NORTHEAST ASIA PEACE AND SECURITY NETWORK
***** SPECIAL REPORT *****
December 13, 2000
The following is an article written by John Feffer <[email protected]>
on recent US policy decisions toward North Korea and their effect on the Korean
Peninsula. Feffer works for the American Friends Service Committee in the
East Asia Quaker International Affairs Program based in Tokyo. He travels
regularly to North and South Korea and China to encourage dialogue on peace and
justice issues. This article was originally published in the December 2000 issue
of "Foreign Policy in Focus."
----------------------------
ABSTRACT
The Clinton administration's on-again, off-again approach to
promoting diplomatic ties with North Korea is partly a result of opposition to
U.S. rapprochement from key congressional leaders and defense industry
lobbyists. For its part, a cautious North Korea has also conducted its own hard
bargaining.
Either way, U.S. policy toward North Korea continues to chart a hesitant course.
To site a few, recent examples: President Clinton plans a trip to Pyongyang,
then cancels it; the U.S. promises to lift economic sanctions, then insists that
North Korea jump through more hoops to get off the "terrorism list."
The U.S. clears the way for North Korean diplomats to participate in the UN's
Millennium Forum, but doesn't make the extra effort to prevent an embarrassing
body search at the Frankfurt airport; And the U.S.-negotiated project to build
two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea is hamstrung by delays and, more
recently, the announced withdrawal of a key supplier, General Electric.
To be most helpful, the U.S. should let Koreans themselves take
the lead in resolving their own conflicts. Washington can best encourage these
initiatives by sending President Clinton to Pyongyang to accelerate the
process of normalizing relations and formally ending the Korean War. After that,
the U.S. should loosen the screws of its containment policy, open up the flow of
multilateral assistance to North Korea, and then step back to give Koreans on
both sides of the 38th parallel a chance to get to know each other better.
ARTICLE
KEY POINTS
* Relations between North and South Korea have improved considerably since
the June summit between the two Korean leaders, although obstacles to détente
remain.
* North Korea is pushing hard to improve relations with the United States.
* As a result of Secretary of State Albright's visit to Pyongyang in
October 2000, the U.S. now has a window of opportunity to advance rapprochement,
if Washington acts soon.
It was a striking juxtaposition, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il sitting side by side at a display of mass
gymnastics in Pyongyang this last October. "Spectacular and amazing,"
Albright called the coordinated movements of the 100,000 performers. When a
picture of the August 1998 Taepodong rocket launch was displayed, Kim Jong Il
confided that it would be his country's first and last such launch. The North
Korean leader was a man with whom she could do business, Albright concluded at
the end of her visit. The U.S. and North Korea, technically at war for over
fifty years, had never before been on quite such cordial speaking terms.
North Korea has recently stepped up its efforts to normalize relations with the
United States. In September, North Korea's second-in-command Jo Myong Ro
traveled to Washington to meet with top U.S. officials,
including President Clinton. When Albright followed up on this initiative, Kim
Jong Il kept a top-ranking Chinese delegation waiting in order to spend
additional time with the U.S. delegation. Both Jo and Kim indicated that North
Korea would be willing to negotiate away its long-range missile capacity. With
Albright and Kim toasting each other's health and with Clinton planning a visit
to Pyongyang, the two countries seemed poised to end mutual hostilities.
But then the Clinton administration squandered the momentum. The pool of U.S.
journalists came away from Pyongyang with their worst prejudices confirmed,
Albright scrambled to defend her reticence on human rights
issues during her trip, pundits lambasted Clinton for overreaching himself in
Korea to save his foreign policy legacy from the flames engulfing the Middle
East, and follow-up bilateral talks in Malaysia failed to yield an agreement on
the missile issue. With the U.S. presidential elections in a procedural
cul-de-sac and Clinton's visit to Pyongyang postponed, U.S.-North Korea
relations remain stalemated.
Albright's visit to Pyongyang, while a step forward for U.S. policy,
demonstrates how out of step the U.S. is in relation to many of its allies.
Since the summer Britain, Germany, Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands have all
extended diplomatic recognition to Pyongyang, following earlier moves by Italy,
Australia, and the Philippines.
But the true path breakers have been the Koreans themselves. Since the June
summit between the two Korean leaders, events seem to be moving rapidly on the
Korean peninsula. In August and December, family members
divided by the Korean War had tearful reunions in Seoul and Pyongyang. At the
opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in September, the audience applauded
wildly as North and South Korean athletes marched
together. Economic agreements between the two countries have led to South
Korea's provision of 500,000 tons of grain to North Korea and the launching of a
new currency to facilitate inter-Korean trade. The two
countries have begun clearing mines in one part of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)
to prepare for a rail link. The South Korean firm Hyundai is backing a major
industrial complex near the North Korean city of Kaesong
that will eventually be home to over a thousand firms. South Korean President
Kim Dae Jung's "engagement policy," coupled with his overall human
rights record, in September even received the world's highest
honor, the Nobel Peace Prize.
North-South reconciliation has certainly encountered speed bumps and setbacks.
In September, South Korea repatriated 63 former North Korean spies, but North
Korea has made no reciprocal move. Despite the new
legal and political foundation for inter-Korean trade and investment, there has
been no rush to invest in the North. The major chaebols (business conglomerates)
are in trouble, with Daewoo bankrupt and Hyundai just barely holding on. The
awarding of Kim Dae Jung's Nobel prize led to a brief honeymoon period between
the major South Korean political parties. But now the honeymoon is over, and the
opposition has even accused the president of delivering the country into the
hands of Kim Jong Il. The peace prize itself may impede rather than hasten
reunification, since it was awarded to only one side, and, as Kim Dae Jung
readily admits, the "summit was not just my own work."
The U.S., South Korea, and Japan continue to coordinate their strategies toward
North Korea. But as Kim Dae Jung has demonstrated, there is still considerable
room for distinctive approaches. In its waning days, the
Clinton administration can still improve on its policy of engaging North Korea.
PROBLEMS WITH CURRENT U.S. POLICY
KEY PROBLEMS
* Washington's policy toward North Korea puts the most intractable
issue-North Korea's missile program-at the core of its engagement strategy.
* The U.S. still blocks North Korea's access to important economic
assistance.
* The U.S. continues to intensify its military containment policy in East
Asia.
There is an air of hesitancy to U.S. policy regarding North Korea. The U.S.
president plans a trip to Pyongyang, then he cancels it. The U.S. promises to
lift economic sanctions against North Korea, then it insists
that North Korea jump through one more hoop to get off the "terrorism
list" by expelling a handful of Japanese Red Army members. The U.S. clears
the way for North Korean diplomats to participate in the Millennium Forum at the
United Nations, but Washington doesn't make the extra effort to prevent an
embarrassing body search of the diplomats at the Frankfurt airport. And the
U.S.-negotiated project to build two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea
is hamstrung by numerous delays and, more recently, the announced withdrawal of
a key supplier, General Electric.
The on-again, off-again approach of the Clinton administration is partly a
result of entrenched political opposition to U.S. rapprochement with North
Korea. For its part, a cautious North Korea has also conducted its own hard
bargaining.
Domestic politics and the indeterminacy of North Korean positions, however, did
not prevent Kim Dae Jung from crafting and implementing his "engagement
policy" with the North. The chief failure of the Clinton administration has
been its inability to construct a corollary policy supporting North-South
engagement. More specifically, the Clinton administration has failed to adopt
two principles of Kim Dae Jung's strategy: tackle the simple things first and
separate economics from politics.
For instance, instead of tackling the least complicated issues, the U.S. has
placed the most challenging issue-missiles-at the center of its policy toward
North Korea. By developing rockets of sufficient range to
launch satellites into space, North Korea is pursuing several strategies at
once. Satellites are a booming export industry and could prove more lucrative
than North Korea's current missile sales. Satellites can improve the country's
communications and intelligence- gathering capacities. Finally, long-range
rockets capable of putting satellites into space, with considerable tinkering
and testing, can also be turned into intercontinental ballistic missiles, the
only North Korean product that seems to command attention from the United
States.
The missile issue is complex, because 1) no one is quite certain of North
Korea's real capability, and 2) North Korea is not likely to give up a major
source of revenue and the single most important lever in its negotiations with
the United States. Yet Washington insists that rapprochement will not advance
without a permanent freeze of North Korea's missile program. Kim Dae Jung, in
contrast, did not insist that North Korea pull back its troops from the DMZ or
dismantle its purported weapons of mass destruction before meeting with Kim Jong
Il in June.
The U.S. has to a certain extent separated politics from economics. It has, for
example, sent North Korea an enormous amount of food aid. However, this food aid
has often come only after political agreements have been negotiated-e.g., access
to a suspected underground nuclear reactor or a continued moratorium on missile
testing. More critically, the Clinton administration has not yet fully lifted
economic sanctions against North Korea, despite repeated promises. North Korea
remains on the "terrorism list," although Washington admits that the
Koreans have not conducted terrorist activities since 1987. As long as it
remains on the "terrorism list," North Korea cannot count on U.S.
support for assistance from multilateral institutions.
On one issue, of course, U.S. policy is anything but hesitant. In the security
arena, Washington continues to press its strategic advantage in East Asia. On
the heels of a Pentagon report identifying Asia as the priority for the next two
decades, the Clinton administration is moving forward on two fronts-to put
greater emphasis on technology rather than troops and to "Asianize"
the U.S. presence in the region. Key to this strategy is ensuring that Japan
abandons its nonoffensive defense and zaps its 1969 pledge not to militarize
space. Meanwhile, with U.S. assistance, South Korea is looking to acquire at
least three Aegis-class destroyers and upgrade its air force. At South Korea's
urging, the U.S. is on the verge of reversing a 1979 agreement and extending the
range of South Korean missiles to 300 km, which would bring them within striking
distance of all of North Korea. By proposing various Theater Missile Defense
scenarios, whose cost and feasibility seem inversely proportional, the U.S. is
implicitly recognizing the declining utility of ground forces, provoking an
adversary considered by hard-liners to be the real East Asian threat (China),
and encouraging a regional high-tech arms race. Sadly, lucrative contracts for
U.S. arms manufacturers continue to outweigh Washington's stated desire for
greater peace and security in the region.
The State Department boasts of its trilateral coordination with Japan and South
Korea. But the single-minded U.S. focus on North Korea's largely conceptual
long-range missile threat ignores Japan's concern with missiles of considerably
shorter range and South Korea's worries over biological and chemical warheads on
tactical weapons. Albright has called the U.S.-South Korean relationship
"wedge-proof," but the U.S. has refused to renegotiate the Status of
Forces Agreement to ensure greater equality of the partners-a wedge in the
making.
Kim Dae Jung's "engagement policy" is two-handed: a hand of friendship
and an iron fist of deterrence. By supporting the latter and ignoring the
former, the U.S. is not serving as a proper midwife for change on
the Korean peninsula.
TOWARD A NEW FOREIGN POLICY
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS
* President Clinton should go to Pyongyang to build on the momentum of
Albright's visit.
* The U.S. should offer access to satellite technology in exchange for
limits on North Korea's missile program.
* Washington should remove North Korea from the "terrorism
list."
Before a new administration is sworn in, the Clinton administration can take an
important step to build on the momentum of both the June inter-Korean summit and
the October visit of the U.S. secretary of state. Bill Clinton should visit
North Korea. The groundwork has been laid by Madeleine Albright, and Kim Dae
Jung has encouraged Clinton to go. Considering how much power is vested in the
top position in North Korea, a two-day discussion between the U.S. and North
Korean leaders could make advances that months of lower-level negotiations might
not achieve. Clinton need not agree to any package deals that won't pass
congressional approval. Even without a deal, the symbolic act-like his recent
visit to Vietnam-would greatly enhance chances for peaceful reconciliation in
the region.
Tackling simple things first, the U.S. should rapidly conclude a deal that
removes North Korea from the "terrorism list." A deal on the remaining
obstacle-several Japanese Red Army hijackers hiding out in North Korea for the
last 30 years-is within sight, if both the U.S. and Japan are willing to
compromise. The Japanese authorities, who jailed one returning hijacker for only
three years, are ready to negotiate. Once this obstacle is removed, the U.S.
should separate politics from economics and help broker the significant economic
aid that North Korea needs to rebuild its economy.
The missile issue will take more time, but here too the U.S. can make progress.
North Korea has indicated on several occasions that it is willing to cut a deal.
In 1993, Israel offered $1 billion in investments and assistance, if North Korea
cancelled the sale of 150 missiles to Iran. But Washington stepped in to disrupt
the deal. Today the U.S. is more willing to entertain the money-for-missiles
option. North Korea's opening bid of $3 billion over three years in exchange for
freezing its missile program could be negotiated down, especially in combination
with a U.S. offer to send a North Korean satellite into space. Kim Jong Il, who
first broached this possibility with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July,
seems to take the prospect very seriously. Critics worry that the U.S. might
unwittingly provide military secrets to North Korea. But if Washington can
determine that Boeing didn't provide sensitive data to Russia and Ukraine for
their October 1999 commercial satellite launch, it could do the same with North
Korea.
Negotiations on the missile question would proceed more quickly if the U.S.
acknowledged the myth of North Korean military strength. North Korea, still
struggling with a severe food crisis, is running low on energy, spare parts, and
ammunition. It can barely conduct military exercises, train its fighter pilots,
or test its weapons. It can afford the illusion of a missile program but not an
actual missile program. A rocket launch reportedly costs between $200 million
and $300 million. The North Korean military budget is approximately $1.4
billion. When
NATO attacked Yugoslavia, the Serbian military dressed up logs to look like
missiles in order to fool U.S. bombers. North Korea is practicing this trick on
a national scale. Since a strong military is a point of pride with North Korea,
the U.S. should not publicly emphasize North Korea's diminished capacities.
Instead it must encourage every opportunity for North Korea to transfer precious
resources to economic development, a process that will most likely take place in
a less threatening environment.
The United States and South Korea need not compete in a zero-sum game in their
overtures toward Pyongyang. Nor should they collaborate in a
lowest-common-denominator approach by restraining each other's rapprochement
policies. Both countries can instead play mutually supportive roles.
To be most helpful, the U.S. should let Koreans themselves take the lead in
resolving their own conflicts. Fortunately, this process has already begun.
Encouraged by the June summit, various civic actors in South
Korea are making contact with their Northern counterparts. Trade unionists met
at the end of November; women will gather on the first anniversary of the June
summit; scientists are working on a joint
project to clone rare Siberian tigers. Washington can best encourage these
initiatives by sending President Clinton to Pyongyang to accelerate the process
of normalizing relations and formally ending the Korean War. After that, the
U.S. should loosen the screws of its containment policy, open up the flow of
multilateral assistance to North Korea, and then step back to give Koreans on
both sides of the 38th parallel a chance to get to know each other better.