THE RISING EAST
Korea crisis continues to smolder after 50 years

By Richard Halloran

Fifty years ago today, the United States and North Korea signed a truce to stop the Korean War. At 10 that night, the crash of artillery and the mutter of machine guns were no longer heard along the 151-mile front spanning the Korean peninsula.

That armistice, however, was not a peace treaty. Two of the world's largest armed forces, the North Koreans with 1.1 million troops and South Koreans with 650,000, confront each other now across the 4,000-yard-wide demilitarized zone that divides the peninsula.

Thus, what has been a Korean cold war could turn hot any time. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry, long experienced in negotiating with the North Koreans, told the Washington Post recently: "Time is running out, and each month the problem gets more dangerous."

Why has peace not come to a people with 4,300 years of legendary and recorded history, of more than a thousand years of unity, a nation of one culture and one language, a people who for centuries nurtured the same Buddhist religion and Confucian philosophy?

It began with the division of Korea in 1945 after 35 years of Japanese occupation and the end of World War II. The Soviet Union took the Japanese surrender north of the 38th parallel and the United States did so south of that arbitrary line, after which it became permanent.

Five years later, North Korea attacked South Korea, bringing the United States and the United Nations to the rescue. China then sent "volunteers" into the fray. By 1953, the casualties were horrendous. About 37,000 Americans were killed; the number of Koreans and Chinese killed was many times higher.

After that hot war, conflict in Korea became a cold war in which there developed two markedly different political orders and economies. And emotionally, as an American student of Korea observed: "Nobody hates the way brothers hate."

Moreover, no country in Northeast Asia has been eager to see Korea reunified. China has made clear that it prefers a divided Korea as a buffer between itself and Japan and the United States. Japan is secretly happy to see Korea remain divided so that it does not become what Japanese feared long ago, "a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan."

The United States has supported reconciliation but mainly seeks to prevent a renewal of hostilities. Younger South Koreans contend that the United States blocks reunification, but political and economic disparity and the rivalry to rule the peninsula are the real obstructions.

After the Korean War, the South Koreans began to dig out and, by 1960, said an American official at the time, "discovered they could do things." The Japanese occupation had left behind people who could read, run a railroad, make shoes and textiles, and keep books. Later, they made steel, built first-class ships, produced cars and trucks, then went into high-tech electronics.

In the North, the communist rulers insisted on a rigidly controlled centralized economy, which allowed the South to surge ahead. Over the last 10 years, floods and poor crops have further devastated the North's economy and 1 million people are estimated to have starved to death.

Today, the gap is wide. In 2002, the North's per capita income was $1,000 while that in the South was $19,400, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. A telling note: North Korea has 1.1 million telephones that barely work; South Korea has 24 million connected to the international network.

Politically, South Korea has evolved from an autocratic government to a fledgling democracy. A turning point came in 1987, when President Roh Tae-woo eased political repression and freed the press. Then came a succession of that most difficult political action, the peaceful transfer of power, culminating in Roh Moo-hyun, who took office in February.

Meanwhile, North Korea has unquestionably become a most repressive regime.

Kim Il Sung, who ruled through a cult of personality that made him a demigod, died in 1994. His son, Kim Jong Il, has succeeded and has placed cronies in critical positions throughout the army and communist party.

Finally, both North Koreans and South Koreans are determined to bring the peninsula under their control, which leaves little room for compromise. As Shannon McCune, a learned student of Korea, has said: "It is obvious that peace and unification of Korea will only come with the defeat of or a drastic change in the character of one or the other."

That was written in 1966; it still holds true in 2003.

Richard Halloran was formerly a New York Times reporter in Asia.