COMMENT A roadmap to peace with North Korea
By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - Almost two decades have passed since the North Korean nuclear crisis
first bubbled over, kick-starting international negotiations with Pyongyang,
yet the impasse is far from over.
North Korean rhetoric is increasingly menacing towards South Korea, and it has
ratcheted up tensions further by moving a Taepodong-2 ballistic missile to one
of its launch sites. The move has certainly attracted the attention of the new
United States administration, ahead of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's 67th
birthday on February 16 and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's trip to
East Asia starting on February 15.
Lee Young-hwa, an expert on Korea and an economics professor
at Kansai University in Osaka, said that Clinton had sent a personal letter to
Pyongyang on February 4 indicating a willingness to advance the deadlocked
six-party talks.
Citing diplomatic sources, Young-hwa, speaking to Asia Times Online on
Thursday, said the letter was delivered by former US ambassador to South Korea
Stephen Bosworth during a group visit he led to the North's capital. Just two
days later, Pyongyang sent a quick reply to Clinton through Bosworth's
delegation demanding direct US-North Korea negotiations, Lee said.
Bosworth, a former US ambassador to South Korea, is expected to be named as the
US envoy to six-party talks, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Disarmament talks
stalled last December over the North's obligations on verification of the
dismantling of its nuclear weapons program and its demands for more heavy fuel
oil shipments.
Despite the recent exchange of diplomatic notes, the stalemate between
Washington and Pyongyang shows no sign of abating.
Disarmament for aid deals, tit-for-tat measures and action-for-action
strategies have so far achieved almost nothing in terms of resolving the
standoff. It would be useful for the international community to review the past
two decades of failed efforts and examine Pyongyang's true intentions to apply
the lessons of the past.
In their various efforts to solve the North Korean nuclear deadlock, the US,
South Korea and Japan have each tried both softline appeasement policies and
hardline containment policies, while piling up more than a few joint
statements, declarations and agreements throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
Intense bilateral talks with Pyongyang happened, most notably, under former US
president Bill Clinton's engagement policy, when he sent secretary of state
Madeleine Albright to meet with Kim Jong-il. South Korean president Kim
Dae-jung's "Sunshine" policy of reconciliation and cooperation with the North
also culminated in a historic first South-North Korean summit in 2000. Then
there were Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's dramatic Pyongyang
visits in 2002 and 2004, seeking a breakthrough in deadlocked relations with
the North over the release of Japanese abductees.
However, each of these missions was only ever half-accomplished.
The US, Japan and South Korea relationship has failed to tackle the
denuclearization of North Korea in a cooperative way with a coherent strategy
reflecting their conflicting ideas, intentions and policies, said Yun Duk-min,
a professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security at the
Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This is in large part to blame
for Pyongyang's continuing nuclear development, he said.
Examples are the George W Bush administration's labeling of North Korea, Iran
and Iraq as an "axis of evil" in his 2002 state of the union address, while
South Korea's Kim Dae-jung was pursuing his "Sunshine" policy.
During the Bush administration, the nuclear crisis spiraled. Under Clinton,
global intelligence estimated that North Korea had 20 kilograms of plutonium,
enough for one or two atomic bombs. Now, the US has estimated that the North
has about 50 kilograms, enough to produce five to 10 nuclear weapons, depending
on the size of the bombs produced.
Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006, sending shockwaves
around the world and converting Bush's hardline policy into a conciliatory
approach. The ensuing appeasement and engagement policy is still a fresh
memory. Bush, eager for a rare foreign-policy success, rushed through
diplomatic deals in the final stages of his presidency by making a series of
significant compromises.
Pyongyang, meanwhile, got itself delisted from the US terror blacklist. But far
from responding in kind, it has now again provoked the world by threatening to
launch a missile which may well be heading in the direction of Tokyo. Japanese
experts expect the missile test to be conducted either on the Kim Jong-il's
birthday or on April 9, the 16th anniversary of his election as chairman of the
National Defense Commission.
"If you compare the Bush with the Clinton era, the North Korean threat has
increased," Hajime Izumi, a professor of international relations at the
University of Shizuoka and an expert on Korean issues, said at a forum in Tokyo
last week. "Increased threats cause much more difficulties in removing threats.
This issue has become harder than ever to be solved."
As seen in the mistakes of the Bush administration, it is too risky to try and
appease the North Korean regime's concerns. History teaches us that with any
administration's hasty, dramatic dash to the North, Pyongyang always resorts to
its favorite tactic of further brinkmanship to escalate tensions and wring
concessions.
Pyongyang cannot and will not abandon its nuclear and missile development,
despite the economic incentives and compromises of the rest of the world. The
threat of nuclear missiles are still Kim Jong-il's best deterrent against
regime collapse in the Hermit Kingdom. He will continue to play the nuclear
card, as without nukes, the North is just a hunger-stricken regime.
The world needs China to take the North Korean nuclear issue more seriously.
There are still widespread suspicions that Beijing prefers a stable North Korea
with some nuclear weapons in its hands rather than an unstable and possibly
collapsing North Korea without any nuclear weapons. More than a few experts,
like Kansai University's Lee, think that for China, Pyongyang's nuclear weapons
are secondary compared to what could happen should chaos engulf the
impoverished state.
North Korean state media reported last week that China had offered Pyongyang
aid. But if China was serious enough to do so, this aid could have been tied to
pressure on North Korea for reform.
The US, Japan, South Korea and China may be prepared to continue a dangerous
cat-and-mouse game of diplomacy with North Korea, but as Hong Sung-Ki, an
editorial writer at the Daily NK recently wrote: Let North Korea follow an
"isolating South Korea while strengthening relations with the US" strategy if
it wishes. When Kim Jong-il strikes out aggressively, he may be feeling that
his time as leader, or in life, is nearing its end.
As Hong puts it, the US and others can do the same as North Korea has done.
That is, the salami-slicing tactics of extracting maximum aid for every
concession. This could be used discreetly to make the six-party talks ambiguous
as to who is chasing whom, and could buy and use up some more time.
Although conjecture that North Korea will immediately collapse following Kim's
death could be erroneous, no one can guarantee the unwavering continuation of
the Kim Jong-il regime with full confidence. Within a few years after Kim dies,
the impoverished nation may face some severe instability in the vortex of power
struggles. After all, Kim Jong-il is the only one that is running out of time.
Kosuke Takahashi, a former staff writer at the Asahi Shimbun, is a
freelance correspondent based in Tokyo. He can be contacted at letters@kosuke.net.
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