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Pyongyang sparks movement under the
radar
By Jasper Becker
SEOUL
- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was reportedly so
terrified when US forces started their "shock and awe"
bombing campaign to "decapitate" Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein that he fled his country. Defectors based in
Seoul say Kim went in his specially armored train across
the narrow border linking his country with Russia and
stayed there for weeks, fearing he might be next.
Whether or not the story is true, he certainly
disappeared from public view for several months, and
Russia is his best ally. But that isn't saying much.
Although the Russians trained his nuclear scientists and
equipped him with the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in the
1980s on the condition that he join the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and place the
experimental reactor under the supervision of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he has
largely worn out his welcome - with everybody.
Certainly, as the world gets ready for six-power
talks, including the United States, China, Russia, Japan
and South Korea, over the future of North Korea and its
bombs, there is vigorous activity below the surface as
countries jockey for position and attempt to protect
themselves from either the United States and its hawkish
administration, or from Kim and his often-unpredictable
stratagems.
However worried the world is about
North Korea, or however worried South Korea is about the
world, the news in Seoul itself that North Korea said it
had reprocessed spent nuclear fuel rods and was busily
making bombs barely made it on to the front pages of the
daily papers. October 3 was National Foundation Day, and
the news didn't provoke many papers to run editorials
even after President Roh Moo-hyun described it as a
"bombshell".
"I don't think they really mean it.
The North Koreans are always trying to boast about these
things," said Young Chang, a 29-year-old nurse.
"South Koreans think of the North as the
alcoholic uncle who keeps knocking on the door. No one
wants to acknowledge the problem or deal with it," said
Scott Snyder, a top Korea watcher with the US-based Asia
Foundation. "Koreans feel this is a family affair and
would rather not see it become an international issue."
North Korea thus is really Washington's problem.
The invasion of Iraq was based on the premise that the
United Nations could not enforce the NPT and that by
invading the weakest member, it would be possible to get
cooperation from other states. Even America's unwilling
allies, the theory went, would want to do something
about Iran or North Korea if only to forestall another
unilateral action by Washington.
So far the plan
is working, sort of. With Iran, the European Union and
the IAEA have stepped up the pressure. On North Korea,
there too is success.
Aside from the US, the
three powers - China, Japan, Russia - have all turned up
the heat on North Korea and next month are due to take
part in the second round of six-party talks - the other
participants being North and South Korea - designed to
drive the message home.
Globally, China is the
biggest winner in the Korean equation. Since the start
of the year, its position of benign indifference to the
issue has changed dramatically and Washington is
sounding very grateful. Western diplomats in Beijing say
that in February when US assistant secretary of state
James Kelly came to Beijing and bluntly warned that
without action the United States would launch a
preemptive strike against North Korea's nuclear
facilities, he caught the attention of the new Chinese
Communist Party secretary, Hu Jintao.
China
temporarily suspended deliveries of oil and food to the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and has
kept warning Pyongyang not to do anything rash or
provocative. Last month it drove home the message by
sending 100,000 troops to the border with North Korea.
That is largely why North Korea was forced to
participate in the first round of six-nation talks
against its will.
It became clear in 1991 that
the IAEA had failed to supervise both Saddam Hussein's
nuclear program and North Korea's. Even by then there
was considerable evidence to show that North Korea had
diverted enough rods to extract plutonium for several
bombs.
That discovery almost led to war in 1993
and 1994. US president Bill Clinton was hours away from
deciding on a preemptive strike when former president
Jimmy Carter came back with a deal.
Under what
become known as the Agreed Framework, Pyongyang agreed
to allow the IAEA inspectors back in return for the
United States promising to deliver half a million tonnes
of fuel oil and helping to build two large light-water
nuclear reactors to help solve North Korea's energy
crisis.
Most of the cost and the work were to be
borne by Japan and South Korea and in addition, Clinton
gave a written undertaking not to attack or invade North
Korea. Yet despite a last-minute push before he retired
from office, Clinton never managed to put together a
larger package.
"A key problem was always then
and now that the White House could never come up with a
deal that it could get past Congress. There is no
bi-partisan approach to the issue," said Snyder.
When US policy changed after September 11, 2001,
and President George W Bush made his "axis of evil"
speech, he signaled that any talk of engagement was
over. Kim Jong-il has managed to make things far worse
than he need have and can consider himself lucky that
his corner of the axis has not yet become the No 1 issue
in Washington.
While Iran and Iraq have denied
the existence of any nuclear-weapons program, forcing
the Americans to find the proof, Kim has taunted
Washington by expelling the IAEA inspectors and by
repeatedly broadcasting his ambition to become a nuclear
power.
He made matters still worse last October
when Kelly came to Pyongyang. In a fit of fury Kim let
it be known that he had not only had secretly continued
with the weapons program after 1994 but had embarked on
a second, hitherto secret program to obtain fissile
material by the process of highly enriching uranium.
By doing so, Kim showed that the Bush
administration was justified in dumping the Clinton
engagement policy because North Korea was now in breach
of a whole series of commitments. Chief among these was
a landmark pact negotiated with South Korea in 1992
under which both sides forswore nuclear weapons on the
peninsula.
Kim took further missteps when a year
ago Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi came to
Pyongyang offering to establish diplomatic recognition
and provide up to US$13 billion in aid.
Hoping
to clear the air, Kim admitted to ordering the
kidnapping of various Japanese citizens but then
revealed that some had died while in captivity for
unexplained reasons. Japanese public opinion became
further incensed when North Korea allowed some of the
captives to return to Japan for a visit but then
insisted they return. When Japan refused to let them
back, North Korea prevented their families from leaving
North Korea, all of which put Tokyo firmly in
Washington's camp.
The result is that both Tokyo
and the United States have suspended nearly all
deliveries of food and fuel. The project to build the
nuclear power stations has stopped and Tokyo has now
signed up for Washington's missile defense system.
North Korea is also in breach of its commitments
to China to keep the peninsula free of nuclear weapons.
For fear of antagonizing China still further, Kim has
shied away from threats to test a nuclear weapon or test
more long-range missiles.
Washington is still
being very cautious about asserting that Pyongyang has
any nuclear weapons. North Korea might clearly just be
bluffing, hoping to deter a preemptive strike and
besides, for the past 10 years military planners have
always had to work on the assumption that the DPRK does
possess weapons of mass destruction.
Pyongyang's
problem is that if it goes ahead and removes the
ambiguity, then there is no point in more talks anyway.
It wants the United States to provide aid and security
guarantees in exchange for its promise to abandon all
nuclear-weapons programs. Once it has the weapons, what
is there to negotiate?
Further, North Korea's
credibility, poor to begin with, has now vanished
altogether. Since it has not kept to earlier
commitments, even if the United States accepted its
proposals, it is quite impossible to see how the US or
anyone else could conceivably operate an independent
weapons-inspection program in such a secretive country,
with more than 1,000 kilometers of tunnels and caves.
It is impossible to imagine the kind of flying
squads of inspectors seen in Iraq rushing around North
Korea followed by posses of journalists. So great is the
distrust of North Korea that there is little prospect
that the US Congress would ever endorse such a deal even
if the Bush administration would negotiate it.
Kim's miscalculations have now ensured that
three of the great powers are lined up against him. That
leaves only South Korea as the loudest advocate of
engagement, but the Sunshine Policy has lost its allure.
Public enthusiasm has dwindled and so has business
sentiment as almost all the investment projects started
after 1998 have collapsed.
The momentum of the
Kim Dae-jung presidency has ensured that new South
Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has been gamely trying to
persuade Washington to soften its tone. He is also being
reluctant to send troops to Iraq for fear of
antagonizing the North.
"South Koreans are
getting angry about the Sunshine Policy but the forces
which support it are still intact," said Dr Paik
Hak-soon, a North Korea watcher at the Sejong Institute,
an independent think-tank.
He believes that
threatening the North actually plays into Kim's hands
because it justifies his "military first" dictatorship,
ensuring that the country remains in a permanent state
of emergency in which no meaningful reform can be
started. In his eyes, Kim is actually a closet reformer
whose intentions are kept in check by the military
hardliners he counts on to stay in power.
As
Washington gets steadily closer to pinning Kim in a
corner on the diplomatic front, it is increasing the
pressure in other ways. The US and South Korea have
embarked on a $13 billion military-modernization program
to introduce the hardware and strategies used with such
success in Iraq. Also being put in place is a
multinational scheme for a naval blockade to restrict
exports of sensitive military technology and drugs.
This would block the DPRK's means to earn
currency revenues at the same time as international aid
shipments have slumped to its lowest level in five
years. Inside North Korea, conditions are said to be
getting close to those seen in 1996 and 1997, when some
3 million perished of disease and hunger.
Kim
has inevitably concluded that the United States is
determined to get rid of him come what may. If the US
did decide to attack, it could be expected to wait until
some time into the second term of another Bush
administration when the military buildup is
completed.
It now seems that Kim's best hope is
to try and hang on in the hope that with US presidential
elections just 13 months away, Bush will be defeated and
an incoming Democrat would go back to the engagement
policies of the Clinton administration.
In the
meantime the Bush administration can sit back and wait
to see if the diplomatic talks go any where. If Kim can
be goaded into abandoning them, then so much the better.
Washington will then be entitled to push through a tough
condemnation at the United Nations which could lead
toward sanctions and a justification for any future
military actions.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
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