| |
PYONGYANG
WATCH
Who whom: A North Korean
hexagon
By Aidan Foster-Carter
I've quoted it before, I know. But watching all
the maneuvering ahead of six-party talks on the North
Korean nuclear issue, due in Beijing imminently - this
Wednesday through Friday, to be precise - more than ever
brings to mind that dodgy limerick, vaguely recalled
from my misspent youth, which ends with the lines: "They
argued all night/ Over who had the right/ To do what,
and with what, and to whom."
If anyone does
anything, that is. Kim Jong-il could throw a hissy-fit
and pull out: it wouldn't be the first time. Already,
ominously, last Thursday Pyongyang's government daily,
Minju Joson, accused the United States of making "the
breakdown of the six-party talks an established fact
when the talks are yet to open". Talk about getting your
retaliation in first. What riled the paper was US
threats to take the nuclear issue to the United Nations
Security Council should the six-party talks fail.
Meanwhile North Korea's party paper was a party-pooper
too. As it has done for decades, Rodong Sinmun attacked
a routine US-South Korean military exercise for raising
tensions on the peninsula. Yawn, yawn. Business as
usual.
But back to the limerick. Ten months into
this crisis - oops, sorry, George W says there ain't no
crisis; and hey, he should know - at least the "with
whom" bit is settled, at last. North Korea, you will
recall, had demanded to go one-on-one with the big guy
in Washington - who insisted on asking his friends to
the party too. In April they compromised with a brief
and unsatisfactory threesome in Beijing. Though in
Pyongyang's view, China was just there to make the tea -
a mere host, not a proper participant.
That
dismissive stance, plus other insults - sending a junior
bureaucrat rather than a minister, who told the
Americans in an aside that sure, we got nukes, and what
if we sell 'em, huh? - did nothing to mend the now
distinctly frayed comradeship between a worried China
and its maverick quasi-ally.
Now there are six,
and the hexagonal table is already ordered (yes,
really). For a while it looked like five - which
presumably would have required a pentagon. No Rummy, not
you. Definitely not you.
Leave this one to the
gentler, kinder folks at the State Department. Always
excepting "human scum" John Bolton, the under secretary
for disarmament, whose astonishingly personal anti-Kim
Jong-il tirade - all of it true, none of it tactful -
delivered in Seoul on July 31 prompted Pyongyang, itself
no slouch in the venom stakes, to question his sanity
and say it wouldn't talk to him. As before, the United
States is represented by the assistant secretary for
Asia, Jim Kelly: a relative moderate by Bush camp
standards - meaning pretty hardline to you or me - but a
skilled negotiator, and someone who knows Asia.
Six is the right number. (Wonder who'll sit next
to whom?) Since George W Bush refused, unlike Bill
Clinton before him, to deal bilaterally with Kim Jong-il
- and ABC (Anything But Clinton) remains as close as
Dubya has to a North Korea policy - then no lesser
number would do. The Beijing triangle? Too exclusive.
Four-party talks? Remember them? Thought not. As
I mentioned here in April (Talking to North Korea: Format or
substance?, April 23), from 1997 to 1999 - it
seems longer ago - the two Koreas, China and the US met
six times, mainly in Geneva - and achieved precisely
zilch. The supposed symmetry - each Korea with a big
brother to hold its hand - didn't pan out. In practice,
the other three used to coordinate before confronting
the hard cases from Pyongyang.
Meanwhile from
the sidelines, in rare unison, Japan and Russia griped
that if regional powers were getting in on the Korean
act, then each of them had a strong claim (history,
geography) to be there too.
Take five? After
April, the US demand was for South Korea and Japan to
join the fun. Spot the missing bear. Symmetry and
justice alike demanded that the successor of the state
that created North Korea in the first place, and
sustained it through thick and thin (mainly thin) for
almost half a century before pulling the plug big-time
in 1991, should be at this table too. The more so, since
President Vladimir Putin has worked hard to mend fences
broken by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin: meeting
Kim Jong-il three times in as many years.
No
train trundling over the tundra this summer, though. The
New York Times recently speculated that the Dear Leader,
who went to ground for seven weeks as war with Iraq
began, didn't fancy being a sitting duck for a B-52 as
he chugged slowly toward the border. As if. They
wouldn't - would they?
Besides, although Moscow
(significantly) was where news of the six-way talks
first broke, here too we're hardly talking Red
comradeship. Russia is no keener on a nuclear North
Korea than is China - and that's not all. A recent
civil-defense exercise in Russia's Far East was premised
on a scenario of massive refugee inflows from North
Korea (thus far, most go to China), in the event of
conflict there (see Disaster overshadows Russian war
games, August 23).
So a miffed
Pyongyang refused an invitation to join the Russian
Pacific fleet in naval exercises held on August 22-27,
on the eve of the six-party talks, saying these would
"sharpen the atmosphere". The United States, Japan and
South Korea are all participating. Separately, even
China and Japan recently agreed on naval cooperation.
Spot the lone and lonely juche yachtsman - or
should that be submariner, or spyboat?
No love
lost all around, then. But at least the "who whom" (in
Lenin's curt phrase, cutting to the chase) is sorted
out. That still leaves the do what doo-wop, and the with
what. More on those next time.
Next: Setting the agenda
Aidan
Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in
sociology and modern Korea, Leeds University,
England.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
