Arming the Two Koreas

Taik-Young Hamm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134620654
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

North Korea has traditionally been seen as militarily superior to South Korea in the long feud between the two nations. This brilliantly argued book taps into a great deal of news interest in North Korea at the moment in the wake of recent hostility against Japan. Hamm controversially shows that the received idea of Koreas military strength is partly a myth created by South Korea to justify a huge programme of rearmament.

1 Introduction

This work is an enquiry into the dynamics of the armament of the two Korean states from the Korean War period to the 1990s. Its purpose is to describe, analyse, and explain the armament processes of the two Korean states with a more objective and critical perspective. It is an effort to contribute to the recently emerged efforts for a more balanced understanding of the armament dynamics and national security of the two Koreas. Based on my previous descriptive and theoretical research, I have tried an analysis of the relationship between armament and state power in its internal and external dimensions. I have also tried to utilise and, in fact, generate more valid and credible data for further research, since various official and semi-official data sets are internally unstable, misleading, or biased.

With a few exceptions, numerous publications and conferences on the issue have been narrowly focused, repeating the redundant theme of North Korean aggressiveness and military superiority. Until the more or less liberal-democratic regime was established in 1988 after widespread popular struggles for democratisation and the consequent free presidential election in 1987, for the first time since 1971, objective, if not critical, research on national security had been taboo in South Korea. To be sure, the two divided states have been engaged in a continued bitter armed confrontation. Although a large-scale armed conflict has not occurred since 1953, each has maintained a high level of military preparedness to the extent that both can be defined as ‘garrison states’. Each side has been trapped in national security paranoia. Everything has been justified in the name of national security. Internal security, i.e. the security of the ruling power bloc, and external security has been closely interrelated. Leaders on both sides have reinforced and exploited the security complex of the people in order to justify their authoritarian rule or at least to mobilise popular support. In this sense they have shared a common interest in the ‘system of national division’.

Nevertheless, modest efforts for a more balanced and even critical understanding of disarmament and arms control on the Korean Peninsula, including the nuclear issue, have recently become one of the most important topics of the Korean problem, as the global Cold War system has come to an end. Yet there exist confusion and controversy in South Korea on national security issues. The government of the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) still maintains that North Korea has military superiority and aggressiveness, with a large number of experts parroting the policy rationale and data provided by the ROK or US government.

To oversimplify, the ROK–US official position can be summarised as follows.¹ First, it has been argued that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) has maintained military superiority in spite of the ROK efforts to catch up, owing to its earlier defence industrialisation and much heavier defence burden. Second, the ROK armament has been justified as an effort to catch up with the DPRK in order to achieve self-reliant deterrence and defence capabilities. An external causation or arms race explanation, e.g. the Richardson ‘rivalry model’, has been the official rationale of the ROK armament. Third, however, internal factors that may be called the ‘military-industrial complex’ or ‘bureaucratic-organisational process’ have explained the DPRK armament. The DPRK has been alleged to continue considerable efforts to build up its military might ever since 1962 without making any significant change in its maximum self-reliant defence effort. The ROK and US estimates of the DPRK defence expenditures have been at least 30.0 (or 30.9) per cent of its total budget or 20–25 per cent of its GNP,² guaranteeing a 100 per cent statistical explanation!

The official government propositions cannot be warranted either theoretically or empirically. First of all, the ROK buildups have not been carried out merely to counter the alleged inferiority on the bean-counting balance sheet. Rather, it has developed new military doctrines and deployed qualitatively different/superior weapons systems that did not require an equivalence to the DPRK systems in sheer numbers. Also, the ROK has outspent the DPRK by an increasing margin since 1976. Even if we adopt the considerably inflated official ROK–US estimates of the DPRK military expenditures, the ROK military expenditures in recent years are more than twice as large as the estimated North Korean spending. The DPRK has assuredly increased its defence expenditures, but ever so slowly. Its budgetary trend coupled with economic growth shows distinct trends and cycles. Also, it has other means to counter the ROK military buildups. One is the more economical means of expanding manpower instead of more costly investment in capital stock. Or it can resort to diplomacy, that is, peace offensives such as proposals for arms reduction or the withdrawal of foreign (American) troops. Still another alternative is the development of non-conventional deterrents, allegedly, chemical weapons and the nuclear option. Rumours of these non-conventional weapons abound, but the exact nature of the DPRK nuclear capabilities in question has yet to be confirmed.

Second, as has been noted, there exists a wide gap between the official DPRK release of data on its defence expenditures and the ROK (and US) estimates. It is highly probable that the DPRK is to blame for cheating or hiding. However, unlike the Soviet case, the hidden proportion, does not seem to be very large. For instance, official Soviet annual military spending has been 17.1 billion roubles (1971–84), 19.1 billion roubles (1985–88), and 20.2 billion roubles (1989) – the new announced figure for 1989 by Gorbachev was 77.3 billion roubles or about 9 per cent of the Soviet GNP – while the US CIA estimate for the 1965–82 period is 15–17 per cent of the Soviet GNP.³ The official DPRK defence expenditures rose from 19.0–19.8 per cent of the total budget during 1960–66 to 30.9 per cent (1967–71), but then gradually declined to 18.0 per cent (1971–76), 14.8 per cent (1978–84), and 13.0 per cent (1985–90).⁴ ROK government estimation is based on the simple extrapolation of the highest official DPRK figure (1967–71): a constant 30.9 per cent during 1967–86 and 30.0 per cent thereafter. Since the estimated size of the Soviet or the DPRK military budget usually receives more attention than any other variable in justifying the respective US or ROK military budget, debates concerning the proper estimation are of great academic as well as political importance. Decision-makers searching for information in this case usually end up with what they perceive and/or what they want to believe. Estimating the Soviet/DPRK defence expenditures involves not only the perception factors but also a high level of bureaucratic-organisational politics, such as the so-called ‘Team A’ and ‘Team B’ reports of the CIA in 1975–76, and the disputes between the CIA and DIA in the 1980s, etc.⁵ In the DPRK case, annual estimates by the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency vary widely from about 10 per cent of its GNP to as high as 23 per cent for the same years without any explanation.

Third, the implied explanations are dubious at best. If an arms race between the two Koreas had occurred, it would have been a one-sided race, not a classical Richardsonian action–reaction process. Without denying that there has existed an armed rivalry between the two states, we may conceive a better explanation adopting domestic variables as well as other external variables, especially the alliance factor. The assumption of a constant threat from the North and the constant share of its budget or GNP for armament should also be reconsidered, if relative capabilities as well as intentions (represented in its defence burden) are taken into account. Foreign-military policy decision-making in general, and the defence budgeting in particular, is the outcome of political and economic processes of resource mobilisation and allocation in which various governmental and non-governmental collective interests are involved: ‘policy making is politics’. In the ROK case, pressures from the United States should be counted as well; the rapid decline of grants/credits in military aid, US troop withdrawals in the 1970s and the requests for more defence burden-sharing in recent years.

Several important works have tried to challenge predominant balance assessment and explanations of armament of the two Koreas. Yet few of them have succeeded in a systematic analysis of the dynamics of armament of the two Koreas during the entire postwar period. Most of them are partial in theory and scope. For instance, the pioneering work of Lee, which was a severe blow to official claims and was actually instrumental in the publication of the Defense White Paper in 1988, is exclusively concerned with the balance assessment in the 1980s.⁶ He covers the entire postwar arms buildups and defence expenditures of the South, but his work remains descriptive rather than explanatory and excludes the North. Yet it shows the total defence expenditures, i.e. the ROK defence budget plus the US military aid.⁷ Hyun tries to explain the internal causation of defence expenditures of the South especially since the 1970s, but he does not include the North either.⁸ On the other hand, Park analyses the North–South Korean arms race, utilising the IISS data, but does not include the alliance factor or military aid, which was responsible for the greater part of total military spending of the South at least until the early 1970s.⁹

Among foreign analysts, Clough and Hayes stand out in their analytical depth and coverage of the entire postwar period. Hayes utilises many hitherto classified materials, yet his highly informative and critical analyses of the Korean military situation are unfortunately focused on the US military policy and nuclear weapons in Korea.¹⁰ Clough provides a well-balanced account of the inter-Korean rivalry and the foreign–domestic linkage, yet it is more descriptive than explanatory. It is somewhat outdated – it does not cover the dramatic turn of events in both Koreas in recent years.¹¹

My previous work covers both Koreas during the entire postwar period, but it falls short of an explanation. My theoretical analysis of armament is not tested by empirical data, although a political economy analysis of the DPRK defence expenditures was tried elsewhere.¹² Here, I will try a synthesis of my previous historical and theoretical research on armament of the two Koreas.

As is explained further in Chapter 3, this work is basically an analysis of defence expenditures of the two Koreas. The monetary expression of defence effort is by far the best operational definition of military might, since it covers both quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the human, material, and the often-neglected organisational factors of military capabilities. It is also far superior to other alternatives for analysing the internal causation of armament, for its share of the government budget (or GNP) represents the burden of armament. Yet some modifications should be made. In the external explanation, it is not the flow but the stock of spending on defence that indicates military capabilities. Depreciation should be included as well. In the internal explanation, defence burden, i.e. the ratio of defence expenditures over the GNP, will be utilised. Since the official ROK– US estimates of the DPRK defence expenditures and the consequent balance assessment are quite distorted, more balanced estimates of the DPRK spending on defence and GNP will be provided.

Still, it is a major challenge to explain the dynamics of armament beyond the generally accepted military expenditure analysis. Typically, two different approaches, or a certain combination of the two, are encountered in the field. The external approach, best represented in the arms race model, focuses on the action– reaction process between rival states, while the internal approach emphasises the bureaucratic-organisational pressures, the military-industrial complex, or military Keynesianism (business cycle, or other political economy cycles).¹³ The Richardsonian action–reaction model, schematised in a mathematical form or its variants, was dominant in arms race research. However, arms race research soon gave way to arms expenditure research in which other domestic variables are introduced.

The Richardson model is a perfect example of the elegance and parsimony that the realist theory provides. In this ‘state-as-actor’ or ‘state-centred’ paradigm, the political process of foreign policy decision-making is black-boxed and what remains is the mass and movement of the states conceived as billiards balls. Armament is the means to power and national security. The internal approach as an alternative to realism challenges the realist assumption that the state is a unitary actor. It rejects the black-box model of the state and focuses on what goes on inside. However, empirical research on the politics of foreign policy-making seldom goes beyond the top decision-makers or the national security bureaucracy. The ‘bureaucratic-organisational politics’ model, another powerful tool for analysing the armament process is a perfect example of the decision-making paradigm.¹⁴ Typically, it adopts the incrementalism model: the most simplified version is that the best predictor variable of X_t is X_t−1.

A number of quantitative analyses of the US and Soviet defence expenditures have compared the relative merits of each model in terms of statistical explanatory power (usually R-square and t-tests) and/or tried to develop a superior model picking the better parts from each. To oversimplify, the incrementalism model performs better – the first conclusion would be that the hypothesis of internally stimulated armament usually prevails. Viewed from another angle, however, it is not surprising. First of all, no state acts exactly in the manner of the Pavlovian stimulus-response behaviourist model. Second, we cannot but doubt whether the incrementalism explanation

is an explanation or a mere prediction without explanation. If it is a prediction based on description, we need an explanation; if it is an explanation, we need a deeper explanation of the underlying dynamics that make incrementalism work. Armament is not simply the outcome of the Schumpeterian disposition of the military bureaucracy to unlimited expansion.¹⁵ Nor is it the essential requirement of monopoly capital.

What we need is a holistic approach as opposed to the above-mentioned reductionist approaches. In addition to serving the parochial interests of some powerful forces, armament performs a general societal function internally as well as externally.¹⁶ However, the realist or pluralist conception of national interest is not accepted. The former presumes that the state represents the ‘interest for the community’, and the latter view it as a simple ‘balance’ among competing, more-orless equal social groups.¹⁷ A deeper or more fundamental explanation requires superior concepts and theories rather than the statistical technique of a ‘curve-fitting exercise’. In other words, it tries to establish a causal relationship between armament and social-structural variables, a relationship deeper than the action– reaction process or incrementalism. In a schematised form, it involves supplanting the endogenous variable in arms expenditures, X_t−1, and other parameters with exogenous variables.

In fact, this effort has been prompted by the outcome of military expenditure analyses of the two Koreas.¹⁸ The research findings suggest several alternative hypotheses, since the statistical relationship can be interpreted as internal bureaucratic pressures, the fatigue factor in the Richardson model, or merely a statistical artefact. They suggest that the ‘threat’ and ‘fatigue’ factors in the Richardson model be closely related to the allocation of resources for national defence, though they are assumed independent from each other in the linear modelling for statistical tests. These hypotheses are strongly supported by historical evidence. The severe party bureaucracy vs. the military conflict in North Korea in the late 1960s is an excellent example. The rise and decline of the defence burden in the South for the last two decades has been influenced by rapid economic growth since the mid-1960s which has reduced the ‘guns vs. butter’ conflict to a quite manageable level. However, there was a decline in grant aid from the US in the 1970s and a strong incrementalism factor at work from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s when defence expenditures were fixed at 6 per cent of GNP or roughly one-third of the total government budget. The rapid acceleration of arms buildup far exceeded the decline of US military aid and was not affected by the US decision in 1979 to halt troop withdrawals. Furthermore, it was the period when the most repressive (disguised) military dictatorship dominated the entire society. After partial democratisation in 1988, the defence burden has dropped to lower than 4 per cent of GNP in 1990.

These alternative hypotheses based on simple quantitative tests and historical analyses of the two Korean cases should be further elaborated. An approach to the fundamental understanding of foreign policy in general and armament in particular should be general rather than partial. The various internal explanations are partial in the sense that they regard armament as the outcome of parochial corporative interests. A general explanation requires analyses of political and economic variables, even though they would not be highly susceptible to rigorous tests. For the sake of simplicity, this thesis begins with the concept of resources. Armament requires resources and, especially, material resources of the state in the industrialised era. Three variables, i.e. the overall resource base, the capacity of the state in resource mobilisation, and allocation are the focus of analysis. One can note that the resource concept refer...