaration of war.
Sanctions are not the solution. It will merely serve to consolidate the hostile symbiosis between the US and NK: in other words, it will only strengthen NK’s military-first policy and force the populace to rally behind the regime.

This article appeared in Counterfire No. 16 (Special Issue on NK's Nuke Test) on October 21.