As US
Senator John Kerry now appears the presumptive
Democratic challenger to President George W Bush, North
Korea is assessing how its relations with the United
States might change, even improve, with a Kerry victory
in November. Although a lot can happen in eight months,
and the contest looks very close, some polls show Kerry
slightly ahead - and Pyongyang's foreign-policy shapers
too are looking head, as reflected in its
state-controlled media.
But if Pyongyang's
leaders are pinning their hopes for better relations on
a Kerry victory, they are almost certainly mistaken -
relations probably would not improve significantly in a
Kerry presidency, though North Korea might buy more time
to increase its nuclear stockpile. Kerry could, in fact,
prove to be a hardliner and find himself under enormous
pressure from conservatives not to make any concessions
to North Korea. Further, an examination of the record
demonstrates that while some statements appear more
moderate and critical of the Bush administration, some
of Kerry's other statements are very similar to those
made by President Bush - and some are even tougher.
North Korean media rarely comment on US domestic
politics, but the state-run Korean Central News Agency
(KCNA) and Radio Pyongyang - monitored by South Korea's
Yonhap news agency - have recently been reporting on
Kerry and his criticism of Bush's exaggerated claims
about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Kerry's
criticism of what he calls Bush's unproductive hardline
policy toward Pyongyang also has been reported on North
Korean news programs.
Given North Korea's
traditional lack of comment on US domestic politics, the
continued references to Kerry, a Massachusetts liberal,
is considered significant, not incidental, by many Korea
watchers.
Highlighting Kerry's criticism of
Bush In a commentary titled "US must approach
six-way talks with sincerity", dated February 23, before
the last round of talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program,
KCNA said:
"Public figures of different
countries, regions and international organizations and
media hope to see a peaceful settlement of the nuclear
issue between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
(DPRK) and the United States and the denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula with the successful holding of the
six-way talks. Growing louder are voices urging the Bush
administration to approach the six-way talks beginning
from February 25 with sincerity.
"The Bush
administration is delaying talks with Pyongyang, said a
US Democratic senator [John Kerry] on January 28. He
added that it is time a sincere attitude was taken
toward negotiation and if the president fails to
instruct his officials to honestly approach negotiation
and leave no room for this, the US will be unable to get
the goal.
"Senator Kerry, who is seeking [the]
presidential candidacy of the Democratic Party, sharply
criticized President Bush, saying it was an
ill-considered act to deny direct dialogue with North
Korea." (The KCNA website specifies that quotations must
be attributed to the Korean News Service, KCNA, in
Tokyo.)
Conservative websites in the US, some of
them strongly anti-Kerry, have seized on such comments
as proof that the Massachusetts senator is favored by
Pyongyang - in effect a kiss of political death - and
therefore unworthy of the presidency of the United
States.
Judging by these reports, it would
appear that North Korea would prefer dealing with a
President Kerry than a re-elected President Bush. It is
highly likely that Pyongyang would like to see US-North
Korea relations return to the status - far from ideal
but hardly as dangerous as they are now - they enjoyed
in the final 18 months of the presidency of Bill
Clinton. That was an all-time high in bilateral
relations, but such terms are relative. Clinton almost
made a historic, first-ever US presidential trip to
North Korea in November 2000, but decided against it at
the last minute, apparently uncertain that it would
achieve concrete results or become anything but a media
circus.
US-North Korean ties improved under
Clinton However, Clinton did receive vice marshal
Jo Myong-rok - the first vice chairman of North Korea's
National Defense Commission and the second-most-powerful
man in the Pyongyang regime - at the White House in
early October 2000. Jo was acting as a special envoy
from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, and he remains the
most senior North Korean ever to have visited the US.
The meeting was remarkable in itself, given that in
mid-1994 Clinton strongly considered ordering air
strikes on North Korea's nuclear facilities, and vice
marshal Jo, who was the North's air force commander at
the time, was believed to have been ready to order
kamikaze suicide attacks on US naval vessels in nearby
waters.
Reciprocating Jo's visit, secretary of
state Madeleine Albright traveled to Pyongyang two weeks
later, on October 23, becoming the most senior US
official ever to visit North Korea, where she was hosted
by Kim Jong-il himself. (Former US president Jimmy
Carter traveled to Pyongyang during the 1994 nuclear
crisis and held a meeting with the then "Great Leader",
Kim Il-sung, but Carter had been retired for 13 years at
that point, and his visit was undertaken in a private
capacity.) Other notable Americans who visited North
Korea during Clinton's second term included former
defense secretary William Perry in May 1999 and, in a
bizarre case, Clinton's half-brother Roger, a musician,
who performed in a charity rock concert organized
jointly by North and South Korean musicians in December
1999.
By contrast, bilateral relations under the
Bush presidency have been frosty from the start. After
September 11, 2001, Bush designated North Korea as a
member of the "axis of evil", joining Iraq and Iran, and
shortly afterward US officials leaked a story that North
Korea is one of seven countries that the Pentagon sees
as possible targets for nuclear strikes under certain
conditions. Further, Bush told Washington Post reporter
Bob Woodward that he personally "loathe[s]" Kim Jong-il.
With all of this in mind, it is hardly
surprising that Pyongyang would like to see the back of
Bush.
Kerry's agenda is little different from
Bush's Pyongyang may somewhat optimistic, though,
if it expects dramatically improved treatment under a
President Kerry. True, his few pronouncements on the
North Korean issue have had a more moderate tone than
Bush's. But the actual picture is somewhat more
complicated.
Kerry told the New York Times on
March 6 that he favors direct bilateral talks with North
Korea - which is one of Pyongyang's long-standing
demands rejected by Bush. Kerry also criticized the US
for sending "mixed and bad messages" to Pyongyang by
breaking the 1972 US-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)
Treaty and developing more nuclear bunker-busting
weapons.
Kerry's conservative opponents claimed
that his willingness to engage in direct talks - as
opposed to the current arrangement of six-way North
Korea talks involving China, Japan, South Korea, Russia
and the United States - makes him too amenable to
Pyongyang's demands. The Bush administration repeatedly
has said it will not "reward" Pyongyang's "bad behavior"
in any way. North Korea seeks direct talks because this
would increase its sense of prestige in the world,
elevating its status by negotiating with a superpower.
The US has favored the multilateral approach because it
wants to be seen taking into account the views of key
allies Japan and South Korea, as well as major powers
China and Russia.
However, should a future
President Kerry engage directly with North Korea,
Pyongyang might soon find that the six-way talks offer
it far more room for maneuver and delay than one-on-one
talks. This is because it is inherently more complex for
the United States and North Korea to negotiate in the
presence of four other countries, at least two of which
(China and Russia) have historically been sympathetic to
Pyongyang, while the other two have been against it. In
the six-way talks, all parties must act not only keeping
Washington and Pyongyang in mind, but also minding how
they view and relate to one another. Kerry's direct
talks - if they ever were to take place - would remove
these complications, potentially allowing for greater US
pressure on North Korea.
Kerry article
spelled out his North Korea policy Kerry
delivered his most comprehensive statement on North
Korea in a Washington Post opinion piece published last
August 6, long before he became the Democratic Party
candidate for the presidency. Overall, it suggests few
real differences with the Bush administration's policy.
In the opinion article, Kerry advocated
negotiations, but so does the Bush administration. In
terms of goals, Kerry wrote that "ultimately, our goal
is to force North Korea to dismantle its nuclear-weapons
program through an internationally verifiable process
... in a way that prevents the North Koreans from
extracting concessions from us absent compliance by
them". This is exactly what George W Bush is demanding.
On Pyongyang's demand for a security guarantee
from the US, Kerry was slightly more accommodating,
noting, "US commitment not to increase its offensive
capabilities on the Korean Peninsula while Pyongyang is
freezing its nuclear activities is one obvious - and I
believe verifiable - way to move forward". However,
barely a sentence later, he added, "but we must make
clear that we retain all options, including military
options, if North Korea breaks the freeze".
Naturally, it's the part about "military
options" that worries Pyongyang. Fear of a US invasion
a la Iraq has fueled its desire for a
non-aggression pact with the United States. Kerry didn't
specifically mention such a treaty in his article.
Kerry even tougher on drugs, human
rights Kerry also went on to raise other topics
that would surely anger Pyongyang, if he were ever to
become president:
"We must be prepared to
negotiate a comprehensive agreement that addresses the
full range of issues of concern to the United States and
its allies - North Korea's nuclear, chemical, and
missile programs, conventional force deployment, drug
running, and human rights - as well as North Korea's
concerns about security and development." The last two
of these issues - security and economic development -
are fine with Pyongyang, but the other items on Kerry's
agenda are steps that even Bush is not demanding.
If a President Kerry were to force these on to
the negotiating table, talks between the two sides would
soon become very frosty - especially since North Korea
is believed to earn a hefty sum from drug smuggling, and
because as many as 200,000 of its citizens may be held
in concentration and forced-labor camps.
Kerry
concluded his article by saying that pursuing
comprehensive negotiations would strengthen Washington's
position since there would be more grounds for the
military option should peaceful efforts fail. On the two
occasions that Kerry mentions Kim Jong-il, he refers to
him as a "despotic leader" and a "paranoid dictator".
Again, this is hardly music to Pyongyang's ears.
Bearing in mind Kerry's statements and article,
Pyongyang would be foolish to assume automatically that
its national well-being and international relations
would be better under a Kerry presidency. Yet it now
appears that Pyongyang has decided not to make any
serious concessions to the United States in six-way
talks this year - with a view to seeing who wins the US
election (see Talks aside, North Korea won't give up
nukes, March 2).
From all indications, North
Korea decided some time ago that its surest form of
defense lay in the possession of nuclear weapons, and
that it would use negotiations with the US and its
allies as a way of stalling for more time in which to
build up its stockpile. Further, Pyongyang is probably
counting on the likelihood that there will be "no war in
'04", since this is an election year, and Bush would not
want to jeopardize his popularity by waging a costly war
on the Korean Peninsula.
A New Mexican
standoff with Bill Richardson? However, from
Pyongyang's point of view, the regime may not
necessarily see a contradiction in continuing to push
for a security guarantee and diplomatic relations with
the US, while retaining its nukes "just in case".
Pyongyang appears to see a Kerry victory as more
conducive to achieving this goal. This would be
especially true in a Kerry administration if his
foreign-policy team included many Clinton-era officials
who are familiar to Pyongyang.
Indeed, although
Kerry has yet to name a vice-presidential running mate,
one name that has been floated and whom Pyongyang would
probably welcome is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
Since December 1994, Richardson has had extensive
experience negotiating with Pyongyang; at that time he
secured the release of a US helicopter pilot who had
been captured by North Korea after a crash. He also had
diplomatic contacts with North Korean officials in his
capacity as US ambassador to the United Nations from
1997-98 and and as US energy secretary from 1998-2001.
In his cabinet posting he oversaw the provision of US
fuel shipments and new nuclear reactors for North Korea
under the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework - the idea
was to give North Korea alternatives to uranium and
plutonium that could be used to produce weapons.
In January 2003 the current nuclear crisis was
unfolding, after Pyongyang's decision to restart its
main nuclear reactor. Then North Korean officials
traveled to New Mexico, approaching Richardson and
asking him to serve as a back channel to the Bush
administration. If Richardson were to become vice
president, Pyongyang might see him as a friendly, or at
least familiar, ear in the White House.
It is
precisely Kerry's moderate background that might
preclude him from being hasty in granting concessions to
Pyongyang if he becomes president. Democrats have long
been accused of being soft on national-security issues,
and Kerry would be under intense pressure from
Republicans not to concede too much, too quickly. This
is especially true given that the neo-conservatives
around Bush, who withhold any criticism of the president
for fear of alienating him, could become much more vocal
if forced into opposition.
The realities of
office and power also could make Kerry take a harder
line with Pyongyang. Few politicians stick to their
pre-election agendas once elected, as they grasp the
complexities and competing forces that bear on any
issue. Although Clinton mellowed toward Pyongyang in his
second term, in early 1993 he visited the inter-Korean
Demilitarized Zone and warned, "It is pointless for
North Korea to try to develop nuclear weapons, because
if they ever used them, it would be the end of their
country." And in June 1994, as mentioned already,
Clinton was seriously contemplating ordering air strikes
on North Korea - which would have led to war.
Democrats not 'soft' on defense and
security North Korea's foreign-policy makers and
analysts must also be aware that the notion that
Democratic presidents are weaker than Republicans,
especially on security, is contradicted by the
historical record. Franklin D Roosevelt led the US into
World War II, and his successor, Harry S Truman,
authorized the first-ever use of the atomic bomb,
against Japan. It was also Truman who repelled North
Korea's invasion of the South in the Korean War, with a
devastating effect on North Korea itself. It was another
Democratic president, John F Kennedy, who risked nuclear
confrontation with the Soviet Union during the Cuban
missile crisis, and it was Lyndon Johnson who escalated
the United States' last war in Asia, in Vietnam.
And it was Jimmy Carter - often seen as a weak
postwar president - who, five months before the Soviet
Union invaded Afghanistan, signed a directive aimed at
destabilizing latter's communist regime by supporting
Islamic fundamentalist forces.
Pyongyang may at
last be waking up to these facts. KCNA stated recently
that "whoever is elected US president should be willing
to make a switchover in its policy toward the DPRK
(Democratic People's Republic of Korea), drop the
hostile policy toward it and express readiness to
coexist with it". The key, therefore, lies in a change
of policy rather than a change in president.
Paradoxically, if George W Bush wins a second
term, then he may be in a better position to reach some
sort of agreement with North Korea. For one thing, he
would be free of electoral or congressional backlashes.
Also, Republicans would more likely tolerate a deal with
North Korea signed by a Republican president than a new
Democratic president. For Pyongyang, a hardliner would
at least clearly spell out terms and conditions, whereas
moderation could be mistaken for weakness, or even be
seen as a form of deception.
Just as only the
late president Richard M Nixon could go to China,
perhaps only George W Bush could go to Pyongyang.
Yoel Sano has worked for publishing
houses in London, providing political, security and
economic analysis, and has been following North Korea,
as well as other Northeast Asian developments, for more
than 10 years.
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