North Korea warned of missile fall-out
By Ahn Mi-Young
SEOUL - South Korean President Lee Myung-bak urged North Korea on Sunday to
return to dialogue with the international community and abandon a planned
missile launch which threatens to push regional tensions to the brink.
North Korea has claimed it preparing to launch a telecommunications satellite,
the Kwangmyungsung No 2, but South Korea, the United States and other countries
believe it is actually planning to test-fire the Taepodong-2, a long-range
ballistic missile designed to to carry a nuclear weapon as far as Alaska.
''What protects North Korea are not nuclear weapons and missiles, but
cooperation with the South and the international
community," Lee said in a speech marking an national uprising against the
1910-1945 Japanese occupation of the peninsula.
"The door to unconditional dialogue remains open," he said. "The South and
North should hold a dialogue at an early date."
His remarks came before urgent talks were held on Monday between senior
generals from the North and United Nations (UN) Command at the North-South
border over the launch, the first such negotiations in six years. The talks
were requested by North Korea "to discuss tension reduction", the UN command
said in a statement.
Observers believe that Pyongyang is using its missile program to pressure the
West into granting it more concessions and it has successfully played the
nuclear card to extract favors from the US and its allies in the region, Japan
and South Korea in the past. In October, 2008 the George W Bush administration
removed it from the US's terrorism blacklist after a nuclear disarmament deal.
North Korea claims it is preparing to launch a satellite and that it has the
right to do so as part of a peaceful space program. South Korea and Japan have
said that a satellite launch would anyway lead to possible sanctions as this
would violate a UN Security Council resolution and use the same technology and
same rocket as a missile launch.
The North's threats come as the US and South Korea are preparing for annual
military exercises which are routinely criticized by the North as a rehearsal
for invasion of the communist state, and amid continuing speculation over who
will succeed Kim Jong-il.
The North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a February 28 report
that "US imperialist aggression forces" of 62 personnel and 58 vehicles had
come within 100 meters of the border on as many as 66 occasions up to February
20 this year.
"If the US forces keep behaving arrogantly in the area under the control of the
North and the South, the KPA [Korean People's Army] will take a resolute
counteraction," said the KCNA report.
The planned launch may also be a way to show defiance to warnings made by
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her Asian tour in
February, when she chastised Pyongyang over its "insulting" and "provocative"
dialogue.
The North, according to observers, is developing missile technology as both a
bargaining chip in its dealings with the West and to raise funds by selling the
technology to countries like Iran and Syria.
The remarks from Lee indicate, however, that Seoul feels the time has come for
the North to realize that engagement will serve its national interests better
than nuclear brinkmanship. To show that he means business, Lee has already
rolled back many of his liberal predecessors' policies towards the North,
including unconditional aid.
North Korea, which conducted a nuclear test in October 2006, does not yet have
the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile, according to experts.
But it has kept its neighbors concerned by refusing to agree to any
verification of claims that it has shut down its nuclear program.
In his speech on Sunday, Lee told Pyongyang that de-nuclearization would help
the isolationist state to reintegrate with the rest of the world.
"De-nuclearization is a short-cut for North Korea that allows it to grow into a
member of the international community," Lee said.
Pyongyang's rhetoric towards the South has grown increasingly antagonistic in
recent weeks, with the KCNA regularly carrying editorials denouncing Lee as a
traitor and demanding he step down.
"The Lee group has pushed inter-Korean relations to the phase of total collapse
and driven the situation to the brink of a war during the first year of its
office. This is a thrice-cursed crime against the nation," editorialized Rodong
Sinmun, the newspaper of the North's Workers' Party.
"We will remain even-tempered no matter how tough North Korea talks against
us," said South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-Hee last week, adding however
that the South would retaliate if it needed to.
"We South Koreans should not allow North Korea to be tempted into striking
Seoul with short-range missiles. This is why we may need at least 10 more
missile defense [sites] as a possible deterrent," Kim Chang-June, a former US
lawmaker of Korean origin, said during a visit to Seoul.
Military insiders have said that another missile launch by North Korea would
strengthen the position of hardliners in Seoul and Washington who are talking
about beefing up the South's military.
Seoul has offered Pyongyang incentives to drop its nuclear ambitions in the
shape of a resumption of a suspended economic package that included food and
fuel aid. A dozen energy development projects are also in the pipeline for
developing North Korea's rich resources.
South Korean manufacturers are waiting for a chance to invest in the North as
their factories in China face rising running costs and are subject to heavy
regulations.
"By insisting on its missile launch, North Korea is giving up all of the
fortunes that await it in return for giving up its nuclear cards," writes Kim
Young-Hee, a senior journalist in an editorial in the Joong-ang newspaper.
Since Lee's new conservative government took over in February 2008, most of the
official contacts between the two Koreas have virtually been severed. South
Korean tourists who once flocked to the North's scenic Kumgang mountain are no
longer able to travel after the North stopped allowing South Koreans on its
soil.
If Pyongyang persists with launching its missile, some 23 million North Korean
people are likely to suffer from the possible sanction. A third of the
population relies on international aid of food supplies.
On this side of the border the South Korean economy, which is now heading for
minus gross domestic product growth, will be affected, with investors already
using the North Korean threat as a reason to pull out.
It will hurt the interests of about 1,000 North Korean defectors living in the
South, who have maintained contact with the families they left behind during
the 1950-1953 Korean war.
North Koreans have, in recent times, sued their half-brothers for shares in
million-dollar inheritances left behind by a deceased common father.
"If North Korea continues to buy into its false belief [that the missile or
nuclear card will work as it did before], the clock is clicking back into the
past [for North Korea],'' said Kim Sung-Han, a professor at Korea University.
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