Nuclear weapons cannot solve anything

North Korea has ratcheted up saber-rattling in the New Year. Wrapping up a five-day plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party on Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un defined the two Koreas as “hostile countries in a state of war” that can never be peacefully united. Portraying “war” as a reality, he warned that the exercise of nuclear deterrence from South Korea and the United States will immediately be met with a “grave action.”

Under the guidance, North Korea is expected to use its nuclear capability to build up tensions and a war-like mood throughout this year. Pyongyang last year touted its diversification of nuclear weapons to fit a warhead into diverse missiles, all thanks to Kim’s leadership.

But historically, nuclear weapons solved nothing. China could ascend to the second largest economy in the world thanks to Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening in the late 1970s, as it did not matter whether “a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” India has emerged as the candidate to replace China as the world’s factory owing to economic reforms under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, not to its nuclear development in the 1990s.

The two countries have nuclear weapons, but they have become richer not thanks to their nuclear arsenal but because of reforms to comply with the international order.

The Soviets were second in the world to develop nuclear weapons, but their economy collapsed. Regardless of its mighty military power, Russia is struggling with the war in Ukraine. Iran, which has been pursuing nuclear programs, remains in extreme poverty due to international sanctions despite its world’s tenth-largest oil reserves.

Kim Jong-un must shake out of his blind obsession with nuclear weapons that could raze the entire 80 million people on the Korean Peninsula and instead seek the path of peace and co-prosperity through dialogue.

New Year prospects for the domestic economy are gloomy. The growth rate could slightly improve from last year. LG Economic Research Institute projects the economy to grow 1.8 percent this year to make the second straight year in the 1-percent range. An economy with less than a 2 percent growth rate represents waning productivity and weakening fundamentals. Without building innovation-led dynamics, the economy cannot pull out of the low-growth slump.

The Yoon Suk Yeol government touts the private-led economy. However, the government overused corporate leaders to campaign for Busan’s bid for the 2030 World Expo last year and intervened frequently in the financial market. Such a forced accompaniment of CEOs must be restrained. The government must differentiate what it must and must not do. It should at least be credited for upholding the market economy, as the president repeatedly stressed.