U.S. Institute of Peace PeaceWatch

North Korea: Signs of Struggle

Food shortages, economic decline, and signs of political instability in North Korea pose a serious threat to the Korean Peninsula and possibly the region.

Above: South Korean soldiers patrol the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea.

ust two years ago, Washington policymakers were focused on the threat from North Korea's nuclear program. Today, in sharp contrast, they concentrate on monitoring the country's severe food shortages and deepening economic crisis, and seek insight into the status of the country's leadership, which has shown signs of division since the death in 1994 of longtime leader Kim Il Sung. "The potential instability these factors pose for the Korean Peninsula is heightened by the lack of a well-established international mechanism for dealing with such challenges," says Richard H. Solomon, president of the U.S. Institute of Peace. The situation is further complicated by the sporadic and unstable nature of United States-North Korean talks and North-South contacts.

About 30 specialists on Korean affairs discussed the latest developments on the Korean Peninsula at meetings February 13 and May 27, sponsored by the Institute's Korea working group, which began meeting in the fall of 1993. Solomon presided over the recent meetings, which were moderated by Stanley O. Roth, director of the Research and Studies Program, and organized by program officer Scott Snyder. The Institute recently published a special report that summarized several earlier working group meetings, entitled A Coming Crisis on the Korean Peninsula?: The Food Crisis, Economic Decline, and Political Considerations.

Above: Sandra Kristoff, (top), National Security Council, and Paul Cleveland, (bottom), U.S. Department of State, address the working group.

The prospective famine in North Korea--the combined result of two years of flooding and structural weaknesses in the country's agricultural system--has caused the deaths of perhaps tens of thousands of people from nutrition-related diseases and reportedly stunted the growth of North Korean children.

Working Group Conclusions and Recommendations

The Institute's working groups on Korean issues reached the following conclusions and recommendations at its most recent sessions:

The United States and its allies should develop a response to the North Korea food and health crisis within the broader strategic framework of goals for the peninsula. For example, the food crisis can be dealt with only in a fundamental way through structural economic reforms in North Korea. Such reforms, if implemented, should enable North Korea, in time, to handle its own food needs and create a political and economic environment that would attract foreign investment, several working group members observed.
The United States and South Korea will require some evidence of economic, political, and military reform in North Korea to generate domestic political support for a policy of engagement with Pyongyang.
The United States should initiate talks on conventional arms reduction--through four-party talks between the North, the South, the United States, and China, or some other mutually acceptable process to defuse the confrontational atmosphere on the peninsula that currently discourages South Korea and the United States from providing the North with greater assistance. Until the military confrontation is eased, the United States and South Korea must sustain a credible deterrent posture south of the demilitarized zone.
The United States should work with South Korea and other allies in the region to structure a coordinated strategy toward North Korea.
The United States objectives in improving U.S.-North Korean relations are to exchange liaison offices with North Korea, pursue information about U.S. prisoners of war and soldiers listed as missing in action during the Korean War, and resume talks about North Korean missile sales to Middle East countries.
Finally, the United States and its allies should not assume that the current crisis will precipitate sudden political change in North Korea, but should be prepared for the possibility of such a development.

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