Where the Korean War Never Ended

OF THE MORE than 60 countries I have visited as a journalist, North Korea is by far the strangest.

As part of a five-person delegation from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), I visited North Korea for one week in spring 2010 at the invitation of the Korean Christian Federation, the government-sanctioned Protestant denomination in North Korea.

From the moment we touched down in Pyongyang, we were “minded” 18 hours a day by two leaders of the KCF. We saw only what they wanted us to see and spoke only with those who were part of our official itinerary. North Koreans are forbidden to speak—or even make eye contact—with foreign visitors.

One morning before our minders showed up, I went for a short walk with another delegation member. I carried my camera and took a few photos. When we returned to the hotel, our minders were waiting for us in the lobby with several government officials. I was instructed to scroll through all my photos and was told which ones I could keep and which were to be erased on the spot.

One member of our delegation, who grew up in North Korea and still has family there, advised us to assume that we were being watched every minute and that every conversation was monitored. When his family visited in the hotel room we shared, he turned the television volume to full blast while they talked quietly beneath the roar.

Everyone we spoke with offered the same narrative: North Korea is a peace-loving nation surrounded by hostile forces seeking its demise. The chief culprits, in this narrative, are South Korea and the United States.

A few things became clear: North Koreans’ expressed faith in their leaders is unshakeable. Kim Il-Sung, a leader of the resistance to the Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1930s, founded North Korea’s family dynasty in 1945, when Korea was divided at the end of World War II. North Koreans may not be literally “brainwashed,” but they are certainly dependent on the dynastic family (and state apparatus) that leads them.

For North Koreans, the political and psychological reality is that their country is still at war with the United States. The Korean War ended with an armistice—a ceasefire—not a treaty. A treaty has never been negotiated, much less signed. As a result, North Koreans seem willing to make any sacrifices and undergo any hardships for the sake of the state. In the 1990s, spending on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program barely skipped a beat, even as a famine wiped out perhaps 10 percent of the country’s population.

So, with tensions rising of late to an unprecedented level, even for this longtime conflict, what are the options? Very few, I’m afraid.

North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons if other countries keep theirs, believing that nukes are the only deterrent to the overwhelming military power of the U.S. (The only countries that have given up nuclear weapons are three former Soviet republics and South Africa.) Efforts to persuade the Chinese to exert more pressure are of limited value. China sees North Korea as an essential buffer on the Korean peninsula. Ratcheting up economic sanctions will squeeze, but not deter, the North Korean government—just ask Cuba. A pre-emptive U.S. military strike will almost surely lead to a war that experts say could cost 1 million lives, primarily in South Korea, and $1 trillion in damage.

Nicholas Kristof wrote in The New York Times that “The only option left ... is to apply relentless pressure together with China, while pushing for a deal in which North Korea would verifiably freeze its nuclear and missile programs without actually giving up its nukes in exchange for sanctions relief.” Such an approach doesn’t solve the problem; it only postpones it. But the alternatives are unthinkable.