The Korean Conundrum: America's Troubled Relations with North and South Korea

Pull the plug on ""security free-rider"" South Korea, advise two Cato Institute East Asia policy experts in this blunt analysis of the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. Despite suspicions that North Korea has jumpstarted its nuclear program, Iraq and the war on terror trump South Korea as vital U.S. national security interests. Therefore, ""it is well past time for South Korea to become 'somewhat more self reliant,'"" believe Carpenter and Bandow, adding that, unless Pyongyang becomes ""the global Wal-Mart of nuclear technology,"" America must avoid preemptive military action. To end the stalemate, the authors recommend a two-tier strategy of negotiations and on-demand inspections. In return, Pyongyang would receive renewed fuel oil shipments, a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from the South and other concessions. But North Korea's ""long record of perfidy on nuclear issues"" suggests East Asia may have to learn to live with a nuclear ""totalitarian hellhole,"" with the burden of containment falling on South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. The authors also laud the volatile idea that Japan or South Korea or both develop nuclear arsenals to offset the North Korean threat. Indeed, Japan emerges as the ""one credible candidate to supplant the United States as regional stabilizer."" While Carpenter and Bandow acknowledge that nuclear weapons remain a sensitive issue in both countries, they also dismiss ""East Asian apprehension about a more assertive"" Japan as ""paranoid fantasy."" Nevertheless, a regional nuclear arms race fueled by Japan's acquisition of nuclear weapons may produce more destabilization than the authors anticipate. Can the U.S. secure an ""amicable divorce"" from South Korea on these terms? Carpenter and Bandow's matter-of-fact answers will pique the interest of audiences attuned to the nuances of contemporary East Asian politics.