The ever-threatening nuclear shadow
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - Another year of crisis on the Korean Peninsula neared a close on a high
note of dialogue fueled by the realization that the alternative might be a
worsening crisis fraught with the danger of a nuclear war.
In a sense, nothing much had changed between the end of the last six-party
talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons in November 2005 and the renewal of
talks more than a year later, on December 18, 2006. All the parties at the
talks in Beijing appeared to have stuck to their usual positions, the United
States
insisting that North Korea begin to shut down its nuclear program before
getting aid, North Korea accusing the US of planning an attack and calling for
an end to United Nations sanctions as well as the US ban on dealings with
foreign banks serving the North Korean regime.
The stakes, however, had radically increased since North Korea test-fired half
a dozen missiles on July 4 and another missile the next day - and then shocked
the world by conducting its first underground nuclear test on October 9. The
tests gave North Korea the confidence to return to negotiations from a
perceived position of strength after having refused to continue negotiations as
a result of a US Treasury Department ban, imposed in September 2005, on any
dealings by US financial institutions with Macau's Banco Delta Asia, seen as a
conduit for US$100 "supernotes" counterfeited in North Korea as well as the
earnings from the export of arms and narcotics.
The highlight of the missile tests was to have been the firing of a long-range
Taepodong 2, theoretically capable of reaching Hawaii, Alaska or the North
American west coast, but the missile plunged into the sea less than a minute
after launch. This failure was far worse than that of Taepodong 1, fired on
August 31, 1998, in an arc over Japan before falling into the ocean south of
Vladivostok without launching the satellite that North Korean rhetoric at the
time claimed had gone into orbit.
The nuclear test was also of questionable success. After much speculation, the
US estimated its strength at less than 1 kiloton of TNT compared with 12.5
kilotons generated by the explosion of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on
August 6, 1945, and the 20-kiloton strength of the atom-bombing of Nagasaki
three days later. The impression was that the test was smaller than anticipated
by North Korea - and possibly a disappointment.
Nonetheless, the fact that North Korea had gone as far as it had in developing
such fearsome weapons was seen as a portent of the holocaust that could envelop
the peninsula, and much of the region, in the event of war. A unanimous vote by
the UN Security Council on sanctions theoretically banned all dealings with
North Korea that might conceivably aid and abet its weapons program, but the
sanctions stopped short of prescribing military action.
North Korea by this time was estimated to have fabricated as many as a dozen
warheads with plutonium at their core at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon, shut
down under terms of the 1994 Geneva Framework Agreement but reopened after the
breakdown of the agreement in October 2002. The US charged that North Korea, in
talks that month in Pyongyang, had acknowledged work on developing warheads
with highly enriched uranium - the reason the US gave for demanding "complete,
verifiable, irreversible dismantlement" of the entire North Korean nuclear
program.
The "statement of principles" reached at the six-party talks in Beijing on
September 19, 2005, remained at the center of the renewed negotiations. The US
saw the statement as committing North Korea to abandoning its entire nuclear
program while North Korea insisted the US first had to fulfill the terms of the
1994 agreement providing for construction of twin nuclear energy reactors,
funded largely by South Korea, with Japan also making a significant
contribution and the US supplying heavy fuel oil until the reactors went
online.
The debate on the North Korean nuclear program exposed deep differences among
participants in the talks with China and South Korea both opposed to signs of a
tough line that would infuriate North Korea. Russia, hoping to participate in
the opening of the North Korean economy, including its rail network, also
opposed strong action. The US and Japan both were emphatic about the need for
North Korea to shut down its nuclear program, but neither was ready to risk a
regional war to enforce the demand.
The North Korea nuclear standoff contributed to divisions in South Korea
between the left-leaning government of President Roh Moo-hyun and conservatives
eager to resume the hold they had on the government until the election of Kim
Dae-jung as president in December 1997 at the height of the economic crisis
then engulfing South Korea.
Roh, elected to a five-year term in December 2002, built on Kim Dae-jung's
Sunshine Policy of reconciliation, encouraging aid in the form of rice and
fertilizer to rescue North Korea from famine and along with cultural and
commercial contacts, as seen in the buildup of the industrial zone at Kaesong,
across the line between the two Koreas near the truce village of Panmunjom, 64
kilometers north of Seoul.
Roh's popularity fell to all-time lows throughout 2006 because of opposition to
his personal and political style and the belief that his liberal policies were
holding back the economy, dominated by conglomerates known as chaebol.
At the same time, conservatives criticized him for yielding too easily to
Northern demands for aid to the detriment of South Korea's alliance with the
United States.
The alliance was seen as weakening amid disagreements between Washington and
Seoul over North Korea as well as US plans to scale down the number of troops
in Korea and pull all of them from Seoul and the invasion route between Seoul
and the Demilitarized Zone that still divided the two Koreas.
South Korea also expressed its desire to be able to take over operational
control of its troops in time of war - a substantial change from the
arrangement, dating from the Korean War, under which an American commander
would be in charge. Paradoxically, the US responded with a show of agreement -
and said operational control could shift by 2009, three years before the date
by which South Korean defense officials believed their forces would be ready
for such a complicated transition.
The US encountered difficulties of quite a different kind in attempting to move
its military headquarters at the Yongsan base in Seoul as well as combat troops
of the 2nd Infantry Division from bases north of Seoul to Pyongtaek, 64km south
of Seoul.
After months of demonstrations, about 20,000 police officers cordoned off the
area in early May as rows of police moved in to arrest more than 500 people,
mostly student activists. Several dozen farm families, led by a Catholic
priest, rejected government offers of large sums to leave their homes, finally
forcing postponement of the plan to build the base, including the US military
headquarters, even though South Korean officials said they would support the
plan.
South Koreans had complicated views about the US military presence. Although
Roh and his advisers wanted to loosen ties, they were alarmed by what seemed
like the US rush to downsize and pull back, and they also had opposed the
strategy, advocated by Donald Rumsfeld as US defense secretary, of viewing the
troops as part of a force for use anywhere in the region.
The government did not want the US to desert South Korea - or draw the country
into a regional conflict by deploying troops from Korean soil. Similarly, the
government flatly rejected US entreaties to join a Proliferation Security
Initiative in which about 70 countries pledged to cooperate to block shipments
of North Korean nuclear components and technology. South Korean officials, like
the Chinese, were not going to commit themselves to any program that risked
having to use force against North Korea, on land, on sea or in the air.
South Korean officials worried, however, that the US might not defend the
country in case of attack. The US by the end of 2006 had only 29,500 troops in
Korea, down from 37,000 three years earlier, on their way to about 25,000.
Compensating for the drawdown, the US is building up South Korea's 600,000-man
military establishment with about $10 billion in the latest weaponry, including
Aegis missile systems and F-15 fighters.
Americans and South Koreans clashed - and negotiated - in yet another arena
with implications for the basic US-Korean relationship. Both the US and South
Korea dearly wanted a free-trade agreement (FTA), but remained far apart on
terms after lengthy negotiations.
South Korea objected strongly to US charges of "dumping" of exports on US
markets at below-market prices and also wanted the United States to accept
products made by South Korean companies in the Kaesong zone inside North Korea
as made in the South under terms of the agreement. The US in turn demanded that
South Korea open markets to a wide range of imports, including motor vehicles,
that were in essence closed or highly circumscribed.
US-South Korean free-trade talks foundered on a topic that was not on the
agenda - the rejection by South Korean immigration officials of the first three
beef shipments to be sent to Korea since the end of a three-year ban on all US
beef after reports of a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow
disease). The reason for the rejections was the discovery, by X-ray, of tiny
bone chips in the shipments, which South Korea said were acceptable only if
entirely bone-free.
US protests against the rejection clouded the fifth round of inconclusive
free-trade talks in the state of Montana in early December, and the future of
the FTA was in doubt. The failure to come to terms on an FTA was just fine by
hundreds of thousands of farmers, angered and fearful of the possibility of
imports of rice and beef cutting into their own sales and profits.
Demonstrations sometimes turned violent as labor-union leaders and leftist
activists joined farmers on the streets of Seoul and other cities.
Roh's grip on power was seriously weakened by an accumulation of problems, so
much so that his own Uri Party fragmented and turned against him. Barred by the
1987 "democracy" constitution from running for a second five-year term, Roh
entered his last year in office as a lame-duck president, threatening to resign
before the expiration of his term.
At the same time, candidates for the Grand National Party, hoping to regain the
power that conservatives had lost in the 1997 election, entered a prolonged
campaign for nomination in the 2007 election. Lee Myung-bak, who had built a
reputation as a reformer and builder during a term as mayor of Seoul and, years
before, as chairman of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co, was a leading
prospect. He faced a strong challenge, though, from Park Geun-hye, daughter of
Park Chung-hee, who had served 18 years as a dictatorial president before his
assassination by his intelligence chief in 1979.
Amid political invective and charges of influence-peddling and bribery in
business and government, however, the economy remained strong, growing 4-5% a
year. North Korea, by contrast, reversed incipient economic reform while
suffering through political persecution, disease, hunger and the threat of
renewed famine.
In South Korean cities and towns, there was little sense of crisis over the
North, except during political outbursts when demonstrators marched down the
streets, carrying signs and shouting slogans, challenging thousands of police.
Even then, people tended to go about their business, complaining about the
traffic jams but otherwise oblivious to displays accepted as part of daily
life.
The inability to come to a viable agreement on North Korea, however, was
worrisome. The worst danger was that nuclear negotiations might break down
entirely, raising the level of confrontation, and the threat of hostilities, as
North Korea battled to break out of economic travail exacerbated by the US
financial restrictions. The talks, however inconclusive, served a purpose by
forestalling a worsening crisis - and a second Korean War that all sides hoped
to avoid.
Donald Kirk, who covered the 1997-98 economic crisis in South Korea for
the International Herald Tribune, is the author of Korean Crisis:
Unraveling of the Miracle in the IMF Era and Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and
Chung Ju Yung.
