[Editorial] Encourage change in North Korea

Posted on : 2012-04-17 13:30 KST Modified on : 2012-04-17 13:30 KST

On Monday, the UN Security Council unanimously called North Korea’s launch of a long-distance rocket a violation of a UN resolution. Notable is the fact that China agreed to the statement. China, like the other nations involved, is interested in preventing a nuclear test in North Korea.
This month’s Security Council (UNSC) president, US ambassador Susan Rice read a statement “strongly” condemning the launch. The statement ordered the sanctions committee to increase restrictions on the movement of North Korean goods and people. The presidential statement itself is not legally enforceable, but is significant in that it reaffirms the resolution and increases pressure on North Korea.   
The rocket launch alone has already eliminated any likelihood that the Obama administration will maintain a conciliatory stance of seeking a plan for substantial dialogue with the North, even until the US presidential election at the beginning of this year. Aside from this, all the launch has achieved is providing more ground for hardliners in other countries to demand tightened sanctions; the same goes for relations with South Korea.
North Korea may actually use this as a pretext to make an unreasonable move such as going ahead with a nuclear test, which would exacerbate the tensions brought on by the rocket launch. The North must abandon any attempts at going ahead with a nuclear test, which will only bring it yet more isolation and ruin any hopes of building a peaceful order through negotiations with the US.
The Kim Jong-un regime must take the latest UNSC statement as a cue to break its obsession with the hopeless strategy it has been following until now. But we wonder if North Korea has the will to follow through with such changes. In his first public speech, which lasted more than 20 minutes, Kim Jong-un still stressed the intention to continue with North Korea’s military-first policies. But North Korea will not reach its goal of becoming a ’strong and prosperous nation‘ with only military power. An economy dependent on foreign assistance is not sustainable without investing in improvements in citizens’ lives.
A report by Japan’s Mainichi newspaper showed hints of a pragmatic approach by Kim Jong-un. The Mainichi reported that North Korea’s new leadership has ordered economic reforms that include even the introduction of “capitalist means.” The North has been sending officials and scholars abroad to sound out such possibilities for a long time, but some analysts have claimed that bureaucratic hostility to the forbidden term, “capitalism” has been too great for this to come to anything., which are known to be records of remarks by Kim Jong-un, are notable in that they call for the barriers that such stereotypes constitute to be broken down.
While Kim Jong-un’s comments bring to mind even the possibility of the introduction of reforms in the style of China and Vietnam. They may also reflect a desire for change within the new North Korean regime. Change in North Korea is impossible through changes made by North Korea alone. The policies isolating North Korea enacted by the countries that adopted the UNSC presidential statement, particularly the US, must change too. Let us hope that Kim Jong-un’s regime opens the way for this to happen.
 
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