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COMMENTARY
Pyongyang talks the
talk
By James A Kelly
Note: This article offers a US
view of relations with North Korea and the
six-party talks. For a North Korean view, see
Why North Korea isn't
talking in Asia Times Online on
June 11.
There is no country in Asia,
indeed in the world, that behaves like the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Since its founding more than a half century ago,
the DPRK has pursued a different course, always
troubling. For 13-15 years it has been the very
center of Northeast Asian tensions.
This
path has been one of uninterrupted hardship for
most of North Korea's people, with an exceptional
loss of life to starvation. Now, as several times
before, nuclear weapons are at the center of these
tensions, and there are serious dangers.
But these tensions can be eased at any
time. DPRK sovereignty is recognized and if it
turns not just part way, but completely and
transparently from its nuclear-weapons policy it
can have solid security assurances. Indeed, many
countries would hasten to provide aid and support
to the DPRK's participation in the global system.
So far, the DPRK chooses not to ease these
tensions. It will negotiate, but apparently only
about negotiations, not about the central issue
that would diminish tensions. Why does a country
seem to seek tension? It has been made clear to
the DPRK in and out of the six-party talks that US
security assurances, guaranteed in a multilateral
process, are available to it if it verifiably ends
all segments of its nuclear-weapons programs.
Since 2003, the DPRK has said little about
desiring security assurances. Its leadership may
believe that threats and tensions serve its needs
better than guarantees of security and a peaceful
atmosphere.
The only way to look at the
present situation is to look carefully at history.
From that examination nations can devise
essentially peaceful policies that, although
necessarily uncertain, promise to offer the best
chance of resolution.
Lesson of
history
The DPRK leadership decades ago
set out on a path that would allow it to acquire
nuclear weapons. Recently released Soviet-era
documents show attempts as early as 1963 to obtain
nuclear materials. North Korea began construction
of its five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon in 1979.
Under international pressure, it joined the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985,
but did not sign its comprehensive safeguards
agreement with the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) until 1992. Within months, the IAEA
found evidence of inconsistencies in North Korea's
declarations with respect to its nuclear program.
We now know that plutonium in quantity sufficient
for one or two nuclear weapons had been
reprocessed before 1992. This provided the first
part of the nuclear-weapons program that the DPRK
will some day have to choose to end.
By
1993, IAEA requests for additional inspections
that were denied led North Korea to announce its
intention to withdraw from the NPT. As tensions
mounted, the US and North Korea began talks that
culminated in the Agreed Framework of 1994. That
agreement obligated the DPRK not to produce
fissile material at its declared nuclear
facilities at Yongbyon. It froze, under
supervision by IAEA inspectors, some 8,000 spent
fuel rods that could have been reprocessed into
plutonium. The agreement's goal, as stated in its
preface, was an overall resolution of the nuclear
issue on the Korean peninsula . In return, the US
offered deliveries of heavy fuel and a consortium
funded largely by South Korea and Japan began
construction on two reactors optimized for power
generation. The absence of direct South Korean
participation in the Agreed Framework
negotiations, a matter of vital concern for all
Koreans, obviously offended many.
Both the
provision of heavy fuel and the new reactors
compensated for a myth, that North Korea 's
Yongbyon reactor was for power generation. In
fact, the reactor produces very little power other
than to sustain itself, but is optimized to
produce sources of fissionable material. The
Agreed Framework, by no means wrongly given the
situation of 1994, was a freeze in exchange for a
reward.
That agreement did not, as we
learned later, end the North Korean nuclear-arms
programs. By the summer of 2002, American
intelligence, with unusual unanimity, assessed
that North Korea was pursuing a large-scale covert
program to produce enriched uranium - in violation
of the Agreed Framework, the North-South Joint
Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula, the NPT, and the DPRK's Safeguards
Agreement with the IAEA. In fact, North Korea had
been pursuing the enrichment program for a number
of years, even as it was receiving a pledge of
non-hostility and negotiating with senior Bill
Clinton administration officials about ballistic
missiles.
In October 2002, this writer led
a delegation to Pyongyang to confront the North
Koreans with our assessment that they had a
uranium-enrichment program. DPRK first vice
foreign minister Kang Sok-ju told us that the
hostile policy of the US administration had left
North Korea with no choice but to pursue such a
program. When we pointed out that North Korea had
been pursuing such a program long before President
George W Bush's election, he had no response.
Once caught in violation of their
international obligations, instead of ending their
covert uranium-enrichment program, the North
Koreans escalated the situation after compensating
heavy fuel deliveries stopped. In December 2002,
they expelled IAEA inspectors and began to
reactivate the five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon.
In January 2003, the DPRK announced its withdrawal
from the NPT. And on several occasions in 2003, it
declared it had finished reprocessing its
8,000-plus existing spent fuel rods. If that is
indeed the case, it could have produced enough
fissile material for several additional nuclear
weapons. Since then, the DPRK has stated it is
strengthening what it calls its "nuclear deterrent
capability".
The DPRK nuclear-weapons
program has three parts by my assessment. One is
the original (1990) plutonium, the second part is
whatever plutonium has been reprocessed since
2003, and the third consists of fissionable
material that the covert uranium enrichment effort
has or will produce.
The US has adhered to
two basic principles to deal with this threat.
First, we seek the dismantlement of all DPRK
nuclear programs in a permanent, thorough, and
transparent manner, subject to international
verification. There is risk in all DPRK
nuclear-weapons programs and no point in accepting
another partial solution that does not deal with
the entirety of the problem. The US does not
intend to allow North Korea to threaten anyone
further with a revival of its nuclear program.
Second, because the North's nuclear
programs threaten its neighbors and the integrity
of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime, we
believe the threat can best be dealt with through
multilateral diplomacy. Each of the other four
parties is in communication with the DPRK and has
a crucial interest in a peaceful outcome.
The threat raised by North Korea and the
nuclear weapons it very likely possesses is a
chronic problem. North Korea has had at least 14
years to work with plutonium and to make a weapon,
even before the newer efforts. It has hard
workers, smart and well educated. Logic alone says
the North could have weapons - you don't need
particular intelligence. It was reported that
Pakistani Abdul Qadeer Khan - the father of that
country's bomb - has said that he was taken to a
cave and shown three nuclear weapons ready to fit
on a missile. Eight or 10 times the North has said
that it has such weapons, and it has certainly
worked hard to that end.
Talk and more
talk
But multilateral negotiations have
been and remain the best option. After a round of
trilateral discussions in April 2003 in Beijing,
we held the first round of six-party talks, with
China as host, in August 2003. The other five
parties all told North Korea very clearly in
plenary session that they would not accept North
Korea's possessing nuclear arms. And all including
the DPRK have agreed to the goal of a
nuclear-weapons-free Korean peninsula.
The
second round of six-party talks was in February
2004. The parties agreed to regularize the talks,
and to establish a working group to set issues up
for resolution at the plenary meetings. At the
second round of talks, South Korea offered fuel
aid to the DPRK, if there were a comprehensive and
verifiable halt of its nuclear programs as a first
step toward complete nuclear dismantlement.
The third round of talks, held in June in
Beijing, brought proposals yet to be explored by
the US, South Korea and the DPRK. The US met
directly with all of the parties, including the
DPRK, over the course of the talks, as it had
before. In June, the US held a two-and-a-half-hour
discussion with the DPRK delegation.
The
US and Seoul during the third round tabled
concrete, detailed proposals to achieve a
denuclearized Korean peninsula. The DPRK also
participated actively in the plenary discussion,
offering a proposal for what it described as the
first step toward full denuclearization: a freeze
of undefined nuclear-weapons-related programs in
exchange for compensation from the other parties.
Despite the agreement of all six parties
in June to resume talks by end-September with a
working group in the interim, and the willingness
of five parties to hold to that commitment, the
DPRK has not yet agreed to return to the table. It
has used various pretexts to avoid responding to
either the South Korean or US proposals made then.
It has sought to shift the discussion to what, if
anything, might induce it to rejoin the talks. For
a time, it said it wanted to wait for the US
election. When that was concluded, the DPRK
declared they had to hear what the president would
say at his inaugural and State of the Union
addresses. More recently, an old saw, "hostile
policies" has been the alleged cause. What has
been going on recently, sadly, is about
negotiating trivialities, not about resolving
critical issues.
Current
situation
North Korea's rhetoric
notwithstanding, the US leadership has said
repeatedly that it has no intention of attacking
or invading the DPRK, and that the US has no
hostile intent toward the DPRK. If the DPRK is
prepared to give up its nuclear-weapons ambitions,
the US remains ready, as we sought to convey in
the third round of the six-party talks in June, to
coexist with the DPRK and to work in the context
of the talks to resolve the full range of issues
of concern.
Diplomatic contacts among the
six parties have never stopped. The US has
repeatedly made clear that it is ready to resume
the talks, without preconditions. The US, now
under delegation leader assistant secretary Chris
Hill, also met often with partners in the talks in
Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing and elsewhere. All five
parties agree that the six-party talks is the way
forward to deal with the threat of North Korea's
nuclear programs, and to improve the lives of the
North Korean people and bring the DPRK into the
international community.
My hope is that
the serious and extensive discussions with the
United States, the Republic of Korea, Japan, China
and Russia will convince the DPRK that a truly
denuclearized Korean peninsula is its only viable
option, and also its most favorable choice. Then,
perhaps, North Korea will come to understand that
all this delay is not in its interest.
The
DPRK may be seeking a kind of respect by
possessing nuclear weapons that it may assess
cannot be obtained any other way. The example of
India and Pakistan, and a de facto acceptance of
its nuclear power status, may be the goal. Indeed,
recent DPRK statements support this. But India and
Pakistan are large countries, with particular
security concerns, and neither had ever joined the
NPT. The parallel is not apt.
Objectively,
despite the cries heard from DPRK organs, there is
and has been little or no military threat to the
regime. Its concern is, I believe, primarily
internal and not external. It was in the late
1990s, at a time of low tension, that the DPRK
declared its Military First or songun
policy. No country can achieve economic viability
with a prohibitively costly Military First policy.
Worse, to sustain such a policy it is essential to
posit unending threats and to maintain a state of
internal fear and tension. These tensions, by my
reading, are deemed necessary to justify the
unending hardships that are the lot of most North
Korean people.
Against the backdrop of the
six-party talks, the DPRK appears to be trying to
undertake some measures in response to its
disastrous economy. Its wage and price reforms are
an important first step, but have created
inflation and other economic and social problems.
Ultimately, then, it is too soon to evaluate the
overall nature or long-term impact of these steps,
but we encourage Pyongyang to move in this
direction and hope these measures will serve as a
foundation on which to build improved economic
relations with other countries in the future. By
addressing the world's concerns about its nuclear
programs and other issues, the DPRK would have
both new resources and opportunities to pursue
policies for peaceful growth in the region that is
already perhaps the world's most vibrant, East
Asia.
Conclusion
The six-party
talks are an appropriate venue - involving each
national player with essential interests - but
North Korea has been working on nuclear weapons
for very many years and it is not about to easily
give them up. Pyongyang is certainly willing to
make a deal, but I fear it wants an arrangement
that guarantees what it sees as its security,
avoids any issues like human rights, pays
generously, and only requires it to give up a
portion of its nuclear-weapons capabilities.
Solving this problem is going to be a long
and difficult process. Delay involves risks. The
possibility that the DPRK might sell weapons or
other fissile material to any buyer, although most
recently it says that it would not, is a potential
nightmare. Yet, various ideas for a "quick"
solution are unattractive. Patient, but
persistent, diplomacy is needed.
Resolution is not impossible. While there
have been some economic reforms, North Korea still
requires certain resources from the outside -
food, fuel and cash. Its illicit attempts to seek
such resources offer vulnerabilities. Cooperative
measures against illicit drug and counterfeit
efforts and diminished missile sales have hurt
cash flow to the North. The prolonged opposition
of Japan and the US, and the careful attitude of
South Korea put a certain amount of pressure on
North Korea. But is it enough?
I must
stress that the door remains open for the DPRK, by
addressing the concerns of the international
community, to vastly improve the lives of its
people, enhance its own security, normalize its
relations with the US and others, and raise its
stature in the world. The US, working with others,
remains committed to resolving the nuclear issue
through peaceful diplomatic means. Looking at what
has been achieved in the six-party talks thus far,
all of the elements of a resolution are clearly
within sight. The only thing that is missing is a
strategic decision by Pyongyang to give up its
nuclear weapons ambitions and to negotiate in
earnest.
James A Kelly is the
counselor of the Pacific Forum CSIS. He was
assistant secretary of state for East Asian and
Pacific Affairs, 2001-2005. This is based on a
paper presented to the 19th Asia Pacific
Roundtable that was recently held in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia. Opinions expressed are those of the
author.
(Used by permission of Pacific Forum CSIS) |
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