South Korea's anger over nuclear test

By Andrew Harding
BBC News, South Korea

North Korea has been celebrating its nuclear test

North Korea's nuclear test early this week has provoked alarm and criticism across much of the world but, not surprisingly, concern has been greatest across the border in South Korea.

I wonder what Mrs Kim is making of it all.

I expect she is grinning fiercely.

Mrs Kim is the North Korean government minder who escorted me around Pyongyang last year.

Icy, serene and cultishly convinced that her Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, was - in all matters - infallible.

And now he has a nuclear bomb or, at least, a working prototype.

Mrs Kim has not called. But on the frontier with South Korea, northern soldiers have been seen roaring with pride, and making neck-slitting gestures at their enemies.

On the border with China, more signs of defiance. North Korean civilians parading along the river bank chanting slogans, some even throwing stones across the border at their Chinese neighbours.

How much of this is genuine? It is very hard to tell.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have already fled across the same river border, desperate to escape the hunger and repression of daily life inside their dark cave of a country.

View from Pyongyang

North Koreans caught leaving the country can face years in labour camps

But this morning I got an e-mail from a European contact in Pyongyang, one of a tiny band of obsessively optimistic businessmen trying to break into North Korea's Stalinist economy.

"I believe," he writes, "the people here fully support their government as they feel deceived and threatened by the United States."

What angers them most, he says, is the fact that last year America imposed aggressive financial sanctions on the North, even though negotiations had been making progress.

"Kim Jong-Il bad. Bush bad," said my taxi driver late last night, smashing his fist on the dashboard for emphasis.

Same old cold war

Here in South Korea, the nuclear crisis does not really seem like a crisis at all, just more of the same.

The stock market dipped briefly, a few protesters have burnt North Korean flags but, rightly or wrongly, most people here are not panicking yet.

They are used to their cold war on this divided peninsula.

Last year I got caught up in riots here in the South - anti-globalisation protesters against the police.

It was the most intense pitched battle you can imagine: rocks, water canons, baton charges.

And yet, it was all minutely choreographed. At the appointed time, both sides put down their weapons and sauntered home.

There is something theatrical about this week's confrontation too.

The careful calibration of tit-for-tat, defiance and punishment, even if the stakes have now been raised dramatically.

And the dangers of proliferation are very real.

Living in an alien world

A few nights ago, I went to a loud bar in Seoul. It was full of middle-aged ladies dancing with their husbands.

There have been several anti-North Korea rallies in Seoul

On a stage a group of beautiful women in traditional Korean costumes were singing. The women were all recent defectors from the North, trying to make a living in a very alien world.

"I am surprised about the test, and heartbroken," said Kim Yang Mi, looking rather embarrassed.

She escaped three years ago, crossing the river into China, then making the dangerous journey to the South.

The Chinese police often catch and repatriate North Koreans forcibly, condemning them and their families to years in labour camps.

In the audience a grey-haired lady sat down after another dance and pointed at her husband.

"He's got family trapped in the North," she told me.

"It's heartbreaking. Now there's even less chance that he'll ever see them again."

I asked her who was to blame. "Kim Jong-Il, of course.

"These days the young blame America.

"They do not see why we should still have American troops in our country so many years after the war.

"But old people like us remember that it was America which saved us and stopped us being overrun by the North and by Communist China."

Looking to the future

So what happens next? North Korea may seem like the world's most opaque and unpredictable country.

But not to everyone.

Kang Cheol-Hwan is another defector. He spent a decade in a labour camp in the mountains north east of Pyongyang.

The regime can either open up like China or tighten its grip but either way it is moving closer to collapse

His father had fallen foul of the regime, so the entire family was punished.

Many defectors look out of place in the South, rumpled and awkward like old black and white photos in a colour album.

Mr Kang is slick and pin-striped.

"I knew this day would come," he said.

For 20 years the North's aim has been to possess nuclear weapons. It gives the regime greater legitimacy with its own people.

But the country has changed in the past decade. Ordinary people have begun to learn about the outside world.

South Korean soap operas get smuggled in.

"I think it's a very dangerous situation now," he said. "It could explode."

The regime can either open up like China, or tighten its grip, but either way it is moving closer to collapse.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 14 October, 2006 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.