A reunified Korea is the solution
AFTER North Korea's nuclear test, no good options exist, pundits say. It's the present six-party talks or another Korean war, they declare. Give Seoul's ``sunshine policy" toward Pyongyang more time to mellow Kim Jong-Il.
But a good option does exist that would terminate the Pyongyang regime without Washington laying a finger on it. The starting point should be not the problem of North Korea's nukes, but the challenge of Korea's reunification. Restoring the unity of a split country raises transforming possibilities; it can be regime change of an attractive kind.
Pyongyang, lost without nukes, has no reason to bargain away its one morsel of strength. Nor could any agreement be verified. (Unlike Libya, North Korea has 8,000 underground tunnels and caves). In the remote chance that a Pyongyang abandonment of nuclear stockpiles could be verified, North Korea would still have missiles that can deliver chemical and biological weapons to Los Angeles. Do we trust it not to do so?
There is no way to address North Korea's security concerns when Pyongyang simply wants the United States out of the way so it can grab South Korea. If all Pyongyang desires is to be secure in its Stalinist bed it would not have attacked South Korea in 1950.
Talks must switch from Pyongyang's intentions and weapons to the shape of a reunified Korea. The basis would be Pyongyang's longstanding suggestion of a Democratic Confederal Republic of Koryo and Seoul's similar idea of a Korean National Community. Reunification would be seen as a process offering a number of open-ended paths to One Korea.
North Korea would cherish an initial hope of a major input into reunification that would probably be dashed. Seoul's ``sunshine policy" would suddenly come into its own as the totalitarian edifice in Pyongyang cracked and northerners glimpsed an alternative future. Compromises, deals, defections, realignments of all kinds would become possible. A bargain between the United States and China is the key to a reunification process.
Until now Beijing has preferred the devil it knows (a Stalinist ally in Pyongyang) to an unknown devil (a unified Korea). But a threshold was reached this week when Beijing said it was ``brazen" of North Korea to perform a nuclear test and leading specialists on Korea in China openly called past negotiations with Pyongyang ``a failure" and Pyongyang's defiance ``the worst setback for Chinese foreign policy in the history of the PRC." The fence-sitting is over for President Hu Jintao: He must choose between the risk of a unified Korea and the greater risk of nuclear weapons being used in northeast Asia.
Yes, China will have to accept the end of Stalinism in North Korea. But Washington and its allies will offer Beijing a reunified Korea free of American troops. Japan could be expected to finance post-reunification Korea -- along with the UN, World Bank, and perhaps the IMF -- in return for the alleviation of a major security concern. A Korea deal could well be the key to preventing a downward spiral in Japan-China relations. Japan's return to world power is tomorrow's issue for Beijing; North Korea's fate should be yesterday's.
Let a unified non-Communist Korea lean where it chooses. It is likely to be friendly to China, but not Beijing's ally. Freed of American troops, Koreans would probably warm to the United States and continue the present close economic and cultural relationship.
Some feel we should just muddle along since crumbling regimes are dangerous. Indeed that is a risk. North Korea has a 1 million-strong army whose loyalties for a time could waver. However, the international structure surrounding a federating, then uniting Korea would modify the danger.
Overlooked by those who believe in talks is the immorality of sustaining North Korea. Northerners are starving, doves cry, overlooking that 60 years of military communism -- to which Pyongyang remains 100 percent committed -- is the cause. Each billion in aid prolongs Pyongyang's repression and military braggadocio.
The charade of treating North Korea as a troubled child requiring kid-glove handling by five patient adults has been without fruit. Sanctions would be fine, if they work. But steps toward Korean reunification would crack the nuclear threat from Pyongyang, lend hope to people in the north, and eventually terminate a wracking pain at the heart of Northeast Asia. One Korea, for all its unknowns, is the solution. A grand bargain between Washington and Beijing can trigger the process.
Ross Terrill is an associate in research at Harvard University's Asia Center. His current book, ``The New Chinese Empire," has just been published in Korean. 
