WASHINGTON - Now comes the hard part for American policy-makers: balancing a
tough line on North Korea's nuclear and missile tests with mounting public
demands in the United States to win the release of two American television
journalists convicted of "grave crimes" and sentenced to 12 years of "hard
labor".
No one in Washington seems to have any idea what to do. The statements that
have been issued have not had the slightest impact on North Korean strategists.
Instead, Pyongyang's attitude has underscored its success in using the two
journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee of Al Gore's Current TV network, as tools
in a much larger game.
"It doesn't look like the [Barack] Obama administration can
contribute much to the equation," said Nicholas Eberstadt, scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute in Washington. There has been talk of sending
former US vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore to Pyongyang to
help spring them, but it's another matter whether or not North Korea will
receive him.
Another candidate for such a mission is New Mexico governor Bill Richardson,
who won the release after three months of an American who had swum the Yalu
River in 1996. Richardson also helped to negotiate the release after 13 days of
an army helicopter pilot shot down after straying across the line between North
and South Korea.
Gore and his San Francisco-based Current TV have maintained silence on the
cases, while Richardson was on morning television expressing a willingness to
help. Richardson called the news of the sentencing "a good sign", observing
that "in previous instances where I was involved in negotiating, you could not
get this started until the legal process had ended".
Richardson, a strong advocate of reconciliation with North Korea, neglected to
mention that both those cases were far simpler than that of Ling and Lee and
that neither went to trial.
The Yalu River swimmer was clearly a nut, and the US army helicopter had
obviously gone off course in an episode in which the co-pilot was killed. Ling
and Lee, by contrast, were filming along the Tumen River border to obtain a
story that would only be extremely negative in its portrayal of North Korean
human-rights abuses perpetrated on defectors who cross the border to escape
starvation and imprisonment.
Ling's older sister, Lisa, moreover, had earlier done a documentary for
National Geographic television in which she used a hidden camera while posing
as a member of the team of a Nepalese eye doctor admitted into North Korea to
cure cataracts. The film ended with North Koreans removing their blindfolds,
seeing portraits of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his late father, Kim
Il-sung, and thanking both of them profusely for giving them back their
eyesight.
Against this background, if North Korea is receptive to anything, the price may
be prohibitively high in terms of concessions that the US administration is
prepared to make.
"North Korea certainly hopes to use these hostages as pawns," said Eberstadt.
"Given the past record of dealing, the North Koreans have reason to think they
can do so."
The North Koreans "will have conditions and demands", observed Larry Niksch,
long-time research analyst at the Congressional Research Service. For starters,
Niksch noted, "They will want an apology" for the "grave crimes" committed by
the two women when North Korea claims they entered the country illegally by
crossing the frozen Tumen River from China on March 17.
An apology might be easy enough, no matter whether Ling and Lee actually
crossed the border, were standing on the ice or were seized by North Korean
soldiers while on the Chinese side. But beyond the apology, it's a cinch the
North Koreas "will want concessions on the nuclear issue", said Niksch. The US
is preparing to press the United Nations Security Council for stringent
sanctions as punishment for the nuclear test of May 25.
The administration of Obama is now hoping that China will persuade North Korea
of the advantages of letting the women go - and also talk some sense into
Pyongyang about its nukes and missiles.
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg has just completed a swing through
the region, leading a team of US officials including representatives of the
National Security Council, the Pentagon and the Treasury Department in talks in
Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo. The purpose of the exercise was to get China in line
behind the sanctions that Washington wants from the UN Security Council,
including provisions authorizing the search of ships and planes suspected of
carrying components of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles for firing
them at distant targets.
Some observers expect China to go along with a UN resolution that will be
considerably tougher than the resolution adopted after North Korea's first
nuclear test in October 2006. There's no guarantee, however, that China, or
Russia, for that matter, will be enthusiastic about tough provisions advocated
by the US, Japan and South Korea. It's quite possible the final resolution, if
adopted, will be considerably weaker than the Americans would like.
In the end, perhaps in a few months or a year or two, after the families of
Ling and Lee have appeared innumerable times on television pleading on their
behalf, the US may have to come up with an offering.
The families of both women turned up their campaign for clemency immediately
after getting word of the sentences. It was revealed that Ling suffered from
ulcers that could get much worse in prison and that Lee's four-year-old
daughter is already suffering from anxiety about her missing mother.
In a statement issued on Monday, North Korea's state-run news agency would not
disclose in what prison the women are to serve their time. According to the Los
Angeles Times, "North Koreans who receive similar sentences of 'reform through
labor' often face starvation and torture in a penal system many consider among
the world's most repressive." The article cited its source as David Hawk,
author of the 2004 study "The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison
Camps."
If the pair are held for a lengthy period, the article continues, analysts
believe they may be sent to a kyo-hwa-so, or "re-education" reformatory.
The literal meaning of kyo-hwa-so is "a place to make a good person
through education".
"It's extremely hard labor under extremely brutal conditions," Hawk was quoted
as saying. "These places have very high rates of deaths in detention. The
casualties from forced labor and inadequate food supplies are very high."
Many North Korean re-education camps, the Los Angeles Times reported, "are
affiliated with mines or textile factories where the long work shifts are often
followed by self-criticism sessions and the forced memorization of North Korean
communist policy doctrine".
The women's families said they were "shocked and devastated" by the sentences,
and that the three months the women had spent in prison was "long enough". The
pleas may eventually force the US to consider making creative offers that North
Korea may be willing to consider.
"It seems to me, the question is whether the Obama administration will have
something to lay out," said Niksch. He recommends "a big offer of food aid,
probably a million tons or more, possibly two million tons", with no strings
attached. In other words, the US would have to drop its insistence on seeing
who got the aid - the demand that led to the end of "humanitarian" shipments
from the US last year.
A large US donation may provide the opening for the bilateral dialogue that
North Korea is widely assumed to want with the US - provided the talk focuses
on North Korea's basic demands. These include recognition of North Korea as a
nuclear state, one of nine members of the global elite of nuclear powers, and
removal of the sanctions that the US is determined to impose.
The Obama administration is avoiding talk on these issues. The White House and
State Department have issued statements expressing deep concerns, and Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton has written a letter asking for the release of the
women. She seems determined to keep that discussion out of the arena of efforts
to get North Korea to give up its nukes.
As Clinton put it in an interview on ABC's This Week before the
sentences were announced, "We don't want this pulled into the political
issues." She also said their situation should not interfere with "concerns that
are being expressed in the United Nations Security Council".
Clinton may be forced to discard the notion of putting North Korea back on the
State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, even though she did
remark that "we're going to look at it".
Some officials in the US believe the George W Bush administration, under severe
North Korean pressure, made a big mistake in dropping North Korea from the list
as a precondition for North Korea making good on the nuclear deals reached in
six-party talks in 2007. At the same time, they are saying it's now too late to
look back.
Clinton may have raised the idea of putting North Korea's name back on the list
as a warning. This was a bad idea, said Tim Peters, a missionary in Seoul who
has crusaded for human rights in North Korea. "Even to mention this at such a
sensitive time", said Peters, "strikes me as idiotic."
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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