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North Korea: Door to diplomacy still
open
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG
KONG - North Korea, for much of the past five decades,
has been relegated to a diplomatic backwater. Determined
to pursue autarchy, or what is known ideologically as
juche, it has eked out an existence based on its
self-imposed isolation.
Accusing the United
States of planning an invasion after its war in Iraq,
North Korea has cut off the only regular military
contact with the US-led command that monitors the Korean
War armistice concluded in 1953. The move will further
isolate the communist country amid tensions over its
suspected nuclear-weapons programs in Yongbyon.
Over the past decade, North Korea has been
regularly in the news for all the wrong reasons. When
widespread famine broke out in 1995, the regime's
collapse was deemed imminent. Since then, however, the
infamous hermit kingdom has remained intact.
Pyongyang's reputation in the post-Cold War
order has also been decrepit at best. In 1998 it
suddenly fired a missile across Japanese air space and
into the latter's territorial waters. North Korea was
quickly labeled a "rogue power". The habit of lobbing
missiles has not stopped. As recently as February and
March, North Korea repeated the provocative actions,
twice. Months before that, Pyongyang even admitted to
illegally kidnapping Japanese nationals.
That
said, is North Korea necessarily beyond redemption?
Can't the international community engage it at all? Is
the situation in North Korea heading for a nuclear
showdown with the United States and its allies? Some
analysts have averred that this time around, the United
States will not tolerate North Korea anymore.
"The US administration is ... ideologically less
willing to deal with North Korea ... unwilling to deal
with rogue states, unwilling to give concessions in
recognition of good behavior," Tat Yan Kong, a lecturer
at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),
told BBC News Online.
Gary Samore, of the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, stressed
that US President George W Bush "truly feels it is an
evil regime" and is "reluctant to ... help to sustain
this government".
But if history is a guide, the
situation is not hopeless. In 1985, North Korea proved
itself capable of compromise when it signed the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The move was encouraged
by the administration of US president Ronald Reagan,
which sought to provide Pyongyang with "modest" economic
aid.
Six years later, following on the Reagan
administration's gambit, president George Bush Sr
withdrew tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea.
Pyongyang reciprocated the gesture in equal measure. On
December 30, 1991, Pyongyang agreed to the signing of
the Joint Declaration for the Denuclearization of the
Korean Peninsula with Seoul.
Although the
agreement was initially devoid of meaning, since North
Korea refused to allow inspections to be carried out by
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the
diplomatic breakthrough was critical as it improved the
atmospherics of the Korean Peninsula. Later, North Korea
also agreed to permit two IAEA officials to be stationed
there. It was not until last December that the IAEA
officials were removed from the scene.
On the
inter-Korean front, the relationship between North and
South Korea isn't as hopeless as some may imagine
either. Close to 10 rounds of cabinet-level ministerial
talks have been held between the two sides since the
Inter-Korean Summit in June 2000 between North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il and former president Kim Dae-jung of
South Korea.
The progress on the diplomatic
front, although subject to repeated breakdowns, does
indicate that North Korea is not necessarily impervious
to engagement. It implies that the engagement process is
incomplete, perhaps subject to intra-elite jockeying
both in Pyongyang and elsewhere.
Be that as it
may, as the world watches keenly for a possible
breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula, Kim Jong-il has
taken to keeping a tight lid on his next move. Instead,
Kim has transformed the agenda by shifting North Korea's
original focus on national reconciliation to one
revolving on leveraging Pyongyang's bargaining position
further. So far, two strategies can be discerned from
Kim's plan over the past three years.
First, Kim
has relied on great-power diplomacy by assiduously, and
separately, cultivating North Korea's relationship with
China and Russia. In 2001, Kim met with president Jiang
Zemin of China and President Vladimir Putin of Russia
(twice). This diplomacy is all the more remarkable as
Kim Jong-il is the only leader in this world who never
travels by air. Rather, he has always traveled by train,
which he did to Beijing. In September 2001, Jiang
reciprocated the gesture by visiting North Korea, thus
strengthening Beijing's and Pyongyang's bilateral ties
further; a relationship that has experienced certain
neglect after Beijing had established its formal
relationship with South Korea in 1995.
Looking
back on the great-power diplomacy of North Korea, Korea
watchers have concurred that Pyongyang was trying to
consolidate its relationships with these two powers in
order to counter-check the economically stronger South
Korea and its traditional backer the United States in
the event of any future summits.
Second,
Pyongyang has resorted to the use of nuclear blackmail
to compel the United States, the main backer of South
Korea and Japan, to yield to North Korea's demand for
economic aid. This is a tried and tested strategy of
Pyongyang that was used in 1993. When it was first
employed, it led the administration of US president Bill
Clinton to agree to the building of two light-water
nuclear reactors for North Korea under the Korean
Peninsula Economic Development Organization (KEDO)
framework.
Nevertheless, since neither strategy
has served to make North Korea feel completely secure -
as abandonment by great powers remains high - the
diplomatic behavior of North Korea has appeared more
erratic than before.
The fact is North Korea is
afraid that its regime may collapse due to a combination
of economic problems and aggression initiated by the
United States. It is for this reason that North Korea
has felt compelled to seek a non-aggression treaty from
the United States when it has traditionally been able to
live with verbal security assurances, both from the
United States and South Korea, that it won't be
attacked.
Historically, whenever Pyongyang has
felt isolated or insecure, it has resorted to taking
seemingly rash or "irrational" actions, such as by
firing missiles or launching surreptitious submarine
raids into South Korean and even Japanese waters.
While these tactics have the effect of
blackmailing the United States and its allies to reopen
talks out of which Pyongyang can then extract various
economic concessions, North Korea's moves are strategic
too. They stem from forcing the United States and its
allies to come to the table to redress the deep-seated
insecurity complex of North Korea, a psychological
condition exacerbated by years of isolation from the
rest of the world. Indeed, the determination of the
present Bush administration to extend anti-missile
capability to South Korea is another source of fear.
To be sure, China and Russia do not want North
Korea to go nuclear, as doing so would compel South
Korea and Japan to venture down the same path -
therefore complicating Beijing's and Moscow's diplomatic
relationship with these countries. Inevitably, both are
trying to control or moderate North Korea's behavior.
This is manifested in their joint attempt to forestall
the United States from deploying missile defense systems
in the Korean Peninsula in future, most likely on the
pretext of countering North Korea.
For what it
is worth, North Korea's desire to go nuclear has
justifiably evoked serious concern among the United
States, South Korea and Japan. After all, since the end
of the Korean War in 1953, the two Koreas have faced
each other across the Demilitarized Zone, engaged most
of the time in unremitting, unregenerate hostility,
punctuated by occasional, brief thaws and increasing
exchanges between Pyongyang and Seoul. As is well known,
huge armies are still poised to fight at a moment's
notice.
Be that as it may, North Korea is not
beyond redemption yet. As long as the Bush
administration is willing to consider the views of
Pyongyang on the non-aggression treaty - just as the
Reagan administration appeased North Korea in 1985 - the
North Korea situation will not necessarily develop to
the stage where actors come to blows.
Still, the
window of opportunity cannot remain open forever. The
Bush administration is well warned to listen to
Pyongyang before it loses the chance. Appeasing North
Korea, unsavory as this may sound, to avoid a second war
cannot be a bad option, since the United States cannot
remain indefinitely on the military treadmill after the
campaign in Iraq.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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