Asia Times Online :: Korea News and Korean Business and Economy, Pyongyang News

Korea

May 21, 2005

Pyongyang reveals its hand
By Selig Harrison

(Republished with permission from Japan Focus)

During the next three months, North Korea will unload its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, removing fuel rods that can be reprocessed into plutonium for more nuclear weapons. Once again, Pyongyang is offering to negotiate a freeze that would prevent further reprocessing, as it did in June, 1994, leading to the Agreed Framework, and as it has repeatedly offered to do in the six-party talks.

This is the good news emerging from my ninth visit to North Korea from April 5 to April 9. The bad news is that Pyongyang is no longer prepared to discuss the dismantlement of its existing nuclear weapons as part of the six-party process in Beijing. First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju told this writer categorically that North Korea would no longer engage in discussions on dismantlement until the United States normalized its economic and political relations with Pyongyang and made a credible commitment not to continue promoting "regime change".

What this posture means is that Pyongyang intends to keep the nuclear weapons it already claims to possess, but is prepared to rule out the enlargement of its arsenal by negotiating a freeze.

My meetings in Pyongyang included Kim Yong Name-nam, president of the Supreme People's Assembly (one hour), Kang Sok-ju (two hours), Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan, who has represented Pyongyang until now in the Beijing talks (five hours) and General Ri Chan-bok, the North Korean representative at Panmunjom (two hours).

All of them emphasized that North Korea now considered itself to be on a par with the US as a nuclear weapons state and that the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula must now embrace "the US nuclear threat in the peninsula and its vicinity" as well as the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear weapons.

This position was spelled out at length in a March 31 Foreign Ministry pronouncement calling for the removal of the US nuclear weapons allegedly stored in secret at Kunsan and other US bases in the South. However, it was clear that these are not serious immediate demands. North Korean inspections of US bases in the South, I was told, would logically have to be accompanied by some form of inspection of North Korean nuclear facilities involving the US, but such reciprocal inspection arrangements could only occur, as a practical matter, after the US and North Korea had established normalized relations and had greater mutual trust.

What North Korea wants now is a start toward normalization with the US in the form of direct bilateral talks with the US. A direct bilateral dialogue is regarded as an essential first gesture of a willingness to recognize and legitimize the North Korean regime. Six-party talks could also be held, but Pyongyang's emphasis is on direct talks.

Kim Gye-gwan emphasized that North Korea was not seeking to impose preconditions for its participation in the six-party talks relating to the agenda, such as a US willingness to discuss its March 31 demands. However, North Korea would not attend, he said, unless the US "improves the atmosphere for the talks by making clear that it is not seeking regime change".

The formal North Korean position is that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should apologize for calling North Korea "an outpost of tyranny". But Kim Yong-nam said, "If they are not prepared to do that, there should be some other way to provide us with a justification to attend. It's up to them to find a way. The ball is in their court."

Similarly, Kang Sok-ju said that it was not enough for Rice to have said: "No one denies that North Korea is a sovereign state." I asked whether it would be satisfactory if she said that "the United States will respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the DPRK and is prepared for peaceful coexistence despite the differences in our social systems". "That's something we can accept," he said, "But we want to hear it directly in open or secret discussions with the US."

"We need a springboard to be at the six-party talks," Kang added, "some signal that the United States treats us with respect. We have to convince our army and our people that we are acting in a way consistent with the dignity of a sovereign state that is respected as a strong military state. It's not a difficult thing to be at the six-party talks, but we can't do so if we are going there under pressure."

Although Kang Sok-ju and Li Gun, director of the American Affairs Bureau in the Foreign Ministry, told me flatly that the periodic unloading of the Yongbyon reactor would begin this month, I could not get them to say whether the unloading had already started, or to specify precisely when it would start. Similarly, all of those I met were vague about whether a nuclear test explosion was being planned, or whether one was even necessary.

When I asked Kim Yong-nam how he knew North Korea's nuclear weapons would work in the absence of a test, he replied, "The agencies concerned are convinced that they have all the preparations made properly, and that our nuclear weapons are operational." General Ri Chan-bok said, "There's no need for a test, and we don't want to have one, even one underground, because of the fallout. Without a test, our nuclear deterrent will be functional. We are ready to put warheads on our missiles whenever we want."

This statement suggested that the warheads were not yet on the missiles. It also prompted me to ask whether the North Korean deterrent consisted only of missiles, or also included air-deliverable nuclear bombs. "In the 21st century," he replied, "it's hard for me to believe that any country would use air deliverable nuclear weapons."

Selig S Harrison is director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy. Harrison is the author of numerous books including Korea Endgame: A Strategy for Korean Unification and US Disengagement. He has visited North Korea nine times.

(Republished with permission from Japan Focus)

Head Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong Kong
Thailand Bureau: 11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110