Pyongyang's call for 'fair's fair' ignored
By Sunny Lee
BEIJING - North Korea officially no longer sponsors terrorism, according to the
United States government. Pyongyang is elated, and the US is in self-help
psychology sessions, trying to believe it was the best possible deal to get the
North to fully disarm its nuclear weapons program.
There is in this development an important detail that deserves attention.
During the three days of negotiations in North Korea's capital between the
chief US nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, and Pyongyang's masters of
high-stakes brinkmanship, Washington tried to include a couple of additional
sites for nuclear inspection besides Yongbyon, where the North on Tuesday
insisted it would allow UN monitors to assure that the plant that produced
plutonium for its test bomb remained disabled.
The US demand over inspection of additional sites was not part of the previous
agreement and Pyongyang made a counter-proposal. It wanted to have a full-scale
nuclear inspection for the entire Korean Peninsula, which, of course, includes
South Korea. That was a hard-hitting, in-your-face punch line by North Korea.
South Korea officially says it is a "nuclear-free" state. On September 18,
2004, then South Korean unification minister Chung Dong-young said, "The [South
Korean] government so far has not had any nuclear programs for military
purposes. It has not pursued one either. This policy won't change." Recently,
Hill also said South Korea regularly received all the required inspections from
the International Atomic Energy Agency and abided by verification agreements
and safety measures.
But North Korea has long accused that the US military bases in the South
possessed nuclear weapons and has called for nuclear verification on the US
military facilities in South Korea. The official US policy stance in the region
is also to create a "nuclear-free Korean Peninsula" that covers both Koreas.
Then, why not take Pyongyang's proposal and come closer to realizing a
"nuclear-free Korea"?
The problem is that it is widely believed in South Korea that the US military
bases have nuclear weapons. South Korea's left-leaning media outlets and civic
groups have openly challenged the government on this matter in their periodical
demand for the withdrawal of US troops from the country.
Pyongyang going nuclear in 2006 poses a threat to neighboring countries and the
international community, but the discourse surrounding its program neglects to
include some key details because they are inconvenient.
North Korea embarked on the path of developing nuclear weapons in the face of a
perceived threat from the United States. That is, Pyongyang's nuclear ambition
is defensive in nature. This may be a hard sell to many, but this is the
message delivered by Selig Harrison, a former Washington Post reporter and
expert on the Korean Peninsula's security affairs.
Harrison in his book Korean Endgame wrote, "North Korea's perception of
its security environment is not irrational in the context of its embattled
national history since 1945." He added that Pyongyang's desire to develop
nuclear weapons was "a direct response to nuclear saber-rattling [by the US]
during the Korean War [in the early 1950s] and the subsequent deployment of US
tactical nuclear weapons in the South for more than three decades."
Harrison, quoting declassified documents from the Korean War, said in
"Operation Hudson Harbor", B-29 bombers dropped dummy atomic bombs on Pyongyang
during "simulated practice runs" in late 1951. In the subsequent several pages,
Harrison elaborates on this observation.
Professor Bruce Cumings, an authority on Korean affairs, nods to this view and
said in his book, North Korea: Another Country, that the North's drive
for nuclear capability is "understandable".
After the Korean War, the US deployed nuclear weapons to South Korea and,
strangely, did not shy away from acknowledging it. That departed from the usual
practice of the Pentagon that maintained a "neither confirm nor deny" policy,
refusing to say where US nuclear weapons were deployed. South Korea was an
exception. In 1975, US secretary of defense James Schlesinger openly confirmed
their presence in South Korea, in an apparently calculated move to intimidate
North Korea and dissuade it from attacking the South.
The period when nuclear weapons were present in South Korea was from 1958 to
1991. President George H W Bush removed tactical nuclear weapons from South
Korea during his term in office between 1989-1993.
However, "Despite the removal of tactical nuclear weapons from the South, the
United States has not ruled out their reintroduction," Harrison said, quoting
the document at that time. That raises the possibility that nuclear weapons
might have been redeployed to South Korea after 1991.
As mentioned earlier, South Korea and the US say no. Pyongyang doesn't trust
them and its demand for simultaneous nuclear inspection for both Koreas has
been a consistent one since 1994, when the first nuclear crisis on the Korean
Peninsula erupted.
In June 2005, North Korea's Workers' Party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, for
example, said, "If denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula to be realized,
America must withdraw the nuclear weapons it deployed in South Korea. The
withdrawal of the nuclear weapons must be verified."
The article also said, "In the past, the US had deployed a number of nuclear
weapons and didn't report it to anyone," adding a shocking claim that "even the
South Korean government was kept in the dark".
"Even after the US announced during the father Bush administration that it no
longer had nuclear weapons in South Korea, there were still nuclear weapons in
South Korea. As long as South Korea has nuclear weapons, no matter how many
times the US said it would not attack us with nuclear bombs, it ultimately
comes as a lip service," the newspaper's commentary said, emphasizing, "Without
verification of nuclear weapons [in South Korea], the withdrawal of American
nuclear weapons argument is meaningless."
Later, North Korea's deputy United Nations ambassador, Han Seung-ryul, in a
July 4 speech delivered at the British think-tank Chatham House in 2007, said,
"The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is only possible through
simultaneous denuclearization steps in North Korea and the US military bases in
South Korea." Han's statement was seen as an expression of intent that North
Korea will definitely take issue with the American forces stationed in South
Korea in its ultimate denuclearization steps.
Against such a background, Choi Han-wook, a researcher with the left-leaning
Korea Civil Rights Institute, argued, "Essentially, the problem is not North
Korean nuclear weapons, but American nuclear weapons ... North Korea embarked
on the path of nuclear development because of its perceived threat from the
US."
Choi continued, "Many people think the nuclear crisis in the Korean Peninsula
is attributable to North Korea. Namely, the crisis happened because North Korea
developed nuclear weapons. These people, therefore, see North Korea's nuclear
development as equal to the nuclear crisis in the Korean Peninsula. Even some
experts think the history of the North Korean nuclear crisis as something that
happened since the 1990s. That's putting the horse before the cart."
Both Seoul and Washington have brushed aside North Korea's proposal for
simultaneous inspection in both the Koreas as a tactic to raise its stake in
the nuclear negotiations. This analysis is rudimentary. What they fail to see
or acknowledge is that it's not just a negotiation tactic, but a fundamental
stance by North Korea.
Therefore, in the ultimate deal-making in which North Korea is poised to make
the final and complete renouncement of its nuclear programs (when the world
pays the right price and the US offers a legally binding security guarantee),
it is very likely that it will demand denuclearization in South Korea as well.
And that points to the need for South Korea and the US to make a clear
statement that can be presented to North Korea in trustworthy fashion.
John Tillery, the American commander of all forces in South Korea for three
years from 1996, said US forces in South Korea didn't have nuclear arms and he
didn't understand why North Korea kept making that claim. "It is the consistent
policy of the United States and the government of the Republic of Korea to
denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. I don't understand why North Korea raises
the [issue of] nuclear inspection on the American military bases in South
Korea."
A well-placed source told this writer that South Korea indeed has nuclear
weapons in the US military base nearby Seoul. "They bring the nuclear arsenals
in and out of the country on a regular basis," he said, adding, "By doing so,
South Korea technically doesn't have nuclear weapons."
True or not, his statement confirms what many people have long privately
believed. But it importantly points out that sooner or later, this issue, if
left unattended, will be a drag on the Korean nuclear talks.
Sunny Lee is a Seoul-born writer and journalist. He is a graduate of
Harvard University and Beijing Foreign Studies University.
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