North Korea gives a lot, expects more
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - The head of the US State Department's Korea desk and four other US
officials crossed the line from North to South Korea at the truce village of
Panmunjom at the weekend lugging 18,000 documents the North Koreans gave them
on their nuclear program.
Now they and their cartons of paper are back in Washington, and translators and
nuclear analysts are poring over them for fresh insights into the extent of the
North's nuclear program.
If nothing else, say experts in South Korea, daily logs may provide clues on
how much plutonium North Korean technicians have managed to reprocess at the
nuclear complex at Yongbyon
for nuclear warheads. It's unlikely, however, they will reveal anything about
the North's separate program for developing warheads with enriched uranium. Nor
do they say a thing about alleged nuclear proliferation to client states such
as Syria.
The US mission to Pyongyang was intended to break the impasse in efforts to get
the North to give up its nuclear program, and North Korea needs to put on a
show of cooperation as long as the US is willing to ship 500,000 tons of
emergency food aid. The infusion of all that food for the North's famished
people may actually take immediate precedence over North Korea's longstanding
demand that the US remove its name from the list of nations sponsoring
terrorism and lift economic sanctions.
It is quite possible, moreover, that North Korea will embellish the handover of
documents by blowing up the cooling tower of its five-megawatt reactor at
Yongbyon as symbolic evidence that it is making good on its promise to give up
the entire program. The North has already shut down the reactor itself, and
destruction of the cooling tower would stand as visible proof of its commitment
to live up to last year's agreements.
Despite the volume of papers handed over to the Americans, however, no way do
analysts believe North Korea is about to give up its deepest nuclear secrets -
or destroy the six to 12 warheads it has already fabricated with plutonium at
their core. "Fundamentally, I don't think the North Koreans will be very
correct and honest in their declaration," said Kim Tae-woo, senior fellow of
the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses, affiliated with the Defense
Ministry. "It's impossible they will give up their nuclear option."
Sung Kim of the US State Department's Korea desk presumably gave the North
Koreans when he saw them in Pyongyang the graphic evidence offered publicly by
the White House last month of North Korea's role in the nuclear complex in
Syria that was bombed by Israeli planes. The White House briefing was to
pressure North Korea into coming up with a full declaration of the Syrian
program and EUP, the enriched uranium program, all of which the North denies.
US officials are pinning hopes on a memorandum worked out by the US chief
nuclear negotiator, Christopher Hill, and North Korea's nuclear negotiator, Kim
Kye-gwan. The memorandum is believed to call for North Korea to recognize
concerns without making a full admission.
North Korea needs to appear cooperative while writhing in mounting economic
problems that approach the years of suffering during the late 1990s. The party
newspaper Rodong Sinmun editorialized that the country's "most imperative issue
now is making a decisive increase in grain production so to smoothly solve the
nation's food problems by ourselves". The newspaper called on citizens to fight
the problem without foreign help - an apparent response to warnings by foreign
aid organizations that starvation may claim the lives of as many as 300,000
people in the next two months.
It is not clear if the US team in Pyongyang came to terms on a deal for
emergency food aid, but North Koreans crossing the Tumen River border into
China testify to the urgency of the food crisis.
"The situation is extremely dire right now," said Tim Peters, founder of
Helping Hands Korea, providing sustenance for North Korean refugees. "People
are comparing it to 1994 and 1995. The poor harvest and poor weather are the
worst in 13 to 14 years." An influx of aid from the US and South Korea, on top
of aid the North receives from China, "could be a big help", Peters said, "but
my question is, how far will it filter down to the little people?"
Lee Chang-choon, a former South Korean ambassador to the International Atomic
Energy Agency, believes the North's need for food will promote dialogue from
which the North stands to derive still more benefits. "The food situation is
getting very, very worse," he said. "If the Americans provide 500,000 tons,
it's quite probable the South Koreans will follow suit."
The White House, eager to show progress from all the six-party talks and
meetings between Hill and Kim Kye-gwan, also appears likely to decide that
delivery of 18,000 pieces of paper suffices to ask the US Congress to remove
the North from the terrorist list and lift sanctions.
North Korea is bargaining hard for these concessions, crucial for entry into
the international financial community from which its leaders dream of increased
foreign investment and commercial deals for exploitation and export of untapped
natural resources ranging from gold to zinc.
North Korea has not made its annual request for aid from South Korea while
denouncing the government of President Lee Myung-bak for conservative, hardline
demands for "reciprocity" and "verification". Signs, however, are growing that
the South Korean government will soften its stance.
Might South Korea offer the aid without being asked? "North Korea has not ruled
out humanitarian assistance," said Lee, the former ambassador. "They have been
very adept at playing cards." He doubts if North Korea has changed its
underlying attitude. "It's just drama on their part," he said of the handover
of documents. "Less than one page is enough to say what they're doing."
South Koreans accuse North Korea of bypassing the South by negotiating directly
with Washington. The ultimate fear is that the US deal with the North Koreans
will sanctify the division of the Korean Peninsula between "two Koreas" if it
leads to diplomatic relations between the US and North Korea and the signing of
a peace treaty to replace the 1953 Korean War armistice.
South Korea's Korean War president, Rhee Syng-man, boycotted the original truce
talks in 1952 and 1953 for the same reason. He wanted no part of an armistice
that would legitimize the permanent division of the Korean Peninsula. The South
is not a signatory to the truce, signed by US, North Korean and Chinese
generals, and might have nothing to do with a peace treaty either.
"Now is the time for the South Korean administration and ourselves to raise the
following questions," said Kim Sang-chul, lawyer and chairman of the National
Crisis Council of Korea. "Is it okay if the North is a foreign nation? Is it
okay if North Koreans become foreigners and the armistice line is considered
the national border, and North-South separation is perpetuated?"
Moreover, he asked, "Do the miserable human-rights conditions of North Koreans
have nothing to do with South Koreans since that's a matter of the internal
affairs of a separate nation?"
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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