SEOUL - North Korea's claim of
a serious scientific reason for planning to fire
off a long-range missile next month with a
satellite for a payload is couched in such
sincere-sounding lingo that one has to wonder if
the North's scientists and engineers actually may
have something in mind there.
Kwangmyogsong-3, as North Korea has dubbed
the satellite, "is a precious result of scientific
researches conducted by scientists
and technicians". The sole
reason for wanting to put it in orbit, according
to Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA),
is "to develop and utilize working satellites
indispensable for the country's economic
development, pursuant to the government's policy
for the peaceful development and use of space".
But what, one might ask, is the
significance of the number 3 after Kwangmyogsong,
which means "brilliant star"? The answer is that
North Korea claims to have already launched
numbers 1 and 2 when the DPRK, the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea, shocked the world by
firing off earlier versions of the same missile
with the satellite on board.
And "when the
DPRK launched two experimental satellites, it
strictly abided by relevant international
regulations and practice", said KCNA. Those claims
sounded so sincere at the time that Daniel
Pinkston, the International Crisis Group's guru in
Seoul, staged a well-attended press conference,
put out releases and wrote commentaries telling
everyone the North Koreans had every right in the
world to go launching satellites, just like every
other self-respecting country with big dreams.
The only problem was that the satellites
were never seen in orbit by scientists in the US,
Russia, South Korea and Japan and everywhere else
they monitor that stuff. The DPRK mentions them
only occasionally - and then to give the
impression they're comfortably circling the Earth
doing whatever they were supposed to be doing,
presumably to the same patriotic music they were
said to be emitting when they were launched.
In truth, however, the real question is
whether any satellites were launched at all - or
whether the missiles that bore them in arcs over
the western Pacific were carrying satellites or
simply some shiny material designed to look like
satellites at the time of liftoff. Why should an
impoverished country like North Korea, begging for
food from foreign donors bother to build a
satellite when it could just as easily fabricate a
dummy and convince its people the enormous
investment is paying off?
This time,
however, the story may be a little different. The
occasion for the launch is the vast celebration
for the 100th birth anniversary on April 15 of the
North's founding leader, and still "eternal
president", Kim Il-sung.
The North Koreans
have been planning for this event for the past
five years, at least. I saw bright lights shining
with the anniversary date when I last attended the
Arirang show in May Day stadium by the Daedong
River in the capital Pyongyang three-and-a-half
years ago. The Arirang show, featuring 50,000
people on one entire side of the stadium flashing
cards to form mosaics of heroic scenes while
another 50,000 prance, dance, parade and pirouette
on the field, normally goes on nightly for weeks.
It's hard to imagine any show more grandiose and
glorious, but for sure the North Koreans will do
their best to outdo past performances.
What could be better, then, than to put on
a live launch for the whole world to see? As the
KCNA dispatch, keeping a straight face, solemnly
informed its readers regarding the launch of what
it portentously called "the working satellite",
the North has already "sent necessary information
to the relevant international bodies according to
international regulations and procedures". Not
only that, but the DPRK also "expressed the will
to invite experts and journalists of other
countries to view the launching station".
In other words, unlike the previous
launches, which no one knew about until the
missiles-cum-satellites were airborne, hurtling
far above the main Japanese island of Honshu, much
to the annoyance of the Japanese, the next launch
will be very much a public event. Public, that is,
except that it strains all credibility to think
that anyone with any expertise would be able to
get close enough to the contraption pre-launch to
see if the thing it's carrying was really a
satellite.
The North Koreans, nothing if
not skilled at bamboozling American negotiators,
know they have to put up a bold front to pull this
one off without seriously jeopardizing the deal
they supposedly made in talks in Beijing on
February 29. Remember that one? That was when the
neophyte US special envoy, Glyn Davies, got
succored by the wily North Korean veteran Kim
Kye-gwan into more or less believing the North
Koreans had agreed to a "moratorium" on testing of
long-range missiles and, of course, nuclear
devices.
Or did they? Is this thing down
in writing, like a contract, or was it all wishful
thinking, extrapolations from conversations,
embroidered in agreed-upon announcements by both
sides afterward? The bottom line for the North
Koreans, regardless of what they do, is that they
still want to be sure of getting 240,000 tons of
food aid that the US promised in the same talks -
not rice for the North's 1.1 million troops but
biscuits and soy sauce and the like for pregnant
women and kids below the age of five.
How
are the North Koreans going to get the US to begin
shipping in all that food, at the rate of 20,000
tons a month over the course of a year, if they've
just fired a long-range missile that's capable in
theory of carrying not merely a dummy satellite
but a weapon of mass destruction, nuclear,
biological or chemical, as far as the US west
coast? And would they still have a chance if they
happened to follow up the missile-cum-satellite
launch with a third underground nuclear test -
just as they did in May 2009 the month after their
last missile launch?
Sure, no problem. For
starters, the North Koreans can make a show of
inviting in inspectors from the International
Atomic Energy Agency to sniff around their main
nuclear complex at Yongbyon, 96 kilometers north
of Pyongyang.
The North Koreans kicked
them all out, for the second time, three years ago
before their last round of
long-range-missile-and-nuclear tests, but there's
no harm in having them back if that's what it
takes to appease foreign critics. They won't go
near the sites for launching missiles and testing
nukes - they're nowhere near Yongbyon.
As
for getting all that food, the next step would be,
fine, let's all return to the six-party talks,
last held in Beijing in December 2008, including
the US, Japan and Russia plus the two Koreas.
Eventually, the talks would end in another
statement, another agreement, and the shipments
would begin.
Only this time, the North
Koreans might bargain for the kind of food they
want the most - fodder for the troops, not baby
food for little kids. That might be a hard
bargain, but the North's got a little time on its
side.
Americans and South Koreans are both
electing new presidents later this year, and new
governments in Washington and Seoul may want to
forgive and forget - that is, until the next
crisis and the next cycle of talking and testing.
Donald Kirk, a long-time
journalist in Asia, is author of Korea
Betrayed: Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
