Placating the Military

If this is true:

The prospects for tough, swift action against North Korea were scuppered yesterday when it became clear that South Korea will not abandon its policy of engagement with its totalitarian neighbour, in spite of North Korea’s claimed nuclear test.

then Rosemary Righter's report of how South Korea's sunshine policy was explained to her at least makes their attitude easier to understand:

“It is our storm umbrella. We have looked carefully at German unification. West Germany is far richer than we are, and the East Germans were almost westerners already, and yet the costs and the cultural strains have been a terrible drain. For us to absorb the North, bankrupt and horribly brainwashed, would be a shock so great that it could imperil our survival as a democracy. So we send food to our hungry brothers knowing that most of it is stolen by the military, and give aid that releases money to the nuclear programme, because we need to prevent not only violent collapse, but even the quiet death we don’t expect. We don’t really hope that ‘engagement’ will tear down the prison walls, because Kim knows that reforms would destroy him. We don’t, frankly, even want the prison gates to open, not yet, because we are afraid that we could not cope.”

In the same article, Righter goes on to provide what seems to me to be the best explanation for the latest stunt - a desperate attempt to placate the military:

[T]here are indications that Kim’s nuclear gamble was driven primarily by the need to suppress dissent in the country’s tiny pampered elite, not least among the all-powerful North Korean military. Even the Chinese are incapable of penetrating the obsessively secretive entourage of the Dear Leader, in a system so overwhelmingly concentrated on his personality cult that even to talk of a military command structure would be to give a misleading impression of ordered hierarchy. Public dissent is impossible, and private disputes are, even for the powerful, one-way passes to labour camps. But there are unmistakable if necessarily sketchy indications of chronic and worsening tensions within the regime.

Beijing is undoubtedly aware of a recent note circulated to senior Workers’ Party cadres, reporting the theft of several thousand weapons from military depots and, linked to these thefts, the murder of 200 high-ranking officers by attackers who dispersed before they could be captured. High-ranking party members no longer go out late at night and have asked for camouflaged guards to ward off attacks.

In the ranks of North Korea’s 1.2 million-strong military, indiscipline bred of deprivation and hunger is spreading despite Kim’s vaunted “military first” policy. Soldiers raid food stores and sell surplus rations to even hungrier civilians. There is rampant smuggling of military equipment and fuel across the supposedly closely policed border with China. Patrol boats have been stranded at sea because sailors had pumped out the fuel tanks and filled them up with water. Factory managers and the secret police are into similar rackets, stripping factories idled for want of fuel and raw materials.

With Kim, it's difficult to tell how much is cunning and how much is desperation. Of course if the whole thing was a dud, then it'll turn into farce.

Update: more on the problems of a collapsing regime:

As the United Nations Security Council mulls sanctions against North Korea, it must consider one question that could affect the stability of North Asia for years to come: Would the collapse of Kim Jong Il's government prove more dangerous than leaving him in charge of a nuclear-armed state?

The prospect of regime change in Pyongyang may cheer many in Washington who view Mr. Kim as running a militarist regime that has tortured and starved its own people and traded missiles to Pakistan, Iran, Syria and others. But turmoil in North Korea could damage the economies of China and South Korea, set off a refugee crisis and lead to military conflict.