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PYONGYANG WATCH
Talking to North Korea: Format or
substance?
By Aidan Foster-Carter
A limerick whose first two lines I can't
remember - just as well, since they were probably rude -
ends thus: "They argued all night / Over who had the
right / To do what, and with what, and to whom".
This seems an apt comment on some of the more
shortsighted and self-serving reactions to what ought to
be an unambiguous cause for relief. This week, with any
luck, North Korea's nuclear crisis is finally about to
be the subject of talks. Not a moment too soon, after
more than six months of rising tension.
So who's
talking? That's the problem. We know where: Beijing. We
know when: starting April 23 - unless Pyongyang's
bizarre weekend curveball - oh and by the way, guys,
we've started reprocessing; oops! sorry, mistranslation,
but we're well on the way - rattles the US into pulling
out. I do hope not. God only knows what Kim Jong-il was
playing at, but the only way to find out is to sit down
and talk.
And we know who - or do we? Three-way
talks, according to Washington, thus meeting its
insistence on a multilateral format. That's not how
Pyongyang sees it: just them and Uncle Sam, with China
to lay the table but little more. China's own version
seems closer to the North Korean one, it must be said.
Disagreement already, and we're not yet at first
base. But worry not. Creative ambiguity can be good.
Different definitions of the situation matter less, at
this point, than the fact that they will meet and
talk.
For the same reason, the shrill whining of
the "excluded" is premature. Trust South Korea's rancid
right-wing press to portray Seoul's absence as some kind
of national insult. Gamely, and correctly, the new
President Roh Moo-hyun countered that format is less
important than substance. But still, it was tactful of
the North - which has been oddly rude to a counterpart
so keen to keep beaming sunshine: firing a missile at
his inauguration and canceling talks, even while
demanding rice and fertilizer - to offer a separate
inter-Korean meeting at the end of this month, as a kind
of consolation prize for Seoul.
Japan and Russia
too let their disappointment show, albeit more mutedly.
Moscow has worked hard to get Kim Jong-il to see reason;
while in Tokyo, fear of missiles and anger over
abductees has replaced the hopes raised by Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi's now abortive-seeming
tete-a-tete with Kim Jong-il last autumn.
Yet
Russia has less real clout than China. As for Japan,
North Korea - like South Korea - may never agree to give
the ex-colonial power a formal role in any planning of
the peninsula's future.
That might be unfair, or
too pessimistic. But either way, the Beijing meeting is
just the start (or restart) of a very long march.
There'll be ample time farther down the road to argue
about who else can join in.
There is plenty of
precedent for all manner of permutations and
combinations on the peninsula. Half a century ago, the
armistice ending the Korean War (there is still no peace
treaty) was signed by the same trio now set to meet in
Beijing - except that the United States was acting for
the United Nations: one reason North Korea has never
been that keen on the world body. South Korea didn't
sign: Syngman Rhee was all for fighting on. Nor did the
Soviet Union, which wasn't in the war - or not
officially. Nor did Japan, for the same reason.
More recently, does anyone remember four-way
talks? Between 1997 and 1999 - it seems longer ago - the
two Koreas, China and the United States met six times,
mainly in Geneva - and did nothing much. They had jolly
jaunts, including to a cheeseworks: Emmenthal or
Gruyere, I forget. Why a cheeseworks? To get tips, one
imagined, on how to concoct something seemingly solid,
but odorous and full of hidden holes.
Just like
the Agreed Framework, I hear you mutter. Not so fast.
That earlier deal may now be in limbo; but whatever you
think of the content, the format was innovative - and
positive. Then as now, North Korea refused any
multilateral forum, demanding to talk to the big fella.
Okay, said the US (Bill Clinton); but you'll also have
to deal with our agents, the Korean Peninsula Energy
Development Organization.
The KEDO consortium
was a stroke of genius, smuggling in South Korea and
Japan (and anyone else prepared to pay) via the back
door. The paying was and is a sore point. When Seoul's
foreign minister Yoon Young-kwan warned recently that
South Korea won't finance any deal it hasn't been
involved in negotiating, this was a dig at KEDO. The US
did the talking, but guess who picked up most of the
tab.
Yet that is shortsighted. I'd argue that
KEDO has done more for substantive inter-Korean ties
than any other contact before or since, including the
2000 summit. Under it hundreds of South Korean engineers
live and work in the North, alongside North Koreans.
Such concrete cooperation is surely what counts. And
couldn't that consortium format be extended? How about
KFDO (food), or KIDO (infrastructure)?
So let's
face it: North Korea just doesn't do multilateral. It
didn't then, and it won't now. For one thing, its
juche ideology abhors universalism in favor of
unbridled national self-will. For another, Kim Jong-il
suspects that if a multitude are gathered together,
they'll all gang up on him. The four-way talks were a
case in point. The supposed symmetry - North Korea had
China, as South Korea had the US - never worked. In
practice, the other three used to coordinate before
confronting the aliens from Pyongyang.
Bilateral
may be better, as each interlocutor can raise their own
particular agenda. Thus kidnaps loom large for Japan,
but are not an issue for anyone else (Seoul chooses not
to raise this). Coordination is vital, of course. The
US, South Korea and Japan have set up a Trilateral
Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG), where vice
ministers meet regularly to ensure they're all singing
from the same sheet.
This can also allow a
division of labor. Those European Union states that
lately recognized North Korea warned it that human
rights were high on their list, being low on everyone
else's. Sure enough, the EU has just sponsored a
critical resolution - the first ever, amazingly - at the
UN Commission on Human Rights.
Horses for
courses. North Korea is everyone's problem - but that
doesn't mean everyone has to turn up and gang up
everywhere, every time. Roh Moo-hyun is right. Substance
matters much more than form. Pragmatism, flexibility,
and creativity should be the watchwords. And any talks
are better than no talks.
Aidan
Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in
sociology and modern Korea, Leeds University,
England.
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