'Fax notice' was an attack on democracy

Lee Ha-kyung

The author is a senior columnist at the JoongAng Ilbo. 

Seventy-six years have passed since North Korea's invasion triggered the 1950-53 Korean War, but tension remains. The peninsula is held together not by peace but by an uneasy armistice. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, armed with nuclear weapons, threatens to "turn the Republic of Korea into ashes without hesitation," referring to South Korea by its official name. In doing so, he insults our goodwill.

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal described North Korea as a place where restaurants sell wood-fired pizza and chicken wings, customers pay by QR code and Chinese EVs fill the streets. It said that Pyongyang built 10,000 apartments last year, more than Los Angeles or Chicago did, and that North Korea's night lights are three times brighter than they were five years ago. The Kim who admitted economic failure and food shortages five years ago is gone.

This is propaganda. Pyongyang's boom is the price that Kim enjoys for sending more than 15,000 young people to the Russia-Ukraine battlefield. From summer 2023 through late last year, North Korea earned more than $10 billion by selling weapons to Russia, according to the Journal. When the war ends, so will the good times. In 1927, on the 10th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, U.S. journalists toured the Soviet Union and met Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. The New York Times carried admiring reports on Soviet achievements. North Korea is likewise hiding wounds behind a show window. According to the United Nations, nearly half of North Koreans are malnourished.

A Chinese diplomat put it bluntly: "[Kim] is intoxicated by wartime demand. This is not the time to spend money on nuclear weapons, missiles and regime propaganda through infrastructure projects. He should open the country to revive the people's economy, but he is blocking outside information and sacrificing hungry people to preserve hereditary rule."

Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh said that if people remain poor and unhappy after a revolution, it is not a revolution.

The Korean War was what University of Georgia historian William Stueck called a "substitute for World War III," with both Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia directly or indirectly involved and more than 5 million killed or wounded. Fortunately, U.S. President Harry Truman quickly intervened, but U.S. President Donald Trump is different. He is delaying sales of advanced weapons promised to Taiwan while watching China. To prevent Kim's fatal miscalculation, we must be ready to fight with our strength.

Alliances matter, but self-reliance comes first. The Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) survived by fighting powerful Khitan and Mongol forces for 25 and 30 years because 700,000 of its 2.1 million people were soldiers. A military's first duty is planning operations to win, followed by logistics and personnel.

During the Korean War, South Korea handed wartime operational control to the United States with serious aftereffects. A former national security adviser said that officers are idle until promotion and procurement seasons, when they become busy with lobbying and defense corruption. South Korea should take back wartime operational control, a sovereign right, once prepared. But the process must not create a rift with Washington.

To defend the country, South Korea must strengthen industrial competitiveness. In December 1950, as Chinese forces advanced toward Seoul, the United States considered withdrawing, judging that South Korea lacked strategic value. Today, its strategic value lies in semiconductors. Relocating chip plants to the Honam region — which encompasses Gwangju and the provinces of North and South Jeolla — can be considered, but corporate investment judgment must come first. The government must not push it for political purposes. If relocation is chosen after review, the government should support companies.

What distinguishes us from hereditary dictatorship in North Korea is democracy. Democracy is a precarious process in which people with different worldviews and interests endure discomfort, listen to their opponents and reach difficult compromises. Tolerance by the majority is essential. That is why Alexis de Tocqueville warned of "soft despotism," in which a minority is forced into silence by the "tyranny of the majority." The National Assembly speaker assigned opposition lawmakers to standing committees without asking their opinion and notified them by fax. He may argue that he followed the National Assembly Act, but he crossed a line. He attacked democracy.

Our resolve to take responsibility for our own security, our will to protect core industries and the functioning of democracy are lifelines for a country facing a belligerent North Korea. They have been damaged. They must not be shaken further.