You can’t win peace with dialogue

The only thing that can help South Korea defend its peace under such volatile circumstances is the will and ability of the country.

Chae Byung-gunThe author is an editor of the JoongAng Ilbo. Two placards put up by the opposition Democratic Party on a street in Seoul attracted my attention in June — the month of patriots and veterans in Korea. “Peace is security!” and “Dialogue, not confrontation!” the placards read. As the two words — “peace” and “security” — are compatible with one another, it seems natural at first glance. But if you think again, the combination looks intriguing. Which really comes first, peace or security?

If peace is a precondition for defending a country against external threats, peace can mean security. But in terms of the sustainability of peace, it is security that ensures peace, not vice versa.

At every security crisis of a country, peace could be maintained by two factors — sacrifice and the capability to defend against foreign aggressions.

To protect peace, our government allotted a budget of 59.4 trillion won ($42.9 billion) this year alone to maintain its 500,000 regular soldiers. Most of them are conscripts who must sacrifice at least 18 months from the golden time of their life. Peace can be maintained by tax money and the youth. The law of entropy also applies here: Energy is needed to maintain peace — and if you don’t pay the right price, you fall into a state of anomie.

Peace can be defined in the context of relations with others, too. When you insist on peace, you must have the power to persuade and enforce peace on your counterpart. Without such “deterrence” or persuasive power, your desperate wish for peace will be just a pipe dream — as clearly seen in the case of the Roh Moo-hyun administration futilely championing Korea’s role as a “peace mediator” in the volatile Northeast Asian theater. The United States didn’t accept the novel idea incompatible with the decades-long alliance. China and North Korea also refused the new proposition “still based on the Korea-U.S. alliance.”

No one would quarrel with the preference of dialogue over standoff, but you can propose dialogue only when you have the ability to defend your peace. Otherwise, you will be dragged by others, including your enemy. If the hope that peace can be maintained by peace dominates our consciousness, our society can fall into the trap of collective hypnosis.

Just think of the significance of security in Northeast Asia. North Korea frequently threatened a nuclear attack on South Korea. If you just imagine scenes of the North firing a 10-kiloton tactical nuclear missile to the South and killing 40,000 people and leaving 160,000 people injured, you are naïve. The repercussions of a nuclear attack will be felt even before launching the missiles. Now, just imagine that the North suddenly announces a contingency, displays a few nuclear missiles on the ground and advances its troops to the frontline. In that case, the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command will ratchet up Defcon, a five-stage combat alert level, followed by foreign press corps in the South starting to report the U.S. government’s order for noncombatant U.S. citizens in the South to be evacuated to Japan. The news will devastate the South’s stock market. Just like Russia did shortly before its invasion of Ukraine, modern wars are basically about hybrid warfare. If the North’s propaganda machine pushes the South into panic amid a massive exodus of foreign capital from the market, the North can win the war even without waging war against the South.

South Korea’s neighbors are not less menacing, either. China persistently tries to tame the South amid the Sino-U.S. hegemony war. The right wing in Japan does not regret the past regardless of improved Seoul-Tokyo ties. Russia is still the maestro in demonstrating how a government’s words and actions can be different. Will the United States be really the same ally after the November presidential election? The only thing that can help South Korea defend its peace under such volatile circumstances is the will and ability of the country. You just can’t achieve peace with rhetoric.