Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe

by Gavan McCormack

North Korea seems impenetrable to outsiders, a bizarre, Stalinist sideshow and relic guerrilla state that defies explanation. For Washington, North Korea is a fully paid-up member of George Bush's "axis of evil," involved in a dangerous game of nuclear brinksmanship since last October. In this timely book, McCormack shows how decisive the founding myths and national identity forged through Korea's armed resistance to a brutal Japanese colonialism are, and how hardened North Korea has become over half a century of Cold War. He shows that at the heart of the Korean crisis is the role of Japan where the North Korean admission of having abducted Japanese citizens has created something of a right-wing, nationalist backlash in a country that itself once abducted thousands of Koreans and almost sixty years later has yet to fully apologize for its acts. A foreign policy satellite of the United States, Japan is now showing signs of becoming more militarily independent, wanting to reassert its old role as a regional hegemon. Permeated by so many ills, North Korea —paranoid, insecure, and ravaged by famine—is in a vice with few cards in its pack. The nuclear one has been its joker for at least a decade.

Genres: Asia, Politics

248 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2004

Reviews

[John Eliade · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few simple things about this book:

1. It's very informative if albeit outdated. Kim Jong Il is still the North Korean dictator and George W. Bush the President. The reason this is an issue (but my earlier review for "Korea: The Limited War" published in 1964 barely notices this as a problem) is because "Target North Korea" reads like an extended news story that tries to supply information and solutions to the North Korea problem circa 2003. But we in the future know that Kim Jong Un is now the ruler of North Korea (who's not even mentioned as possible successors to Jong Il) and President Obama is preparing for his last year in office, never mind whatever Bush Jr. is doing.

2. The writing style is inconsistent. It's weird considering that there's only one author and not an anthology. I gather that he didn't go through a very rigorous editing process. Something to be expected of a journalist who just writing a long article and not really a book.

3. He's remarkably pro-Pyongyang. Sometimes uncomfortably so. In his chapter on Japan-North Korea relations, which focuses mainly on the kidnapping of Japanese citizens and abducting them to North Korea (mainly as Japanese teachers of language and culture for North Korean spies) McCormack compares these acts (taking place mostly in the '70s and '80s) with the Japanese Empire's colonial era and the lives destroyed by the actions of the Japanese military between 1910 and 1945. And while McCormack isn't *wrong, that certainly there was a disproportionate amount of death and destruction wrought in Asia all due to the ambitions of the Japanese Imperial regime, he fails to remind the reader and make the distinction that this sort of behavior is not acceptable in the framework of modern nation-states; that while the actions of the Japanese Empire are regrettable in hindsight, it is a happy development of history that we have moved past this horrifying form of colonialism.

I enjoyed reading this book because it gave me insights on antebellum North Korean history that I've been interested in since arriving in Korea, but it genuinely made me uncomfortable in its effort to put the reader in the mind of a Pyongyang official: imagine how the world looks from this dynastic palace in North Korea, and then how would you react?

Does President Bush referring to your country as a part of the "Axis of Evil" sound threatening? Yes.
Does the fact that the United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons appear suspicious? Yes.
Does the fact that Iraq, the first of the Axis of Evil countries, was toppled by American invasion (apparently because they did not have nuclear weapons to fend off attack) seem alarming? Yes.

Does any of that excuse the abuses of its own citizenry? The abductions of other nationals? The regular threats that can immediately destabilize the region? Fucking NO.

Much of this book seems constructed to paint North Korea as a victim of international trends and attempting to arbitrate its own destiny and the United States as the region's true warmonger. While I'm no patriot, and believe that there is something to be said about the Kim regime being used to keep a Korea-Japan-China alliance from dominating American interests, McCormack seems to forget any history that makes North Korea appear bad, or gloss over it and try to remind the reader of past injustices committed against Korea.

This is understandable in the manner that we can use it to understand the North Korean mindset, but is a bit disingenuous in this form of a Nightline story. He literally writes "North Korea has never invaded any of its neighbors."

Um... I understand that McCormack was trying to compare Kim Jong Il's North Korea with Bush's United States, BUT McCormack also writes in the first paragraph of Chapter 2, "The fighting began on the morning of June 25, 1950, when Korean People's Army (KPA) forces crossed into the South."

This book should probably be read for anyone interested in the full range of opinions on the "Korean Problem." But grab your salt shaker.

[Macmanj · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well researched and unbiased look into the North Korean political reality.