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PYONGYANG WATCH
What a
week
By Aidan Foster-Carter
In 20-odd years of following North Korea, there
have been weeks - months, even - when nothing very much
discernibly happened. In recent years that has been less
the case. Last week events came thick and fast.
On Tuesday Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi flew to Pyongyang for what may prove a turning
point in ties with the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK). The same day, Seoul's Mr Football, Hyundai
scion Chung Mong-joon, declared his long-expected
candidacy for South Korea's presidential election on
December 19. As yet he doesn't have either a party or a
program, but polls suggest he could still become Kim
Dae-jung's successor.
That was just Tuesday. On
Wednesday the two Koreas held (separate) ceremonies for
starting work on two road and rail corridors across the
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Actual mine-clearing began for
real on Thursday. The publicity photos were a contrast.
In the South, a German-made bulldozer led a posse of
troops clad in bright-orange protective uniforms into
the DMZ. Whereas the North just showed a lot of guys
with spades. (Seoul has sent them a load of equipment,
so one would hope the Korean People's Army, or KPA, has
protection too.) First agreed after the 2000 summit,
this project had stalled for two years. Now, it seems,
it's for real.
Nor did it stop there. On Friday,
the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)
reported that the city of Sinuiju, on the Yalu river
(Amnok-gang to Koreans) facing Dandong in China, has
been made a special administrative region (SAR) for 50
years. Pretty much anything goes by way of business, it
seems. Foreigners are welcome.
Quite a week, all
in all. In detail, I'm still digesting it. But as a
whole, the mind boggles. Who can now deny that North
Korea really is changing? Any one of these three events
would have been major news. Each entails risk for Kim
Jong-il. At the same time, none of them is wholly
clear-cut. Pyongyang is not about to simply roll over,
wag its tail and make nice to everyone. There may still
be reversals. Yet even a hardened cynic like me finds
the evidence overwhelming that we're now in a new and
hopeful phase.
For a start, suddenly Koizumi is
a foreign-policy mover and shaker. Sunday found him in
Copenhagen for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). Kim
Dae-jung was in town too, and the pair urged the United
States to resume dialogue with North Korea. That call
will be echoed by ASEM as a whole. Thirteen out of 15
European Union member states - all but France and
Ireland - plus the EU itself now have ties with the
DPRK. Especially since the skeptical George W Bush
administration came to power in the US, Europe has
strongly backed engagement with Pyongyang: an approach
endorsed equally by ASEM's Asian members.
Spot
the odd man out. True, in Iraq Washington seems to be
planning to go after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein come
what may, with or without allies. If that proves a
pushover - which is a very big if - then "axis of evil"
logic suggests North Korea could be next on the list.
Here again Russia and China are dead against, as is the
current South Korean government. But even the
conservative opposition leader Lee Hoi-chang, current
favorite to be South Korea's next president come
February, pointedly hasn't endorsed the evil-axis
phrase. Now that Japan has plumped for dialogue too,
it'll be hard for President Bush not at least to give
peace a chance. So assistant secretary of state James
Kelly may soon make his much-delayed trip to Pyongyang.
And then what? That remains to be seen. Unlike
some, I don't think we're out of the woods yet, not by a
long chalk. It depends how you evaluate Kim Jong-il's
sensational admission that North Korea did indeed kidnap
about a dozen Japanese in the 1970s and '80s. While a
welcome change from their usual Bart Simpson denial
posture - "didn't do it/nobody saw me/can't prove a
thing" - is this a new leaf overall (next up, here's
where we hid the nukes)? Or is it rather a gamble:
playing a low-value card - and for vast potential gains
in Japanese aid - precisely so as to keep hidden the
aces that really matter?
It doesn't help that
the abduction issue may backfire. Coming half-clean
doesn't cut it. It was brave to admit these crimes, but
dumb to let the issue run on by not fessing up in full.
Why are most dead? How did they die? Bilateral ties
can't move forward until the whole gory story is known.
But if this runs on, Kim may conclude that confessions
are a Pandora's box and revert back to Bart mode on
other issues. Also, naturally, families of South Korea's
far more numerous abductees are now demanding parity and
want their own loved ones back, or at least news of
their fate.
Lee Hoi-chang agrees, so North-South
ties under him could turn frosty too. Then again, it was
cunning timing of Kim Jong-il finally to let the rail
and road links roll now. If Lee inherits these as a fait
accompli, that locks him into the Sunshine Policy. Yet
making Sinuiju an SAR suggests the first border to open
may be the far less risky one with China.
But as
ever, it's the United States that is crucial. If and
when Kelly goes to Pyongyang, he needs to hear credible
offers of serious dialogue on the nuclear, missile, and
other issues. Will he? Or will a US attack on Iraq
instead stiffen the KPA's resolve not to yield up any of
its own nasty arsenal, for fear of facing the same fate;
and give Pyongyang a pretext to break off North-South
dialogue as well?
It would be tragic if Bush's
seeming determination to do things John Wayne-style in
western Asia torpedoes the Korean peace process as
collateral damage, just when North Korea is at last
showing it is willing to risk real change.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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