Pyongyang Watch

Pyongyang - For Seoul correspondents, there is no substitute for being there

By Andrew Salmon, Seoul correspondent, Washington Times, March 2006

At 2:30AM, the streets of Pyongyang are largely unlit, almost silent, and virtually empty. A cough echoes across the broad, dark boulevards. A couple walks surreptitiously by, arm in arm, almost invisible in the shadows under the trees that line the road. In the only business open, a kiosk selling sweet potatoes, a brown-uniformed serving woman snores on the counter. In the rare patches of light, portraits of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader beam benevolently from their illuminated alcoves. With their daytime schedules being tightly controlled, a group of 17 journalists and authors – including six from Seoul - who visited the secretive state in October 2005 on a rare media tour for the Arirang Mass Games found that the only time they could wander freely was to slip out of their hotel after midnight.But in Pyongyang, is one ever unobserved? This reporter was startled when an invisible loudspeaker, droning unintelligible Korean from a pitch-black side street, suddenly burst into “Hello, hello!” as he returned to his hotel... ( read the story here)

East Asia's black sheep

North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival by Young Whan Kihl and Hong Nack Kim (eds)
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia Asia Times On-line, BOOK REVIEW, Feb 18, 2006

Despite rampant speculation of imminent collapse, North Korea has muddled through economic hardship and diplomatic pressures for 11 years under Kim Jong-il. While there is little doubt that North Korea's domestic politics and foreign relations are in a devastated condition, the longevity of Kim's regime has proved many soothsayers wrong.

North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival contains commentaries by internationally renowned scholars who specialize in the study of the anachronistic Hermit Kingdom, which never fails to befuddle. Impartially making sense of a black sheep in a rapidly progressing East Asia is no mean task, but this book ably places North Korea's endurance game in the regional framework.

Co-editor Young Whan Kihl's introductory essay characterizes North Korea as a "failing state" that is politically repressive and economically reliant on humanitarian assistance to overcome chronic starvation. The limited "marketization" measures introduced by Kim with hesitancy in 2002 create more losers than winners and increase the possibility of greater social unrest. Agricultural commodity price reform will not improve efficiency because of North Korea's small proportion of farm population. Inferior export competitiveness places limits on large-scale trade expansion. The new industrial policy is unbalanced, with excessive spending on armaments and ammunition factories. The special economic zones are plagued by mismanagement, poor infrastructure, geographic isolation and onerous rules.

Kim's power is based on tight control of the Korean People's Army (KPA) and songun-chongchi (military-first) ideology. Having abolished the office of president, he governs in the capacity of chairman of the National Defense Commission. Improvising on his father's ideology of juche (self-reliance), Kim organizes the citizens on a "revolutionary course" under the guidance of the suryong (leader), who is glorified as "brain of the body politic". (p 9) His "mini-max" foreign-policy style is tough and rarely deviates from pre-established strategic plans such as forcing US troop withdrawal from South Korea. His strong sense of national pride, self-righteousness and distrust toward outsiders are reflected in nuclear brinkmanship and the unalloyed desire to reunify Korea on the North's terms. In Kihl's perception, "the evolving balance of power in the region will ultimately shape the form of Korea's reunification." (p 27)

Alexandre Mansourov's essay posits an ongoing structural transformation of North Korea that is affecting the elite, bureaucracy and the masses. Kim's succession in 1994 ushered in "political neo-authoritarianism" that loosened the Korean Workers Party's (KWP's) grip and replaced it with military penetration of all civil affairs. The KPA is "the general backbone of society" and the principal veto player, with the conservative state security apparatus purged and relegated to nominal status. Kim is modeling himself after General Park Chung-hee's military reign in South Korea. The race for his successor mantle "has already begun" among the third generation within the Kim family clan along the lines of "estate fights". (p 50) As regional rivalries heat up, the suryong is maintaining an even balance at the center between leaders hailing from the Hamgyong (northern) provinces and those from the Pyongan (southern) provinces.

Economy-wise, North Korea is going through "neo-corporatism" that rewards traders, landlords, apparatchiks and those with access to foreign currency. The worst impacted are the elderly, the disabled, women and children, budgetary employees, hinterland dwellers, intellectuals and scientists. The regime is also emphasizing "cultural neo-traditionalism", authentic Korean values and revival of religion in the countryside. Mansourov feels Kim will not halt the process of change "even if his absolute power is eroded", as long as his dynastic rule is assured of continuation. (p 55)

Ilpyong Kim's essay interprets the suryong's military-first politics formalized in the 1998 constitutional amendment that licensed the army to rule the party. The collapse of communist parties worldwide in 1991 and the deteriorating North Korean economy led Kim to advocate songun-chongchi. Another reason is Kim's suspicions of senior KWP cadres of his father's generation, who are less responsive to his command than younger KPA officers. He knows from history that Kim Il-sung took one decade of KWP factional struggles to reach the summit. The unified and loyal military is seen by the suryong as a quicker conduit to power and as a fixer of the moribund economy.

Kenneth Quinones' essay argues that North Korea's nuclear program is less about economic woes and more to do with security concerns. Countering the US conventional and nuclear threat to regime survival drives Pyongyang's atomic ambitions. South Korea's admission in 2004 of secret nuclear experiments intensifies Kim's anxiety that they are being "conducted at the instruction of the United States". (p 79) Folding of the Soviet nuclear umbrella in 1991 and the awesome display of US weapons technology in the first Gulf War stunned Pyongyang and laid the foundations for a "self-reliant" deterrence capability. Kim does not believe that the US would desist from invading if he unilaterally dismantled his weapons of mass destruction. He is also not confident that his generals will agree to total disarmament. Quinones takes the long-term view that North Korea must end songun-chongchi and provide a safer environment for foreign investors to avoid demise.

Larry Niksch presents the evidence on North Korea's weapons of mass destruction from sensory detection, Russian intelligence documents and "confessions" of Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Kim directed North Korea's nuclear program since at least the late 1980s, accelerating it after his father's death. The project has managed to produce metallic plutonium, but the amount is uncertain. It has successfully tested triggering devices, but a nebula pervades the crucial question of whether North Korea has developed warhead-class bombs capable of being mounted on ballistic missiles.

Kim's enriched-uranium adventure is afforded by "cash payments that South Korea's Hyundai Group made" between 1999 and 2002. (p 105) North Korea's "real fear of US attack" is receding as the US juggernaut gets bogged down in Iraq. Niksch maintains that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to other governments or terrorists is a bigger threat from cash-strapped North Korea than a land invasion of the South.

Dick Nanto takes stock of North Korea's dismal economic conditions. About 40% of the population still suffers from malnutrition. Underweight children, physically stunted youth and factories running at about 30% of their capacity are morbid signs. Scarce consumer necessities are being used to reward regime loyalists classified according to ideological orientation. The military and bureaucratic elites who enjoy privileges far above the reach of the average person "have a strong vested interest in maintaining the current economic system". (p 121) They are stifling the first round of capitalistic enclaves. To pay for imports, North Korea dabbles in illicit drugs, weapons-trading and currency counterfeiting. Ethnic Koreans living in Japan are boosting Pyongyang's money-laundering operations.

Robert Scalapino's essay on US-North Korea relations expresses doubts whether the North Korean military is indeed divided on foreign policy toward Washington. The broad thrust within the KPA is of toughness, matching that of the Pentagon. Kim's advisers regard a nuclear deterrent as a necessary substitute to the country's obsolescent and expensive conventional arsenal. Talks over the nuclear program are stalemated over the sequence of reciprocity, since Pyongyang deciphers from readjustment of US forces in South Korea that a preemptive strike may be in the offing. Scalapino's projection for US-North Korea ties is for "partial moves, subject to retreats". (p 158)

Co-editor Hong Nack Kim's article on Japan-North Korea relations goes into Tokyo's objective of competing effectively with China and Russia in the Korean Peninsula. Preventing a "hard landing" of North Korea is necessary for Japan also to stanch influxes of refugees. Kim Jong-il needs Japanese economic aid and goodwill that can be leveraged with the US. Although prickly issues such as abduction of Japanese nationals, reparations for colonial wrongdoings, launch of missiles and spy ships keep pegging back the Tokyo-Pyongyang saga, Kim's nuclear program is the ultimate bone of contention.

Japan has joined the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict shipments to and from North Korea, stepped up customs and safety inspections of North Korean cargoes, investigated finances of pro-Pyongyang organizations and mulled economic sanctions on Kim's regime. It has launched spy satellites to monitor North Korean missile tests and plans to deploy a costly anti-missile defense system by 2007. Despite Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's reconciliatory intent, conservatives in Japan disparage easy concessions to Pyongyang without securing gains in nuclear dismantlement.

Samuel Kim's analysis of the "special relationship" between China and North Korea lists Beijing's goals as staving off collapse of the Kim Jong-il regime, halting refugee inflows and preventing the rise of ethno-nationalism among Chinese-Koreans. China is "more committed to maintaining stability than to nuclear disarmament". (p 186) Aggressive US military action on the peninsula worries China more than North Korea's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Beijing rejects the US claim that Pyongyang has an enriched-uranium project. Every year, in the face of US sanctions, China provides more aid in a wider variety of forms to North Korea, accounting for nearly 100% of the latter's energy imports. However, there are limits to China's embrace of Kim, as shown in 2001, when president Jiang Zemin refused to acquiesce to an anti-US declaration during a visit to Pyongyang.

Peggy Meyer's piece on Russia-North Korea relations describes Moscow's overarching goal for acceptance as an influential power on the Korean Peninsula. President Vladimir Putin is also promoting economic ventures such as electricity transmission, natural-gas pipelines, port renovation, and railroads linking Russia with both Koreas. North Korean labor working to develop Russia's Far East is another concern, along with avoidance of nuclear radiation or refugees pouring over the border.

Putin strongly condemns Kim's nuclear gimmicks and lends his spooks to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for joint monitoring efforts of Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction. He has tried to walk the middle ground by disagreeing with the Bush administration's "language of ultimatums and strict demands". (p 213) Time and again, he stresses the importance of giving Kim "security guarantees" and "step by step" disarmament options. Russia also refuses to put North Korea's "civilian nuclear research" on the table at the six-party talks. Since Beijing, Seoul and, to a lesser extent, Tokyo also oppose Washington's hardball negotiation tactics, Moscow has succeeded in limiting spill-over damage to the US-Russia equation.

Seongji Woo's essay on North and South Korean relations portrays weapons of mass destruction as "the safety valve for the North Korean regime's survival". (p 225) President Roh Moo-hyun's "peace and prosperity" policy with the North is opening the door to a schism in alliance politics with the US. With Washington and Pyongyang at loggerheads, Seoul's wish for inter-Korean reconciliation and integration is "once again on hold". (p 231) Kim, on his part, takes advantage of the ideological divisions within the South by playing one side against the other and attempts to widen the gap between Washington and Seoul.

Seongji's view is that the future of inter-Korean economic cooperation hinges on success or failure of the Gaesong industrial park initiative. The flow of Southern investment into the North is also contingent upon resolution of the nuclear imbroglio. Seongji concurs with the rest of the writers that "only by reforming its economy and opening to the outside world can North Korea's regime security be achieved". (p 238)

Kihl's second contribution is on the "bi-multilateral approach" (2+4 formula) for defusing the nuclear crisis. China is interestingly an intermediary or third party by virtue of hosting the six-party talks. Beijing is allegedly employing strong-arm tactics toward North Korea to improve its own relations with the US. President George W Bush has rejected calls for bilateral US-North Korea dealing "because it would remove China, a powerful influence on its communist neighbor". (p 256) Beijing has been unusually critical of Kim's threats to withdraw from the six-party talks last February, but the other side of the coin is its reported undercutting of Washington's strategy of sanctions on North Korea. Kihl recommends that the US "must go beyond treating Korea policy as an appendage to larger causes in Asia such as rising China or rearming Japan". (p 261) He also moots conversion of the six-party talks into a regional security forum for East Asia.

Nicholas Eberstadt's final essay brings the lens back on the factors that abet state survival in North Korea. Kim Jong-il averted economic collapse in the late 1990s through a huge upsurge in merchandise imports financed by illicit trading, South Korean, Japanese, US and European Union aid injections. "Appeasement-motivated" Western aid has been the lifeline for Kim. North Korea's dysfunctional and stagnant trade regimen, far from being irrational, has "a deeply embedded regime logic". (p 284) Economic exchanges with the "capitalist world" are resisted by Kim because of his paranoia against "ideological and cultural infiltration". Terming aid-seeking a highly tenuous mode of state finance, Eberstadt calls for a more secure path such as Chinese or Vietnamese outward-oriented growth in North Korea. Reallocation of resources from the hypertrophied military to civilian sectors is necessary to harvest productivity in Kim's tin-pot empire.

How the "Dear Leader" can juggle the antinomies brought out in this book and yet remain in the saddle is the big question. East Asia will rest easier when the answer is found.

*North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival by Young Whan Kihl and Hong Nack Kim (eds). M E Sharpe, New York, 2006. ISBN: 0-7656-1638-6. Price US$78.95, 322 pages.

Spokesman for Foreign Ministry Assails U.S. Cry for Preemptive Attack

Pyongyang, March 22 (KCNA) -- A preemptive attack is not the monopoly of the United States, warns a spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry in an answer given to a question put by KCNA Tuesday in connection with the fact that the U.S. in a recent "report on national security strategy" designated the DPRK as an "outpost of tyranny " and a "target of preemptive attack" once again. The Bush administration singled out those countries which are not meekly following it from an independent stand, including the DPRK, as "outposts of tyranny," revealing its undisguised attempt to realize its wild ambition to realize "regime change" through a "preemptive attack", he said, and went on:

The above-said "report" reveals the U.S. intention to start a war to prevent nuclear proliferation, "combat terrorism" and "spread democracy." It is, therefore, nothing but a brigandish document declaring a war as it is an indication that the Bush regime will not rule out even a war to bring down those countries which refuse to follow its ideology and view on value by branding them as enemies without exception. Today the Bush regime is to blame for unhesitatingly committing war and military intervention, stepping up the modernization of nuclear weapons and encouraging the spread of weapons of mass destruction, defying all the principles of international law and unbiased public opinion to meet its narrow-minded partisan purpose. It is the root cause of aggression, war and arms race.

Such aggressive nature of the Bush administration finds a more striking manifestation in its policy towards the Korean Peninsula. The Bush administration again cried out for a "preemptive attack" at a time when it let loose a string of balderdash against the DPRK after labeling it part of an "axis of evil" and an "outpost of tyranny" and is increasing such physical pressure as financial sanctions and joint military exercises against it. This brings to light the Bush administration's intention to invariably pursue its hostile policy toward the DPRK. The Bush administration is talking about the "six-party talks" and the like but, in actuality, is not interested in them at all. It is the calculation of the U.S. that it will evade the fulfillment of such commitment as the provision of light water reactors it made in the September 19 joint statement even if the talks are resumed. We made nuclear weapons to cope with the U.S. nuclear threat. The Bush administration is sadly mistaken if it thinks the DPRK will yield to the outside pressure and surrender to it when Pyongyang is steadily driven to a tight corner. It is our traditional fighting method to react to the increasing pressure head-on, without making any detour. The same method will be applied to countering the U.S. A preemptive attack is not the monopoly of the U.S.

У Ким Чен Ира объявилась тайная дочь

21 марта 2006, PrimaMedia ВЛАДИВОСТОК.

Южнокорейские СМИ пишут, что Ким Соль Сон молода, красива, образованна

Мировая общественность впервые услышала о Ким Соль Сон – старшей дочери северокорейского лидера Ким Чен Ира. Информация о ней появилась в южнокорейских СМИ. Выяснилось, что она обладает массой достоинств: молода, красива, образованна, работает личным секретарем отца и имеет воинское звание подполковника.

Южнокорейская пресса неоднократно писала о трех сыновьях северокорейского лидера Ким Чен Ира, обсуждая, кто из них станет наследником "солнца нации". О дочерях мировая общественность знала только то, что их у "любимого руководителя" две. Однако на прошлой неделе влиятельная консервативная южнокорейская газета "Чосон Ильбо" со ссылкой на анонимного перебежчика из Северной Кореи, занимавшего в конце 1990-х годов высокие партийные посты, рассказала о старшей дочери Ким Чен Ира – 32-летней Ким Соль Сон.

Она выполняет обязанности личного секретаря-референта у своего отца. Однако помимо традиционных для подобной должности обязанностей (составления и согласования графика встреч и прочих мероприятий) на ее плечи возложена еще одна крайне важная забота – о безопасности главы государства. По утверждению перебежчика, Ким Чен Ир не рискует появляться в том или ином месте за пределами своей правительственной резиденции, пока Ким Соль Сон не проведет последний осмотр и проверку обеспечения системы безопасности лидера КНДР.

Ким Соль Сон уделяет немало внимания и таким аспектам, как личная гигиена главы государства. Как рассказал перебежчик, "когда после посещения заводов, предприятий, колхозов и других мест Ким Чен Ир возвращается к своему кортежу, первым делом из машины выходит дочь, которая подает папе гигиенические салфетки, чтобы тот протер руки после неизбежных в ходе таких визитов многочисленных рукопожатий".

Вместе со своим отцом Ким Соль Сон побывала в разных странах, в том числе и в России. В августе 2002 года она сопровождала Ким Чен Ира в ходе его визита в Дальневосточный регион РФ. В прошлом же году, по информации южнокорейской разведки, она некоторое время под видом иностранной студентки находилась во Франции.

Фотографии таинственной дочки "великого вождя" в прессе пока не появлялись, но бывший партийный босс, в итоге оказавшийся на капиталистическом Юге, дал ее достаточно подробный словесный портрет. Она немного выше своего отца (рост 165 см), носит длинные прямые волосы, доходящие до пояса, что крайне нетипично для северной кореянки. Описывая лицо, анонимный источник "Чосон Ильбо" не скупился на комплименты, особенно восхищаясь ее "огромными глазами".

Ким Соль Сон закончила самый престижный вуз КНДР – Университет имени Ким Ир Сена, специализируясь на политэкономии. При этом старшая дочь Ким Чен Ира, как сообщается, "имеет развитое эстетическое чувство, а также выдающиеся знания в области литературы".

Несомненно, эти склонности и были учтены при распределении. После окончания университета девушка работала некоторое время в отделе пропаганды Трудовой партии Кореи, где занималась в основном вопросами, касающимися литературы. Уже здесь она стала выполнять весьма деликатную работу. По сведениям южнокорейского издания, все хранящиеся в библиотеке отдела пропаганды книги, имеющие автограф ее отца, на самом деле подписывались дочерью.

Ким Соль Сон родилась в 1974 году от брака Ким Чен Ира с Ким Ен Сук (родилась в 1947 году), которая работала машинисткой в отделе ЦК Трудовой партии Кореи, возглавляемом Ким Чен Иром, и в 1973 году вышла за него замуж. Их брак благословил лично Ким Ир Сен, поскольку отец девушки был другом основателя КНДР со времен партизанской борьбы с японскими оккупантами.

Вероятно, еще и по этой причине Ким Ир Сен был в восторге от своей первой внучки. Именно дедушка дал ей такое поэтичное имя – Соль Сон, что означает "заснеженная сосна". Ким Чен Ир тоже души в ней не чает.

Как и отец, Ким Соль Сон поступила в Университет имени Ким Ир Сена и, как и он, не посещала лекций и семинаров, обучаясь на дому. Ее наставницей была Пак Сун Ок, жена одного из руководителей Трудовой партии Кореи – Хван Чон Опа, который в 1996 году бежал в Южную Корею, став самым высокопоставленным перебежчиком.

После Ким Ен Сук у Ким Чен Ира были еще две жены – Сон Хе Рим, родившая ему старшего сына Ким Чон Нама, а также Ко Ен Хи, чьи сыновья Ким Чон Чхоль и Ким Чон Ун сейчас рассматриваются в качестве наиболее вероятных преемников Ким Чен Ира на посту главы Северной Кореи.

WFP IN PYONGYANG WITH NEW FOOD AID PACKAGE

Chosun Ilbo, 15 March 2006

Senior officials from the UN World Food Program are in Pyongyang to discuss a new aid package for the country, a South Korean government source said Wednesday. The WFP is the conduit of international aid to the impoverished country.

The WFP has unveiled a new two-year US$100 million aid package for North Korea. An insider with the organization said the new plan will focus on bringing aid to the weak and needy in North Korea, so the contents are little changed from the aid the WFP provided until Pyongyang noisily expelled aid workers at the end of last year saying it no longer needs food donations. The North instead asked for development aid, which is what the new program officially provides. The negotiations are needed because Pyongyang bristles at the strict monitoring the WFP has implemented to ensure aid reaches those who need it most and is not diverted to the military.

WFP officials will resist North Korean demands to curtail their monitoring, according to government officials, who said donor countries place great importance on transparent distribution. WFP spokesman Gerald Bourke said he hoped the two sides can find a solution that satisfies both. If not, it will be difficult to persuade donors to send aid, he warned.

Meeting of Asian Countries for Railway Cooperation

Pyongyang, March 10 (KCNA) -- A meeting of Asian countries under the Organization of Railways Cooperation was held here from March 6 to 10. It was participated in by railway delegations and delegates from the DPRK, Russia, Mongolia, China, Vietnam and Kazakhstan. A representative of the organization made an opening address at the meeting, which was followed by a congratulatory speech of Jon Kil Su, executive vice-minister of Railways of the DPRK. The meeting, divided into different panels, reviewed the implementation of the 2005 plan for foreign trade freight transport among Asian countries and agreed on the freight transport turnover for 2006. It also discussed the technical matters to this end. A relevant protocol was adopted at the meeting.

TRAVEL TO NORTH KOREA MADE EASIER

The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2006

This Year, More U.S. Groups Can Go to Mass Games

This year, it will be easier for Americans to travel to North Korea. In what Korea-watchers see as a bid to gain grass-roots favor in the U.S. -- plus foreign currency -- Pyongyang has extended invitations to several U.S. tour operators to bring Americans into the country. Operators say the planned visits will run from August to October, the months of the Mass Games -- athletic events that feature 100,000 gymnasts and dancers, all North Korean, with heavy participation from spectators in the stands.

If the trips fill up, they would represent the largest contingent of U.S. leisure travelers to North Korea since the Korean War. San Francisco-based Geographic Expeditions will run two 10-day trips in August, its first group tours to the country, for $5,190 per person. Universal Travel System, a small Santa Monica, Calif., agency, says it has permission to take 250 Americans on eight-day tours ($3,460 a person, excluding air fare). Poe Travel of Little Rock, Ark., is planning to take a small number of clients into North Korea for the first time as well -- leading them to China, where they will join a Beijing-based tour group that specializes in travel to the region. All the tours had spaces as of yesterday...

DPRK SETS TERMS FOR RETURN TO TALKS

by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, 9 March 2006

In a rare meeting between US and North Korean officials this week, North Korea pressed the United States to end efforts to stem alleged money-laundering and counterfeiting activities, warning that otherwise it would not return to the six-nation talks on its nuclear programs. Li Gun, the senior North Korean official at the meeting, made four requests, according to a US official familiar with the talks. They included demanding that the United States remove what he called "financial sanctions," form a joint US-North Korean task force to examine the counterfeiting concerns, give North Korea access to the US banking system, and provide North Korea with technical help on identifying counterfeit bills. "We cannot go into the six-party talks with this hat over our head," the official quoted Li as saying.

The US officials viewed the meeting as only a briefing, not a negotiation, and rejected any link between Treasury Department actions to thwart alleged counterfeiting and the six-party talks. D. Kathleen Stephens, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia, opened the meeting, but the briefing was led by Daniel Glaser, a deputy assistant Treasury secretary.

The nearly three-hour meeting was held Tuesday in New York at the US Mission to the United Nations. It came as North Korea rattled nerves in Asia yesterday with a missile test, and as a senior Republican lawmaker accused the White House of giving "exceedingly constrained options to our negotiators" and urged a more creative approach, including direct talks with Pyongyang.

"The six-party process is beginning to appear moribund," declared Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. "It's time for the United States to lead," he said, rather than "indebting us to the diplomacy of countries that may have different interests."

The nuclear talks -- which include China, Japan, South Korea and Russia -- have been on hiatus since November because of North Korean distress over the Treasury Department investigation. In September -- just as the six-party talks reached a breakthrough agreement in which North Korea said it would give up its nuclear programs in exchange for aid, security assurances and eventual normalization of relations -- the Treasury designated a Macao bank as acting as a front for North Korean counterfeiting operations.

The Treasury action had wide repercussions, forcing all US banks to cut off correspondent-banking relations with Macao's Banco Delta Asia -- and leading many banks around the world to curtail dealings with North Korea to avoid any similar taint. "BDA was designated because its facilitation of North Korean illicit financial activity presents an unacceptable risk to the US financial system," Glaser said in a statement issued after the meeting.

The Treasury Department has alleged that senior officials at Banco Delta Asia accepted large deposits of cash, including counterfeit money, and  agreed to place it in circulation. Treasury officials also alleged that the bank accepted multimillion-dollar wire transfers from North Korean front  companies that were involved in criminal activities.

At the meeting, Li said there is no evidence of illicit activity by North Korea. Li noted that US credit cards cannot be used in North Korea, forcing US diplomats to enter the country with large amounts of cash. He suggested that counterfeit money had entered North Korea through this route. Despite Li's official denials, Chinese officials have privately told US officials that North Korea has admitted that some individuals had been involved in such activities in the past.

US officials have repeatedly denied any link between the Treasury action and the nuclear talks, saying the government in Pyongyang is trying to use the issue as a way to start a dialogue with the United States outside the six-party framework. Li began the session Tuesday by saying that North Korea was upset that it had to be called a briefing rather than a bilateral negotiation. The North Koreans had canceled a session scheduled in December over the semantic dispute. "This is not a USA-North Korea issue," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday. "This is a matter of getting back to the six-party talks."

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, who played a key role in negotiating the September agreement, said on Capitol Hill yesterday that the United States is ready to resume the six-nation talks on implementing the agreement "without conditions." Leach said the case for allowing Hill to go to Pyongyang "to test the boundaries -- and push the implementation -- of the joint statement is compelling." He also said the United States and North Korea should consider establishing liaison offices in each other's capitals. "There is clearly a problem of communication between our two governments," he said.

SALUTARY ANTIDOTE TO HEATED RHETORIC

North Korea: The Struggle against American Power, by Tim Beal,

Reviewed by John Feffer, Korean Quarterly, Winter 2006

Amid all of the accusations and counter-accusations between the United States and North Korea, it can be refreshing to step to the sidelines to get another perspective on the conflict. Tim Beal is a lecturer in international business at the University of Wellington in New Zealand. He has followed Korean issues for some time and has visited North Korea. And just as New Zealand has had the courage to challenge US power on military questions, so has Tim Beal fearlessly tackled US policy and press coverage head on. His new book is a salutary antidote to the heated rhetoric and conventional analysis that typifies US perspectives on North Korea.

Beal's book is divided in two parts. In the first, he provides a concise history of the Korean peninsula, from its legendary beginnings to the current conflict that erupted again in 2002 when the United States accused North Korea of harboring a secret nuclear program. Beal provides useful mini-chronologies to guide the reader through the often confusing twists and turns of recent history. He attempts to give North Korea's side of the story, as a way of making sense of positions that many in the United States dismiss as nonsensical. Americans don't come out very well in this story, from US involvement in dividing the peninsula to generous support for South Korea's authoritarian leaders. There are some missing pieces -- such as Kim Il Sung's ruthless suppression of rival communists and leftists, which appears only as "outmanoeuvring" in the text -- but in general Beal provides a concise summary of revisionist history.

The second part of the book is both more interesting and more problematic. Here, Beal tackles some of the key charges against North Korea: that it violates human rights, exports drugs and missiles, is developing an offensive nuclear capacity, and violated the 1994 Agreed Framework with a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program. In the first part Beal took aim at historians; in part two he challenges sloppy journalists, conservative activists with hidden agendas, and politicians eager to score points.

Healthy skepticism toward the most extravagant claims made against North Korea is surely welcome. Beal carefully scrutinizes charges of drug smuggling to reveal a much more complicated picture. He compares North Korea's missile exports to the general practices of the United States and its allies and determines that Pyongyang is really no worse and, at least when it comes to volume of exports, less pernicious.

On the issue of human rights, Beal does an excellent job tracking down the 2004 claim that North Korea practiced chemical warfare on political prisoners. The documents that a North Korean defector smuggled out and handed over to the BBC turned out to be likely forgeries. Details in the defector's testimony were not internally consistent. This should be enough to discredit the story, but Beal goes on to quote from a press conference given in Pyongyang by the defector's family after they'd been returned to the country. However plausible their account, the circumstances of the press conference were not conducive to a full and honest accounting of what happened, so Beal should not have emphasized it.

That the human rights issue is being used by the hard-line right in the United States and South Korea to advance regime collapse in North Korea should not discredit or throw into doubt the wide range of evidence that has come out about the extensive violations taking place in the country. At times it seems that Beal forgets that he is writing about a state run by a privileged elite under enormous pressure from the outside. This elite, like embattled elites everywhere, will do pretty much anything to remain in power. Evidence of smuggling by North Korean diplomats in the 1970s and 1980s, more recent evidence of counterfeiting operations with the IRA, and evidence of methamphetamine production go unexamined in Beal's book.

Skepticism is a much-needed tool for revealing US hypocrisy, but it shouldn't be deployed only in one direction. Beal is by no means an apologist for the North Korean regime. But his book might have benefited from more analysis of the self-serving aims of the North Korean elite. Such concerns aside, Tim Beal's new book is a helpful guide for all of us who stand on the sidelines and watch the United States and North Korea intermittently fight and negotiate. He's not a cheerleader. He's not a partisan. So it's good to have his voice in our ear as we try to figure out the action on the field and who the players are.

NORTH KOREA AGAINST WHOM?

Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World by Gordon G. Chang
North Korea: The Struggle against American Power by Tim Beal
Reviewed by Erik Mobrand, Global Politician, 8 March 2006

In October 2002 the Agreed Framework that supplied North Korea with US aid since 1994 in return for promises not to produce nuclear weapons broke down and led to the current standoff on North Korea's uranium enrichment program. Since then, rounds of six-party talks involving the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia have sought to deal with the impasse. The United States refuses to talk with North Korea directly. The world is faced with the question of what is to be done with a secretive country that may or may not have nuclear weapons.

What are we to make of the current situation? Two recent books on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), both written for general audiences, offer widely divergent views on the nuclear problem. Tim Beal, a New Zealand-based academic and host of a website on North Korea, provides a guide to sifting through the sparse and often-politicized information on the reclusive country. Gordon Chang, lawyer and author of The Coming Collapse of China, has produced a polemical treatise on the crisis, claiming that the need for decisive action trumps any gaps in knowledge.

The subtitles of the volumes by Beal and Chang sum up their contrasting interpretations of the current North Korean situation. According to Beal, the development of the North Korean nuclear problem is a story about interaction between the DPRK and the United States. The immediate cause of the current crisis was American fear of Japanese-North Korean and North-South rapprochement. A summit between Tokyo and Pyongyang in September 2002, as well as an impending South Korean election, prompted Washington to abandon the framework, as the current administration has sought an "ABC" (Anything But Clinton) policy on North Korea.

For Chang, on the other hand, North Korea is threatening the world in a crisis of its own making. American involvement extends only to failing to act earlier to protect the "global order" from North Korea. Chang does not mention Washington's role in the breakdown of the 1994 Agreed Framework. Overstating his case, Chang seems to have forgotten about decades of Soviet aid, the withdrawal of which plunged the North Korean economy into turmoil: "Neither friend nor foe has had much influence on the fanatical and militaristic state, not even the mightiest nation in history" (p. xx).

Chang notes that President George W. Bush's "impressive achievement" has been to keep North Korea "off balance" (p. 212). (Is this an accomplishment?) Chang is upset, though, about American reliance on cooperation in Northeast Asia to address the problem. Washington's "generous policy" (p. 131) has been to have China disarm North Korea. Chang tells us that the USA is being forced to "bend to Seoul" (p. 113), before going on a tirade against South Korean leadership - based largely, it seems, on a discussion with a conservative South Korean economist-turned-legislator. Rather than celebrating South Korea's turn to democracy since the 1980s, Chang blames "recent South Korean presidents" for not calling the DPRK what it is: "South Koreans have, in their newfound wealth, lost their way" (p. 175).

What is the solution to the current situation? Chang considers engagement with North Koreans - not their government - to be a long-term answer that  could empower the people to overthrow the regime. But Chang is convinced danger is imminent, and he brushes this approach aside. What worries Chang is that Pyongyang will sells its nukes to terrorists who will sneak them across the Mexican border into the United States. And that is why Washington must act, the sooner the better, to wipe out the threat from North Korea.

Offended by the regime's existence, Chang tells us it is time for it to go. An American encounter with the DPRK would be "a fight to preserve the  liberal international system" (p. 225). Is Chang calling for the USA to strike North Korea? Presumably, but what does he mean when he advises, "we  have to steel ourselves for war if we don't take great risks for peace" (p. 219)? What might those "great risks" be, if not military ones?

Beal has a response to Chang's righteous indignation. Beal warns the world, and especially Americans, to consider carefully whether extreme measures on North Korea would truly be motivated by moral concerns, including the regime's human rights record: "The coexistence of genuine moral fervour over crimes committed by others with a readiness to commit one's own is not uncommon. The road to empire is paved with good intentions" (p.130).

For Beal, the optimal solution is for the United States to acknowledge the existence of the Pyongyang regime. Progress will be difficult until Washington takes Pyongyang seriously and starts discussions. The United States could help revive the North Korean economy quickly, which would set the country on a road toward positive social and political change.

Chang's whole argument comes down to the claim that we should worry about North Korea selling weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. This possibility must figure among low-priority security concerns. Nuclear weapons are not needed for devastating attacks to occur, as 9/11 demonstrated. Shifting resources to address this threat would be incommensurate with its rank behind more likely sources of insecurity. Furthermore, if weapons proliferation is truly a concern, then North Korea, which Beal notes conducts missile sales equal to 0.3% of the United States' (p. 186), is not the biggest problem.

More to the point, international assistance to North Korea's economy would reduce the likelihood that the regime would turn to weapons trading for cash. Chang opposes aid, because it funds the regime - but expanding the country's resource base would diminish the threat of Pyongyang selling weapons to terrorist groups. The danger of searching for good and evil in a complex world is that it may obscure the least bad solution.

Neither book offers new information on North Korea. Beal and Chang approach the country as outsiders, and they miss some of the important developments in the region, especially in exchanges between China and the DPRK. Still, Beal has done the public a service by offering a guide to widely-available sources that anyone can look through to draw their own conclusions on the North Korean nuclear issue.

Chang's book seeks to provoke, but with the pretense of informing. On North Korea's nuclear program, Chang writes - without explanation of how he knows it - that the "soundest view" is that by late 2007 Pyongyang will be able to produce uranium for two to six bombs per year (p. 33). Chang's expertise is left in doubt by mistakes in his book, ranging from downright falsehoods (that legislator Park Geun-hye is the favorite in the next South Korean presidential election, p. 214) to half-lies (that China's Chongqing is the largest city in the world, p. 117).

The far better-informed Beal is more honest about unknowns. The situation with North Korea is not only complicated; it is unclear because information is scarce and sometimes manipulated. But there is danger in the view, expressed by Chang, that "When there's not much to go on, the simplest explanation is often the best" (p. 63). Chang does well to remind us of US "responsibility" to the world, but he neglects the other side of that responsibility - to show restraint in resorting to its superior coercive power.

North Korea's Nuclear Push May Be Stymied by U.S. Banking Rules

By Bradley K. Martin with reporting by Alison Fitzgerald and Jeffrey St.Onge in Washington, Bloomberg.com , 7 March 2006

March 7 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. law enforcement actions that are hobbling North Korea's financial system may be as important as diplomacy in persuading the country to give up its nuclear weapons program.

U.S. efforts to cut off funds from counterfeiting and drug trafficking may move dictator Kim Jong Il to trade warheads for development aid, says David Asher, coordinator of the State Department's North Korea working group from 2003 to 2005. U.S. officials plan to present evidence of North Korea's money-laundering to Kim's representatives today in New York. ``There's no doubt this is the most powerful reverberation we've ever had on North Korea,'' Asher says. ``Cutting into the illicit foundations of their regime should provide an incentive for them to start opening up and cooperating.''

The Treasury Department in September said Macau, China-based Banco Delta Asia SARL helped North Korean officials make ``surreptitious'' deposits and withdrawals. The bank responded by freezing all accounts linked to North Korea, blocking access to millions of dollars. Last month, Banco Delta said it would no longer accept business from North Korean customers.

The crackdown had an immediate effect on Daedong Credit Bank, the only foreign-run bank in North Korea, which used Banco Delta as its primary correspondent for overseas transactions. General Manager Nigel Cowie says banks in Germany and Singapore also severed their links to Daedong.
``Banks with any kind of U.S. ties are just terrified to have anything to do with any North Korean bank,'' says Cowie, 43. Daedong represents international account holders and has nothing to do with money laundering, he says.

No Official Link

Officially, the U.S. State Department says there is no link between the financial clampdown and the effort to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program through negotiation. U.S. law on illicit financial transactions ``is not targeted against any one regime,'' State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said at a Feb. 23 briefing in Washington. Five days later, North Korea denied any involvement in criminal activities. ``The U.S. argument is quite childish and nonsensical,'' the official Korea Central News Agency said, citing an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Under provisions of the USA Patriot Act of 2001, the Treasury Department may prohibit U.S. financial institutions from doing business with banks designated as money-laundering concerns. At a minimum, the act requires U.S. banks to know the customers with whom they do business. The U.S. opened another front in the financial war on June 28, when President George W. Bush signed an executive order directing Treasury to freeze the assets of those that help distribute weapons of mass destruction, including three North Korean companies. Investigators later froze the U.S. assets of eight more North Korean entities it said were involved in illegal activities.

`Raised the Scrutiny'

Stuart Levey, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, says the U.S. can take further steps against North Korea. The Patriot Act permits labeling an entire country a ``money laundering concern,'' effectively isolating it from access to U.S. financing of any kind. ``We do have a number of tools, and we have used two of those tools recently with respect to North Korea,'' Levey says. ``It's raised the consciousness and raised the scrutiny of financial institutions of the world.'' The Treasury designated Ukraine as a money laundering concern in December 2002. The label was rescinded four months later after Ukraine strengthened laws against illegal transactions and pledged greater financial transparency.

Heroin and Viagra

North Korea typically uses trading companies to pass counterfeit $100 bills, and earns hard currency by selling fake Viagra pills and trafficking heroin, in addition to culling cash from illegal trade in weapons, Asher says. ``Nukes, crime, repression -- these are the key aspects of support for the North Korean leadership,'' says Asher, a researcher at the Alexandria, Virginia-based Institute for Defense Analyses, which advises the U.S. government on national security issues.

Financial pressure on North Korea is growing as diplomats step up efforts to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The U.S., South Korea, Japan, China and Russia have been negotiating with North Korea for the past 2 1/2 years in an effort to get Kim to dismantle his weapons program. Though all six parties called in September for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and economic cooperation in energy, trade and investment, the next round of talks ended Nov. 11 with no further agreement.

On Feb. 4, the International Atomic Energy Agency, an arm of the United Nations, called on Iran to halt uranium-enrichment and open its military sites to inspection. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country would continue its nuclear research.

Isolated Society

North Korea's government has isolated its citizens for almost 60 years, under founder Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il, who has ruled since 1994. Under the Kim regimes, the country pursued a nuclear weapons program, even as its 20 million citizens suffered from a famine in the late 1990s. Food shortages killed as many as 2 million people, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Lee Dong Bok, a former South Korean lawmaker who has negotiated with North Korea, says the Kim regime dispatched officials from the ruling party to try to reverse Banco Delta's decision to stop doing business with North Korea. ``Apparently, it was unable to win the support of China because of China's own interest,'' Lee says. He adds the government of the world's fastest-growing economy wants to maintain its access to western finance. ``China relies heavily on transactions with New York.''

Primitive State

Daedong's Cowie, a former HSBC Plc banker who has been in Pyongyang for a decade, says the U.S. actions are likely to reduce North Korea's financial system to a primitive state, hurting law-abiding businesses as well as the government. ``Everybody doing trading business is just going to be carrying cash into China,'' he says, noting that Chinese traders provide most of the consumer goods sold in North Korea.

Daedong has about $10 million in assets and has only foreigners as customers, mostly Chinese, Japanese and Western individuals and institutions, Cowie says. Wendy Sherman, President Bill Clinton's special adviser on North Korea, says a crackdown on criminal activities at this stage may hurt chances for success at the six-party talks.

``If indeed one wants to say to North Korea, `We have a way to slow down your access to capital and we're prepared to use it,' that becomes part of the negotiation,'' Sherman says. ``But to do it in advance of negotiation loses benefit.'' Sherman is now a principal at the Washington-based Albright Group LLC, run by former Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Australian Setback

The U.S. case against Kim's government was set back on March 5, when a Melbourne jury acquitted the captain and three crew members of the North Korean freighter Pong Su of drug trafficking. Australian police said they discovered 275 pounds (125 kilograms) of heroin on the Pong Su after seized the ship in April 2003. U.S. officials had cited the case as evidence of North Korea's involvement in drug smuggling.

A face-off with the Bush administration may even shore up domestic support for North Korea's government, says Kim Myong Chol, a resident of Japan who encourages reporters to refer to him as an unofficial spokesman for the regime. ``The crackdown gives North Korea time and pretext to continue nuclear weapons production,'' Kim says. ``The North Korean government's legitimacy only comes from standing up to America.''

Increased Activity

While the U.S. has known about North Korea's illegal activities for years, they have accelerated recently, says Michael J. Green, a former senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council who left that post in December. Many of the efforts appeared to be tied to Rooms 35 and 39 at the North Korean Workers' Party headquarters, says Green, who is now a senior adviser at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Room 39 unit is charged by Kim Jong Il with bringing in foreign currency, and Room 35, formerly known as the Overseas Intelligence Department, has been linked to the abductions of foreign nationals.

North Korea is making tentative moves toward the sorts of change that have transformed China's economy. The country has designated special economic zones, and Kim visited China in January to see its booming southern region.

Meeting With Hu

In a suggestion the visit may have been related to concerns about the Banco Delta crackdown, Japan's Kyodo News reported that Kim told Chinese Premier Hu Jintao that continued U.S. financial pressure could cause his regime to collapse. The news service cited unidentified people close to the six-nation talks.

U.S. policy can be characterized as ``squeeze, but keep the talks going,'' Green says. In the end, Kim may return to the negotiating table only when there is no other way to guarantee his continued rule.``Their main goal is to ensure continuation of their regime and their country,'' Green says.

Sanctions on Pyongyang will backfire

By Kim Myong Chol, Asia Times On-line Feb 16, 2006

(Editor's note: For an Asia Times Online interview with Kim Myong Chol, a Korean resident of Japan often described as an unofficial spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea, see North Korea's only talking head loves the US.)

The unilateral financial sanctions the Bush administration has imposed on North Korea on alleged charges of money-laundering, drug-trafficking and counterfeiting of US dollars are far from a hallmark of the lone superpower's moral integrity and lofty political principles. They are totally arbitrary and poorly advised steps.

Ill-advised as they are, will the financial sanctions produce political fallout? If the hidden real objective of the sanctions is to keep the North Korean threat alive and continue to justify US arms buildup, including missile defense, the answer is a definite yes.

Keep North Korean threat alive

The financial sanctions serve to infuriate the North Koreans, giving them a pretext to refuse to resume the six-party talks over their nuclear program and prompting them to increase their nuclear arsenal - with the six-party talks in disarray. Second, they serve to allow the US to persist in the policy of hostility toward North Korea and continue to provide raison d'etre for an arms buildup, including missile defense. On this basis, the financial sanctions may be called a splendid success.

Successful six-party talks would lead to a peace treaty between North Korea and the US, full diplomatic relations between the two enemies and normalized relations between Pyongyang and Tokyo.

Peace with North Korea will expose China as the true target of US missile defense and the potential threat to US influence. Behind the smokescreen of the North Korean threat the US has strived to beef up its armed forces and encircle China.

The financial sanctions, which will produce the desired results, are fraught with major negative effects.

North Korea is building up its nuclear force at a far higher pace than the Americans expect. North Korea will pass the United Kingdom and France by 2007 to emerge as the world's fourth nuclear power after China. The North Koreans will overtake China not later than 2010 to clinch the spot of the world's third nuclear-weapons state just after the US and Russia.

Three factors make North Korea unique. The first is possession of a fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of unleashing retaliatory nuclear strikes on the US mainland. Second, the North Koreans still torment the Americans as a result of their victory over them in the Korean War. The North Koreans are still locked in the life-and-death state of war with the United States.

The third is that North Korea is well geared for a nuclear exchange with the US, while the population of the US is anything but prepared for the worst-case scenario of the "day after", despite its status as the world's largest nuclear power. Neither is the Japanese population. Nor is South Korea. North Korea has little to lose in war. However, the US and Japan have too much to lose.

Failure to stop North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons is another reminder that there is no preventing nuclear proliferation. This is signified by an abortive bid of the administration of US President George W Bush to restrict the membership of the elite nuclear club.

A net result is a remarkable decline of US prestige and influence as the sole superpower and world's policeman, becoming just one of the great powers. The US is a far cry from what it was. With all its high-tech weapons, ground superiority and air supremacy, it is being badly mauled in Iraq and Afghanistan.

North Korea and China are both nuclear powers and are in the process of strengthening their alliance, political, diplomatic and military, while promoting economic cooperation. Nuclear-armed and on an equal footing, the Korean-Chinese alliance is applying great pressure on the waning US, hastening its decline.

This represents a total reversal of tide for the Americans whose wishful thinking is to drive a wedge between North Korea and China over the nuclear issue. South Korea is further distancing itself from the US, leaving Japan the sole US ally in Northeast Asia. Japan, however, finds itself split between the two giants.

Cutting off funding for nuclear arms

If the financial sanctions are intended to cut off North Korea's income source to fund the nuclear-weapons development program, it is highly unlikely that the objective will be accomplished. The Bush administration is not all that interested in pursuing the sanctions. Making a scene is simply designed to keep the allies in line.

This is a hackneyed witchhunt employed since ancient times. The feudal lord frames a village woman as a witch, deflecting local criticisms for him toward her, and subsequently keeping control of the village.

The North Korean defense industry is guided by the juche principle, which calls for domestic funding, brains and self-reliance in materials. The principle of juche conflicts with counterfeiting of foreign currency and drug-trafficking to buy foreign materials and equipment needed for the production of nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration's imposition of a financial crackdown on the Far Eastern country is untenable because it is tantamount to denying that juche is the leading idea of the Kim Jong-il government.

North Korea successfully developed a nuclear weapon as far back as the mid-1980s. The end of the decade saw successful development of the ICBM. It is sheer absurdity to call for cutting of funding sources for the North Korean development of nuclear weapons and missiles, 15 years after their successful development.

The Bush administration has no hard evidence to support its allegations against North Korea. This having been said, it is characteristic of the Bush administration to apply financial sanctions on North Korea. Truth is the first casualty in the conduct of US policy.

The Korean Broadcasting Service (KBS) reported that Macau-based Banco Delta Asia handed its documents over to US Treasury Department investigators, telling them they found no proof to back up the US allegations. The South Korean National Intelligence Agency dismissed the US allegations as unfounded.

It is common knowledge that the allegation Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, cited by Washington to warrant an armed invasion of the Middle East country, was a deliberate and complete frame-up.

Most US government officials know there is no truth to charges by the Bush administration that Iran is intent on developing nuclear bombs. The Americans told a big lie to its key ally Japan about the US beef issue.

Toppling the North Korean regime

 
Suppose one of the key aims of the financial sanctions is to help topple the North Korean government, the answer to whether it will be successful is obvious - no.

The louder the Americans talk about North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles, alleged bad human-rights record, money-laundering, drug-trafficking and counterfeiting, the more dramatically the Pyongyang administration comes across to the North and South Korean people as Korean David, heroically standing up to the arrogant, self-centered American Goliath. It adds to the Korean nationalist credentials of the North's government.

Korean nationalist legitimacy lies in standing up to foreign forces, the Americans and the Japanese among others, and safeguarding the pride, independence, sovereignty and dignity of the Korean people. Pressure from the US is a vital factor that sustains the North's government.

Unlike their Chinese and Japanese counterparts that governed their respective countries, each for up to 270 years, the Korean dynasties ruled the country much longer. Each dynasty lasted nearly 1,000 years, with very few civil wars.

Of all the Korean regimes that have existed in Korea's 5,000-year history, the Kim government is the most stubborn, with the North Korean population closely knit around it.

The North Korean people see a source of boundless pride and glory in holding Kim in high esteem as their national hero and supreme leader. Their dedication is such that they are glad to lay down their lives in defense of his leadership at any time.

The North Korean people find their sacrifices quite satisfying and fulfilling, since the Kim government has built up capability to administer nuclear retaliatory strikes on the US mainland thanks to their sacrifices and has kept the Korean Peninsula from becoming another battleground as a result of its army-first policy and nuclear deterrence.

The Bush administration's talk about North Korean human rights serves only to profit the North Korean regime. Whatever the Americans do only benefits the Kim administration.

Kim Myong Chol is author of a number of books and papers in Korean, Japanese and English on North Korea. He is executive director of the Center for Korean-American Peace, and is often called an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.

Pyongyang outsmarts bungling double act

By Aidan Foster-Carter, Financial Times Published: February 1 2006

An open row between Seoul and Washington has finally ended all pretence of a united front on how to handle North Korea. Presidents Roh Moo-hyun and George W. Bush are tackling North Korea with all the skill and co-ordination of Laurel and Hardy. The result is a fine mess, with Kim Jong-il, North Korea's leader, the only gainer.

Last week, South Korea's foreign ministry criticised a US embassy statement that it had "urged" Seoul to join in curbing the North's counterfeiting and other financial derring-do. President Roh weighed in, insisting that there are no differences with the US - but warning that there will be, if "some forces" in Washington continue to "raise issues about North Korea's regime, put pressure on it and apparently desire to see its collapse".

Like Kim Dae-jung before him, Roh Moo-hyun pursues a "sunshine" policy of engaging North Korea. Most South Koreans support this. Neo-conservatives may sneer from across the Pacific, but unlike the 20m people of greater Seoul they are not in the frontline.

Engage or not, policy entails prioritising. North Korea, the ultimate rogue state, is offensive on many fronts: from nuclear, missile and chemical and biological weapons threats to counterfeiting, drug trafficking, human rights abuses and more. It is unfeasible to tackle everything simultaneously. Hitherto, all agreed that the nuclear threat was the most serious.

But last autumn the Bush administration suddenly "discovered" Pyongyang's counterfeiting, and imposed sanctions. Predictably, North Korea has seized this as a fresh excuse to stonewall. It says it will not return to six-party nuclear talks in Beijing unless sanctions are lifted.

Disgraceful as it is, this counterfeiting has been well-known for more than a decade. To raise it now suggests skewed priorities, or worse. As Mr Roh hinted, many suspect a ploy by hardliners in Washington who oppose any engagement with Mr Kim's regime. While such a stance is defensible, what is not is the Bush administration's failure, for five long years, to pursue a single, coherent North Korea policy. Former secretary of state Colin Powell's wish to engage fell victim to Mr Bush's glib "axis of evil" rhetoric. Last year, Chris Hill, a new US negotiator, reinvigorated the six-party process - only to be undermined again by hawks back home.

Yet South Korea's own stance is no better. Like the three monkeys of Chinese fable, Seoul refuses to see, hear or speak evil of its northern "brother": a term of endearment favoured by ex-unification minister Chung Dong-young, a likely presidential candidate next year.

Fraternity covers a multitude of sins. One may doubt Mr Bush's tactics or timing, but pleading lack of proof of Pyongyang's wrongdoing will not wash. In June 2003, South Korea joined the US and Japan in condemning North Korean counterfeiting. Mr Roh was president then, so his wriggling now fails to convince. Worse is Seoul's weasel stance on North Korean human rights abuses: abstaining in UN votes, discouraging northern refugees and not demanding back its own prisoners of war illicitly held for over half a century.

South Korea's retort is that building peace and trust must come first. Yet the risk is that, rather than induce change, unconditional carrots simply prop up North Korea as it is. Mr Kim pockets the cash and carries on.

To see his foes fight must amuse the dear leader. His recent royal reception by China, with no sign of pressure on either nuclear talks or counterfeiting (centred on Macau), should be a reality check for the US. All North Korea's neighbours are keen to engage it. Even Japan, which alone and successfully balances stick and carrot, is opening fresh bilateral talks.

Bogged down in Iraq and with crisis brewing over Iran, the Bush administration may huff and puff on North Korea but in practice is impotent. Its antics risk losing South Korea as well.

Handling Pyongyang is never easy, but the mess need not have been this bad. There are three obvious ground rules. First, think hard about ends and means: realism, not rhetoric. Second, amid a plethora of potential issues, prioritising is key. Third, present a united front with allies, or Kim Jong-il will seek to drive wedges.

As it is, the dear leader can sit back and milk both Beijing and Seoul, just as his father Kim Il-sung played off China with the USSR. Untroubled by democratic term limits, Mr Kim was always likely to outlast the current flailing and failing occupants of the White House and Seoul's Blue House. But it was not preordained that he would also outsmart them.

*The author is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University and a freelance writer and consultant on Korea.