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If you go back to its Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 and its National Security Strategy of 2002, the Bush administration was then keen to posit an American-dominated globe until the end of time. According to those documents, such domination would involve allowing neither potential military rivals, nor rival military blocs, nor "rogue" regional powers armed with nuclear weapons to arise. In the case of the regional rogue states, the new American military stance was to be based on a willingness to launch "preventive" rather than "preemptive" wars -- wars, that is, not just against powers believed to be on the verge of attacking the United States, but ones preparing for or simply striving to achieve the potential to do so (even regionally).
Put another way, if you were developing or threatening to develop a nuclear arsenal and weren't an ally (Pakistan, Israel, Great Britain), you were already a target for what the administration called "proactive counter-proliferation" and what Jonathan Schell soon dubbed "disarmament wars." According to the Bush administration, such a stance, in turn, necessitated the creation of new American nuclear capabilities -- new generations of less powerful nuclear weapons (like bunker busting mini-nukes) -- with which a counter-proliferating American administration of the future could bolster its nuclear "credibility." In other words, they were ready to raise the specter of crossing the nuclear threshold for the third time in history by using such weapons against a nuclear-arming or -armed regional power.
If Bush's "axis of evil" speech was a public statement of the regional part of this new global strategy, the ultimate enemy of choice for many of the neocons in the administration was China (though the more traditional part of the Republican elite, the elder Bush's wing of the party, with heavy business ties to China, resisted this idea). Yes, the neocons in the new administration were pushing to topple Saddam Hussein and then reorganize the whole Middle East (as they had throughout the latter part of the 1990s), but in their fantasies they always saw that as a reasonably easy task. It was to be but the first set of scenes in a longer drama of "global power projection." As it happened, they got stuck in Act I, Scene 2 of the Iraq prelude to their great global play; and so, as Gavan McCormack comments below, Asia (and the potential Chinese enemy) was trumped by the Middle East, and remains so to this day with a President who travels to Europe to "reassure" its public via statements like: "And finally, this notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous." Short pause. "And having said that, all options are on the table."
Had events in Iraq not unfolded so disastrously, the neocons of the Bush administration might already be ratcheting up the pressure to unbearable levels in the Taiwan Straits and threatening North Korea with a preventive strike. (Not for nothing was the grim regime of Kim Jong Il placed in that otherwise Middle Eastern axis of evil.) There has, in fact, been a modest ratcheting upwards recently. CIA Director Porter Goss warned the Senate that "Beijing's military modernization and military buildup is tilting the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait. Improved Chinese capabilities threaten US forces in the region"; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has reportedly been fretting terribly about the Chinese navy ("The People's Republic of China is a country that we hope and pray enters the civilized world in an orderly way…"), as has the President on the promised lifting of a European arms embargo against China; and the U.S. and Japanese governments just issued a joint statement that upped the ante on Taiwan. As it happens, though, the Bush administration, strung out militarily, has been robbed of its major power-projection abilities in North Asia for the time being and so must resort to bluster, the so-called 6-sided talks, and hopes that regional pressure can be applied to the North Korean regime.
Looked at from the Chinese point of view -- and I've seen no one even speculate on this -- our Iraqi disaster must have seemed a godsend. The Chinese leadership, which of course has had a good deal of experience with foreign encirclement since the Japanese invasion of 1931, is keenly aware that the Pentagon now has established bases deep in Central Asia near their borders, and that a collapsed North Korea might leave Americans pushed up against another border (as in the worst days -- for them -- of the Korean War). So it wouldn't be surprising if they were dancing in the streets of Beijing's Forbidden City, knowing that as long as the U.S. military is stuck in Iraq, China can't be enemy number one.
Looked at yet another way, while for the time being the Iranian bomb-to-come outweighs the North Korean bomb(s)-that-may-exist in American policy, the region that already may house the North Korean bomb threatens to tip over into a potentially devastating nuclear-arms race. It's quite possible that, for all its counter-proliferation talk, the Bush administration will prove the greatest WMD promoter of all time. There is simply no way to lead us into a world of "deproliferation" while promoting the future usefulness of nuclear weapons. If anything, Washington simply continues to raise the value of such weaponry enormously as a currency of power.
As Paul Woodward, editor of the War in Context blog, put it recently, "Proliferation cannot be separated from disarmament. The fact that the United States has decoupled the two objectives means it is governed by a single principle: the desire to maintain and wield global power. This undermines the very possibility that other nations could be persuaded to balance their individual interests with those of the international community. Underlying this fracturing of interests is the Bush administration's own unwillingness to entertain the idea that the interests of the world could ever take precedence over those of America." And, of course, the more nuclear weapons proliferate, the more likely that this administration's deepest fear -- such a weapon falling into the hands of a terrorist group -- will actually come to be.
Below, the canny Australian scholar of North Asia, Gavan McCormack, who has written for Tomdispatch before on North Korea, puts into necessary perspective the North Korean bomb (or at least the North Korean regime's claim to be the ninth power to enter the nuclear underworld). The ever-tense North Korean situation is unlikely to go away during a Bush second term. It is a trigger point, even without war, for all sorts of unsettling developments in Asia, including a potentially explosive nuclear-arms race in the region which might, one day in the not-so-distant future, lead to a nuclear-armed Japan, a nuclear-armed South Korea, a nuclear-armed Taiwan, and a China embarked on a major nuclear build-up. For those of you –- and that means most of us -- who need to be brought up to date on North Korea (from the Korean War to the present moment), don't miss McCormack's small, on-target paperback book, the best account around of the subject, Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe.
Tom
By Gavan McCormack
With the lunar New Year in Northeast Asia, the darkness of winter recedes, a pale sun gains strength, daylight hours lengthen and the earth stirs. However, in one of the bleakest and coldest corners of the region, North Korea, the land is still hard-frozen, spring is far off, and political frosts have not melted for more than half a century. Yet all extremes are eventually exhausted and yield, as yang to yin -- and even for North Korea that time may not be far off.
Relations between the United States and North Korea, having edged right up to the brink of reconciliation and normalization in the last days of Bill Clinton's presidency, went into crisis with the advent of the Bush administration and have remained in a kind of eternal, roiling crisis ever since. After North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in January 2003, there were four sessions of talks aimed at breaking the impasse between the two countries: a three-sided meeting (the US, North Korea, and China) in Beijing in April 2003, and three subsequent "Six-Sided" meetings (that added South Korea, Russia, and Japan) in August 2003, February 2004, and June 2004. All parties agree that the North's nuclear and other problems can be, and must be, resolved through discussion; while North Korean officials claim that their country has no wish to possess nuclear weapons and is ready to give them up as long as its legitimate security concerns are met.
To many it seemed that a new round of talks, expected early in 2005, might actually achieve a breakthrough; some even thought a long-awaited Pyongyang Spring might be imminent. Then, came the North Korean Foreign Ministry's February 10th announcement that the country was indeed a nuclear-weapons state, that such weapons were necessary because of the American government's "ever-more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle" it, and that there was no point in resuming the talks so long as this hostility continued. Only "powerful strength," it said, "can protect justice and truth."
Heading into a Korean Winter
As George W. Bush began his second term, his administration reviewed its intelligence and policy on North Korea. On the face of it, the outcome seemed, at the very least, milder than the uncompromising hostility of his first year or so in office. This is hardly surprising, given that the ongoing war in Iraq has strained American military power to something like its limits and, for at least the last two years, Middle Eastern policy has simply absorbed all available Bush administration attention, in effect trumping the more muscular approach to various problems in Asia of which America's neocons had long dreamed.
Nonetheless, the overall effect of the Korean policy review was not so much to resolve the dilemmas on the peninsula, as to put forward a stance of studied ambiguity, of what might be called hostility-plus -- that is, plus readiness for some kind of deal. Late in 2004, U.S. government sources released accounts of what it called a "bold approach" toward settlement, which had apparently first been placed on the table in Pyongyang in October 2002. If the North Koreans would suspend and dismantle all their nuclear programs (military and civil) under appropriate international inspection, address proliferation concerns about missile, biological, and chemical weapons as well as conventional arms levels and the lack of human rights in the country, the U.S. would, in return, "kick off negotiations" to convert the existing cease-fire agreement still in effect from the Korean War of the early 1950s into an actual peace treaty, push for North Korean membership in international financial institutions, and provide energy assistance and humanitarian aid.
This "bold offer" had been quickly overshadowed by other disputed matters and died stillborn in 2002; and it had itself been a study in ambiguity -- a mix of generous-sounding promises, all of which depended on North Korea's initial and comprehensive surrender to American demands. It was an offer made in order to rebut any future charges that the Bush administration had lacked interest in negotiating, and made on terms that it could be certain the other side would never accept. Now, as 2005 began, it was evidently back on the table, but so, it turned out, was the hostility.
In her confirmation hearings to become Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice struck an apparently upbeat note by declaring that the US had "no intention" of invading North Korea. At the same time, she explicitly included it among six "outposts of tyranny" that must be dealt with and proclaimed that the US stood with "the oppressed people" of all countries. For Pyongyang, "outpost of tyranny" must have sounded no less menacing than "axis of evil." President Bush himself, in his 2005 State of the Union address, had little to say about North Korea other than that the US was "working closely with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions." But he too stressed the ongoing U.S. mission to extend "democracy" to the benighted regions of the world: regimes would have to embrace "freedom" either by changing themselves or by being changed. Against all this, at least since the Beijing talks began, Pyongyang's message, often ridiculed as a stance of preposterous blackmail, had in fact remained constant: It simply sought concrete assurances of survival.
Late in 2004, under pressure from its Asian allies, the Bush administration had evidently decided to shift from talking about the need for "regime change" in North Korea to "regime transformation" -- a subtle distinction indeed. As Jeong Se Hyun, former Unification Minister in South Korea, commented, "I don't understand why the United States is beginning to say that. If you go from telling someone else 'I'm going to kill you,' to 'If you become a good guy I might not kill you,' what will the other guy think…"
Whatever the words from Washington, the view from Pyongyang must have been grim. After all, on October 19, the North Korea Human Rights Act was signed into law, having been adopted by a unanimous vote of both houses of Congress. It widened the administration's playing field for multifarious potential interventions short of all-out war, both along the North's borders and via the airwaves. It also supported an "East European" model of undermining and destabilizing the regime by non-military means.
Behind such actions lay the long-term lobbying efforts of various American neoconservative intellectuals with close ties to the administration. And they now chimed in as well. On December 23, the right-wing Hudson Institute's Michael Horowitz, one of the authors of the Human Rights Law, stated his belief that North Korea would implode within the year. He also spoke of the possibility of finding generals within the North Korean military prepared to work with the U.S. and using them to bring about a coup. "Defense Committee Chairman Kim Jong Il," he added, "won't be able to enjoy the next Christmas." He also mocked the South Korean government, which is absolutely opposed to such an approach, as "hypercritical and irresponsible."
In a similar vein, Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, another prominent neo-conservative intellectual, wrote a November 2004 article entitled "Tear down this Tyranny." Like Horowitz, he directed his venom at both Korean governments, referring to "the pro-appeasement crowd in the South Korean government" who had turned that country into a place "increasingly governed in accordance with graduate-school 'peace studies' desiderata." If the North Koreans needed another signal from the Bush administration, the appointment of Georgetown University academic Victor Cha as Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council was undoubtedly it. He had earned plaudits from neoconservatives for a 2002 article in the Council on Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs, later developed into a book, in which he argued for pressure to be brought to bear on Pyongyang by forming a "coalition for punishment." The priority he placed on "punishing" Kim Jong Il's regime suggested a view of "transformation" for North Korea that was blood brother to those being proposed by Horowitz and Eberstadt.
There have been two strands to the Bush administration's North Korean nuclear concern: plutonium and uranium-based weapons programs. Under the Clinton administration's "Agreed Framework" deal with Pyongyang, North Korea's graphite reactor had been shut down and its accumulated plutonium wastes frozen under international inspection between 1994 and 2003. The breakdown in relations that occurred under Bush, however, meant that the reactor was restarted; new wastes began to accumulate; the pre-existing 8,000 fuel rods were removed from the site; and, according to the North Koreans, they were processed into weapon fuel. This program, however, was not controversial, in the sense that Pyongyang has repeatedly offered to sacrifice it as part of a comprehensive deal. The Bush administration, in dismissing any possibility of such a deal, has concentrated on an alleged North Korean "second track" weapons program, based on uranium. This matter is highly controversial.
The basis for this "second-track" charge was the claimed confession of a Pyongyang official to Deputy Secretary of State James Kelly on a rare Bush administration official visit to Pyongyang in October 2002 that it had a secret uranium-enrichment program. That confession, in turn, was supposed to have prompted the U.S. to suspend its Agreed Framework commitments (in particular a pledge of 500,000 tons annually of heavy oil). Soon after, North Korea withdrew from the Agreed Framework and the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
No confirmation, however, has ever been forthcoming for the U.S. claim. North Korea denies any such "confession," and South Korea, China, and Russia have all expressed skepticism about such a nuclear program despite dogged Bush administration efforts over the last two-and-a-half years to persuade them of its existence. Not only has Washington been unable to persuade allies and negotiating partners, but it has failed to persuade its own intelligence and diplomatic community as well.
The January-February 2005 issue of the establishment journal on foreign policy, Foreign Affairs, carried a powerful dissenting article by Selig Harrison, the former Washington Post journalist who is now Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and also chair of the "Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy," an influential group of ex-diplomats, officials, and academics. Harrison argued that the U.S. had deliberately distorted North Korea's statement in order to put a halt to moves towards reconciliation among Pyongyang, Seoul, and Tokyo; that its negotiator had only said it was "entitled" to such a program or "an even more powerful one" to deter a preemptive US attack. Washington had done this, he argued, to step up pressure on Pyongyang and to stop U.S. allies from any compromise with "evil"; from, that is, appeasement.
The Magic Bullet of Intelligence
Whether or not it was designed to do so, Kelly's October mission to Pyongyang certainly nipped in the bud promising signs of an East Asian spring. An all-Korean summit of June 2000, the fruit of a new South Korean "sunshine policy" toward the North, had been followed by a spate of economic cooperation and trust-building deals on the peninsula. In September 2002, Japan had joined the process and, for the first time, a vision of a new, regional East Asian "order" in which the United States would have no defined role (unheard of since the Korean War), had been officially declared in the most unlikely of settings -- a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi. This dramatic picture of a future Asia would soon be buried in an ever more sensational, headline-grabbing dispute about Japanese citizens who had been kidnapped -- in some cases decades previously -- by the North Korean regime. Despite the rancor that the ongoing dispute subsequently engendered, both sides remain officially committed to such a new order.
In Selig Harrison's view, Kelly's charges, which were headline grabbing in the United States, depended on an exaggeration of dangerously minimalist intelligence or, as he put it, the "treating of a worst-case scenario as revealed truth." North Korea, he agreed, might possibly have a secret program to produce low-enriched uranium (LEU), the fuel used to power light-water plutonium reactors, which would indeed put it in technical violation of the Framework. It was unlikely, however, that its scientists had solved the far more technically difficult task of turning it into high-enriched uranium (HEU) for weapons purposes. He simply did not accept what Washington alleged: that the North had an advanced program that would have enriched uranium weapons ready for deployment by "mid-decade."
In November 2004, Harrison's "Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy" had already issued a paper, "Ending the North Korean Crisis," critical of the administration. If this paper, with its detailed policy proposals, was the first public broadside against the administration from middle-of-the-road members of the intelligence, academic, and bureaucratic communities, Harrison's Foreign Affairs article was the second, attacking the very fundaments of Bush policy-making.
In response, official Washington ratcheted up its efforts both at home and abroad. A riposte by Robert Gallucci, the official who helped negotiate the 1994 Agreed Framework with Pyongyang, and Mitchell Reiss, head of policy planning at the State Department during the first George W. Bush administration, appeared in the very next issue of Foreign Affairs. They insisted that enrichment was enrichment, and the danger of uranium, enriched to whatever degree, being either weaponized or exported was real. At the same time, Michael Green, the National Security Council's newly-appointed Senior Director for Asia, was dispatched on a tour of Asian capitals to try to bring various allies into line. He evidently reaffirmed the Kelly line on enrichment, perhaps by offering additional intelligence, and claimed as well that North Korea had been guilty of the grave offence of proliferation through supplying uranium hexafluoride (a component for nuclear weapons manufacture) to Libya. The evidence for this latter claim is not known in full, but the preliminary response of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was that the case was at best inconclusive; at worst, as one member of the IAEA put it, it was "hard to believe." In a speech in New York on February 16, Harrison continued to insist that it was "reckless to base policy on worst case scenario intelligence driven by ideology."
So bureaucratic war raged in Washington on the Korean issue -- and this took place against a backdrop of the previous year's devastating revelations of the ways in which the administration had used wholesale intelligence distortion and manipulation to justify its much-desired war in Iraq. Beyond Washington at least, the thought that Harrison might be right and that the Iraq intelligence process was now only being repeated in relation to Korea occurred to many. The credibility of Washington's search for a "magic bullet" of intelligence to crush alternative policy lines in Asia had been badly eroded by the intellectual, political, and moral capital squandered in Iraq.
Can There Be a North Korean "Soft Landing"?
As for North Korea itself, Kim Jong Il's regime in Pyongyang appears to have passed through the worst of its long and disastrous economic crisis that stretched back into the 1990s and to have embarked on a process of gradual but far-reaching change. A generational shift seems to be proceeding within the bureaucracy where it is clear that the "Chinese model" is being studied and slowly adapted to Korean circumstances. Markets proliferate; Pyongyang is now reported to have 350 restaurants and 150 karaoke bars; student cafeterias have begun to serve hamburgers; and 24-hour stores are appearing. As South Korean culture and fashion come to be known and appreciated -- through pirated videos and via an increasing reliance on Chinese cell telephones -- the government has begun to campaign against young men growing their hair long, suggesting that, as in Japan and much of Asia, North Korea too may be experiencing a wave of Seoul youth and fashion culture.
In other words, change on many fronts is underway, even under the Kim Jong Il regime, and largely unnoticed by the Bush administration. While U.S. (and Japanese) conservatives dream of overthrowing Kim, there is a possibility that North Korea's present leader may be the most likely candidate to push through reform and an opening to the world in an otherwise highly conservative, repressive, and closed society. Jeong Se Hyun, South Korea's former Unification Minister, believes that social change generally proceeds through three stages -- symbolic, significant, and fundamental -- and that North Korea is now at the second of these stages. He insists that "[n]o nation has ever gone back on reform and opening up," and is critical of American officials for their lack of sensitivity to North Korean pride as well as their lack of awareness of the need to consider "face" as a crucial element in any negotiation. Quite apart from the devastation that the sudden overthrow and collapse of the present regime would likely visit on the region -- a fearful prospect for both the South Korean and Chinese governments -- the possibility that forces more opposed to economic liberalization, more-anti-U.S., anti-China, anti-Japan, and anti-South Korea might replace Kim Jong Il in the chaos is too rarely considered by those who see him simply as another worst-case dictator to be toppled.
In its 2005 New Year message to the world, North Korea referred to the "growing danger" of nuclear war, but made no reference to its own nuclear plans and issued no threats. Since then, senior North Korean officials informed Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa), Vice-Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, that their country was indeed a nuclear state. (This has, in fact, been a constant refrain of the North Koreans since 2003, whether true or not.) They assured him, however, that they had no interest in maintaining a nuclear status once the regime's security concerns were met, and that their government would then respect the United States and "treat it as a friend" provided that the Bush administration did not "slander" it or "intervene in its internal affairs."
Although Weldon, a prominent Republican conservative, described his talks as "an overwhelming success," slander and intervention are precisely the kinds of activities likely to be authorized under the Human Rights Act. After all, Eberstadt and Horowitz are calling for outright hostility and Cha for punishment. So whatever ambiguity may remain in the messages of the President and the Secretary of State will be unlikely to quell North Korean doubts and suspicions. What the Kim Jong Il regime seeks now, as it has through the past decade, is an end to the siege under which it exists and removal of the American nuclear or military threat -- as well as further normalization of political and economic relations with neighboring counties and with the world. On his previous visit to Pyongyang in mid-2003, Congressman Weldon actually made a series of detailed proposals to this end to which his hosts responded positively. His hopes that a breakthrough might come and a deal be done were, however, dashed with the Foreign Ministry's official nuclear announcement on February 10.
The persistent, intense efforts of the Bush administration to turn the "Beijing Six" group into a "coalition of the willing," capable of exerting systematic and sustained pressure on Pyongyang, continue to falter in the face of chronic dissent and policy disunity. The sharpest differences have arisen between Washington and Seoul. South Korea, which naturally has the greatest at stake in the fate of Kim Jong Il and his regime, increasingly defines the issues as peninsular rather than global and demands a voice in the outcome at least as great as Washington's. It accepts the legitimacy of North Korea's plea for "security" and "normalization," believing that the flow of refugees from the North will best be stemmed by allowing reforms to take root there and then nurturing them. American plans to destabilize and overthrow the Pyongyang regime fill it with alarm.
To the extent that South Korea's stance is broadly supported by the Chinese and Russian governments, it amounts to a near "majority" position in the Group of Six. Even Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi tends to incline towards or defer to South Korea on crucial peninsular issues -- not only in an insistence that any resort to war is out of the question but in his readiness to offer aid to Pyongyang as well as his encouragement of the idea of a future regional community that would include North Korea.
In the case of Koizumi, however, there is an important qualification. In Japan, all other issues have become subordinate to resolving various vexing questions about the abduction of Japanese citizens a quarter century ago that still remain on the table. Subject to that uniquely Japanese consideration, Koizumi's Japan is inclined, like the government of South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun, to want to find a path that will lead North Korea to a "soft landing."
In a major speech in Los Angeles in November 2004, South Korea's president shocked Washington by declaring that there was "some justification" for North Korean claims to a right to develop nuclear weapons and missiles in order to protect itself against the American threat (though, of course, he did not actually name the threat). One US government official described this statement as tantamount to "suicide terrorism."
In January 2005, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong Young, in a major speech in Berlin, styled Korea as the "greatest victim of the Cold War." He promised that war on the peninsula henceforth was "impermissible" and instead that both halves of Korea would move forward on the principles of "no war, peaceful coexistence, and common prosperity," with South Korea offering "comprehensive and concrete aid," including food, fertilizers and machinery for its agriculture sector, from the moment North Korea began the process of giving up its nuclear program. A few days later, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he added the express hope that Kim Jong Il would accept an invitation to attend the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Pusan. Even the think tank of the conservative South Korean opposition Grand National Party now calls for "accommodative engagement" with the North and a "Marshall Plan" of incentives to aid Pyongyang. Park Jin, one of its senior figures and a likely presidential candidate in 2007, now describes the relationship between South and North as one between a husband and wife, with South Korea "trying to help a spouse come back who left home after a huge fight." Though Park Jin's party should be the prefect ally for the Washington neoconservatives, they see this kind of thinking as puerile, "peace-studies" appeasement, no matter who espouses it.
Singing with the President
In Japan, Koizumi, though faithful to Washington on almost all issues, shows signs of independence on North Korea. It was, after all, his visit to Pyongyang in September 2002 -- about which he informed Washington but without consultation of any sort --- that set off the present crisis. The Pyongyang Declaration, issued after his first meeting with Kim and never repudiated by either side, remains a clarion call to reconciliation and to the formation of a Northeast Asian community in which the US role remains undefined, and so an unspoken challenge to Washington.
In May 2004, Koizumi made a second visit to North Korea. On his departure for Pyongyang he spoke about normalizing the abnormal relationship between Japan and North Korea so that "hostility" could be "turned to friendship, confrontation to cooperation." It was an agenda poles apart from Washington's. Koizumi, it seems, is on a mission to close the books on Japan's twentieth century colonial empire and thereby secure for his country a central role in the emerging community of twenty-first century Northeast Asia.
Later, asked his impression of his North Korean opposite number, Koizumi reported to the Japanese Diet:
"I guess for many his image is that of a dictator, fearful and weird, but when you actually meet and talk with him he is mild-mannered and cheerful, quick to make jokes ... quick-witted."
In other words, he confirmed that Kim Jong Il was a man to do business with.
Most foreigners who meet him have reacted similarly, including among others former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. So keen did Kim profess himself to be when it came to talking with George W. Bush that he asked Koizumi to provide music that they could sing to together -- till, as he put it, their throats dried out and became sore. By contrast, the American president says, with great feeling, that he "loathes" Kim Jong Il and could never possibly deal directly with him.
After the second trip, Koizumi pledged to normalize the Japan-North Korea relationship in his remaining two years in office -- if possible within a single year. In the months that followed, Kim Jong Il's request to sing with President Bush seems to have weighed on Koizumi's mind, so that when he met with Bush later in the year he urged him to consider such a meeting. The President's response, we are told, was a stony silence; and while an American president's wish may be tantamount to a command to a Japanese Prime Minister, the reverse can never be true.
The Korean abduction of Japanese citizens during the late 1970s and early 1980s remains an enormous thorn sunk deep into any attempt to achieve the sort of normalization Koizumi seeks. The North Korean leader did apologize in 2002 for the abduction of thirteen Japanese citizens, and by 2004 had returned to Japan five survivors and their families, but it was the explanations offered for the deaths of the other eight around which controversy swirled. When Japanese DNA analysis indicated that what North Korean officials proffered in 2004 as the remains of Yokota Megumi, a young woman abductee, were actually those of two unrelated people, the shock and outrage in Japan would prove deep and lasting. Since then, the demand for the imposition of sanctions on the North has grown and moves have begun in the Japanese Diet to pass a Japanese version of the U.S. North Korean Human Rights Law.
Early in February 2005, a statement signed by five million Japanese demanding the imposition of sanctions was presented to the government. Most Japanese favor such a course of action because they believe that Kim Jong Il as a dictator is responsible for everything that happens in his country. They are convinced that he has been deliberately tricking and deceiving Japan about the abductees.
Koizumi, who alone has met and formed his own assessment of Kim Jong Il, remains cool to the idea. Although he shares in the popular anger at the thoroughly unsatisfactory nature of the abductee explanations that have so far been offered, he may well find credible what Kim told him in 2002: that "some elements of a special agency of state," long since abolished, had been responsible for the abductions, and that such things would never recur.
If indeed Kim's power does not fully extend to those "special agencies of state," the remaining mysteries concerning the abductees may only gradually be cleared up as part of a future process of normalization -- as was the case with the fate of orphaned Japanese children left behind in China at the end of World War II. Only after normalization and the opening of diplomatic relations with China in the 1970s, did information on these children become available. While Koizumi persists in his demands for a satisfactory North Korean explanation of the Yokota remains and clarification of the circumstances surrounding the fates of other abductees, he remains committed to reconciliation and normalization. Around him, however, the mood in his party and in the country at large has been hardening.
Toward a Pyongyang Thaw?
North Korea's statement that it has nuclear weapons and is uninterested, at least for the time being, in the resumption of the six-sided talks represents a step back towards mid-winter from any hopes of a Pyongyang spring. Washington is now said to be considering a possible referral of the matter to the United Nations Security Council for international sanctions or even trying to convene the six-sided talks without North Korea -- that is, in one way or another simply stepping up the pressure. China is said to be angry that its efforts at conciliation have been dashed. South Korea frantically counsels reason and moderation on all sides as its "sunshine" policies are tested as never before. All the while, North Korea moves ever closer to being a de facto nuclear power with inevitable destabilizing consequences on the region, especially on Japan's future military posture.
If North Korea seems more isolated than ever, however, the disarray among the other five partner countries is also plain, as are the deep, unresolved contradictions between Bush's Washington, already frustrated and limited in its policy options by its endless occupation and war in Iraq, and the Asian allies it would like to support its projected global order. The Japanese prime minister, the Bush administration's closest partner in Asia, has publicly pledged to normalize relations with Kim Jong Il's North Korea and has begged the President to meet one-on-one with Kim; China stated after the last round of talks in Beijing that American policy towards the North was the "main problem we are facing"; and South Korea's president believes North Korea is "not without cause" in its nuclear weapon program, encourages multifaceted cooperation across the well fortified Demilitarized Zone that still separates the two countries, and has invited President Bush to join him on a visit to the new joint South-North industrial development zone just north of the old Korean war dividing line that was once so impermeable.
What for Washington is a matter of how to stop a nuclear-weapons program and/or overthrow the strange dictator of a distant land, is for other countries in the region a much more essential problem: how to bring North Korea first into the community of Northeast Asia and then into the larger global community. In Washington's view, North Korea is simply troublesome, lunatic, or evil, and there can be no truck with it. As its Asian neighbors see it, North Korea's demand for security, however shrill, contains within it something that, from their own histories, they recognize as essentially just. The six-sided forum, despite the present impasse, is probably still the best, perhaps even the only way forward, providing as it does a forum for regional powers to exert pressure not just on North Korea but on the United States as well. It offers just about the only hope for overseeing the inevitably protracted process of detente leading to resolution.
Gavan McCormack is a professor of the Australian National University and visiting professor at International Christian University in Tokyo. He is the author of many works on modern and contemporary East Asia, including most recently Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe (Nation Books).
Copyright 2005 Gavan McCormack
by Tony Banbury, Press Conference, Beijing, 31 March 2005
[At a press conference in Beijing after his DPRK visit, WFP Asia Region Director
Tony Banbury described monitoring issues being discussed with authorities.
Highlights are excerpted here. Full text available at the Nautilus Institute
website: http://www.nautilus.org/napsnet/sr/2005/0528A_Banbury.html]
The last issue that is very important to touch upon is the issue of monitoring,
and WFP's operating conditions. WFP has struggled with this issue from the first
day we started working in the country in the mid-90s. It is a perpetual quest of
ours to improve the monitoring conditions. In the course of 2003 and 2004 we
had, in fact, made some great progress. We steadily increased the number of
monitoring visits we were able to conduct. On average, over the years, it went
from the low 200s to more than 500 visits per month. We were able to access much
different kinds of information, a much wider variety of information. Not just
how much food you need, but what your sources of income are, your sources of
food, where else do you get food, what you are consuming, what you go forage for
in the forest. This gave us a much better understanding of household-level food
security.
WFP used to look at the food security issue from a national perspective: what's
the total national requirement, what's the total national production, and then
we'd look at helping to fill the gap. Now we are much more focused on
household-level food security. What are individual households' experiences, who
are the most vulnerable - is it the elderly, is it the urban poor, is it the
children, is it the pregnant women? And as a result of the improvements in our
monitoring in 2003-2004, we have developed a much better understanding of that.
So we are better able to target our assistance to the people who need it the
most.
It seems, though, that as a result of the improvements in our monitoring, there were certain segments of the North Korean authorities that were uncomfortable with WFP activities: the very large number of visits we were making, the intrusiveness of those visits - our visits into households, the very detailed questions we were asking. We were told by the North Korean authorities that this was making the people uncomfortable, and some parts of the government itself uncomfortable. So they decided to change our operating conditions, putting more limits, as of September of last year, for instance, reducing the number of visits we're able to make from more than 500 a month to down to around 300 a month. They also closed off some counties, although our access to most has been re-established.
They also told us we should not ask certain types of questions which were not directly related to food aid. We understand their concerns. (...) But we have also worked very hard to try to explain to the North Korean authorities the importance of having confidence that our food is reaching the people who need it. There are different ways to have that confidence. One way is to follow the type of practices we had in 2003-2004. But there are other ways. And in the past few months we have been having very intensive discussions with the North Korean authorities about different ways to develop the same or even greater confidence about how food aid is being used. So, for instance, we are looking at having much more frequent visits to Public Distribution Centres. If we can go and observe people receiving assistance directly, and talk to them at the PDCs about their situation - similar types of questions but in a more public setting - that's one way we can get information.
Another way is to have focus group discussions, where, instead of one person in
her living room with three government officials and three WFP people there - a
rather intimidating setting - we gather a larger number of beneficiaries and
talk to them in a group setting and allow them to talk among themselves, where
they might be more confident in sharing common experiences.
Another important way that is through baseline surveys. Instead of doing
household visits on a regular basis across the entire year, we would do three
surveys a year. We would have household visits, but a rather intensive number
over a short period. The fourth and perhaps most important element of this new
system that we are discussing with the government is a commodity tracking
system, where we would use an internal technical logistics commodity tracking
system that includes software - in WFP we call it COMPAS and use it around the
world - that helps us track a bag of food aid from the point it enters the
country to the point its distributed to the beneficiary. Technical logisticians
can explain how this system works using computer tracking methods, where we know
where the food is the whole way through the system.
We have discussed all of this with the North Korean authorities. They agree in
principle on the need for us to have the confidence we demand on how the food
aid is being used. They agree in principle to develop this new system, where we
would have improved quality of monitoring, even if the quantity of visits is
reduced. And they agree in principle with the elements that I have just
mentioned. We are now in the process - our country team there, the country
director Richard Ragan who I think some of you have met - are in the process now
of trying to roll this out at the provincial level. Starting in April, officials
from all the 158 counties where we deliver our assistance, where we have access,
will be getting training from WFP on this new approach.
So it's not a done deal yet. But I'm very pleased that the government has
extended its agreement in principle, has shown its understanding of our need to
have confidence in the use of the food aid. (...) If we are successful in
implementing the agreement in principle, we will have a better understanding of
the use of this food aid from its entry into the country to its final
consumption. What appeared to us to be a big problem in the latter part of last
year has in fact turned into a very good opportunity for WFP. And I think we'll
emerge in a stronger position as a result of the changes.
Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), 31 March 2005
A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry released a statement today as regards the wrong view spread by the US and its allies on the
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The statement says: It is the consistent strategic goal of the DPRK to achieve lasting peace and
stability and realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. However, the United States and its allies are now spreading a wrong view on the
denuclearization of the peninsula at a time when the six-way talks for a solution to the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the US still remain at a
stalemate. They assert that the DPRK's access to nukes is incompatible with the efforts to ensure security and the abandonment of its nuclear program
would precisely lead to the denuclearization of the peninsula.
This is a deliberate distortion of the essence of the situation. If the Korean Peninsula is to be denuclearized, it is necessary to put an end to the growing US nuclear threat in and around the peninsula, the source that compelled the DPRK to have access to nuclear weapons, and establish the relations of confidence between the DPRK and the countries concerned. By nature, the denuclearization of the peninsula was initiated by the DPRK for the purpose of freeing it from the US nuclear threat. That was why the DPRK acceded to the NPT and concluded the DPRK-US Agreed Framework.
But, the US has abused all this for isolating and stifling the DPRK. The Bush administration, in particular, openly posed a nuclear threat to the DPRK, thus compelling it to produce nuclear weapons so as to prevent a war and protect its system and existence. Such being a hard fact, the US is twisting the essence of the denuclearization of the peninsula. It asserts that the DPRK's dismantlement of nukes would lead to the denuclearization, sidestepping the nuclear threat posed by Washington. Denuclearization is needed only for ensuring lasting peace and stability on the peninsula. In the real sense, the denuclearization of the peninsula calls for rooting out the very source that compelled the DPRK to make nuclear weapons. This would be a proper order in the efforts to find a solution to the issue. To this end, the US should roll back before anything else its hostile policy aimed at toppling the system of the DPRK through a nuclear war after designating it as a "target of pre-emptive nuclear attack".
But the reality is quite contrary to this demand. The US keeps many tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea on a permanent basis. And it is ceaselessly
shipping nuclear strike means there. It also brought lots of nuclear carrier flotillas and strategic bombers capable of nuclear delivery into South Korea
when it staged large-scale nuclear war exercises against the DPRK in and around South Korea on an annual basis in recent years. It has conducted mock
nuke dropping exercises in South Korea by mobilizing even flying corps of its air force in Japan and on Guam, etc.
As if it were not enough with this, the US is spending a colossal amount of fund for developing smaller nukes capable of destroying underground bunkers
in the DPRK. Shortly ago it stealthily brought Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine to Jinhae Port in South Korea, sparking off a big furor. It is
preposterous for the US to turn a blind eye to this fact and assert that only the DPRK's dismantlement of its nukes can lead to the denuclearization
of the Korean Peninsula. If the peninsula is to be nuclear-free, it is necessary to clear South Korea of all the nuclear weapons of the US and root
out every element that can help South Korea have access to nukes.
Of course, this should be confirmed through verification. It is also necessary to stop all nuclear war exercises against the DPRK in
and around the Korean Peninsula, remove leverage by which one can threaten others with nukes and build the relations of confidence among surrounding
countries including the DPRK and the US. Only then is it possible to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula in practice, just as President Kim Il Sung
desired so much in his lifetime. Given that the DPRK and the US are technically at war and south Korea is
under the nuclear umbrella of the US, nuclear weapons in the hands of the DPRK would serve a main deterrent force in its effort to avert a war on the
peninsula and ensure peace and stability there until the above-said demands are met.
The same can be said of the six-party talks. The six-party talks should provide a platform for seeking comprehensive ways of substantially and
fairly realizing the denuclearization of the peninsula, not just as a bargaining ground where a give-and-take type way of solution is discussed.
Gone are the days when the six-party talks took up such give-and-take type issues as reward for freeze. Now that the DPRK has become a
full-fledged nuclear weapons state, the six-party talks should be disarmament talks where
the participating countries negotiate the issue on an equal footing. The US claims that if the
DPRK dismantles its nuclear weapons first, it will be given "collective assurances for security" and get a
"benefit". This is, however, nothing but a gangster-like logic urging the DPRK to disarm itself
and yield to the US domination. Such unequal "talks" at which the US
sitting in a chair is allowed to issue commands to the DPRK while the latter is forced to sit on its knees and meet the former's demand can never help find
a solution to the nuclear issue. On the contrary, they will only escalate the confrontation and tensions.
If the US threat of nukes is completely removed from the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity, it will be possible to ensure lasting peace and stability
not only in the peninsula but in the rest of Northeast Asia. If the six-party talks are to creditably fulfill their mission, it is necessary to
convert them into a place where ways are sought to completely remove the US threat of nukes and a nuclear war from the peninsula and its vicinity.
The DPRK will as ever do its best to avert a war and realize the comprehensive denuclearization on the peninsula.
30 March 2005, ITAR Tass, (in Russian)
Футбольный матч в Пхеньяне между национальными сборными КНДР и Ирана в
рамках отборочного турнира чемпионата мира-2006 закончился массовыми
беспорядками. Иранцы выиграли со счетом 2:0, после чего толпа
северокорейских болельщиков устроила потасовку прямо на стадионе имени
основателя и вечного президента страны Ким Ир Сена.
Разъяренные фанаты пробились к иранским спортсменам и группе судей и стали
швырять в них камни и бутылки. Для усмирения
были толпы задействованы отряды армии и полиции, но порядок удалось восстановить только спустя час
после игры. О пострадавших сведений нет, сообщает ИТАР-ТАСС.
by Gordon Tynan, The Independent, 31 March 2005
FIFA is awaiting referee Mohammed Kousa's report before launching an investigation after he and two assistants were forced to seek refuge from angry North Korea fans following the World Cup qualifier against Iran. Iran beat North Korea 2-0 in Pyongyang yesterday in a match that ended in violent scenes to take the outright lead in their World Cup qualifying group. The match officials were unable to leave the pitch for 20 minutes after the game as furious North Korea fans hurled bottles, rocks and chairs in frustration. North Korean soldiers and police were forced to step in to restore order at Kim Il-Sung Stadium after the defender Nam Song-Chol was sent off for shoving the Syrian referee Kousa. The violence spilled over outside the stadium where thousands of angry North Korea supporters prevented Iran's players from boarding the team bus. Riot police finally pushed back the crowd far enough for Iran's squad to depart two hours after the end of the game.
"The atmosphere on the pitch and outside the pitch was not a sports atmosphere," said Iran's Croatian coach, Branko Ivankovic. "It is very
disappointing when you feel your life is not safe. My players tried to get to the bus after the game but it was not possible - it was a very dangerous
situation." A deflected free-kick from Mehdi Mahdavikia in the 33rd minute and a Javad
Nekounam goal 10 minutes from time gave Iran seven points from three games in the final round of the Asian zone qualifiers for 2006.
Tempers flared towards the end of the Group B match as Nam was dismissed for pushing
Kousa after he had denied the defender a penalty. The game was held up for five minutes following Nam's dismissal as bottles rained down on to
the stadium's running track. As trouble reignited on the final whistle, security forces were mobilized and stadium announcements warned the crowd of
60,000 to be calm. The result left North Korea's hopes of qualifying for their second World Cup
in tatters after their third consecutive defeat.
Itar-Tass reported that exchange rate of the DPRK's national currency, the won, has sunk to a historic low level since the day of emergence of the DPRK. Runaway inflation and the resultant price leaps are among the major social and economic headaches for this country. Since an average salary in the DPRK stands at around 6,000 Won, the rapid depreciation of national money may bring about grave social problems, experts say. ("NORTH KOREAN CURRENCY SINKS TO HISTORIC LOW LEVEL", 2005-03-29)
By HOWARD W. FRENCH, The New York Times, March 28, 2005
DANDONG, China - At night, the view from the upper floor of a hotel looking out
across the Yalu River toward the North Korean city of Sinuiju seems one of utter
desolation. Three naked bulbs twinkling feebly is all that can be seen along a
several-miles arc of riverfront. By day, though, the scene at the border in this
bustling Chinese city could scarcely be more different. Trucks steadily lumber
across the bridge linking the countries, ferrying North Korean raw materials
into China and Chinese manufactured goods to market in North Korea.
Westerners have long taken the night-time view as the truest reflection of North
Korea, a country all but frozen in time, its leaders so obsessed with control
that they do not countenance contact with the outside world. The view from
China, though, in cities like this, where small groups of North Koreans can be
found in the downtown shops and hotels, scouring the city for bargains, is of a
country already well into an experiment, however uncertain, aimed at rebuilding
its economy and even opening up, ever so gingerly, to the outside world.
North Koreans who have recently arrived in China, and Chinese businessmen who
have extensive experience in North Korea, speak of significant changes in the
economic life in a country with a reputation as one of the most closed and
regimented. They say the changes, which were officially started in 2002 and have
gradually gained momentum, have undone many of the most basic tenets of North
Korea's Communist system, where private commerce was banned, private property
circumscribed, and an all-powerful state the universal employer and
provider.
Now in ways that many Chinese say remind them of their own early economic
reforms a quarter century ago, North Korean farmers are allowed to take over
fallow land and plant it for their own profit, selling their products in
markets. "It seems they are learning from the Chinese model of the 1980's,
giving land to farmers and not allowing people to depend on the central
government for everything," said Yu Zhongde, a Chinese businessman whose
company operates bus routes in North Korea. "The rate of change is speeding
up, and the aspiration for wealth among the people is really
growing."
In the cities, Mr. Yu and others say, the changes have been even more
noticeable, with people being allowed to trade goods for profit in newly created
public markets, including 38 in the capital, Pyongyang. These days, traders sell
everything from clothing and bicycles to televisions and refrigerators, mostly
imported from China. Private automobile ownership is still not permitted, but
people reported seeing signs advertising used cars for sale in Pyongyang,
nonetheless. Here and there, others also report the opening of small restaurants
and karaoke bars.
"The standard of living is improving, not just in Pyongyang, but throughout
the country," said another Chinese businessman who has been a frequent
visitor to the country since 1997. "Nowadays, if you have money you can buy
whatever you want. The problem is that most people still don't have much
money." Similar comments about the recent availability of goods were
repeated in numerous interviews with North Koreans who had illegally slipped
across the porous border, taking a risk in hopes of earning some money in China
and buying goods to carry back and sell.
The difference in the remarks of Chinese business people and the North Koreans
is one of tone, with the North Koreans almost universally asserting that life
has gotten tougher, not better, since the introduction of the economic changes.
"The government has no money, and everything has become much more
expensive," said a woman from the northeastern city of Chongjin, who
sneaked into China three months ago. "Many people steal things to
survive."
People from the countryside said farmers had tended to do better than city
residents under the economic changes. "You can find anything you want in
the markets now, but the prices are too high for us to afford them," said
one 50-year-old woman from a village in the Musan region, near the Chinese
border. "Farming for ourselves, though, made us better off than people in
the towns. At least we always had enough to eat."
Deok Ryong Yoon, an economist at the South Korean Institute for International
Economic Policy, acknowledged the growing social disparity. "The market has
become the main mechanism for the North Korean economy, and they are trying to
use the market to rehabilitate their economy," he said. "The changes
have increased net production in North Korea. They have more goods and seem to
be benefiting from the reforms, but distribution is very unequal."
North Korean officials have used the state's propaganda machine to spread the
new market-economy gospel, including quotes from the supreme leader, Kim Jong
Il. They began with an article attributed to Mr. Kim published in the state
press in 2001 under the headline "Gigantic Change," in which he called
for making "constant efforts to renew the landscape to replace the one
which was formed in the past, to meet the requirements of a new era."
More recent articles have gone further, praising some aspects of capitalism and
extolling "those with money using money" as a new force for social
regeneration. Many analysts say this most recent language also echoes important
changes in China, including most famously the quote often attributed to Deng
Xiaoping: "to be rich is glorious."
Chinese businessmen and foreign economists say North Korea's emergent capitalist
class has two disparate components: the operators of a small, clandestine
private economy who have survived since their emergence during the famines of
the mid-1990's, when the state distribution system was failing, and a far larger
group consisting of officials of all description, from petty and mid-level
functionaries to members of the political elite and perhaps largest of all, the
military.
"Pretty much everyone in business is an official of one kind or
another," said one Chinese investor who is a frequent visitor to North
Korea. "Ordinary people simply don't have the money, and if they had money,
they'd be asked where they got it, and get in trouble."
The businessman said corruption, abuse of office and the seemingly arbitrary
application of rules were the biggest weaknesses in the country's new policy
drive. "Changes are declared," he said. "They are spoken, but
it's not put into law, and this makes it very difficult for
business."
Ordinary citizens say these uncertainties hit them hard, too. A hint of this
notion, of a state that gives and can also take away, was included in a
sarcastic but menacing commentary by North Korea after its rejection last month
of new multinational talks about its nuclear program. Washington "can just
have talks with peasant market merchants, whom the United States is said to
like, or with the representatives of the North Korean defectors organizations
the United States is said to have formed."
One city dweller told a story of how the government had engineered the
introduction of new banknotes for the won, the currency, as part of the economic
changes. With little explanation except a vague discussion of addressing social
inequality, people were ordered to turn in their old won for new ones, the woman
said. "No matter how much of the old money you turned in, each family was
given 4,500 new won," she said. "You didn't dare complain. If you did,
you would be denounced as an enemy of the people."
by Stuart McMillan, National Business Review (NZ), 24 March 2005
[Stuart McMillan is an adjunct senior fellow in the school of political science and communication at the University of Canterbury.]
For her visit to Asia last week US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had much more on her agenda than she did when she visited Europe last month.
In Europe she had some fences to mend after the breaks brought about by the Iraq war. That was not an easy undertaking but it was at least less
complicated than the issues she had to juggle in Asia. Much of her effort in Asia was directed toward getting some resolution of
the North Korean nuclear problem. She came bearing what may be described as a special gift to North Korea, admitting that the country was a sovereign
state. By most measures North Korea, cranky as it obviously is, would seem to fulfill the criteria for being a sovereign country but might be flattered
to be so described by the US. Dr Rice has previously referred to it as an "outpost of tyranny." The two are, of course, not mutually exclusive.
An official said the wording was reached after "extensive contemplation."
North Korea withdrew from the six-party (the US, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China) talks last June
and on February 10 this year announced that it had nuclear weapons. The US wants the talks to resume soon. It argues, with
some justification, that a nuclear-armed North Korea is a problem for the region, not just the US.
North Korea has appeared determined to have the US talk directly to it. Dr Rice did not rule this out but said that it would be within the framework of
the six-party talks. Because everyone would not be talking at once, the US would sometimes be talking directly to North Korea.
The US believes China has the ability, if it is so inclined, to bring North Korea back to the bargaining table. The argument is that China is the main
provider of North Korea's needs and this should give China a lever to persuade the North Koreans. Dr Rice pressed China, which has been the host
of the talks, to put pressure on North Korea to return. China would like the talks to resume but seems to have a much more
pessimistic view of its ability to bring North Korea to the table. It might also be hesitating a little because China is adamant there should not be
interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, a status it accords North Korea. China also appears sceptical of North Korea's claims
that it has nuclear weapons and is even more sceptical of the claims by US intelligence that North Korea has eight or nine plutonium-based bombs.
In South Korea, Dr Rice said the US did not intend to attack North Korea, though it felt that it could not wait forever for North Korea to give up any nuclear weapons or ambitions to have nuclear weapons. She did not specify what would happen if the US felt it had waited too long. Within the US Administration there are people who would like North Korea to be referred to the Security Council of the UN soon. If North Korea did not comply with Security Council requests it should have sanctions imposed on it. Soon after she landed in South Korea, Dr Rice visited an underground US base, a somewhat pointed reminder of the presence of US troops in South Korea and their task of helping to repel any North Korean attack. General Richard B Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, recently said that if North Korea attacked it knew very well that it would be defeated and that that would be the end of the present regime.
When it left the talks, North Korea identified US hostility toward it as one reason for doing so. It remains to be seen if it will be mollified by the US viewing it as a sovereign state and will agree to return. The US has already said that if North Korea gave up nuclear weapons programmes the US might give it a guarantee of security. There is a difference in tactics between the US on one side and Japan and South Korea on the other. The latter two would like to provide incentives for North Korea to give up its programmes; the US wants any rewards to come after North Korea has renounced any plans to produce nuclear weapons. (...)
By GLYN FORD and SOYOUNG KWON, Special to The Japan Times: March 17, 2005
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- The European Union is increasingly showing a new independent stance on foreign-policy issues as the logic of its industrial and economic integration plays out in the international arena.
Already the EU has taken a distinct and independent approach to both the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the nuclear crisis in Iran. Now it has broken ranks over the Korean Peninsula, fed up and concerned with the failure to resolve the ongoing crisis over North Korea's development of nuclear arms.
Reflecting this new stance, the European Parliament this week passed a comprehensive resolution on the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and nuclear arms in North Korea and Iran:
- It urges the resumption of the supply of heavy fuel oil (HFO) to North Korea in exchange for a verified freeze of the Yongbyong heavy-water reactor, which is capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, to avoid a further deterioration in the situation. At the same time it is calling for the European Council and Commission to offer to pay for these HFO supplies.
- It urges the Council of Ministers to reconsider paying 4 million Euros of the suspension costs for KEDO (the Korea Energy Development Organization) to South Korea to ensure the continued existence of an organization that could play a key role in delivering energy supplies during a settlement process.
- It demands that the Commission and Council request EU participation in future six-party talks, making it clear that the EU will in the future adopt a "no say, no pay" principle in respect to the Korean Peninsula. Having already placed more than $650 million worth of humanitarian and development aid into the North, it is no longer willing to be seen merely as a cash cow. This view was backed in the debate by the Luxembourg presidency and follows a line initially enunciated by Javier Solana's representatives last month in the Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.
- It urges North Korea to rejoin the NPT, return to the six-party talks and allow the resumption of negotiations.
The EP cannot substantiate U.S. allegations that North Korea has an HEU (highly enriched uranium) program or that North Korea provided HEU to Libya. It has called for its Foreign Affairs Committee to hold a public hearing to evaluate the evidence. "Once bitten, twice shy" is the consequence of U.S. claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The world order is changing; the EU -- like China -- is emerging as a significant global power economically with the euro challenging the dollar as the global currency (even prior to the latest enlargement from 15 to 25 member states, the EU's economy was bigger than that of the United States). Speaking at Stanford University earlier this month, former U.S. foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski pointed out that the EU, U.S., China, Japan and India will be the major powers in the new emerging global order. Since the new Asia will have three out of the five major players, he stressed the importance of engaging with it.
How will those already in play respond? Some may claim that statements by North Korea welcoming the EU's involvement and participation are merely polite, inoffensive small talk that cannot be taken seriously. Yet there have been a spate of pro-EU articles appearing in Rodong Sinmun, the daily newspaper of the Central Committee of the Korean Workers Party, since 2001.
Of 128 EU-related articles between 2001 and 2004, a majority praised Europe's independent counter-U.S. stance, emphasized its increasing economic power and influence, and heralded its autonomous regional integration. Rodong Sinmun portrays the EU as the only superpower that can check and balance U.S. hegemony and America's unilateral exercise of military power.
North Korea's perception of the EU is well reflected in articles such as: "EU becomes new challenge to U.S. unilateralism"; "Escalating frictions (disagreements) between Europe and U.S."; "European economy (euro) dominating that of the U.S."; "Europe strongly opposing unilateral power play of U.S.," and so forth.
Concurrently, North Korea has pursued active engagement with the EU by establishing diplomatic relations with 24 of the 25 EU member states (the exception being France). It is not necessary to read between the lines to recognize North Korea's genuine commitment to engagement with the EU based on its perception of the EU's emerging role on the world stage.
The Republic of Korea has publicly welcomed the prospect of EU involvement, while China wishes to go further and engage in bilateral discussions with the EU on its new policy toward the North. Russia will follow the majority. The problem is with Japan and the U.S.
In Japan, opinion is split by hardliners in the Liberal Democratic Party who view problems with North Korea as a convenient excuse to justify the abandonment of the Peace Constitution. They don't want a quick solution until crisis has catalyzed the transformation of Japan into what advocates call a "normal" country.
The U.S. expects an EU financial commitment, but not EU participation. The neocons believe that EU participation would change the balance of forces within the talks inexorably toward critical engagement rather than confrontation.
The question is whether the EU's offer will point the U.S. into a corner or trigger a breakthrough. Will U.S. fundamentalists outmaneuver the realists who favor a diplomatic rather than military solution? Only time will tell.
Glyn Ford, a Labour Party member of the European Parliament (representing South West England), belongs to the EP's Korean Peninsula Delegation. Soyoung Kwon is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Asia-Pacific Research Center.
By James Brooke, The New York Times, Wednesday, March 16, 2005
SEOUL Halfway through a video from North Korea, the camera pans to a propaganda portrait of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, magnificent in his general's dress uniform with gold epaulets. Scribbled in black ink across his smooth face is a demand for "freedom and democracy."
If genuine, the graffiti speaks of political opponents willing to risk execution to get their message out. If staged, the video means that a North Korean hustler was willing to deface a picture of the "Dear Leader" to earn a quick profit by selling it to a South Korean human rights group.
Either way, the 35-minute video is the latest evidence that new ways of thinking are stealing into North Korea, perhaps corroding the steely controls on ideology and information that have kept the Kim family in power for almost 60 years.
The construction of cellular relay stations last fall along the Chinese side of the border has allowed some North Koreans in border towns to use prepaid Chinese cellphones to call relatives and reporters in South Korea, defectors from North Korea say. And after DVD players swept northern China two years ago, entrepreneurs collected castoff videocassette recorders and peddled them in North Korea. Now, tapes of South Korean soap operas are so popular that state television in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, is campaigning against South Korean hairstyles, clothing and slang, visitors and defectors have said.
"In the 1960s, in the Soviet Union, it was cool to wear blue jeans and listen to rock 'n'
roll," said Andrei Lankov, a Russian exchange student in the North at Kim Il Sung University in 1985, who now teaches about North Korea at Kookmin University in the South.
"Today, it is cool for North Koreans to look and behave South Korean, as they do in the television serials. That does not bode well for the long-term survival of the
regime."
Analysts of the North usually focus on the governing elite, and some cracks have appeared there in the past year: the demotion of Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law, the defection of a few high-ranking military officers, the huge explosion that destroyed a rail station a few hours after Kim's train had passed through, and what appears to be the start of a succession battle among his three sons.
Analysts are debating the importance of Kim's visits to military bases, which accounted for almost two-thirds of his 92 publicly divulged appearances last year, compared with one-third in 2003. With North Korea closed to American journalists, it was hard to decipher whether Kim was shoring up his power base in the army out of fear of a foreign attack or of an internal coup.
Past predictions that Kim's power was ebbing have not been borne out.
"We have very meager intelligence resources, and we're sort of flying blind," Howard Baker Jr. said on Feb. 16 in Tokyo, in his final news briefing as U.S. ambassador to Japan. "My country has no alternative but to assume that Kim Jong Il will continue in power."
Reviewing North Korea's political elite, "we see no big change," said Noriyuki Suzuki, director of Radio Press, a Japanese government monitoring service that focuses on the North Korean media. "But the bigger worry for him should be not in the core part of his power structure, but any move of distrust or dissatisfaction with the regime among the general public," Suzuki said, referring to Kim.
Suzuki cited a recent joint editorial published in North Korea's three most important newspapers "strongly warning against the flow of information from outside the country, warning against the inflow of capitalist elements through travel outside."
In the recording studio of a radio station in Seoul, Seong Min Kim, a former North Korean Army captain who is now the director for the South Korean radio station Free NK, explained how Chinese cellphones in North Korea have enabled him to nurture sources there.
"He just dials 0082 to get the Korean-speaking Chinese operator, then makes a collect call to here," Kim said of one source. The prepaid cellphones are usually paid for by journalists in South Korea, he said, and the North Koreans go along largely out of curiosity or to try to make business deals.
At a human rights conference in Seoul on Feb. 15, defectors estimated in interviews that about one-third of the defectors in South Korea regularly talked to family members back in North Korea, calling owners of prepaid Chinese cellphones at a prearranged time.
To counter this, North Korea has reportedly started border patrols using Japanese equipment that can track cellphone calls. Reporters tell stories of their contacts who make calls only from their private garden plots in the hills, burying the cellphones in the ground after each call.
While Chinese cellphones work only a few kilometers inside North Korea, the videocassette phenomenon has reportedly spread throughout the nation, reaching into every area where there is electricity. "They are within the reach of the average family," said Lankov, who regularly interviews recent defectors.
Kim ordered the formation of a special prosecutor's office last November to arrest people who deal in South Korean goods, largely videotapes, or who use South Korean expressions or slang, analysts in South Korea say. To crack down on home viewing of imported videotapes, the North Korean police developed the strategy of encircling a neighborhood in the evening, cutting off electricity, then inspecting players to find videotapes stuck inside, according to Young Howard, international coordinator of the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, a Seoul-based group.
Social, political and economic controls in North Korea have been eroded by two other changes over the past decade: private markets and a breakdown in travel restrictions,
Lankov said.
Draconian controls on internal travel and on travel to China have been breaking down, he said, and hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have
travelled to and from Korean-speaking areas of China, exposing them to a thriving market economy and more South Korean television broadcasts.
"They are gradually learning about South Korean prosperity," Lankov said. "This is a death sentence to the regime. North Korea's claim to legitimacy is based on its ability to deliver the worker's paradise now. What if everyone sees that it is not delivering?"
By Andrei Lankov, Asia Times On-line, 16 March 2005
SEOUL - Churches are opening in North Korea, a country long known for its
hostility to any religion, and especially Protestantism. But it is not the
handful of officially sanctioned churches that are interesting so much as
reports of a revival of the North's "catacomb church". Given the
privation and suffering in North Korea, it's not surprising that the masses
would find solace in the opiate of the people.
North Korean defectors to South Korea recently were asked about the fate of
those escapees who were apprehended in China and sent back for interrogation in
North Korea. Their treatment is harsh but they are not necessarily doomed. If an
arrested escapee does not make some dangerous confessions while subjected to
relatively mild beatings, he or she is likely to be set free very soon (not very
nice, but still it's a vast improvement over the situation that existed two
decades ago). This correspondent asked, "What do interrogators see as
dangerous activity?" The answers were virtually identical across the board:
"Contacting missionaries and bringing religious literature to North
Korea."
For three decades North Korea and Albania were distinct in being countries
without any organized religious worship and without a single temple of any
religion. But this is changing fast - and the Pyongyang authorities obviously
worry that they do not have complete control over the fast-developing new
situation concerning religion. The central authorities also are losing control,
as cracks appear in the country's "Stalinist" ideology.
Once upon the time, Christianity played an important role in North Korean
politics. Indeed, few people are now aware that in the colonial era, between
1910 and 1945, what is now North Korea was the stronghold of Korean
Protestantism. Protestant missionaries came to Korea in the 1880s and achieved
remarkable success in conversions. By the early 20th century Koreans had come to
associate Protestantism with modernity and progress, and many early Korean
modernizers came from Protestant families. Although Christians composed just
1-2% of the population, they were over-represented among intellectuals and
professionals. It helped that Korea was colonized by a non-Christian nation -
Japan - so in Korea the teachings of Jesus avoided those associations with
colonialism that proved to be so damaging in many other parts of Asia.
Once upon a time, relations between early Korean communism and Korean
Christianity were much closer than either side is willing to admit nowadays. Kim
Il-sung himself, the founder of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK),
was born into a family of prominent Protestant activists. His father graduated
from a Protestant school and was an active supporter of the local missions, and
his mother was the daughter of a prominent Protestant activist. This was fairly
typical: it seems that a majority of early Korean communists had Christian
family backgrounds, even though Christians were few and far between in the
general population.
By the early 1940s Pyongyang was by far the most Protestant of all major cities
of Korea, with some 25-30% of its adult population being church-going
Christians. In missionary circles this earned the city the nickname
"Jerusalem of the East".
Thus, throughout the first years of North Korean history, the nascent communist
government had to reckon with the power of the Christian community. Even Kim Il-sung's
own family connections with the Protestants could be put to a good use. A large
role in the North Korean politics of the 1940s and 1950s was played by Kang
Ryang-uk, a Protestant minister who also happened to be a relative of Kim's
mother. He even became the target of an assassination attempt by rightist
agents, specially dispatched from the South.
Nonetheless, left-wing Christianity was not a success in North Korea. Most
Protestant preachers and activists were enemies of the new regime. There were a
number of reasons for this. Most pastors came from affluent families and were
not happy about the redistribution of wealth during the land reforms of 1946 and
subsequent nationalization of industries. As well, many Christians had personal
connections with the West and admired the United States as a beacon of
democracy, and thus were alienated by the regime's intense anti-American
propaganda. The increasingly harsh and repressive policies of the new government
did not help either.
Thus in 1946-50 Protestants formed one of the major groups of the refugees who
moved to the South. When the Korean War began, these Protestants often helped
the advancing United Nations troops. Such incidents once again demonstrated to
the Pyongyang leaders what they believed anyway: that Christians were
politically unreliable.
In the 1950s anti-Protestant propaganda reached a hysterical pitch. All kinds of
religious worship were banned, but Protestantism was particularly singled out as
a "wicked teaching of the US imperialists". All churches were closed
by the mid-1950s, and those Protestant leaders who were unlucky, naive or
foolish enough to stay in the North after the Korean War were purged in the late
1950s as "American spies". Even those who renounced their faith,
though doing so usually saved their lives, were not completely off the hook:
under North Korea's elaborate system of hereditary groups, such people became
members of "hostile group No 37" and remained branded until the end of
their days.
Meanwhile, the official media bombarded North Koreans with ranting
anti-Protestant propaganda. The educational efforts of the early missionaries
were explained as part of their scheme to pave the road for the long-planned US
invasion. Pastors and activists were portrayed as a spies and saboteurs on the
payroll of the US Central Intelligence Agency, or as sadists killing innocent
and naive Koreans with their own hands. Works of fiction depicted how
missionaries were killing innocent Korean children in their "clinics"
- in order to sell their blood, eyes or body parts (very improbable in the era
before body-parts transplantation, but good propaganda anyway). The
"regeneration" of a Korean Christian was another favorite topic of
North Korean fiction of the late 1950s. A protagonist of such stories was
initially misled by scheming missionaries and their willful collaborators and
foolishly became a Christian, but then some incident or bitter personal
experiences helped him or her to discover the depraved nature of Christian
teaching. Of course, he or she rejected the "imperialist ideological
poison" and led others to eventual enlightenment.
Even nowadays, in Sinch'on Museum, a propaganda center dealing with US
atrocities (largely invented), one can see a collage of photos of all prominent
American missionaries active in Korea around 1900, accompanied by the caption:
"the American missionaries who crawled into Korea, hiding their daggers in
their clothing".
By the mid-1950s, not a single church was left functioning. As usual, the Korean
Stalinists outdid Stalin himself: even in the worst days of Josef Stalin's rule
a handful of churches remained opened in Soviet cities, and some priests avoided
the gulag (more often than not through cooperation with Stalin's secret police).
Some North Korean believers continued to worship in secret. The precise scale of
the North Korean "catacomb church" is likely to remain unknown
forever. Serious research is made impossible by the secrecy of the church, and
in the post-unification future (if there is one), the picture is likely to be
distorted by exaggerations and myth-making to which religious organizations are
usually so prone. A lot of martyrdom stories are certain to emerge in
post-unification Korea, and some of them are certain to be true, but none of
these stories should be taken at face value without careful checking.
Nonetheless, the existence of the Protestant underground is beyond doubt.
In the early 1970s the North Korean approach to religion was softened, but the
liberalization was initially designed for export only. By the 1970s, Pyongyang
had given up its earlier hopes of a communist revolution in the South. Long and
persistent efforts would be needed to bring the "Seoul puppets" down,
and cooperation with "progressive religious forces" in the South would
be useful.
Thus some Christian associations had to be created under the auspices of the
North Korean government, to be put to good use as propaganda organizations. In
1974, the Korean Christian Association reappeared on the political scene. This
association was established in 1946 to steer religious activity in the right
direction, but in 1960 it was disbanded. Of course, the restoration of the KCA
did not mean much for the few surviving underground Christians. Its sole task
was to influence South Korean religious circles and provide a convenient outlet
for dealing with them. Indeed, the KCA conducted a number of remarkably
successful propaganda exercises that targeted credulous Southern lefties.
The real turning point came in 1988 when the first North Korean church was
opened in Pyongyang. This was done under some pressure from overseas religious
circles, but was significant nonetheless.
Nowadays, North Korea has two Protestant churches with, allegedly, 150
believers. That figure is suspect, however; one should not be surprised to learn
eventually that these people were appointed to be "believers" after
careful selection by the party and screening by secret police. After all, their
major role is to be props during frequent visits of foreign delegations.
The existence of two churches is hardly a sign of revival in a country that once
boasted 3,000 churches and some 250,000 believers. Nonetheless, it could be a
sign of liberalization. North Korea has also opened a Catholic church, also
located in Pyongyang.
Recently, Pyongyang suggested opening an Orthodox church as well. The hitherto
unknown "Orthodox Committee of the DPRK" contacted Russian church
leaders - and nobody was surprised by the fact that nothing has been heard about
North Korean Orthodox believers for six decades (and even in 1945 they hardly
numbered more than few hundred). The dear leader, Kim Jong-il, assured a Russian
official who expressed some doubts in this regard: "Do not worry, we'll
find believers!" No doubt they will - the North Korean "competent
agencies" know how this should be done.
However, there are signs of a genuine Christian revival in North Korea. From the
mid-1990s an increasing number of South Korean missionaries have been going to
northeastern China, adjacent to the almost uncontrolled border with the DPRK.
These missionaries are overwhelmingly Protestant, of various denominations. They
preach among the refugees, and their mission is remarkably successful. This is
understandable: Christian organizations are among the few organizations that
take note of the refugees and work hard to help them - much to the annoyance of
the North Korean authorities. Newly converted North Koreans often go back to
their country, taking Bibles and religious literature there. The North Korean
authorities take the problem very seriously. As mentioned above, defectors
extradited from China and then interrogated by North Korean political police are
always asked whether they have been in contact with Christian missionaries.
There are reports about the growing Christian underground. Alas, these reports
cannot be verified. Still, it seems that some sort of catacomb church is fast
developing in North Korea - a development that has nothing to do with the
elaborate performances staged by the authorities in the officially approved
churches.
It is remarkable how successful Protestantism is among Northern defectors who
are currently living in South Korea. Many of them converted in the first months
of their sojourn. Once again, this can be partially explained by the active
involvement of right-wing Christians with the refugee community (the secular
left and South Korean society in general are quite indifferent if not hostile to
these people). Still, it is clear that North Koreans are willing to embrace the
religion with exceptional zeal.
Perhaps this is a sign of things to come, and Pyongyang is on the verge of
regaining its old title "Jerusalem of the East". The collapse of Kim
Jong-il's rule someday is likely to leave a serious ideological and spiritual
vacuum, which can be easily filled by Christianity. The associations between
Christianity and South Korean prosperity will not hurt either - as well as
right-wing sympathies of Korean mainstream Christians (the left is unlikely to
be popular in post-Kim North Korea for at least a generation). And it seems
likely that in many cases the new-found North Korean Protestantism will take
rather extreme forms.
Dr Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies, China
and Korea Center, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad
State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on
Korea, and his thesis focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North Asia. He is currently on leave,
teaching at Kookmin University, Seoul.
Kyodo News Service, Tokyo, 15 March 2005
North Korea asked the United Nations last week to close the Pyongyang branch of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),
international organization sources involved with humanitarian aid to North Korea said Tuesday. Pyongyang has not said why it wants OCHA to leave, but
the move may be aimed at reducing foreign surveillance of the country, the sources said.
Since last summer, the North has been asking the United Nations to simplify its monitoring of aid activities and cut the number of foreign staff. One
foreign staff member works at OCHA's Pyongyang office. In response to North Korea's latest request, which was made around Thursday
last week, the United Nations plans to emphasize the need for emergency assistance to the country and urge it to withdraw the request, the sources
said.
Last August, North Korea demanded that OCHA exclude it from the Consolidated Appeals Process the aid organization was compiling to prepare to conduct humanitarian assistance activities in 2005 and that it reduce its foreign staff, they said. Pyongyang is believed to be seeking mid- to long-term technical and development aid from the international community, rather than short-term humanitarian assistance, according to the sources. In the CAP for 2004, OCHA had called for contributions of 209m dollars from the international community to help North Korea, about the same amount as in 2003.
The sources said the United Nations explained to North Korea that being excluded from the CAP, which aims to facilitate highly urgent humanitarian aid, would likely mean that international assistance would be substantially reduced, but Pyongyang has not yet withdrawn its demand. To deal with the situation, OCHA has distributed documents to donor countries, listing the necessary assistance programmes for North Korea in 2005 and seeking continued aid without specifying the amount of contributions requested.
by James Brooke, New York Times, 14 March 2005
Halfway
through a video from North Korea, the camera pans on a propaganda portrait of
Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, magnificent in his general's
dress uniform with gold epaulets. Scribbled in black ink across his smooth face
is a demand for "freedom and democracy."
If genuine, the graffiti speaks of political opponents willing to risk execution
to get their message out. If staged, the video means that a North Korean hustler
was willing to deface a picture of the "Dear Leader" to earn a quick
profit by selling it to a South Korean human rights group. Either way, the
35-minute video is the latest evidence that new ways of thinking are stealing
into North Korea, perhaps corroding the steely controls on ideology and
information that have kept the Kim family in power for almost 60 years.
The construction of cellular relay stations last fall along the Chinese side of
the border has allowed some North Koreans in border towns to use prepaid Chinese
cell phones to call relatives and reporters in South Korea, defectors from North
Korea say. And after DVD players swept northern China two years ago,
entrepreneurs collected cast-off videocassette recorders and peddled them in
North Korea. Now tapes of South Korean soap operas are so popular that state
television in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, is campaigning against South
Korean hairstyles, clothing and slang, visitors and defectors have said.
"In the 1960's in the Soviet Union, it was cool to wear blue jeans and
listen to rock and roll," said Andrei Lankov, a Russian exchange student in
the North at Kim Il Sung University in 1985, who now teaches about North Korea
at Kookmin University here in the South. "Today, it is cool for North
Koreans to look and behave South Korean, as they do in the television serials.
That does not bode well for the long-term survival of the regime."
Interest in the political hold of the Kim family has spiked since the North's
claim that it has nuclear bombs and will continue to boycott disarmament talks.
Analysts of the North usually focus on the governing elite, and some cracks have
appeared there in the past year: the demotion of Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law,
the defection of a few high-ranking military officers, the huge explosion that
destroyed a rail station a few hours after Mr. Kim's train had passed through,
and what appears to be the start of a succession battle among his three sons.
Analysts are debating the importance of Mr. Kim's visits to military bases,
which accounted for almost two-thirds of his 92 publicly divulged appearances
last year, compared with one-third in 2003. With North Korea closed to American
journalists, it is hard to decipher whether Mr. Kim is shoring up his power base
in the army out of fear of a foreign attack or of an internal coup. Past
predictions that Mr. Kim's power was ebbing have not been borne out.
"We have very meagre intelligence resources, and we're sort of flying
blind," Howard H. Baker Jr. said on Feb. 16 in Tokyo, in his final news
briefing as American ambassador to Japan. "My country has no alternative
but to assume that Kim Jong Il will continue in power. There won't be any
significant change in the governance of that country."
Reviewing North Korea's political elite, "we see no big change," said
Noriyuki Suzuki, director of Radio Press, a Japanese government monitoring
service that focuses on the North Korean media. "But the bigger worry for
him should be not in the core part of his power structure, but any move of
distrust or dissatisfaction with the regime among the general public," Mr.
Suzuki said, referring to Mr. Kim. He cited a recent joint editorial published
in North Korea's three most important newspapers "strongly warning against
the flow of information from outside the country, warning against the inflow of
capitalist elements through travel outside."
In the recording studio of a radio station here, Seong Min Kim, a former North
Korean Army captain who is now the director for the South Korean radio station
Free NK, explained how Chinese cell phones in North Korea have enabled him to
nurture sources there.
"He just dials 0082 to get the Korean-speaking Chinese operator, then makes
a collect call to here," Mr. Kim said of one source. The prepaid cell
phones are usually paid for by journalists in South Korea, he said, and the
North Koreans go along largely out of curiosity or to try to make business
deals. He added: "They are getting more and more tech savvy. Now they are
asking for cell phones with cameras attached."
At a human rights conference here on Feb. 15, defectors estimated in interviews
that about one-third of the defectors in South Korea regularly talk to family
members back in North Korea, calling owners of prepaid Chinese cell phones at a
prearranged time. To counter this, North Korea has reportedly started border
patrols using Japanese equipment that can track cell phone calls. Reporters tell
stories of their contacts that only make calls from their private garden plots
in the hills, burying the cell phone in the ground after each call. While
Chinese cell phones only work a few miles inside North Korea, the videocassette
phenomenon has reportedly spread throughout the nation, reaching into every area
where there is electricity.
"They are within the reach of the average family," said Dr. Lankov,
who regularly interviews recent defectors. "They watch, almost exclusively,
smuggled and copied South Korean movies and drama. Only a few weeks after airing
here, they will go throughout North Korea."
More than showing middle-class family lifestyles, which can be staged in a
studio, the soap operas also provide images of a modern Seoul - the forest of
high-rise buildings, the huge traffic jams, the late-model cars. With such
images showing a stark contrast with primitive conditions in North Korea, Mr.
Kim ordered the formation of a special prosecutor's office last November to
arrest people who deal in South Korean goods, largely videotapes, or who use
South Korean expressions or slang, analysts in South Korea say.
To crack down on home viewing of imported videotapes, the North Korean police
developed the strategy of encircling a neighbourhood in the evening, cutting off
electricity, then inspecting players to find videotapes stuck inside, according
to Young Howard, international coordinator of the Network for North Korean
Democracy and Human Rights, a Seoul-based group. Recent defectors have also told
Mr. Howard that police cars with loudspeakers have patrolled neighbourhoods,
warning residents to maintain their "socialist lifestyle" and to shun
South Korean speech and clothing and hairstyles, he said.
Aggressive moves by the United States have added to the information leaking into
North Korea. Last fall, Congress unanimously approved the North Korea Human
Rights Act, which provides for increased Korean-language radio broadcasting to
North Korea and for helping North Korean refugees in China.
The law has been a favourite target of harsh denunciations from North Korea. In
January, the official radio network blamed the United States for societal
decay, accusing Washington of increasing the broadcasting hours of Radio Free
Asia toward North Korea and "massively infiltrating" into North Korea
"portable transistor radios and impure publications and video
materials." Inside North Korea, social, political and economic controls
have been eroded by two other changes over the past decade: private markets and
a breakdown in travel restrictions, Dr. Lankov said. "You have private
money lenders, you have inns, you have brothels, you have canteens," he
said, adding that most North Koreans survive through a combination of foreign
aid and a fledgling private economy.
Draconian controls on internal travel and on travel to China have been breaking
down, he said, and hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have traveled to and
from Korean-speaking areas of China, exposing them to a thriving market economy
and more South Korean television broadcasts.
"They are gradually learning about South Korean prosperity," Dr.
Lankov said. "This is a death sentence to the regime. North Korea's claim
to legitimacy is based on its ability to deliver the worker's paradise now. What
if everyone sees that it is not delivering?"
by Selig Harrison, 13 March 2005
The latest numbers out of Iraq are some 11,000 Americans wounded in action and some 1,500 dead. The most conservative estimate of non-combatant Iraqis killed is about 15,700. This is happening because the war was sold to the U.S. Congress on the basis of false and misleading intelligence. So it's important to keep these numbers in mind in coping with the barrage of intelligence leaks we are getting about North Korea, in particular about the suspected uranium enrichment program that we'll be focusing on today. The people who put out the intelligence on Iraq don't think of themselves as liars. They operate according to an ideological, black and white view of the world in which there are good guys and bad guys and with bad guys you have to assume the worst.
Condoleezza Rice defined this approach to intelligence very explicitly in an ABC news interview in October when she was asked to justify misleading congress about WMD in Iraq. Here's what she said: "a policymaker cannot afford to be wrong on the short side, underestimating the ability of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein." In other words, it's O.K. to be wrong on the high side, overestimating Saddam or Kim Jong Il and starting a preemptive war on the basis of a hypothetical worst case scenario.
This way of thinking of course did not begin with the Bush administration. Listen to the words of General James Clapper. General Clapper was a sensible director of the defense intelligence agency during the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis. After he retired he gave an interview to Leon Sigal for his book, Disarming Strangers, in which he explained how the DIA and CIA had arrived at their estimate in 1994 that North Korea had "one or two" nuclear weapons at that time. Here's what he said:
"Personally as opposed to institutionally, I was skeptical that they ever had a bomb. We didn't have smoking gun evidence either way. But you build a case for a range of possibilities. In a case like North Korea, you have to apply the most conservative approach, the worst-case scenario."
My message today is simple. It's reckless to base policy on worst case scenario intelligence driven by ideology. We should take a good hard look at the intelligence we're given on North Korea to make sure we're not conned again by our own government or, for that matter, by the North Koreans.
We should take a good hard look at the North Korean claim last week that they have already "manufactured" nuclear weapons. Until they conduct a test, we should reserve judgment on that claim. I think it may very well prove to be a bluff for bargaining purposes to bolster their position in negotiating a settlement. At the same time, we do know that they have the capability to have reprocessed some or all of the 8,000 fuel rods at Yongbyon. This plutonium may not yet be weaponized but it could be transferred to third parties. Our policy should give priority to getting that plutonium under control and out of North Korea.
Here's where we see the dangerous results of worst-case scenario intelligence. Instead of focusing on the clear and present threat posed by the North Korean plutonium program, the administration has tied our policy in knots by giving priority to a suspected uranium enrichment program about which we know little.
In October, 2002, the administration announced that North Korea had a program to enrich uranium to weapons-grade and might be capable of producing one or two uranium-based nuclear weapons per year by "mid-decade". Well, it's 2005, and we've heard nothing since then about those two weapons a year. In fact, the administration has presented no evidence at all to back up the claim that North Korea has a program in place to enrich uranium to weapons-grade. They're trying to finesse the issue without admitting that they exaggerated. I challenged the administration in the January issue of Foreign Affairs to present the evidence. The State Department spokesperson issued a formal reply on December 10th that carefully omitted the accusation of a military uranium program and referred only to a "uranium enrichment program." No reference to weapons-grade. That's finessing the issue because enrichment as such is not prohibited by the NPT.
Let me briefly summarize what I said in Foreign Affairs. North Korea has indeed explored the option of developing weapons-grade enrichment technology going back ten years. There is indeed credible intelligence that it has attempted to import the components and equipment needed for enrichment. What is in doubt is how much actually got to North Korea and especially how much they got from the A.Q. Khan network. On the day the Khan scandal broke the Pakistani government said he gave North Korea only discarded centrifuges to serve as prototypes plus some blueprints. Did he give them the thousands of centrifuges that would be needed to enrich to weapons-grade? Did he give them the large numbers of sophisticated components and equipment needed to make centrifuges?
We do know that the centrifuges Khan sold to Libya and Iran were made in a Malaysian factory. And we know that the Malaysian factory sent nothing to North Korea. Khan was out to make money, and his biggest deals were with the countries that had big money. So the United States will have to wait until General Musharraf provides access to A.Q. Khan. Period. If it turns out they did not give them thousands of ready-to-use centrifuges, that means that North Korea would have to scour the world for the special grade of steel needed to make the centrifuge rotors and go through a long process of trial and error to get the centrifuge cascades working. Unless and until we learn much more than we know now, it's a plausible hypothesis that North Korea has been forced to scale down its ambitions and settle for a pilot program or no coherent program at all, with lots of expensive equipment lying around unused.
Privately, people in the administration say they will eventually put forward what they know, but that they can't tell all they know without jeopardizing methods and sources, like telephone intercepts and moles inside the A.Q. Khan network. I would welcome an administration white paper putting forward credible evidence of a weapons-grade program. That would help to break the present stalemate in the six-party negotiations, putting North Korea on the defensive. China, South Korea, Japan and Russia have been openly skeptical of the weapons-grade accusation and critical of a U.S. diplomatic strategy that conditions the start of negotiations on resolving this issue. Putting forward credible evidence would lead to a united diplomatic front in confronting Pyongyang that the administration has so far been unable to mobilize. Alternatively, if, as I hypothesize, there is not enough evidence to justify accusations of a weapons-grade program, the United States should give priority to getting any plutonium so far reprocessed by North Korea out of the country, while providing for the elimination of any uranium enrichment facilities at a later stage of a step-by-step denuclearization process.
Now there's a basic premise underlying what I'm saying, namely, that the ideological camp in the Bush administration exaggerated the intelligence relating to North Korean uranium capabilities with a broader agenda in mind: namely, reversing the Clinton policy of engagement with North Korea and, more particularly, abrogating the 1994 Agreed Framework. So I'm going to run through some brief history to show how we got to where we are now and to put the present situation in an accurate perspective that we don't get in media stereotypes.
In 1994 North Korea had an expanding plutonium-based nuclear program with a potential of 30 nuclear weapons a year. They agreed in 1994 to freeze that program under inspection, and they honored that agreement until December 2002 when the Bush administration abrogated it. We got up front what we wanted -- an end to plutonium production. They got promises. In article two, we promised to end sanctions and normalize relations. In article three, we promised to make a formal pledge "not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against North Korea." We promised to build two civilian nuclear reactors for electricity by 2003 and to supply 500,000 tons of oil per year.
We did supply oil, but we didn't live up to our other promises. Why? Mainly, U.S. politics. The agreement was signed on October 21, 1994, and a month later the Republicans won big in the congressional election. They bitterly criticized the agreement and Clinton wanted to save his political capital for other battles. Six years later, in June 2000, Clinton did finally begin to move toward ending sanctions and normalizing relations. But during those six years, the political situation inside North Korea did not stand still. The pro-nuclear hawks in Pyongyang kept telling Kim Jong Il that he had been conned, that the U.S. was not prepared for friendship, that we only understand force and they should resume making nuclear weapons and missiles. So when Pakistan offered uranium enrichment technology to pay for missiles, they grabbed it.
Kim Jong Il followed a two-track policy to keep both his hawks and his doves happy. The uranium program was a hedge in case we refused to normalize relations. It was also a violation of the 1991 North-South denuclearization agreement and of the 1994 agreement. But at the same time, North Korea did continue to honor the operative provisions of the 1994 agreement barring plutonium production.
The Clinton administration knew that North Korea was pursuing uranium enrichment, but they wanted to deal with the problem through quiet diplomacy. They wanted to avoid a confrontation with Pyongyang that would jeopardize the gains made in controlling the plutonium danger under the freeze agreement. By contrast, President Bush openly expressed his desire for regime change in Pyongyang soon after taking office. So his most influential advisors were looking from the start for an excuse to abrogate the 1994 accord. They were -- and are -- ideologically opposed to providing material incentives that would help to sustain the Kim Jong Il regime in exchange for denuclearization.
The result was a paralysis of U.S. Korea policy until the summer of 2002. At that point new intelligence on North Korean enrichment efforts provided a basis for accusing North Korea of cheating and, thus, a rationale for abrogating the Agreed Framework. We don't know what the content of the new intelligence was, but we do know that the administration threw the baby out with the bathwater when it stopped the oil shipments to North Korea in December 2002. Pyongyang predictably retaliated by resuming the reprocessing of plutonium and ousting the international inspectors.
A lot was happening during 2002 that led to the October 4th mission of Assistant Secretary James Kelly to Pyongyang. That's when Kelly confronted the North Koreans with the accusation of a weapons-grade program. In the summer of 2002, South Korea was stepping up its rapprochement with the North, and Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan went to Pyongyang on September 17th despite U.S. objections. The ideologues in the administration wanted to use the uranium issue to rein in Seoul and Tokyo and to put Pyongyang on the defensive. I don't think that Jack Pritchard and other professionals in the State Department and the White House had ulterior political motives in mind. This is clear when you look at how the story about the uranium accusation leaked to USA Today on October 11th. The White House and the State Department didn't want it to leak for several reasons. One, the Iraq resolution was coming up in Congress, and two they hadn't figured out what to do next. USA Today got the story from someone who was privy to the cable traffic from Kelly and wanted to leak it. Barbara Slavin of USA Today, who wrote the story, tells me it was someone opposed to the Agreed Framework who favors a much tougher position towards Pyongyang.
There's a dispute, as you know, about what the North Koreans said in Pyongyang on October 4th. According to Kelly and Jack Pritchard, North Korea admitted to having such a program. Professor John Lewis of Stanford went to Pyongyang and later wrote in the Washington Post that there might have been an interpreting problem. I wasn't there, but I did question them extensively last April and my impression is that their intention was to be ambiguous. Don't forget the context. For two years the Bush administration had conducted policy review after policy review on North Korea, but was unable to come up with a policy. The North Koreans expected Kelly to open a new chapter. Instead, they thought he was overbearing, arrogant and threatening. So they reacted in the way that North Korea will always react when it feels it is being pressured. They felt compelled to talk tough. The generals who have the last word there thought it would be helpful to keep the U.S. guessing. General Ri Chan Bok told me in so many words that the uranium issue is useful because "it strengthens our deterrent to keep you guessing."
The North Korean nuclear problem could eventually be resolved if President Bush would utter two little words -- "peaceful coexistence." We have to say explicitly that we are prepared to coexist with them regardless of differences in our systems. If we do that we can negotiate a step-by-step denuclearization agreement that will enable us to find out the truth about the uranium mystery. We can open up North Korea, let in the winds of freedom, and liberalize the totalitarian system there over a period of years as we are doing in China. Congressman Tom Lantos of California voted for the North Korean Freedom Act, but he said in a speech Monday that he favors engagement. I'll end with his words: "As the French say, c'est la tone qui fait la musique" -- it is the tone which makes the music."
State Department officials have been carrying on a disinformation campaign for more than a year to make it appear that China endorses the CIA assessment (in a report to Congress on November 19, 2002) that North Korea is building a weapons-grade uranium enrichment facility that might be able to produce "one or more"uranium-based nuclear weapons per year by "mid-decade."
China first questioned this assessment in early January, 2004, when Fu Ying,director of the Asian division of the Foreign Ministry, told South Korean and Japanese officials in a Seoul meeting that the U.S. intelligence shared with China "has not convinced us that North Korea has a weapons-grade uranium enrichment program." (Washington Post, January 7, 2004).
Then came the statement by Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong to The New York Times on June 7th, 2004, that "so far, the United States has not presented convincing evidence for the uranium program. We don't know whether it exists."
Finally on March 6th, 2005, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing made his press conference statement that "I definitely don't know any more that you do" in response to a question about the program. Another statement at the press conference suggesting that China felt the six-nation talks should be replaced by bilateral U.S.-Korea talks was subsequently retracted, but not the Foreign Minister's response to the uranium question.
Each time that China has expressed its doubts, U.S. officials have told U.S. and foreign journalists that China actually accepts the U.S. position, but must express doubt publicly to preserve its ties with North Korea. Actually, based on my own extensive meetings with Chinese officials and specialists, all three Foreign Ministry statements on the uranium issue have been softened to avoid upsetting the United States. It is surprising that an Asahi reporter swallowed the U.S. disinformation uncritically in a February 28th article. Instead of attributing his story clearly to U.S. sources, the reporter said flatly that China "now agrees with U.S. assessments that North Korea has a uranium program to develop nuclear weapons."
China's assessment is essentially the same as the one I have expressed in Foreign Affairs (January, 2005): that North Korea has attempted to import the components necessary to make the thousands of centrifuges that would be necessary for weapons-grade uranium enrichment, but has not been able to do so and has, thus, not gone beyond a pilot or experimental program. This view was also explicitly expressed by the Director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, Ko Young Koo, in testimony before the National Assembly Intelligence Committee on February 24th, 2005. "We judge that North Korea does not have an enrichment plant," he said, due to its inability to obtain "key components."
***
Michael Green gave President Hu Jin Tao evidence designed to show that North Korea had exported uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6) to Libya, thus suggesting that it had an enrichment plant. What the Chinese think of this, specifically, I don't know from my own sources. But the U.S. case is weak because there is no isotopic evidence connecting North Korea to the UF6 found in Libya. Since the isotopic fingerprint in the gas could not be matched up with that of any other country, the U.S. has assumed, by the process of elimination, that the gas came from North Korea, even though the U.S. does not know the North Korean uranium isotope. As a prominent scientist said, "it is as if archaeologists were digging in the ruins of ancient Rome, and when they couldn't find wires, they concluded that the
Romans had wireless."
Selig Harrison contributed this article to Japan Focus. It originated as a talk at the Korea Society in New York on February 16, 2005. Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy. Harrison is the author of numerous books including Korea Endgame: A Strategy for Korean Unification and U.S. Disengagement. He has visited North Korea eight times. Updated at Japan Focus, March 15, 2005.
World Food Programme (WFP), 7 March 2005
Malnutrition rates among children in the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea have declined in the past two years but remain relatively high,
according to a new survey. UN agencies announcing the findings today said
that substantial, well-targeted international assistance must be sustained
to build on the gains. The large-scale, random sample survey covered both
child and maternal nutrition and was carried out last October by the
government's Central Bureau of Statistics and Institute of Child Nutrition,
in collaboration with UNICEF and the World Food Programme. The survey
assessed 4,800 children under six years of age and 2,109 mothers with
children under two across seven of the DPRK's nine provinces and in the
capital, Pyongyang. The two UN agencies said that although the new
assessment is not strictly comparable with the previous survey conducted in
October 2002, positive trends are apparent:
-- the proportion of young children chronically malnourished, or stunted
(height-for-age), has fallen from 42 percent to 37 percent; and
-- acute malnutrition, or wasting (weight-for-height), has declined from 9
percent to 7 percent.
WFP and UNICEF attributed the improvements in part to the significant levels
of support provided by the international community in recent years.
"These results are encouraging, and show that the balanced rations and
fortified foods we provide to millions of the most vulnerable are helping,"
Richard Ragan, WFP Country Director for the DPRK, told a news conference in
Beijing.
While the proportion of children under six found to be underweight
(weight-for-age) increased from 21 percent to 23 percent, the rate among 1-2
year olds -- the most nutritionally vulnerable group -- fell from 25 percent
to 21 percent. Childhood malnutrition rates varied significantly by region,
with the highest levels recorded in the more food-insecure northern
provinces, and the lowest in the relatively fertile and better-off south,
especially Pyongyang.
WFP, which supports 6.5 million North Koreans, provides a full ration of cereals and foods enriched with micronutrients by UNICEF to pregnant and nursing women, nursery and kindergarten children. Primary school children are given a daily supplement of fortified biscuits and school children in urban areas receive a take-home cereal ration. Some one-third of mothers were found to be malnourished and anaemic, which are key factors contributing to child malnutrition. This is an area of concern, as it indicates no progress over the past two years. "The health and nutritional status of North Korean mothers inevitably determines that of their children, and are crucial to breaking the vicious cycle of impaired growth," said Pierrette Vu Thi, UNICEF's Representative in the DPRK.
Child feeding practices are likewise important. While breast milk is the
best and safest food for infants, fully satisfying their nutritional needs
for the first six months, the survey found that only two-thirds of those up
to that age were exclusively breastfed. Less than one-third of infants in
the 6-9 month age group were given complementary foods, when all should have
been, in accordance with international standards. One in five children
surveyed suffered from diarrhoea during the two weeks prior to data
collection, and 12 percent had symptoms of acute respiratory infection. The
survey revealed a number of highly prevalent childhood diseases that combine
with malnutrition to put children's lives at risk.
With the proportions of stunted and underweight children still "high"
by
World Health Organisation criteria, and no improvement in the nutritional
status of mothers since the 2002 survey, much work remains to be done,
UNICEF and WFP said. They urged continued international food and other
assistance for the DPRK, and pledged to expand targeted programmes in favour
of specific vulnerable groups, including young children and women of
reproductive age.
Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Saturday, March 5, 2005
SEOUL North Korea has postponed a regular session of its Parliament, its official news agency said Friday, in an unprecedented move that puzzled watchers of the secretive state.
The presidium of the Communist country's Supreme People's Assembly made the decision Thursday, the official KCNA news agency said. The session had been scheduled to begin next Wednesday. "The date of the session will be set and announced publicly," the news agency said.
Officially, the Supreme People's Assembly is the highest organ of state power. In practice it serves only to ratify decisions made by the Korean Workers' Party headed by Kim Jong Il.
The timing of the postponement - coming soon after the North declared it had nuclear weapons and more recently threatened to resume missile testing - indicates an attempt to give the government the maximum amount of bargaining power, analysts said.
Some officials and analysts said the assembly postponement might be linked to mounting tension over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Others said it might have been caused by delays in drawing up a new budget.
"It's anybody's guess what caused the postponement," an official of South Korea's Unification Ministry said. "But Pyongyang might be seeking to alert people to the rising tensions and step up solidarity in the nuclear stand-off."
An assembly session may have come as a distraction that North Korea wanted to avoid at this critical juncture, said Paik Hak Soon, head of North Korea studies at Sejong Institute, a prominent national security research group based south of Seoul.
"The North has taken a big calculated risk of using the nuclear card, and it must be aware that, if the United States does not cooperate in this game, the repercussion would be tremendous, he said, adding "any kind of assessment would be speculative at this point."
The assembly is North Korea's top legislative body. It is largely an organ of the Communist state that is quick to approve economic policy measures and personnel appointments.
A key South Korean government official who follows changes in the North said that postponing a session after it had been publicly called had never happened before, although previously sessions had been skipped altogether.
The North declared explicitly for the first time on Feb. 10 that it had nuclear weapons and said it was pulling out of six-party talks intended to end its nuclear ambitions.
Kim Jong Il reportedly has told an envoy from the North's main benefactor, China, that his country could return to the talks under the right conditions.
The move to postpone the assembly meeting was probably not directly related to the state of Kim's hold on power, the official said, but the postponement is likely to fuel the arguments of North Korean watchers who believe Kim has a tenuous grip.
The spring session of the assembly is held to settle the previous year's spending and to approve a new budget. Major economic policy measures are also adopted at the session.
Noriyuki Suzuki, chief analyst at the Tokyo-based Radiopress news agency, said the postponement might be a sign that a decision on a major economic policy move was delayed.
"I think this is the most reasonable interpretation," he said. Radiopress specializes in monitoring events in the North.
Among the items sought by the North are security assurances, direct talks with the United States, as well as massive economic assistance.
Three rounds of the six-party talks that include North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia have been held with little progress made in curbing the North's nuclear programs.
Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), 2 March 2005
The international community is now voicing strong support and solidarity for the just self-defensive step taken by the DPRK as regards the nuclear issue
between the DPRK and the US and the principled stand taken by the DPRK as regards the six-party talks.
But the United States is paying no heed to this just demand of the DPRK, insisting that it come out to the six-party talks without preconditions.
Some forces toeing the US line continue making a series of undesirable assertions that the DPRK too strongly reacted to the US though it took a
moderate attitude, the DPRK reneged on its international commitment and pressure should be put upon the DPRK for the resumption of the six-party
talks.
The US is wholly to blame for the fact that the talks have not yet been resumed and the solution to the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the US
has been delayed. The DPRK Foreign Ministry issues the memorandum to clearly explain the
reason why it has decided it would go out to the talks only when there are the justification to participate in them and mature conditions for them.
1. The DPRK is left with no justification to sit at the negotiating table with the US for the six-party talks or bilateral talks.
The basic key to the solution of the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the US is for the US to make a switchover from its hostile policy towards the
DPRK to a policy of peaceful co-existence with the DPRK as the issue is a product of the extremely hostile policy of the Bush administration.
The second-term Bush administration, just as it did in its first-term, adopted it as its policy not to co-exist with the DPRK but bring down the
political system chosen by the Korean people themselves, thus eliminating any justification for the DPRK to participate in the six-party talks. The
Bush administration asserts that it is not hostile towards the DPRK and it has no intention to invade the latter but, in actuality, set it as its
"ultimate aim" to "bring down the system" in the DPRK and
has persistently pursued its double-dealing tactics of carrot and the stick. All this has
been clearly expressed in the course of adopting the policy of the second-term Bush administration.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the second-term president on 20 January, Bush declared that it is the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the
world. He blustered that the US would spread liberty and democracy of American style to the whole world and, to this end, would not rule out the
use of force, when necessary. In his state of the union address on 2 February he, not mentioning the six-party talks and the peaceful settlement
of the nuclear issue, once again vociferated about an "end to the
tyranny", asserting that the US will force North Korea to abandon its nuclear
ambition.
US State Secretary Rice made it clear in which countries tyranny should be terminated as claimed by Bush at the US Senate confirmation hearing on 18 January 2005, two days before his inaugural address. Branding the DPRK together with Cuba, Iran, Belarus and some other countries strongly advocating independence against the US as "outposts of tyranny", Rice asserted that the US would stand by the people subject to tyranny and spread American style liberty and democracy and urge North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambition.
In this regard some forces made clumsy excuses, saying that Bush did not directly mention the DPRK as a country of "tyranny" and Rice made the
remarks in her private capacity only and that it is desirable to interpret her address in its whole context. If so, is Rice's declaration of the US
policy her private address and did not Bush define the DPRK as an outpost of "tyranny"? Speaking at the ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of
the foundation of the National Foundation for Democracy in the US on 6 November 2003, during his first-term office, Bush clearly defined the DPRK as an
"outpost of tyranny", asserting that the US commitment to democracy is
tested in countries like Cuba, Myanmar, North Korea and Zimbabwe, outposts of oppression.
Deep-rooted is the real intention of the US not to co-exist with the DPRK under any circumstances but seek to bring down its system by disarming it.
This remains unchanged. US official figures have not expressed any intention to co-exist with the DPRK or make a switchover in its hostile policy
towards the DPRK in any recent remarks made by them. The world people are now interpreting the Bush group's talk about "spread
of liberty" as a "paradox disturbing the world" and a
"poisonous logic pushing the world to a new war," and even the US allies are cursing and ridiculing
American style "liberty and democracy", saying where is tyranny touted
by the US, it is designating a series of anti-American countries which are out of favour with it as
"outposts of tyranny" and it is styling itself
the master of this planet.
As a matter of fact, the DPRK has shown its utmost patience and magnanimity for the last four years since the Bush administration took office. However,
the US has stuck to its hostile policy, unreasonably ignoring the DPRK, its
dialogue partner, prompted by the inveterate idea of rejection that it will
not co-exist with the DPRK from the ideological point of view.
It is widely known a fact that no sooner had Bush taken office as president
than he suspended all dialogues and negotiations with the DPRK which had
been under way during the former administration. In his state of the union
address late in January 2002, Bush designated the DPRK as part of an "axis
of evil" and, in March of the same year, listed it as a target of the US
pre-emptive nuclear attack. He, instead of retracting his remarks listing
the DPRK as part of "an axis of evil," termed the government in the
DPRK
installed by its own people as an "outpost of tyranny", singling it
out as
the object to be removed to the last, outcries worse than those remarks.
How can we sit at the negotiating table with the US given that it has
rejected the government of the DPRK? The wrongdoings committed by the US
have deprived it of any justification to sit with the DPRK. The DPRK and the
US are in the relationship of belligerency and at war technically.
Therefore, it is quite natural that the DPRK has manufactured nukes for
self-defence and continues to do so to cope with the policy of the Bush
administration aimed at mounting a pre-emptive nuclear attack on it. In
order to cope with the US policy to stifle it with nukes, the DPRK pulled
out of the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) on 10 January 2003 and
legitimately made nukes, not bound to the international treaty. Whenever it
took a step for self-defence to cope with the US stepped-up policy to
isolate and stifle it, the DPRK opened the step to the world and has built
nuclear deterrent in a transparent manner, informing the US of it each time.
We are also not bound to any international treaty or law as far as the
missile issue is concerned. Some forces claim that the DPRK's moratorium on
the missile launch still remains valid. In September 1999, the period of the
previous US administration, we announced the moratorium on the missile
launch while dialogue was under way but the DPRK-US dialogue was totally
suspended when the Bush administration took office in 2001. Accordingly, we
are not bound to the moratorium on the missile launch at present.
As everybody knows, the US hostile policy towards the DPRK compels it to
bolster its self-defensive nuclear arsenal. Not only the public in the US
but the world public are becoming increasingly critical of the Bush
administration, asserting that its remarks about "tyranny" and hostile
policy towards the DPRK resulted in rendering the six-party talks abortive.
Senator Kerry, who ran for presidency on the democratic ticket during the
2004 US presidential election, when interviewed by the New York Times on 12
September openly criticized the Bush administration, saying that it refused
to directly negotiate with North Korea after its emergence, bringing a
nuclear nightmare. Foreign policy focus, the organ of the US Institute for
International Policy Studies, in an article dated 22 February 2005, said
that Bush has taken a very rough approach towards North Korea in military
and diplomatic aspects since the outset of his office and this let it have
access to nukes.
In an editorial dated 11 February 2005 the New York Times said that North
Korea declared its access to nuclear weapons because the Bush administration
made an error while leading it to isolation. It justly criticized the Bush
administration, saying that its reaction to North Korea till now has been
unreasonable and, accordingly, there should be a radical switchover in its
future engagement.
The US claims that it has not pursued a hostile policy towards North Korea,
repeatedly making empty words that it has never been hostile to North Korea
and has no intention to attack it. Is there any act more hostile than
branding the system chosen by the Korean people as "tyranny" and
threatening
to bring down it to the last? By nature, the remarks that there is no
intention for invasion themselves are shameless ones which can be made only
by the US that has not hesitated to overthrow the regimes of other countries
and invade them, and such reckless remarks can never mean a drop of its
hostile policy towards the DPRK.
The Washington post in an editorial dated 22 February 2005, said that a
breakthrough might be made in the settlement of the nuclear issue if just
three words of no hostile intention are said to the Pyongyang government but
Bush and Rice have never used such expression. This emphasized that it is
essential for the US to make a switchover in its hostile policy towards the
DPRK. The nuclear issue can never be settled unless the US shows political
willingness to make a policy switchover and co-exist with the DPRK.
We have shown utmost patience and magnanimity to settle the nuclear issue
and improve the DPRK-US relations for the last four years since the Bush
administration took office. The US should apologize for the above-said
remarks calling for "ending tyranny" and withdraw them, clarify its
political willingness to renounce the hostile policy aimed at a "regime
change" in the DPRK and co-exist with the DPRK in peace and show it in
practice. We can negotiate with the US only when it provides such conditions
and justification for the resumption of the talks. The DPRK will not act
such a fool as going out to the talks at the request of the one who totally
rejected it and works hard to "destroy" it.
2. It is imperative for the US to rebuild the groundwork of the six-party
talks and create conditions and atmosphere for their resumption as quickly
as possible.
It was thanks to the sincere and patient efforts of the DPRK to denuclearize
the Korean peninsula that the principle of "words for words" and
"action for
action" and the principle of "reward for freeze", the first-phase
step for
the settlement of the nuclear issue, were agreed upon at the third round of
the six-party talks held in June 2004. The talks reached the common
understanding that the US should make a switchover in its hostile policy
towards the DPRK. Such agreement and common understanding are the basis for
advancing the talks.
The US delegation agreed upon such principles at the third round of the
talks, under the pressure of the public opinion at home and abroad, and had
no option but to make a verbal promise that it would not be hostile to the
DPRK.
At the talks on 24 June 2004, US Assistant Secretary of State Kelly said
that the US side would assess and seriously examine the DPRK side's proposal
on reward for freeze. State Secretary Powell, at the contact with the DPRK
foreign minister during the ministerial meeting of the ASEAN (Association of
Southeast Asian Nations) regional forum held in Jakarta on 2 July 2004, said
that the US is ready to abide by the principle of "words for words",
"action
for action" and "results for results" and will seriously examine
the DPRK's
proposal on "reward for freeze". But the US reneged on all the
agreements
and common understanding less than one month after the talks, totally
destroying the groundwork of the talks.
The second term Bush administration is now talking about the "resumption of
the six-way talks without preconditions" in disregard of the DPRK's demand
for totally rebuilding the groundwork of the talks, which had been destroyed
by it during its first term.
Kelly, the then assistant secretary of state who headed the delegation of
the US side to the talks, said at a US Senate hearing on 15 July 2004, that
the "landmark proposal" made by the US at the third round of the
six-party
talks is a proposal which envisages a reward for the DPRK only after it
totally scraps all its nuclear programmes first. Even if the nuclear
programme is abandoned, it will not lead soon to the normalization of the
bilateral relations and, accordingly, all other issues such as missile,
conventional weapon and human rights issues should be settled, he added.
After all, he insisted on the US assertion that the DPRK dismantle its
nuclear programme first, thus rejecting the principles of "words for
words"
and "action for action". He also totally denied the principle of
"reward for
freeze" when he said that the US has no intention to negotiate with North
Koreans, there can be no reward for North Korea and the US will not bring
any benefit to it.
On 21 July a week after that statement of Kelly, Bolton, US under-secretary
of state, said in Seoul that the US does not trust the proposed nuclear
freeze and there will be no reward for Pyongyang unless Washington's demand
for the total dismantlement of its nuclear programme is met. On 23 July he
told reporters in Tokyo that North Korea should abandon its nuclear
programme as Libya did.
The US secretary of state, too, said at press conferences that the US wants
Pyongyang to follow in the footsteps of Libya, demanding it dismantle its
nuclear programme first. Armitage, deputy secretary of state, asserted that
if the US took any positive gesture towards North Korea, though symbolic, it
would mean making a reward for the bad behaviour or sending a wrong message
to North Korea.
In fact, such contradictory behaviours of the US inside and outside the
venue of the talks took the world people by surprise. Even since the start
of its second term, the Bush administration has not made any trustworthy
sincere effort to create conditions for the talks, persistently insisting on
the assertion that the DPRK dismantle its nuclear programme first on the
basis of CVID (complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement) on 22
February 2005, a spokesman for the US Department of State said that the five
parties consider the conditions to be mature for the talks but it is only
North Korea that denies it.
US Secretary of State Rice told reporters on 3 February that all parties to
the six-way talks will have to persuade North Koreans to choose a strategic
option for abandoning its nuclear programme by accepting CVID. On the same
day, a spokesman for the US Department of State said that the proposal made
by the US at the third round of the talks is valid and it is high time North
Korea returned to the negotiating table to discuss it.
As for the "proposal", it is, in essence, the demand that the DPRK
dismantle
its nuclear programme first, the assertion veiled by what it called
"landmark". It makes no mention of the principles of "words for
words" and
"action for action", which had been accepted by the US, too, and
especially
of the US promise to renounce its hostile policy. That was why on 24 July
2004, the DPRK, through a spokesman for its foreign ministry, dismissed the
"proposal" as one not deserving even a passing note. Later, this stand
of
the DPRK was officially notified to the US side at the DPRK-US contact in
New York on 11 August 2004.
The delegation of the Bush administration declared at the third round of the
six-way talks that it does not take a hostile attitude towards the DPRK.
But, it has since resorted without hesitation to more frantic hostile acts
aimed at toppling the system of the DPRK. On 21 July 2004, less than one
month after the third round of the talks, US congress passed what it called
"North Korean human rights act" to legally provide a financial and
material
guarantee for the activities to bring down the system in the DPRK. Under
this act, US congress is to allot 24m US dollars every year to individuals
and organizations supporting the activities for "freedom" and
"improvement
of human rights performance". Out of this fund two million dollars will be
spent every year to massively smuggle transistors into the DPRK and extend
the broadcasting time of Radio Free Asia to 12 hours.
On 21 October 2004, a spokesman for the White House announced that the
"act"
endorsed by President Bush would focus on defectors from the North Korean
regime. Commenting on the nature of this "act", radio Voice of
America, too,
said that the US decision to allocate 24m US dollars every year as part of
its official government budget, the first of its kind, is meaningful in that
it has laid down the groundwork for putting pressure on the North Korean
regime in two aspects of nuclear and human rights. The "act" is a
strategy
aimed to overthrow the system of North Korea under the pretext of
"protection of defectors" from it, it added.
Georges Hage, member of the National Assembly of France who is member of its
foreign relations commission, said in an open questionnaire to the French
foreign minister on 15 February 2005: the study of the Korean issue shows
that the sovereignty of the DPRK has been consistently violated. US Congress
passed a bill calling for spending 24m dollars in a bid to destabilize the
Pyongyang government.
At the working meeting of PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative) member
nations held in Norway early in August 2004 when preparations were made for
the fourth round of the six-way talks, the US decided to stage naval
blockade exercises in the waters off Japan between 26 and 27 October. And it
did not hide the fact that the exercises were targeted against the DPRK. The
US secretary of state flew into Tokyo on 23 October, three days before the
start of the exercises and stated that PSI exercises are an expression of
concern of the international community over North Korea and a drill to check
its bad behaviour.
On the day the exercises were kicked off, Undersecretary of State Bolton
told aboard a combat ship that clear is the threat from North Korea, the
exercises are so efficient as to make businesses give up trade with North
Korea and other countries involved in the proliferation of weapons and they
are of weighty significance as they are the first drill in the North
Pacific. He did not conceal the fact that the PSI exercises are targeted
against the DPRK.
The US military threat was not confined to this. On 29 June 2004, right
after the third round of the six-way talks, the US Department of Defence
announced a plan to deploy three squadrons of F-117 stealth fighter-bombers
of the US air force in South Korea within three months and started their
deployment. And it announced that it would permanently keep two Aegis
destroyers equipped with the latest missile system in the East Sea of Korea,
and deployed them to be ready for action.
Having already listed the DPRK as one of "its targets of nuclear
pre-emptive
attacks", the Bush administration announced that it worked out "new
Operation Plan 5026" and "Oplan 5027-04" from the beginning of
2004 and
since stepped up the shipment of huge armed forces into South Korea, the US
announced a "combat power build-up programme", which calls for
investing
11bn US dollars in South Korea, in May 2003 and increased the investment up
to 13bn dollars under the signboard of "relocation of combat forces"
in the
middle of 2004 to massively ship the latest war equipment into it.
What is more serious is that the US declared it would supply new type
missiles capable of penetrating underground facilities in the DPRK to the US
forces in South Korea on a priority basis. The 12 July 2004 issue of the US
weekly Defence News, commenting on this, disclosed that the US decided to
deploy six bunker burst missiles by the end of 2005.
The Bush administration has persistently conducted a psychological warfare
and smear operation against the DPRK, letting loose a spate of vituperation
against the dialogue partner and pulling it up over this or that issue. It
even made public a report every year in which it raised the oft-repeated hue
and cry over such fictions as "drug smuggling", "flesh
trafficking" and
"religious suppression" as part of its smear campaign against the DPRK.
As if it were not enough with this, the US has faked up the story about the
"transfer of nuclear substance", chilling the atmosphere of dialogue.
The US
spread more than once misinformation that the DPRK secretly sold uranium
hexafluoride and fluorine gas to Iran, it is going to hand over special
motors for nuclear plants to it and that Pyongyang transferred nuclear
substance to Libya via Pakistan.
This is nothing but an attempt to charge the DPRK with the "proliferation
of
nuclear substance" in a bid to tarnish its image and create an atmosphere
for bringing international pressure to bear upon it. The DPRK has never made
any deal in the nuclear field with neither Iran nor Libya nor any other
country.
Even leading media in the US put it that American investigators admitted
that there is no way to ascertain the origin of nuclear substance found in
the nuclear substance container in Libya considered to be of North Korean
origin as there is no nuclear substance sample of North Korea and American
experts were sceptical, admitting that it is hard to draw a definite
conclusion as the analysis of samples of uranium hexafluoride is different
from that of DNA test. This disclosed the sinister aim sought by the US as
seen above, the US has increased political and diplomatic pressure and
military threat to the DPRK while going so shameless as to demand the DPRK
come out to the six-party talks as quickly as possible as there are mature
conditions for them.
This reminds one of the "gunboat diplomacy" pursued by big countries
to
occupy smaller countries in the past 18th-19th centuries. It is foolish of
the US to calculate that the DPRK will come out to the talks and yield to it
under its military pressure. All these moves of the US are a clear
manifestation of its hostile policy towards the DPRK.
The DPRK's demand that the US roll back its hostile policy and rebuild the
groundwork of the six-party talks is not a precondition. The Bush
administration has not taken any practical measure to rebuild the groundwork
of the third round of the six-party talks. Conditions can not be
automatically created for the talks with the passage of time.
The US totally negated the ideology and system chosen by the Korean people
themselves and the freedom and democracy of their own style and, at the same
time, has become more undisguised in its hostile moves to bring down the
system in the DPRK. Then will it be reasonable to say that conditions have
been created for the talks? All the facts go to prove that the US has not
been interested in settling the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the US
through the six-party talks from the outset but has only pursued the aim of
going ahead with fruitless talks as it thinks fit in a bid to gain time and
create an atmosphere for imposing phased pressure upon the DPRK and
implementing its policy to isolate and blockade it.
Gallucci, special envoy for negotiations with the DPRK in the former US
administration, in his interview with Kyodo on 18 June 2004, criticized the
Bush administration for seeking a "regime change" in North Korea and
refusing to have full-fledged negotiations with it. Foreign policy focus,
the organ of the US Institute for International Policy Studies, in its
article on 22 February 2005, said that Bush has held the six-party talks
with a final aim to seek change of Pyongyang's regime while openly talking
about the world without the Pyongyang regime. This is a strategy pursued by
Bush.
The sinister purpose sought by the US is clearly revealed by the fact that
it turned blind eyes to the secret nuclear activities South Korea conducted
in a premeditated manner at its tacit connivance and under its manipulation
while persistently raising a hue and cry over the non-existent "uranium
enrichment programme" of the DPRK. As far as the "uranium enrichment
programme" is concerned, the DPRK has no such programme.
The US talked about peaceful negotiated solution to the nuclear issue and
the resumption of the talks before making any sincere efforts to rebuild
their groundwork. This is nothing but a gimmick to evade its responsibility.
If the US truly stands for the negotiated settlement of the nuclear issue
between the two countries it should rebuild the groundwork of the talks it
had destroyed unilaterally, renounce its hostile policy aimed at a "regime
change" in the DPRK through practical actions and opt for co-existing with
the DPRK.
Our demand is that the US make a switchover in its policy. But, without
showing any willingness to make it, the Bush administration is demanding the
DPRK come out to the talks. This is nothing but a trick to put the DPRK in
the dock, force it to dismantle its nuclear weapons and seize it by force of
arms in the end. Bush blustered that the US would force the DPRK to disarm
itself during his election campaign in Wisconsin on 18 August 2004, and on
other occasions. It is not hard to guess what the US has in mind. Washington
is sadly mistaken to think that the DPRK would meekly dismantle its nuclear
weapons it has made with much effort.
The DPRK clarified in an answer given by a spokesman for the Foreign
Ministry on 23 August 2004, and on other occasions that the US should not
dream of forcing it to lay down its arms. The US had better bear this deep
in mind.
Japan is now behaving without discretion, talking about "unconditional
return to the talks" and "sanctions", pursuant to the US policy.
By nature,
Japan has no qualification to participate in the six-party talks as it is a
faithful servant for the US is there any need to invite even its servant to
the talks as his American master's participation in the talks is enough?
However, Japan has gone so impertinent as to contemplate applying sanctions
against the DPRK. The DPRK has closely followed such move of Japan.
The DPRK's principled stand to achieve the goal of denuclearizing the Korean
peninsula and seek a peaceful negotiated settlement of the nuclear issue
still remains unchanged. The DPRK will go to the talks anytime if the US
takes a trustworthy sincere attitude and moves to provide conditions and
justification for the resumption of the six-party talks. The Bush
administration may not show any sincerity and while away time, repeatedly
talking about the resumption of the six-party talks despite the just demand
of the DPRK. That would do the DPRK nothing bad.
The Bush administration has so far undisguisedly pursued hostile policy
towards the DPRK in a bid to topple its system. This overturned the
groundwork of the six-party talks and removed all conditions and
justification for holding dialogue, blocking the settlement of the nuclear
issue. These acts are bound to be recorded in history and the US will have
to pay dear prices for them.
by Ryu Jin, Korea Times, 1 March 2005
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has presented four conditions for returning to the six-party talks on his nuclear weapons program, including a demand
for a security guarantee from the United States, according to a Japanese news agency Tuesday.
Kim told Wang Jiarui, a high-profile Chinese official who visited Pyongyang last month, that he wants Washington to give the reasons why it labelled his
country as an "outpost of tyranny," the Kyodo News Agency reported,
citing unnamed diplomatic sources. In addition to the aforementioned conditions,
the report said he made another pair of requests such as Washington's pledge that it would negotiate with Pyongyang on an equal basis and a sincere
attitude that could be trusted by North Koreans.
During a three-and-a-half-hour meeting with the Chinese envoy on Feb. 21, the North Korean leader was quoted as saying his country would go to the
discussion table when there are "mature conditions" for the six-party dialogue. Officials in Seoul, who had been briefed by Beijing on the outcome
of Wang's trip, said the "conditions" seemed to refer to more abstract
demands such as a US pledge of "no hostile intent," rather than
"material rewards" for simply rejoining the talks.
Last Saturday, South Korea, the US and Japan held a strategy session in Seoul to devise ways to lure North Korea back to the bargaining table as soon as possible. The US and its Asian allies reached a consensus, according to sources, that they could allow the North more opportunities to have bilateral talks with the US within the six-party formula. Beijing, which virtually has the sole channel to talk with Pyongyang, will send its chief nuclear negotiator, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, to Seoul today to learn more about Saturday's tripartite session before contacting North Korea again.
North Korea and the US held negotiations for three times from August 2003 to June 2004 along with South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. But no
clear breakthrough has been found yet to resolve the 28-month-long nuclear standoff. Citing the US "hostile" policies, which they argue is aimed
at toppling the Kim Jong Il regime, North Korea has refused to hold a fourth round of talks. In a surprise announcement on Feb. 10, the North claimed it
already possesses nuclear weapons.
Most officials and experts view Kim's remarks, made at his meeting with the Chinese envoy about two weeks after the announcement, as an indication that his country would eventually come back to the disarmament talks sometime in the near future. But others predict it will take some more time for North Korea to return to the bargaining table as it has not yet listened to the US, which has so far avoided giving the North the three words it yearns for: no hostile intent. The US put dictators and corrupt officials on notice on Monday, using its annual report on global human rights practices to focus the spotlight on the continuing abuses in Cuba, China, North Korea and Myanmar. Senior US officials, presenting the 2004 report, once again emphasized the theme of advancing democracy and freedom that was struck by President George W. Bush in his second inaugural address and State of the Union speech.
The Los Angeles Times looks at North
Korea, without rancor.
by Hugh Hewitt , The Weekly Standard, 03/11/2005
A FRONT PAGE STORY in the March 1, 2005 Los Angeles Times was headlined "North Korea, Without the Rancor." The author, Barbara Demick, met with a North Korean businessman in a North Korean-owned karaoke bar in Beijing. The article presented this "businessman's" view of the world. His views were favorable of Kim Jung Il, dismissive of human rights complaints about North Korea's brutal treatment of its people, and silent about both the famine (that is believed to have killed 2 million in the 1990s) and the North Koreans' obstruction of international relief efforts. The entire article should be read but these are the choice quotes:
* "There's never been a positive article about North Korea, not one," he said. "We're portrayed as monsters, inhuman, Dracula . . . with horns on our heads."
* "Now that we are members of the nuclear club, we can start talking on an equal footing. In the past, the U.S. tried to whip us, as though they were saying, 'Little boy, don't play with dangerous things.'"
* "We were hoping for change from the U.S. administration. We expected some clear-cut positive change," the North Korean said. "Instead, Condoleezza Rice immediately committed the mistake of calling us an outpost of tyranny. North Koreans are most sensitive when they hear that kind of remark."
* "We Asians are traditional people," he said. "We prefer to have a benevolent father leader."
* "Is there any country where there is a 100 percent guarantee of human rights? Certainly not the United States," the businessman said. "There is a question of what is a political prisoner. Maybe these people are not political prisoners but social agitators."
* "There is love [in North Korea]. There is hate. There is fighting. There is charity. . . . People marry. They divorce. They make children," he said. "People are just trying to live a normal life."
A STORM OF CRITICISM broke out on the web in response to the Times's decision to cede its front page to this one-sided view of North Korea. The name "Walter Duranty" was thrown about, as Demick's whitewash reminded many of the infamous New York Times reporter's glowing reports from the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
After publishing Demick's piece, the Times went to ground. Two days later they published exactly one letter--a complimentary letter!--out of the avalanche of correspondence they received. Via email, Demick explained that she had found the "businessman's" account repellent (even though her article did not betray her feelings). She and others said she ought to be judged not on the basis of her paean to Kim Jong Il, but by the totality of her work. (A review of her work over the past two years does not yield up any extensive assessments of the life of North Koreans, but rather sidelong glances at small parts of the story, such as a look at Kim Jong Il's culinary excesses and the plight of women fleeing North Korea across the border with China.)
The March 1 article mentioned the State Department's report on human rights in North Korea, but only in passing, and with none of the detail that might have provided readers with a grasp of how the life of ordinary North Koreans has become under the crazed Kim Jong Il.
I SENT DEMICK SOME QUESTIONS, which she responded to in guarded but revealing ways. She refused, for example, to answer in straightforward fashion the question of whether Kim Jong Il is evil. Asked about North Koreas nuclear proliferation, she replied that while they may have violated the "spirit" of the 1994 deal with the United States, there were "loopholes" in the agreement that made it possible that they were in "technical compliance" with the deal. (You can read all of her responses here.)
What the totality of Demick's work demonstrates is that neither she nor her editors are in a hurry to detail the horrific nature of the North Korean regime. In fact, they work to smooth over that shocking picture, even to the extent of providing a front-page apologia.
WHAT CAN BE SAID of Demick and the Los Angeles Times? First, favorable propaganda of this sort would never be written if the regime in question were suspected of rightwing extremism. As one commentator on Roger L. Simon's blog eloquently put it:
Imagine if the LAT had printed this story in the '70s . . . "South Africa Without the Rancor": As I was traveling in Kenya I came across this South African businessman. He did not want to give out his name. We talked of the current strain in relations between South Africa and the rest of the world. "The press is always so negative. Every story is bad, bad, bad. Every country has human rights problems, is your country perfect? We are just like everyone else, we marry, we love, we fight, we're charitable. You can't impose your western standards on everyone, we are different and we should be allowed our own expression of government. We come from a tribal society and we have needed strong leaders and the idea of democracy is foreign to us. Our blacks have their own autonomous states within the South African structure and they really don't want independence or equality. Our blacks thrive under our strong leadership and Botha is really no different then any tribal king. It is the constant aggression of the west that is the cause of friction between us." . . .
A lie about a Communist country is just not as bad as a lie about a racist country.
Second, the hypocrisy of Times editor John Carroll knows no bounds. It was Carroll who just last year blasted much of New Media as "pseudojournalism." Carroll has yet to speak about the use of his paper's front page to present the rosiest of views of the North Korean gulag-state.
There are no circumstances that justify puffing an evil regime, and no excuse for mistaking an obvious intelligence operative for a "businessman." The Times's status as West coast tip sheet for the Democratic party is annoying, but its shilling for Kim Jong Il is disgusting.
Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, and author most recently of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That is Changing Your World. His daily blog can be found at HughHewitt.com.
By Barbara Demick, LA Times Staff Writer, 1 March 2005
BEIJING — He arrived at the entrance to a North Korean government-owned restaurant and karaoke club here in the Chinese capital with a handshake and a request. "Call me Mr. Anonymous," he said in English.
This North Korean, an affable man in his late 50s who spent much of his career as a diplomat in Europe, has been assigned to help his communist country attract foreign investment. With the U.S. and other countries complaining about North Korea's nuclear weapons program and its human rights record, it's a difficult task, he admitted.
"There's never been a positive article about North Korea, not one," he said. "We're portrayed as monsters, inhuman, Dracula … with horns on our heads."
So, in an effort to clear up misunderstandings, he expounded on the North Korean view of the world in an informal conversation that began one night this week over beer as North Korean waitresses sang Celine Dion in the karaoke restaurant, and resumed the next day over coffee.
The North Korean, dressed in a cranberry-colored flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, described himself as a businessman with close ties to the government. He said he did not want to be quoted by name because his perspective was personal, not official. Because North Koreans seldom talk to U.S. media organizations, his comments offered rare insight into the view from the other side of the geopolitical divide.
He said better relations with the United States were key to turning around his nation's economy, which has nearly ground to a halt over the last decade amid famine, the collapse of industry and severe electricity shortages. "For basic life, we can live without America, but we can live better with" it, he said.
Yet he voiced strong enthusiasm for his country's recent announcement that it had developed nuclear weapons. The declaration, which jarred U.S. officials, was not intended as a threat, he said, but merely a way to advance negotiations.
"Now that we are members of the nuclear club, we can start talking on an equal footing. In the past, the U.S. tried to whip us, as though they were saying, 'Little boy, don't play with dangerous things.' "
"This was the right thing to do, to declare ourselves a nuclear power. The U.S. had been talking not only about economic sanctions, but regime change," the businessman said. "We can't just sit there waiting for them to do something. We have the right to protect ourselves."
The North Koreans said they were keenly attentive to the language used by Bush administration officials in regard to their country. They were relieved that in this year's State of the Union address the president didn't again characterize North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," as he did in 2002. But they were greatly offended that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called North Korea an "outpost of tyranny" during her confirmation hearings.
"We were hoping for change from the U.S. administration. We expected some clear-cut positive change," the North Korean said. "Instead, Condoleezza Rice immediately committed the mistake of calling us an outpost of tyranny. North Koreans are most sensitive when they hear that kind of remark."
He believes that Americans have the wrongheaded notion that North Koreas are unhappy with the system of government under Kim Jong Il. "We Asians are traditional people," he said. "We prefer to have a benevolent father leader."
He also said that U.S. criticism of North Korea's record on human rights was unfair and hypocritical. In its annual human rights report on Monday, the State Department characterized North Korea's behavior as "extremely poor." It said 150,000 to 200,000 people were being held in detention camps for political reasons and that there continued to be reports of extrajudicial killings.
"Is there any country where there is a 100% guarantee of human rights? Certainly not the United States," the businessman said. "There is a question of what is a political prisoner. Maybe these people are not political prisoners but social agitators."
While Westerners tend to stress the rights of the individual, he said, "we have chosen collective human rights as a nation…. We should have food, shelter, security rather than chaos and vandalism. The question of our survival as a nation is dangling."
The North Korean admitted that "it is no secret that we have economic problems," and he said North Koreans were themselves largely to blame because they let their industry become too dependent on the socialist bloc countries. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, trade fell sharply.
But he faulted the United States for the collapse of a 1994 pact under which North Korea was supposed to get energy assistance in return for freezing its nuclear program. The agreement fell apart after Washington accused North Korea in 2002 of cheating on the deal, and the U.S. and its allies suspended deliveries of fuel oil.
"Electricity is a real problem. We have only six hours a day," said the North Korean, who lives in an apartment in a choice neighbourhood of Pyongyang, the capital. "When you are watching a movie on TV, there might be a nice love scene and then suddenly the power is out. People blame the Americans. They blame Bush."
As for international negotiations aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear arms program, he said he thought Pyongyang would probably show up at the next round of talks. But his country would prefer to negotiate directly with the United States, he said, rather than in six-party discussions that also include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
He said the Americans' insistence on including six countries had caused undue complications. "If we sort out the problems with America, everything else will fall into place. The problems with Japan can easily be sorted out," he said.
The North Korean criticized some Japanese politicians' efforts to link the nuclear talks to the question of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. "This was something done by a few overly enthusiastic people long ago," he said. "We tried to make amends. "Now people like Shinzo Abe [deputy secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party] are using it for political purposes and destroying the interests of millions of people."
The most important point the North Korean said he wanted to convey in the conversation was that his nation was a place just like any other. "There is love. There is hate. There is fighting. There is charity…. People marry. They divorce. They make children," he said. "People are just trying to live a normal life."