WASHINGTON - After three years of frozen
relations between North Korea and the United
States, the two long-standing adversaries are on
the verge of a thaw.
In what has been
called the "leap-day deal", North Korea has
pledged to stop uranium enrichment and suspend
nuclear and missile tests. The US, meanwhile, will
deliver 240,000 tonnes of food to the country's
malnourished population.
The
administration of US President Barack Obama has
maintained a policy of "strategic patience" toward
North Korea, which amounted to a wait-and-see
approach while Washington was preoccupied with
other foreign-policy issues. Obama administration
officials portray the leap-day deal as a modest
first step in re-engaging North Korea.
"After the really tough sanctions that
were put in place by the UN
Security Council and the
North Koreans announced that they wanted to return
to six-party talks, talks that they had previously
abandoned, we and our allies made clear that North
Korea needed to take a number of steps that would
demonstrate their seriousness of purpose," said a
senior US official at a background briefing on
February 29 - leap day.
"We were firm that
we were only interested in credible negotiations
leading to the denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula."
The death of North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il in late 2011 interrupted the
preparatory steps toward this deal. Although the
country remains officially in its 100-day mourning
period, the leader's youngest son and successor,
Kim Jong-eun, has continued key elements of his
father's policies. Foremost among these is the
more energetic diplomacy North Korea has conducted
over the past year.
As the Obama
administration attempts a "Pacific pivot" to
refocus its geopolitical energies from the Middle
East to Asia, North Korea has been executing a
pivot of its own. The centennial of the birth of
the country's founder Kim Il-sung, 2012 is also
the year in which North Korea has pledged to
achieve the status of kangsong taeguk: an
economically prosperous and militarily strong
country. To attract the economic investment
necessary to achieve this goal, Pyongyang has
reached out to friend and foe alike.
It
has been negotiating with Russia, for instance,
over a natural-gas pipeline that would extend down
the peninsula to customers in South Korea and
possibly Japan. Extensive deals with China have
been concluded over access to minerals and ports.
Even inter-Korean relations, which bottomed out
over the past several years as a result of
low-level military clashes and high-level
belligerent rhetoric, promise to improve as both
ruling- and opposition-party leaders in the South
lean toward a more conciliatory policy.
Meanwhile, the industrial zone at Kaesong,
run by 123 South Korean firms on North Korean
territory, has expanded to employ more than 50,000
Northern workers.
But the focus of the
North Korean negotiating strategy has been the US,
with which it has frequently insisted on bilateral
discussions.
"The North Koreans have been
interested in reaching some accommodation with the
United States for a while now," observed Joel Wit,
a former US State Department official and
currently a visiting fellow at the US-Korea
Institute at Johns Hopkins University's
Washington-based School of Advanced International
Studies.
"It's been a year now that
they've been sending signals that they're
interested in talking and taking some limited
steps forward. The Obama administration didn't
take them up on it because the South Koreans were
against it. But South Korea's position changed
last summer," he said.
Another reason for
the North Korean pivot is its perennial push-pull
relationship with China.
"The North
Koreans feel that they've become very close to
China over the past few years because of the US
policy of 'strategic patience', which has forced
them into the Chinese arms," Wit continued. "But
the North Koreans aren't comfortable with that.
They're trying to create some distance with the
Chinese, using the United States as a balancer."
US reaction to the leap-day deal has
ranged from relief at North Korea's moratorium on
nuclear testing and missile launches to skepticism
that the agreement represents anything new.
"North Korea's promise to suspend certain
nuclear activities can't be taken at face value,
given the almost certain existence of several
undeclared nuclear facilities," US Representative
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a press
statement. "Pyongyang will likely continue its
clandestine nuclear-weapons program right under
our noses. We have bought this bridge several
times before."
North Korea, meanwhile,
seems to interpret the agreement somewhat
differently than the US. A Korean Central News
Agency article reported that the Six-Party Talks
would prioritize "the lifting of sanctions on the
DPRK and provision of light-water reactors",
neither of which is mentioned in US government
statements.
The humanitarian community has
reacted with unambiguous support for the
resumption of food aid, which will consist of
nutritional supplements designed particularly for
children and pregnant women.
"There have
been over six nutritional assessments, most
everything done on our own dime, to verify that
there is a need for food," said Robert Springs,
the head of Global Resource Services, one of the
five non-governmental organizations involved in
the last round of US food-aid distribution. "We
welcome this nutritional assistance. It's
responding to a need. It should have been done a
long time ago."
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