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SPEAKING FREELY
Time for Pyongyang to show the
goods
By
Jang Sung-min
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click
here if you are
interested in contributing.
The
situation on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia
region is drifting toward a crisis after the United
States and North Korea made an informal agreement in New
York on July 8.
The looming crisis was triggered
by North Korea's claims that it has already reactivated
its five-megawatt nuclear reactor in the name of its
alleged peaceful nuclear-energy activities and that it
has also resumed the operations of its 50MW and 200MW
nuclear reactors. In addition, the reclusive Stalinist
state disclosed that it finished reprocessing 8,000
spent fuel rods as of June 30 and that it had no choice
but to use them to secure nuclear deterrence against
foreign aggression, while advising the United States
that it would continue extracting plutonium from the
five-megawatt nuclear reactor at a future time as deemed
appropriate.
At present, there is no way to
validate such claims as true or false. However, if they
are true, the United States' North Korean nuclear
policies as so far formulated and implemented through
cooperative efforts with South Korea would not be
assessed as effective enough to have prevented Pyongyang
from restarting its nuclear-development program. Rather,
South Korea and the US would be chastised for having
failed to stop Pyongyang's nuclear-development moves,
even inadvertently accelerating them by adopting
lopsided North Korea policies based on military threats.
Inevitably, South Korea and the US would then have to
shift from their current threat-based North Korean
policies to economic-cooperation-driven policies.
However, if North Korea's claims were found to
be nothing more than continued nuclear bluffing tactics,
anticipations on the North side of a resolution of the
nuclear issue through negotiations would rapidly
plummet. Also, the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon would
likely become indisputable military target coordinates,
and the North Korean nuclear issue would be immediately
referred to the United Nations.
In a nutshell,
if all of the North's claims were to found to be true,
the North Korea policies shared by South Korea and the
United States would prove to have resulted in a failure,
while on the other hand, if the claims were to found as
bluffs, the North's nuclear policies with the US would
end in a fiasco.
As this situation unfolds, all
attention is being paid to what assessment and
interpretation the United States is coming up with in
terms of North Korea's claims. After being directly
notified in New York by Park Gil-yeon, North Korea's
ambassador to the United Nations, the US State
Department has assessed North Korea's intentions in four
distinctive respects, as follows.
First, a strong impression has been received that
North Korea intends to drive toward becoming a nuclear
state.
Second, it is a matter of very grave concern that
North Korea has for the first time confronted the United
States with information on when it finished its nuclear
reprocessing work along with its publicized intention to
produce nuclear weapons, and that it disclosed its
milestones for the completion of building 50MW and 200MW
nuclear reactors.
Third, it is assessed that North Korea's decision to
use its channels in New York through Ambassador Park to
further negotiations with the US derives from its
strategic attempt to free itself from any pressures from
its blood-forged ally, China.
Fourth, it remains to be seen in what direction the
current situation will progress after Chinese Vice
Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo's visit to North Korea. At
present, mounting attention is paid to what outcomes his
visits to North Korea will bring forth.
However,
South Korea and the United States must make cooperative
efforts to establish a more concrete contact channel
with North Korea to verify whether the North has in fact
fully completed the reprocessing of the spent fuel rods.
As for the North side, it must show real evidence for
its claim that it has finished reprocessing the spent
fuel rods, for there will be no new turning point to
break the deadlock as long as all the parties concerned
continue to believe North Korea's claims to be
exaggerations or bluffs. If Pyongyang actually has
finished reprocessing the spent fuel rods but refuses to
disclose relevant and substantial evidence, this might
in the end invite new miscalculations about the North's
nuclear-development program.
Jang
Sung-min, former member of the South Korean National
Assembly and of the Unification, Foreign Affairs and
Trade Committee and author of Bush Administration's
Foreign Policy and Korea After 9/11, is a visiting
scholar of the Center for International Studies at Duke
University, North Carolina. E-mail: smjjang21@hanmail.net
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click
here if you are
interested in contributing.
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