North Korea: More Plowshares Into Swords?

North Korea—impoverished yet bristling with armaments—seems set to give up much-needed food aid rather than back down on an announced missile launch. When will the craziness end?

U.S. President Barack Obama held the binoculars and peered across the demilitarized zone near Panmunjom, in the center of the Korean Peninsula. He was looking into the “hermit kingdom”—the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea.

An agreement on food aid

Not long before the president’s March 25 visit, the Americans and North Koreans had ostensibly come to an agreement on food aid, in exchange for a nuclear freeze.

In February, the United States agreed to ship 20,000 tons of food per month to malnourished North Korea, with the understanding that “the aid be dispersed to the marginal groups that are hardest hit by malnutrition … [including] children, mothers, pregnant women and the elderly ” (USA Today, Feb. 29, 2012). In exchange, North Korea committed to a freeze on its development of nuclear arms, including uranium enrichment and long-range missile testing.

A looming missile launch

Yet on March 16, less than three weeks later, North Korea announced the planned mid-April launch of a satellite into space to mark the 100th birthday of its founder and president-for-life (and death) Kim Il Sung.

The United States cried foul, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declaring “such a missile launch would pose a threat to regional security and would also be inconsistent with North Korea’s recent undertaking to refrain from long-range missile launches.” The North Koreans, however, claim the satellite launch is peaceful and not prohibited by the February agreement.

“No more rewards for provocations”

In a speech at a South Korean university, President Obama attempted to break the cycle of North Korean blackmail followed by concessions from the South and the United States. He declared, “There will be no more rewards for provocations. … You can continue down the road you are on, but we know where that leads. It leads to more of the same—more broken dreams, more isolation, ever more distance between the people of North Korea and the dignity and opportunity they deserve” (CNN.com).

In a press conference in Seoul later the same day, President Obama attempted to underline the point. “North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or by provocations. … North Korea knows its obligations, and it must take irreversible steps to meet those obligations” (Time.com, March 26, 2012).

Yet it would seem the United States and other Western powers have little leverage with the North Koreans, just as they have had little influence for almost six decades since the end of the bloody Korean War in 1953.

At the time of writing, it looks as if North Korea’s satellite launch will go ahead, with its new leader, 29-year-old Kim Jong Eun, apparently feeling constrained to prove his credentials by defying the United States and world opinion and making a military gesture. Yet, sadly, in the midst of the conflict, it is the suffering of the North Korean people that will worsen, as the food aid will almost certainly be cut off.

Massive military spending in the midst of poverty

“Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, ‘I am strong’” (Joel 3:10). That sounds like a description of North Korea today, a nation of some 24 million people, with approximately 9.5 million in the military, reserves and paramilitary, and an estimated 22.9 percent of gross domestic product dedicated to the military, the highest ratio of any nation on earth (www.nationmaster.com).

In the meantime, the misery of the North Korean people continues. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the nation lost its primary benefactor and began to run tragically low on food to feed its people. Estimates of the extent of starvation in the 1990s vary, but some accounts suggest as many as 1.5 million died for lack of food.

Recent accounts of starvation, abuse and torture provided by the very few who have ever escaped, tear at the heartstrings. A recent story of a North Korean woman who miraculously escaped, albeit at a very high human cost, makes wrenching reading (“In North Korea, a Brutal Choice,” CNN.com, March 24, 2012).

War or peace?

Swords into plowshares or plowshares into swords? The prophecy of Joel, and so much human history, tells us we have a long way to go till humanity witnesses what is represented on the famous statue outside the United Nations buildings in New York, inspired by the beautiful prophecy of peace recorded in Isaiah 2.

Of course, this isn’t new. The cycle of false ideology, war, famine and death depicted in the four horsemen of the Apocalypse (Revelation 6:1-8) has been repeated many times in human history, but it is yet to be revived once more on a grand and fearful scale before God’s intervention and the fulfillment of Isaiah’s famous prophecy.

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).

This wonderful prophecy will yet take place and bring relief from the scourge of war and starvation. It’s a time to look forward to—and to prepare for!

Ralph Levy is a minister of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, who grew up in England and now lives in the United States. Dr. Levy enjoys reading, travel and foreign languages. He has a Ph.D. in biblical studies and has worked in foreign language and religious education for much of his life.

For more about North Korea, end-time prophecy and the coming peaceful Kingdom of God, see:

• The Death of Kim Jong Il: What Does It Portend?
• Understanding End-Time Prophecy
• The Mystery of the Kingdom