North Korea: Something might just
happen
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - Raise the topic of the upcoming round of six-party talks on North
Korea's nuclear weapons, and responses may range from "not again" to "what else
is new?"
Forecasts of abject failure, while understandable in view of the prior record
of rhetoric, disappointment and breakdown, may be premature. It's just possible
- even probable, in the view of some but hardly all experts - that something
substantive will emerge from all the yakking across the table and on the
sidelines when
the protagonists cross swords yet again in Beijing beginning next Thursday.
No, that's not just because Christopher Hill, the US envoy to the talks, has
been dropping upbeat remarks ever since he met his North Korean counterpart,
Kim Kye-gwan, two weeks ago in Berlin. One might expect Hill, after all, to
say, as he did in Washington before taking off for talks-before-talks in Seoul
this weekend, "We believe we can make progress."
And Hill might also be expected to qualify that remark, as he carefully
remembered to do, with the footnote that he was "very mindful of the fact that
I expected progress in December, and it didn't happen".
But now things are different, really different, in the view of some of the
experts. Now, they say, North Korea is going to Beijing to negotiate seriously,
to drop a few bones for the Americans to chew on, to make an offer the US side
just can't refuse - and then return to Pyongyang and await the next stage in
the great bargaining game.
The logic here is that Kim Kye-gwan took the initiative in asking to see Hill,
not the other way around, and specified that they should meet not in China but
in Berlin, where Hill was scheduled to give a talk at a local college. Away
from Chinese pressures, they engaged in intensive discussion for three days,
after which North Korea came out with the extraordinary announcement that they
had reached "a certain agreement" after talking in "a sincere atmosphere".
No one here is confusing "a certain agreement" with anything like final
agreement on how the two sides are going to live up to the word of the joint
statement of September 19, 2005, in which everyone - China, Japan, Russia, the
US, and the two Koreas - agreed on providing huge amounts of aid to North
Korea, and North Korea agreed to give up its nukes.
There is the sense, however, that Kim Kye-gwan, having returned to Pyongyang
for final instructions, presumably handed down from North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il, is not going to go back to Beijing with nothing to offer.
"It looks like there will be a piecemeal agreement," said Han Sung-joo, who was
the South Korean foreign minister when the US engineered the 1994 Geneva
Framework Agreement under which North Korea was promised twin light-water
nuclear reactors in return for locking up its 5-megawatt reactor at its nuclear
complex at Yongbyon and ceasing development of nuclear warheads.
"The United States needs a modicum of success after the debacle in Iraq," Han
reasoned. "North Korea has a handful of piecemeal concessions to satisfy the
political needs - without giving up [its] nuclear program."
No way, of course, does Han think North Korea is about to abandon its nuclear
program until extracting much more from the US and others at the table.
"They're keeping the weapons to the last stage," he said, playing "the good-boy
role" all the while "weakening the rationale" for a strong alliance between the
United States and South Korea.
Han offered this Machiavellian estimate of North Korea's strategy for
negotiations at a conference staged in Seoul by the Korea Society and the
Security Management Institute, a local think-tank, on the occasion of the 50th
anniversary of the Korea Society, a prestigious organization, led by retired
senior US diplomats and funded in large part by Korean donations. Although Han
believed North Korea would make an offer at the talks, he seemed to believe the
purpose might well be to deepen fissures that are already evident in the
US-South Korean relationship.
"We are at the point as to whether the alliance is pulled apart or stays
together," said Han, who returned to public office as South Korea's ambassador
to the US several years ago. "South Korean views on the alliance are quite
polarized," he noted, with debate focusing on such issues as the extent of the
North Korean threat, human rights in North Korea and, eventually, what kind of
structure will emerge if North and South Korea move to reunification.
Don Oberdorfer, author of The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History and
professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies,
offered more details on what he believed Kim Kye-gwan might bring to the table.
"The North Koreans are very likely to shut down Yongbyon and bring back
[inspectors]," he said, an allusion to inspectors from the International Atomic
Energy Agency whom North Korea expelled at the end of 2002 after the breakdown
of the 1994 Geneva agreement.
The deal might depend, said Oberdorfer - for many years a diplomatic and
foreign correspondent for the Washington Post - on the US acting "to modify the
Treasury Department sanctions that seem so painful to them". The inference was
that Hill might be ready to offer to remove some of the restraints imposed by
the Treasury Department in September 2005, shortly before the Statement of
Principles was issued, on financial institutions dealings with Banco Delta
Asia, the Macau bank through which Treasury officials accuse North Korea of
channeling counterfeit US$100 bills.
Oberdorfer seemed surprisingly optimistic about the talks. "It appears there's
going to be new life breathed into diplomacy," he said. All the participants
"will have more of an opportunity to work positively" as all sides weigh the
alternative of North Korea "continuing to make nuclear materials" and moving
"toward war".
Nor was Oberdorfer pessimistic about the outlook for US-South Korean relations.
"South Korea is going to move closer to the center," he said, suggesting that
the South would pull back from policies viewed by the White House, as well as
South Korean conservatives, as too soft toward North Korea. At the same time,
he predicted, "The US is going to move closer to the center" with "an
opportunity for both governments to work together" - but "not with such
discrepancies".
Others were not nearly so sanguine about the upcoming talks.
Kim Sung-han, professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National
Security, affiliated with South Korea's Foreign Ministry, said only when the
two allies, the US and South Korea, resolve their own differences "can we move
closer to resolving the North Korea nuclear problem".
David Steinberg, director of the Asian studies program at Georgetown
University, noted "an intensive rivalry as to which country", the US or South
Korea, "will take the lead in dealing with North Korea". As for the alliance,
he said it was in its present state "very tenuous indeed" with problems in the
relationship "attributed to differences in policies toward North Korea".
Some observers believed the six-party talks were not likely to go anywhere
until after the 2008 presidential election in the United States. A South Korean
military officer was heard to murmur, "We're screwed," when asked what he
thought of the six-party talks - and the likelihood of a serious deal emerging
from them. The inference was that any agreement acceptable to North Korea would
undermine the US-Korean alliance - and South Korea's determination to stand up
against North Korea's demands.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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