I don't know whether North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Lee Myung Bak has invited retaliation by repudiating the commitment to coexistence and eventual confederation enshrined in the two summit declarations negotiated with Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun.

This is not meant as an excuse for the North if it is proved guilty. But military reprisals by the South would only make matters worse. As I reported after my January, 2009, visit to Pyongyang, Lee's repudiation of the two summits has revived the deep seated fears in the North that South Korea is once again seeking the collapse of the North and its absorption by the South.

General pledges of a desire for reunification like those recently made by Lee will not change the atmosphere. What is needed is a series of explicit statements accepting the two summit declarations as the point of departure for the resumption of the efforts made by his predecessors to improve North-South relations in parallel with denuclearization negotiations.

Seoul should push the U.S. to pursue bilateral denuclearization negotiations with Pyongyang, a trilateral peace treaty (North Korea, the United States and South Korea) and renewed six-party talks. But denuclearization should be pursued in parallel with improved North-South relations, not as a precondition for North-South dialogue, since it is Pyongyang’s fear of the United States that primarily explains its nuclear ambitions.

The reality, of course, is that hard-line elements in the ruling party may well push Lee in the opposite direction. Pentagon and State Department officials who met on May 6 with Park Jin, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification Committee of the National Assembly, said that he had pushed for joint naval exercises with the U.S. in the Yellow Sea and a five-party regional meeting excluding North Korea.

A return to the military tensions that preceded DJ's summit breakthrough in June, 2000, would not only be dangerous for the South. It would also mean ever higher levels of military spending at the expense of civilian needs in both the South and the North.

South Korea allocates much less of its gross national product to health, welfare and social security than other advanced countries. To be sure, some analysts argue that military spending benefits economic growth in the South, but a new Korea Economic Institute paper by John Feffer concludes that “the economic arguments for increased military spending are at best weak, at worst counterproductive and in general irrelevant.” Feffer cites evidence that “the military establishment monopolizes capital and robs the private sector of additional opportunities to grow.” As Suh Jae Jung has pointed out in his study, Power, Interest and Identity in Military Alliances, South Korea’s military spending is driven by a military-industrial complex, “a dense network between the government, the military and the defense industry” that depends on government largesse and is staffed by a “revolving door.” For example, Suh shows that there were 326 retired officers working in defense industries in the mid-1990‘s.

Feffer notes that “North Korea has simply not been able to keep up with the South. A country spending approximately $7 billion dollars on defense each year simply cannot compete with one spending more than $20 billion.” On all my 11 visits to Pyongyang, officials have emphasized their desire for mutual North-South force reductions to make possible more spending on economic needs.

In the South, entrenched interests, centered in the armed forces and the military-industrial complex, have spearheaded opposition to a serious dialogue on force reductions. To be sure, there is also a military-industrial complex in the North, allied with hard-liners in the Workers Party, that has grown much stronger under Kim Jong Il. Force reductions are not popular with this hard-line faction in Pyongyang. In the case of the North, however, economic factors have made such reductions imperative and have tipped the scales in the internal debate. By contrast, since the South spends so much less of its GNP on defense, the pressures for reductions are not as great as in the North.

The South’s rapid economic growth has enabled successive regimes to avoid increasing the proportion of GNP allocated to defense while, at the same time, steadily raising the actual level of defense expenditures. Another factor making force reductions less urgent than in the North is the economic subsidy provided by the American military presence. It should be emphasized, however, that the middle- and low-income majority of the populace in the South would benefit greatly from any diversion to civilian welfare needs of resources now going into military spending.

Kim Jong Il’s recent visit to China was clearly designed to cushion the growing impact of disproportionate defense spending with increased Chinese economic aid. Yet a growing aid dependence on Beijing is the last thing Kim wants. I am reminded of a prophetic interview I had with Hwang Chang Yop shortly after his defection in 1998. “The Chinese have been trying to pull Kim Jong Il into their sphere,” he said, and “what I’m worried about is that if the food problem and economic stagnation go on and on, he will bow down to China to get the help he needs. He'll be forced to knuckle under.”

Knuckling under is likely to include giving Beijing its long-coveted access to the East Sea by permitting it to develop Rajin port under its tutelage. Lee Myung Bak’s policies, in short, reinforced by those of the United States, are driving the North into the arms of China and steadily strengthening Beijing's strategic posture in Northeast Asia at the expense of long-term U.S. and South Korean interests.