Return to *North Korean Studies*
Yahoo News, Tue May 17, 1:40 PM ET
Plans for a joint lunch were abandoned following a morning session that left the South Korean chief delegate, Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-Jo, looking grim, news reports said.
"As we did yesterday (Monday), we
again urged
Rhee made what he described as an
"important offer" to entice North Korea back to the six-party talks on
Monday but received no word in reply as the two-day session drew to a close.
The vice-ministerial talks in the North
Korean border town of
The nuclear crisis erupted in October
2002 when
Three rounds of inconclusive six-party
talks bringing together the two
At the last round in June, the
However,
At the June talks in
Earlier
By PAUL ALEXANDER, The Associated Press
The rival
Trying to ease rising tensions,
The resumption of dialogue between the two
countries was the first potentially positive development on the Korean Peninsula
since February, when North Korea claimed it had nuclear weapons and said it
would indefinitely boycott arms talks until Washington drops its ``hostile''
policy.
The North Korean delegation listened without
comment as South Korean Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo brought up the
nuclear issue during Monday's first session.
``If the six-party talks resume, it shouldn't
be talks for the sake of talks, but substantial progress is necessary,'' Rhee
said. ``For this, the South side is preparing for a substantial proposal, and
will propose it to the related countries when the talks resume.''
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned
``Escalation on the part of the North Koreans
is going to deepen their isolation a lot,'' she said Monday after a visit to
A senior State Department official in
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley
threatened unspecified actions against
Shinzo Abe, secretary-general of
But South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Song
Min-soon played down the prospects of a nuclear test.
``The reports that are coming out are
artificial and groundless that have no specific evidence to back them up,'' Song
told
Discussions involving the two
``We are doing everything to get this
six-party process going, and we really want to, but that does not mean we are
not going to look eventually at other options,'' Hill told South Korean Foreign
Minister Ban Ki-moon.
Talks between the two
Rhee made several suggestions for improving
relations.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher
offered support for South Korean efforts to bring
The latest nuclear standoff with
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Saturday that Washington's reassurances about recognizing its independence were a trick meant to conceal a U.S. plan to topple the communist government.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier this month that "the United States, of course, recognizes that North Korea is sovereign" — a remark seen as a gesture to coax the North to return to nuclear disarmament negotiations with five other nations.
Rice's "loudmouthed recognition of the sovereign state and the like were nothing but a ruse to conceal the U.S. attempt at bringing down (North Korea's) regime," said an unidentified spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry.
The spokesman said Rice was either "ignorant" or a "brazen-faced liar" and criticized a "U.S. attempt at a military invasion" of North Korea, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported.
The communist state declared Feb. 10 that it has nuclear weapons and would indefinitely boycott the six-nation disarmament talks — involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia — until the United States dropped its "hostile" policy toward it. Washington has repeatedly said it has no intention of invading the North.
The North's nuclear claim has not been verified, but U.S. intelligence and other estimates say North Korea has as many as six atomic weapons.
The North Korean spokesman also blamed "U.S. noncompliance" for the collapse of a 1994 deal between the countries in which North Korea agreed to stop its nuclear weapons development in exchange for aid.
In a separate commentary Saturday in the state-run Minju Joson newspaper, the North said it would "steadfastly keep to the path of its own choice as urgently required by the reality."
"The U.S. would be well-advised to clearly understand the gravity of the situation and behave itself," said the commentary, carried by KCNA.
The current standoff was sparked in late 2002 after U.S. officials accused North Korea of running a secret uranium enrichment program.
Also Saturday, the North asked South Korea to participate in talks next week, which would be a resumption of their dialogue after a 10-month hiatus, North Korea's news agency said. The talks would be held Monday and Tuesday in the North Korean border city of Kaesong.
Southern officials will tell those from the North of growing international concern about the nuclear standoff and will urge Pyongyang to return to the six-nation talks that have been stalled for nearly a year, officials in the South said.
Dialogue between the two Koreas was suspended in July after mass defections to South Korea from the North that Pyongyang labeled kidnappings.
"First, there will be discussions on measures to normalize relations between the South and the North," Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo told reporters. "We will also convey our position on the North Korean nuclear issue."
Rhee will lead the South Korean delegation to the talks in Kaesong, site of a joint economic zone run by both Koreas.
New York Times, 12 May 2005
America's intelligence agencies often struggle to reach consensus on
what is happening in the intelligence black hole of North Korea. That
has been particularly true in the past month, as officials examine satellite images suggesting that something suspicious is happening in
the mountains near the town of Kilju, on the country's northeast coast. North Korea said Wednesday that it had taken spent fuel rods from a
reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. To some, including several North Korea experts who have served across a number of administrations,
the activity is the latest sign that North Korea may be preparing for its first test of a nuclear weapon.
The new American ambassador to Japan, J. Thomas Schieffer, seemed to suggest as much when he told a group of Japanese lawmakers that "I believe they have taken some preparatory steps" for a test, as an embassy spokesman quoted him saying. Japanese officials quoted Mr.Schieffer as calling a test highly likely, according to Kyodo, a Japanese news agency - a view held by some North Korea experts in Washington.
But the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, asked if this confirmed that North Korea had indeed taken the first steps toward a test, replied, "I wouldn't quite read as much into his statements as you do." A similar ambiguity pervades what various intelligence officials have been saying in recent days as they describe their views on broad questions like the intentions and capabilities of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, and narrower questions like whether, in fact, the North Koreans have built a reviewing stand so that their leaders can feel the ground shake if a test happens.
Last week, three sources in different parts of the United States government told The New York Times that they had seen or been briefed on evidence of what looked like grandstands erected at a distance from the suspected test site, raising suspicions that preparations were in place for observers of a possible test. They acknowledged that even if there were grandstands, they could exist for another purpose. But one agency cautioned at the same time that it knew of no evidence of any such structure. This week officials at the intelligence arm of the State Department expressed the same view. As written intelligence reports are usually shared among agencies, their inability to confirm the information was striking. Some positions are shifting: a senior administration official who confirmed the presence of the grandstand last week said late Wednesday that he was now uncertain whether the structure was related to the test site. But he said he was more concerned than ever that the North might be tempted to test.
Because the issue of North Korea's obtaining nuclear weapons is of such far-reaching importance, and because this kind of military intelligence is so highly sensitive, officials will describe the intelligence only very cautiously, each divulging only limited information, and none agreeing to be identified, or even to let their organizations be named. Those involved in trying to interpret intelligence from North Korea are haunted by a long history of missteps - both overestimating and underestimating the country's abilities.
"There's a reason I call North Korea the longest-running intelligence failure in the history of American espionage," said Donald Gregg, a CIA station chief in Seoul during the cold war who returned there as the American ambassador. "And I can say that with pride because I was part of the failure." The Bush administration has long been a divided camp on how to deal with North Korea - whether to pressure the country until it collapses or negotiate with it in hopes it will give up its weapons. As that debate has continued, North Korea has stepped up its claims of progress in a nuclear arms program that it once denied existed at all. So, on the immediate question of what is happening above Kilju, the problem is matching up what satellites see with estimates of what the North Koreans want the United States to believe.
Trucks have been moving in and out of the site for months, and lately some technical analysts have said they believe the trucks are bringing in material to fill a hole, sometimes a sign that an underground test site is being sealed up again. Others have reported similar evidence. But the White House also warned of a possible test last October, because of similar activity, and was worried about the issue (though it said nothing publicly) during a spate of activity in January. Part of the problem, experts say, is that because North Korea has never conducted a test, no one understands whether its preparations look like the kind that were seen in the old Soviet Union or in China, both of which have helped North Korea's program in years past.
"We might not know until it is fired off," one American official conceded the other day. Another said that while the activity was worrying, it could be "part of the ebb and flow of what we've seen for a while." Of course, there is the possibility - some say probability - that the North is engaging in either deception or deliberate message-sending. The problem is made more difficult by the fact that the United States has almost no human spies, and there are so few telephones in North Korea that there is not much conversation to tap. Moreover, some experts say that assessments may be colored by mistakes made seven years ago - mistakes that produced contradictory lessons.
In 1998 American intelligence agencies missed the evidence that India and Pakistan were preparing to test their nuclear weapons, an intelligence failure that prompted official inquiries that concluded the United States could never make the same mistake again. But the same year, satellite images of a secret nuclear site called Kumchang-ri, near North Korea's border with China, led to a scare that the North was building a secret reactor or reprocessing plant to cheat on its agreements with the United States. The United States demanded access. When North Korea granted it - in return for some aid - the inspectors found a huge cavern. It was empty. To this day, arguments persist about whether North Korea abandoned the project when it was caught, or was digging to deceive.
Pyongyang, May 11 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs Wednesday gave the following answer to the question raised by KCNA as regards the completion of the unloading of spent fuel rods from its pilot nuclear plant: The relevant field of the DPRK has successfully finished the unloading of 8,000 spent fuel rods from the 5MW pilot nuclear plant in the shortest period recently.
The DPRK had already declared in Dec. 2002 that it would re-operate the above-said plant and resume the construction of two other nuclear plants, one with a capacity of 50,000 kw and the other with a capacity of 200,000 kw which had been frozen according to the DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework the keynote of which is the provision of light water reactors to the DPRK because the Bush administration threatened the DPRK with nuclear weapons in violation of the AF.
Accordingly, the DPRK keeps taking necessary measures to bolster its nuclear arsenal for the defensive purpose of coping with the prevailing situation, with a main emphasis on developing the self-reliant nuclear power industry.
SYDNEY Morning Herald, May 13, 2005, Reuters, The New York Times
Tokyo: The Pentagon says it cannot confirm or disprove North Korea's claim that it has harvested a nuclear reactor, while other intelligence experts were sceptical that Pyongyang's action, even if it was true, would significantly increase its weapons stockpile.
North Korea said in a statement on Wednesday that it had removed 8000 spent fuel rods from a reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear complex as a "necessary measure to bolster its nuclear arsenal".
At worst, experts say, the removal and reprocessing of the fuel rods could produce fuel-grade plutonium for a few nuclear weapons. But by leaving the rods inside the reactor for another year, the North could have obtained a much better yield of weapons fuel.
"There is a lot of symbolism and taunting here," a Bush Administration official said.
North Korea expelled United Nations weapons inspectors in late 2002, and without them it is impossible to independently verify its claims. Analysts say North Korean leaders could be bluffing to win concessions from the US in long-stalled six-party negotiations - which also include South Korea, Russia, Japan and China - to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.
Alternatively, the North Koreans could have pulled the fuel from the reactor early because of technical problems, or because of fears that the US would order a strike on it.
If Pyongyang fires a missile at the US, the military would have only minutes to get authorisation to shoot it down, General James Cartwright told the US Congress on Wednesday.
"Getting the president, the secretary, the regional combat commander into a conversation and a conference in a three- to four-minute time frame is going to be challenging," he told the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defence.
Thu May 12, 2:31 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - An influential US senator threatened to seek sanctions against China if it does not stop turning back refugees from North Korea who face persecution and possible execution at home.
While Pyongyang's nuclear arms program has dominated headlines, Republican Senator Sam Brownback said that "there is probably no greater humanitarian crisis on the Earth today than in North Korea."
Brownback, sponsor of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, said 10 percent of the population had died in the past decade and would-be refugees were finding little shelter outside their homeland.
"It is a horrific situation," the Kansas lawmaker told a briefing organized by the humanitarian group Refugees International and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.
"Thousands are fleeing persecution and starvation only to be rounded up by the Chinese in contravention of international law and then sent back to North Korea to persecution and probable death," he said.
Brownback, who has been active in Asian affairs, said the United States needed to step up its pressure on Beijing to help resettle the refugees, whom the Chinese consider economic migrants.
"We would consider putting on a series of economic sanctions against China if they continue to refuse to deal with this situation," he said.
"It's time to act, because each day we delay, more get in prison, more get killed," the senator said. "It's wrong, it's happening before our eyes, it must stop."
The theme was echoed by Refugees International in a new report titled "Acts of Betrayal" that urged Washington to make the issue of North Korean refugees a major part of its human rights dialogue with China.
The group also called for the appointment of a senior retired US official of ambassadorial rank or higher who could carry on discreet discussions with the Chinese on the subject.
Tom Casey, a spokesman for the State Department, rejected suggestions it was not doing enough to support the North Korean refugees. He said US officials had made regular representations on the issue, including some at high levels.
"We consistently and repeatedly convey to the Chinese government that it should not forcibly repatriate North Koreans back to their home country, where we know they could face extremely harsh punishment and, in some cases, death," he said.
On another front, Richard Ragan, the World Food Program's country director for North Korea and the only official American allowed to live in the insular Stalinist state, raised the alarm over food aid donations.
He said the WFP, which seeks to help feed 6.5 million North Koreans deemed most at risk, may have to stop providing sustenance for as many as three million people over the summer for lack of contributions.
The WFP sought 500,000 tonnes of food, worth 200 million dollars, for 2005 and by the end of March had received 210,000 tonnes, valued at 70 million dollars, he said via video hookup from Texas.
The group planned to make a major push with the United States and South Korea, but Tokyo's contribution was affected by the row over North Korea's past abductions of Japanese nationals, Ragan said.
He said, however, that the diplomatic wrangling over North Korea's nuclear weapons program had nothing to do with the shortfall in food aid.
"That's a separate issue from the humanitarian discussion," Ragan said. "That was clearly our position, and it's clearly been the position of the Bush administration, as well."
by Peter Hayes, Nautilus Institute Executive Director
On Thursday the 28th of April at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Admiral Lowell F. Jacoby testified that North Korea has the capacity to arm their missiles with a nuclear device. He also made the political assessment that it was unlikely that North Korea would be willing to surrender or trade away its full nuclear capacity.
See the following transcript available at: http://clinton.senate.gov/4.28.05.html
Senator Clinton: According to a March 15th Washington Times article a North Korean Foreign Ministry Spokesman said, "reality proves that our possession of nuclear weapons guarantees balance of power in the region and acts as strong deterrent against the outbreak of war and for maintaining peace." He went on to add that, "the North [sic, NAPSNet editor] will take necessary countermeasures including bolstering of its nuclear arsenal to cope with the extremely hostile attempt of the United States to bring down our system." Admiral, do you have an opinion as to whether North Korea would be willing under certain circumstances, including a guarantee by the United States not to forcibly attempt to change North Korea's regime, to give up its nuclear programs?
Admiral Jacoby: Senator our assessment is that the nuclear capabilities and the ambiguity that they have pursued for so many years was a major bargaining chip leverage in their position. Our assessment has been that it's unlikely that they would negotiate it away completely that capability or associated ambiguities because of their concerns about change in world events, regional dynamics and so forth, that that would be viewed by them as leaving them vulnerable.
...
Senator Clinton: This is an area of grave concern to me and I assume, to many others of my colleagues and it's very frustrating. We have been locked into this six party talk idea now for a number of years and all the while, we've seen North Korea going about the business of acquiring nuclear weapons and the missile capacity to deliver those to the shores of the United States and so Admiral let me ask you, do you assess that North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device?
Admiral Jacoby: My assessment is that they have the capability to do that, yes Ma'am
Senator Clinton: And do you assess that North Korea has the ability to deploy a two-stage intercontinental missile, a nuclear missile, that could successfully hit U.S. territory?
Admiral Jacoby: Yes, the assessment on a two stage missile would give capability to reach portions of U.S. territory and the projection on a three stage missile would be that it would be able to reach most of the continental United States. That still is a theoretical capability in a sense that those missiles have not been tested but that is part of the community position.
Senator Clinton: So the two-stage, you are testifying, is already within their operational capacity?
Admiral Jacoby: Assessed to be within their capacity, yes.
Senator Clinton: And that's the west coast of the United States?
Admiral Jacoby: I would need to look at the range arcs, it's certainly Alaska and Hawaii and I believe a portion of the Northwest.
This statement has provoked mixed responses from other government officials. At a White House press conference President Bush responded:
"┘there is concern about his [Kim Jong-il's] capacity to deliver a
nuclear weapon. We don't know if he can or not, but I think it's best when
you're dealing with a tyrant like Kim Jong-il to assume he can. "
Full transcript available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050428-9.html
Some defense officials countered Jacoby's statement:
"┘two U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said North Korea is several years away from developing a nuclear-armed missile that could reach the United States." http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050429/ap/d89p15to2.html
Chris Nelson in his Nelson Report, an insider's newsletter in Washington DC [http://samuelsinternational.com/NelRpt.html] stated: "commentators noted that Jacoby had tried to extend his tenure by a year, but had failed. Perhaps now we know why. On the matter of DPRK missiles able to hit the US, this is, indeed, 'old news', as DIA press flacks tried to claim this afternoon, while dismissing or conflating the first part of Jacoby's war head statement as 'old news', also. As to Jacoby's dismissal of the entire premise of Bush Administration policy toward N. Korea...god only knows what he was trying to say."
Meanwhile Senators Hilary Clinton and Carl Levin followed-up on this testimony with a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
"We urge you to engage in further diplomacy with the North Koreans to address this threat - both within the multilateral context of the Six Party Talks, and bilaterally. It is important to include our allies and friends in Northeast Asia in our diplomatic effort, but this does not mean that we cannot hold bilateral talks with North Korea. Indeed, our allies in South Korea would like us to engage in bilateral talks, and have even stated that the North Korean proposal of a nuclear freeze is a good first step. In short, we urge you to pursue all avenues of negotiation." The entire letter is available online at: http://clinton.senate.gov/4.28.05.html
The US Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice responded on May 2 to this issue by saying that "the United States maintains significant, I want to underline significant, deterrent capability of all kinds in the Asia-Pacific region." http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050502/pl_afp/usnkorearice_050502201148
Peter Hayes, Director of Nautilus Institute, comments on these developments: "It is improbable that the North Koreans would put a nuclear device on a missile, let alone test one, for the simple reason that they don't have much fissile material for many warheads, and North Korean missiles are a very unreliable way to deliver such a device in any case. It is worth noting that t he problem with North Korean missiles is not primarily their poor accuracy. If they take off and the various stages separate to lob a warhead out of the atmosphere to plunge back on a ballistic trajectory, then a high-level atmospheric explosion would be quite effective both in disabling C3I systems (EMP effect) or city-busting (near or even distant, over-the-horizon misses would be quite scary, depending what city you are in).
The problem with North Korean missiles is their likely unreliability. The chances that a North Korean missile will take off (say 60%), and that the stages separate (90% * 90% ) is a combined probability of the missile working of 48% with a guaranteed, near-100% assured retaliatory and exterminatory reply from the United States. Achieving delivery missile reliability is why the United States tests a new missile system scores of times before fielding it, and then tests deployed missiles regularly out of the active arsenal to ensure that they work; and even then, deployed missiles don't work as designed all the time.
The North Koreans are terrible at systems engineering. My estimate is that each North Korean missile is essentially a new type of unknown operating characteristics. A North Korean missile attack would look like an uncontrolled fireworks display; they are as likely to nuke themselves as they are some distant target.
This unreliability doesn't matter if one is firing hundreds of North Korean missiles as occurred in the war of the cities between Iran and Iraq; enough launch and then land somewhere near where people live for the systems to "work" by terrorizing civilian populations. But it would be incredibly stupid for the North Koreans to entrust scarce, hugely valuable nuclear warheads to lousy delivery systems aimed at civilian targets when they have high value military targets and hundreds of fishing vessels and dozens of diesel submarines, or simply can emplace them under invasion corridors inside North Korea itself. In fact, it would be good for our security if the North Koreans put whatever nuclear devices that they have on missiles rather than explore other, more threatening delivery pathways."
What really matters in the latest round of flame-throwing rhetoric from both sides is not what President George Bush said about President Kim Jong Il or the DPRK response. Secretary of State Rice's emphasis on the fact that the United States keeps a "significant, deterrent capability of all kinds in the Asia-Pacific region" means that the DPRK and the United States have now locked horns in an old, Cold War game: mutual nuclear threats aimed at achieving general "deterrence."
Whatever the Secretary's intent, the North Koreans will interpret her phrase unambiguously to mean that the United States has reactivated its nuclear deterrence machinery in the region, effectively put on the back burner since the final withdrawal of American tactical and theater nuclear weapons in February 1992.
This was a huge step backwards for the United States and the region. It will take all the players party to the Korean conflict some time to adjust to the fact that we are now in an era of accelerating nuclear proliferation in East Asia.
The primary measure of American security policy in relation to North Korea is whether it a) destabilizes the DPRK itself (with consequent possible loss of control of fissile material and warheads), b) risks unleashing war across the Demilitarized Zone (with the risk of potential escalation to use of weapons of mass destruction in the Korean Peninsula and surrounding areas), and c), further stimulates the proliferation propensity of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Concurrently, the United States will now have to deal with the rapidly emerging strategic bi-furcation of this region into a China-led continental camp that includes the two Koreas versus the US-Japan (+ Taiwan) alliance, albeit one complicated by the increasing geopolitical and economic interdependence between the United States, China and Japan. To the extent that China manages to extend strategic reassurance to Japan, for example, by restraining North Korean threat projection, the United States is now at risk of losing its pre-eminent position in what former Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone once called its "offshore aircraft carrier" in the Western Pacific and not only in South Korea.
Yahoo News, Tue May 10, Additional reporting by Kim Yeon-hee and Kim Yoo-chul and Lindsay Beck in
Beijing
SEOUL (Reuters) - Reports it could soon conduct an underground nuclear weapons test were speculation cooked up by Washington, North Korea said on Tuesday, but the secretive state did not deny outright that one might be planned.
Media reports have said spy satellites show North Korea has apparently stepped up activity in its northeastern region of Kilju. The area has been suspected of being where the North would conduct a test, U.S. and South Korean officials have said.
"The United States is making a fuss that our republic may proceed with an underground nuclear test in June and it will report its own view to the International Atomic Energy Agency and other countries, including Japan," the North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.
The official KCNA news agency reported about the commentary on its Korean-language service. The South's Yonhap news agency carried the report.
The commentary did not deny North Korea might conduct a test. It said reports of an impending nuclear test were "U.S. strategic opinions," KCNA said.
The United States has said it may take North Korea to the U.N. Security Council, where Pyongyang could face possible sanctions, if the North stays away from six-party talks aimed at ending its nuclear ambitions.
"Let the United States do whatever it wants," the commentary said. "That's our bold stance."
The data from spy satellites indicates cranes, trucks and other heavy equipment are in the area digging holes and conducting other activity that increase the prospects of an imminent test, U.S. and South Korean officials have told newspapers.
DANGEROUS GAMBLE
North Korea said in February it possessed nuclear weapons and was withdrawing from six-party talks. In recent weeks it has increased tensions by threatening to boost its nuclear arsenal and by shutting down a nuclear reactor from which it can harvest fissile material for nuclear weapons.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman did not directly comment when asked if China, the North's old ally, had communicated with Pyongyang about a possible nuclear test, but he indicated Beijing would disapprove of such a development.
"I'd like to repeat that upholding the goal of the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is the important consensus reached by all sides of the six-party talks," Liu Jianchao told a news briefing.
Choi Jin-wook, an expert on the North's nuclear programs at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said Pyongyang may be staging the activity for the spy satellites in order to bluff that it was preparing a test, and better its bargaining position.
"North Korea will not unnecessarily engage in any brinksmanship that could result in them being permanently isolated from the international community," Choi said.
A nuclear test is a dangerous gamble for North Korea that could bolster it stature as a nuclear state and change the dynamics of regional diplomacy. But a test would also likely lead to economic sanctions that could cripple its fragile economy, he said.
The key player in sanctions would be the North's main benefactor and trading partner, China.
China can veto sanctions at the Security Council and analysts said they would be meaningless unless China shuts the border it shares with the North, something Liu repeated it would be unwilling to do.
"We don't want to solve the issue by pressures or sanctions and we think such measures would not necessarily be effective," he said.
If sanctions were in place, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il would likely be left with little food and fuel coming from the outside world to support the North's faltering economy.
This would deal a blow to the its stumbling industrial and agricultural sectors as well raise the prospect of famine in a country already facing severe food shortages, analysts said.
On Monday, Washington sought to coax North Korea back to the negotiating table by saying it viewed the communist state as sovereign and it would hold direct talks with it as part of the stalled six-party dialogue.
There have been three inconclusive rounds of talks involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. The last round was held in June 2004, but Liu said the world should not lose heart over the long delay.
May 10 (Bloomberg)
The U.S. government described North Korea as a sovereign state and doesn't plan to attack the communist nation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.
The U.S. ``recognizes that North Korea is sovereign. It's obvious. They're a member of the United Nations,'' Rice said in an interview in Moscow with CNN television yesterday, according a transcript posted on the State Department's Web site. ``We have no intention to attack or invade North Korea.''
The U.S., along with South Korea, China, Japan and Russia are trying to convince North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons. North Korea wants economic and fuel aid, security guarantees and recognition by the U.S. as a sovereign state.
North Korea may be speeding up preparations to conduct a nuclear test, including what may be construction of a reviewing stand for dignitaries, the New York Times reported on May 7, citing U.S. and foreign officials it didn't identify.
U.S. intelligence and defense officials are examining satellite photographs showing ``everything you need to test,'' the newspaper said, citing a senior administration official who has seen the pictures.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan on May 7 warned North Korea that a nuclear-weapons test would be considered a ``provocative act,'' following the reports.
Isolating Acts
``If North Korea did take such a step, that would just be another provocative act that would further isolate it from the international community,'' McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One, while traveling with President George W. Bush to Latvia.
The U.S. is ``making a fuss'' by warning other nations, including Japan and the International Atomic Energy Agency about a possible test, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said today, citing the North's official Korea Central News Agency.
North Korea reiterated it will not return to six-nation talks while the U.S. remained ``hostile'' toward the country.
North Korea's government will ``not deal with a band of hooligans,'' the North Korean official news agency said according to Yonhap. North Korea won't return to talks after being ``defamed'' by the U.S., being called first an ``axis of evil,'' and then an ``outpost of tyranny.''
Rice again urged North Korea to return to the six-nation talks to resolve the impasse.
``The best route for the North Koreans is to get back to the six-party framework because anything that they do to escalate the situation is only going to isolate them further,'' Rice said. ``Any activities that might be aimed at escalation are obviously not going to help their cause.''
Conducting Tests
Reports that North Korea may be ready to conduct a test as early as next month have appeared in other U.S. and Japanese newspapers, which have cited unidentified officials. North Korea test fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on May 1 heightening concerns.
Five days later, the South Korean government, said the issue of trying to find a peaceful, diplomatic solution to North Korea's nuclear-weapons development has reached a ``critical stage.'' The South Korean capital, Seoul, is 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the border with its communist neighbor.
The six nations have been at an impasse since the leadership in Pyongyang admitted the nation had broken a 1994 agreement and continued a nuclear weapons-development program. There have been three rounds of talks in Beijing, yielding no agreement.
The communist North, which relies on overseas aid to feed its 22 million people, may already have 10 nuclear weapons, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group estimated in November. North Korea, which has an economy on the verge of collapse after decades of famine and government mismanagement, has said its nuclear arsenal is to deter a planned attack by the U.S.
Tue May 10, 3:51 PM ET
BEIJING - China declared flatly Tuesday that it won't reduce fuel supplies to North Korea to discourage that country from testing a nuclear weapon.
"We are not in favor of exerting pressure or imposing sanctions. We believe that such measures will not necessarily have an effect," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.
North Korea receives most of its energy through a pipeline from China. Trade between the nations also is rising quickly, providing economic support to the isolated regime of Kim Jong Il.
Trade relations between China and North Korea - or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as it's known - shouldn't be linked to the nuclear issue, Liu said, and won't be affected by the "worrying developments" on the Korean Peninsula.
"The normal trade links between China and the DPRK will continue," Liu said.
A senior U.S. diplomat, Christopher R. Hill, visited Beijing late in April and reportedly asked China to cut off oil deliveries to North Korea as a way to prod the regime back to six-nation disarmament talks.
In the past week, U.S. officials in Washington have cited satellite images indicating that North Korea may be preparing a nuclear test in Kilju, in the northeast of the country. The images, while not conclusive, show workers closing a tunnel with rock and concrete, consistent with plugging a site for an underground nuclear test, and possibly even preparing a viewing stand.
U.S. intelligence officials, however, say they don't know whether the North Koreans are planning a test or staging a show in an attempt to force the United States to make concessions.
North Korea formally declared itself a nuclear power on Feb. 10, saying it had "manufactured nuclear weapons" to defend itself from attack by the United States.
Some U.S. officials think that a North Korean nuclear test probably would prompt Japan, South Korea and Russia - all parties to the six-nation talks along with the United States, China and North Korea - to urge the Bush administration to show more flexibility.
A Chinese scholar on North Korea, Jin Linbo, said China's refusal to cut oil deliveries had raised skepticism abroad about its determination to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, but that the stance was consistent with China's foreign policy.
"The Chinese government is reluctant to put any kind of pressure on another country, including North Korea. It's China's diplomatic philosophy," said Jin, the director of the department of Asia-Pacific studies at the China Institute of International Studies.
China is believed to have cut off oil to North Korea in March 2003 for three days, citing "technical reasons." The suspension was seen widely as a way to punish North Korea for resisting regional talks on disarmament.
Liu, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said China, as the host, was working to reignite the six-nation talks on the nuclear crisis, which have been stalled since the third round in Beijing 11 months ago. Liu declined to say what kind of communications China and North Korea have had amid the reports that Pyongyang may be preparing a nuclear test.
Some neighboring countries already may be accepting North Korea's status as a nuclear power, said Stephen Noerper, a U.S. expert on northeast Asia security issues.
He said he expected restrained responses from several key countries, including China, if North Korea proceeded with a test.
"China would basically be saying, `Well, we have a nuclear north. We can live with that as long as we have stability'" on the Korean Peninsula, Noerper said.
Jin said Kim might be evaluating the timing for when to show his nuclear card. "His main aim, if he decided to test nuclear weapons, is to escalate the tension between North Korea and the United States, and between the United States and neighboring countries" to North Korea, Jin said, adding that he doesn't think Kim "is in a hurry to do the test."
While China resists leaning on North Korea, Beijing realizes that the stakes are high, especially in its relations with the United States, a key trading partner.
"China will be as frustrated as anyone" by a North Korean nuclear test, Noerper said. "They'll be the real loser of the scenario. ... It's going to create a huge new quandary in Sino-U.S. relations that I don't think anyone's thought through."
by Stanislav Varivoda, Itar-Tass, 22 February 2005
China is ready to increase oil deliveries to North Korea if it returns to the six-nation talks on its nuclear programme, a source close to the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. He said the deputy chief of the international relations department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, Wang Jiarui, made such statement at his meeting with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il on Monday.
Other options of engaging North Korea in the negotiation process were discussed at the meeting, including economic moves. After Pyongyang had declared its suspending the talks on the nuclear issue indefinitely, China drastically decreased oil deliveries to North Korea. "This is not the sole lever of pressure on Pyongyang that Beijing has," the source said.
A five-member Chinese delegation lead by Wang Jiarui arrived in Pyongyang on Saturday with a plan to persuade North Korea to resume the talks
that engage North and South Korea, the US, Russia, China and Japan. Pyongyang recently said it suspended its participation in the talks because
of a "hostile policy of the US" that which is understood in North Korea as Washington's imposing economic sanctions against the republic and frequent
military manoeuvres on the territory of South Korea seen by the North as a rehearsal of a war against it.
North Korea is also irritated by the "activity aimed at destruction" of its state order and the US' passing last year a North Korea Human Rights Act considered as stepping up a psychological war against it. The North Korean official Central News Agency said on Tuesday that Kim Jong Il told the Chinese emissary during their meeting that Pyongyang was ready to return to the negotiating table "at any time", with the provision that "necessary conditions are met" for it.
Pyongyang, May 5 (KCNA) -- Rodong Sinmun Thursday dedicates an article to 14th anniversary of leade Kim Jong Il's famous work "Our Socialism Centred on the Masses Shall Not Perish". The work scientifically proves the essential features of Korean-style socialism centred on the masses and its invincibility, advantages and vitality and inspires the people with the conviction of the victory of socialism.
Reviewing the course of the triumphant advance of Korean-style socialism centred on the masses over the last ten years or more since the publication of the work, the author of the article says Korean-style socialism based on the Juche idea is an invincible socialism not wavering in whatever ordeals and difficulties.
The solidness and invincibility of Korean-style socialism lie in that the whole party and all the people are united as one in mind around the headquarters of the revolution as firm as a rock, the article notes, and goes on:
Our single-minded unity is close ideological and purposeful and organizational unity around the headquarters of the revolution and moral and obligatory unity based on love and trust. The Party and the leader believe in the people and all the people follow the Party and the leader in one mind and absolutely support them. Herein lies the eternal vitality of our single-minded unity.
The benevolent policy of our Party is the fundamental source of the invincibility of the single-minded unity of the leader, the party and the masses.
It is thanks to the noble popular policy of Kim Jong Il that unbreakable blood ties have been forged between the headquarters of the revolution and the people and, on its basis, relationship of comradely love and revolutionary sense of obligation has been established among all the members of society to turn the whole country into a large harmonious family.
The close unity of our army and people around the headquarters of the revolution in ideology and will and in moral sense of obligation is the real picture of our harmonious whole and herein lies the source of the invincibility of Korean-style socialism.
The solidness and invincibility of Korean-style socialism also lie in that it has the powerful military strength as its pillar and the popular masses regard socialism as their life and soul. Nothing can break the faith of the Korean people in socialism of our style centred on the popular masses.
By DONALD MACINTYRE, TIME, Monday, May 9, 2005 With reporting by Elaine Shannon
In the late 1990s, U.S. spy satellites crisscrossing North Korea picked up alarming evidence that suggested the rogue regime might be excavating a secret underground nuclear test facility.
North Korea agreed to allow U.S. officials to visit the site--after Washington ponied up some extra food aid--but when the inspectors arrived, all they found was an empty hole.
With that incident in mind, U.S. officials last week cast a skeptical eye on new satellite images of the North Koreans hard at work on another big dig. Traffic around the mouth of a tunnel has intensified recently, and heavy equipment has been spotted hauling materials, possibly including cement, into the hole, according to a U.S. official briefed on the latest intelligence.
That could mean technicians are plugging the shaft to conduct an underground test. Or not. "Could the activity at the tunnel be consistent with a nuclear test?" asks the official. "Yes. Are there other potential explanations?
Yes." Given North Korea's track record of bluff and brinksmanship, "it is very possible they are pretending it is a test," says Choi Jin Wook, an expert on North Korea at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification.
The U.S. believes North Korea could have as many as eight nukes. And although testing one would mark Pyongyang's unequivocal entry into the world's exclusive club of proven nuclear powers, North Korea watchers say the potential fallout with its ally China could stay Pyongyang's hand.
But President Bush isn't taking any chances. He urged China's President Hu Jintao last week to rein in his irksome neighbor.
And in case Kim Jong Il doesn't get the message, the U.S. is rotating Stealth bombers and fighter jets through Guam, where they are within striking distance of North Korea.
Pinkston, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program and a Korea specialist at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on May 9, 2005.
Daniel A. Pinkston, a well-known expert on North Korea's nuclear program, says he believes the six-party talks to end North Korea's nuclear program "are dead." Pinkston says that while the Bush administration did not overtly call an end to the negotiations, harsh statements by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in recent weeks "will push North Korea to withdraw from the talks."
Pinkston advocates a last-ditch U.S. diplomatic effort before going to the U.N. Security Council to seek sanctions. He says a high-level envoy such as former President George H.W. Bush should meet directly with the North Koreans and "lay out a last, best proposal." Such a move would serve strategic purposes, he says, because if North Korea refuses the deal, "only then could we count on some Chinese support in the Security Council, I think."
The Washington Post, Reuters, May 9, 2005
A senior US envoy asked Chinese officials to cut off North Korea's supply of oil
as a way of pressuring Pyongyang to return to disarmament talks.But the Chinese rejected the idea, saying it would damage their pipeline.
After the US assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill suggested a "technical" interruption of fuel during a meeting in Beijing last week, a senior Chinese official, Yang Xiyu, complained that the Americans were focused on "too narrow a range of tools" for China to influence Pyongyang.
Chinese officials suggested that cutting off food deliveries would have the greatest impact on North Korea, and said Beijing was considering expanding a ban on certain imports to Pyongyang.
The details of these behind-the-scenes negotiations emerged in the face of concerns that the reclusive state may be planning to test a nuclear weapon.
Over the past two weeks there have been reports, including satellite pictures, that back these concerns. US officials dismissed as unreliable another report of a viewing platform erected for a test, but they again warned Pyongyang not to detonate a weapon.
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, on Saturday said the US had "a robust deterrent capability and no one should mistake what our capability is".He again urged North Korea to return to the six-party talks with the US, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, which have been stalled for almost a year.
Asian and European foreign ministers attending a two-day Asia-Europe Meeting in Japan issued a statement on Saturday urging North Korea to return to the talks "without any further delay" and said it needed to "make a strategic decision so as to achieve the denuclearisation of the [Korean] peninsula in a peaceful manner through dialogue".
Japan's Foreign Minister, Nobutaka Machimura, on Friday said the United Nations should be urged to impose sanctions on the North, but did not say what types of sanctions might be appropriate.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, also warned of "disastrous political repercussions" and environmental damage if the North conducted a nuclear test. He called on world leaders to try to use their influence to prevent it.
With relations between Washington and Pyongyang at a low point US officials have increasingly turned to China to help bring North Korea back to the negotiating table.
Chinese officials told Washington of an unofficial North Korean proposal that Beijing considered unrealistic, calling for a secret bilateral meeting between the US and North Korea, during which the US would privately apologise for the comment by the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, that North Korea was an "outpost of tyranny." After that secret session, North Korea would consider returning to six-nation negotiations.
North Korea on Sunday denied it had ever called for one-on-one talks with the United States as a precondition for returning to six-party negotiations on its nuclear program.
A North Korea Foreign Ministry spokesman said Washington was "distorting truth" by suggesting that Pyongyang was insisting on direct one-on-one talks with the United States, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency.
"We have not demanded DPRK-United States talks separate from the six-party talks," KCNA quoted the spokesman as saying, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
Yonhap said the North Korean spokesman was contradicting a Japanese news report that said earlier this month that North Korea was demanding bilateral talks with the United States as a condition for returning to the six-party talks, which also involve Russia, China Japan and South Korea.
The spokesman said Washington should stop making "foolish remarks and behavior."
Participants in the six-party talks have urged North Korea to return immediately to the nuclear disarmament talks amid concerns that the communist state was preparing to test an atomic bomb. Talks have been stalled since June after Pyongyang refused to come to the negotiating table.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that North Korea has close to six nuclear weapons, the UN nuclear watchdog's chief said.
Asked by CNN if it was the IAEA's assessment that the North Koreans already have as many as six nuclear bombs, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said: "I think that would be close to our estimation."
"We knew they had the plutonium that could be converted into five or six North Korea weapons," he said.
"We know that they had the industrial infrastructure to weaponize this plutonium. We know -- we have read also that they have the delivery system."
According to US intelligence reports, Pyongyang is believed to have one or two crude nuclear bombs, and North Korea declared on February 10 that it had developed nuclear weapons to defend itself from the United States.
Recent media reports have said that North Korea has been preparing an underground nuclear test since March and might conduct one as early as June.
The New York Times reported Friday that US officials familiar with satellite and intelligence data believed the Stalinist state was building a reviewing stand and filling in a tunnel, signs of a potential underground nuclear test.
"I'm not sure they will gain anything by testing other than provoking every member of the international community and bring -- and play a brinkmanship policy, which nobody will benefit," ElBaradei told CNN. "I think everybody would lose if they were to do that."
"I do hope that the North Koreans would absolutely reconsider such a reckless, reckless step," he said.
ElBaradei has urged world leaders to call Pyongyang to dissuade it from conducting a nuclear test.
"I'm afraid that this will throw back the whole North Korean side into again yet another worse situation than what we had in the last few years," he said. "It is getting from bad to worse. And the earlier we intervene to engage the North Koreans, the earlier we try to find a comprehensive solution, the better for everybody."
A North Korean test would cause "a lot of insecurity fallout," ElBaradei said. "The impact on the whole East Asian and Japan, South Korea is tremendous."
"I think implicitly, to me at least, it involves crying for help, frankly," he said.
"North Korea, I think, has been seeking a dialogue with the United States, with the rest of the international community ... through their usual policy of nuclear blackmail, nuclear brinkmanship, to force the other parties to engage them."
Talks between the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the United States on the North's nuclear programs have been stalled since a third round of discussions last June.
The North has boycotted the six-party talks, citing "hostile" US policy. US Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, urged North Korea to return to the talks on Sunday.
The threat of a nuclear test "is the only card they have to play," Roberts told CNN. "I think basically that Kim Jong-Il believes this is his card to play to stay on the world stage to make demands."
CBS News.com WASHINGTON, May 6, 2005
(AP) Japan has information that North Korea may be preparing for a nuclear test, a Defense Agency official said Friday, less than a week after Pyongyang is believed to have tested a short-range missile off its eastern coast.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, refused to specify the information or its source.
An official at the Foreign Ministry said Japan was exchanging information on North Korea with "concerned countries," but did not confirm that there were signs of an imminent test.
The New York Times on Friday reported that the White House and Pentagon officials were examining satellite photographs that suggest North Korea is making rapid preparations for a nuclear test.
The report, which cited unidentified American and foreign officials, also said that the U.S. had extensively briefed Japan and South Korea on the preparations.
Japanese officials refused to confirm they had been briefed on the possible test by the Americans.
Japan, which is in range of Pyongyang's missiles, has been working with the United States, South Korea and China to draw North Korea back to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programs.
Pyongyang is boycotting the talks, and Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told reporters on Friday that Tokyo could push to bring the case to the U.N. Security Council if there is no progress in the negotiations.
Christian Science Monitor, Thu May 5, 4:00 AM ET
Sen. Hillary Clinton squared off against President Bush last week over how to deal with North Korea, throwing a political punch that's likely to be repeated again and again into the 2008 presidential campaign.
The junior senator of New York claimed Mr. Bush hasn't "been all that successful" in preventing North Korea's "continued attempts to obtain nuclear weapons." In fact, the world now finds itself in "grave consequences" due to Bush's "failure," said the former first lady of another president who tried (and failed) to curb Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
Her criticism is anything but a domestic dispute between Democrats and Republicans. North Korean officials are probably cupping their hands to their ears to find out which side will prevail, and may aim their actions at influencing this Beltway debate.
Many Democrats such as Senator Clinton see a more immediate - perhaps imminent - threat in North Korea's nuclear program and long-range missiles than Bush does. That's quite a role reversal from the pre- Iraq war debate. It may be they simply want to position themselves to the right on the type of security issues that had hurt them in the 2004 elections.
What they specifically want are direct talks with the North's truculent leader, Kim Jong Il, rather than continuing the six-nation talks that are going nowhere. Mrs. Clinton made that request last week in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The North's threat level does appear to be rising. Pyongyang declared in February that it had nuclear weapons. And the US has told foreign diplomats the North appears to be preparing an underground test, perhaps next month. South Korea claims the North Korean issue has reached a "critical point."
What the US can give away
Could direct talks quickly "solve" the crisis? The US could easily give the North what it wants - a security guarantee, money, and humanitarian aid - if the North can verifiably dismantle its nuclear program. Mr. Kim's ruthless regime might then be able to stay in power, but without nukes, without an economic collapse, and without opening his hermit nation to global influences.
But Bush doesn't buy into the direct approach. He saw how President Clinton's bilateral agreements failed due to the North's perfidy. So he's looped in China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia as witnesses and enforcers to any deal that might come out of the multiparty talks.
China as pivot
Bush's less urgent attitude toward the North relies to a large degree on China, which prefers the current "nuclear ambiguity" but would come down hard on the North if it had a bomb, knowing the US might attack. Chinese spies provide a canary-in-the-coal-mine alert for Bush. So far they're telling South Korea and others that North Korea is far from having a bomb.
Bush, in other words, wants simply to manage the problem for now, while some Democrats want to solve it immediately.
Those opposing views represent two very different readings on North Korea's intentions.
It's not clear to Pyongyang watchers if dictator Kim simply wants to continue to make dubious nuclear threats as a way to keep getting money from South Korea and others to help keep his regime in power, or whether he's really prepared to drop the nuclear program, open up his society to foreign investment, and risk domestic pressures that might bring his demise. His credibility with North Koreans could fall fast if they clearly saw how deprived their country is compared to others.
Testing Kim's vulnerability
If Kim is sincere in wanting his country to be non-nuclear and open to the world - and yet confident that he can stay in power - then the time is ripe to cut a deal. The six-party talks are a way to probe Kim about his intentions and test his vulnerability.
But since the last talks in September, North Korea has refused to attend. Instead, angry words continue to pass between the US and the North. The White House calls Kim "not a good person" while the North calls Bush a "philistine" and a "hooligan."
Until Kim is confident enough to make a decision to open his nation, the outside world will have to remain vigilant, probing, and patient until he's really ready to deal.
by David Kang (Co-author, "Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement
Strategies"), Wednesday, May 4, 2005; 3:00 PM
North Korea recently fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, reminding its neighbors once again of its desire to intimidate and the potential consequences of its nuclear weapons program. The U.S. denounced the action while expressing cautious hope that the six-party talks with China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, which have been stalled since June, would be resumed. This was the most recent in a series of similar tests conducted by North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong Il has openly expressed hostility toward the U.S. What is the significance of this most recent move? What is the status of North Korea's nuclear program?
David Kang , co-author of "Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies," and an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, was online to take your questions about North Korea.
A transcript follows.
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Seattle, Wash.: Should I consider investing in a bunker?
David Kang: No, no bunker! North Korea has no weapons capability that has been tested that can hit the U.S. -- they conducted a failed test in 1998, and since then have not tested an inter-continental ballistic missile. Beyond that, however, North Korea is fairly well deterred by the U.S. Condi Rice is absolutely right that we have the capability to deter the North -- they have been deterred since 1953 (52 years), and we don't see any indications that this is lessening.
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Pasadena, Calif.: Hello, David. Do you think Kim Jong Il is a "rational actor" when it comes to nuclear weapons? My concern is that he has been willing to allow about 2,000,000 of his own people to starve to death rather than make any changes which would threaten his power. Doesn't this suggest that a policy of "engagement" may not work?
David Kang: Kim Jong-il may be a brutal dictator, but he is also calculating and rational. Kim has also not launched a suicidal war, because as I mentioned just now, he has good reason to think that he would face determined opposition from the U.S. and South Korea. Dictators do not survive without being sophisticated politicians, and Kim Jong-il is no exception. Kim Jong-Il has kept power for ten years despite intelligence assessments that his leadership would not be able to survive his father's death in July 1994 through the end of the calendar year. Just because Kim is rational, however, does not mean he is not dangerous, however. The question of whether allowing starvation in his own country threatens his survival is a good one: all dictators want to survive. Kim has made the conclusion that disarming his nuclear program without security assurances from the U.S. is more risky than not. An engagement strategy now is focused on precisely that issue: how to change his calculation from one of losses to one where North Korea is better off without nuclear weapons than with them. To my mind, the strategy of carrots and sticks works better than just the sticks.
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Alexandria, Va.: Good Afternoon,
In your opinion, does the DPRK wish to become and remain a nuclear power or are they simply using their capabilities as a bargaining chip that they would be willing to give up if the economic and security guarantees were offered? Secondly, wouldn't an assumption of the DPRK's intention, forge the Bush administration's strategy of dealing with Kim? Do you believe that the U.S. government has already made such an assumption and that it is currently shaping U.S. policy?
David Kang: I believe North Korea would bargain them away for credible (and that's the important part) security assurances from the U.S. They certainly say so, and we have certainly not tried to test that. However, I think that the Bush administration thinks they won't ever give them up, and that drives the Bush administration's policy towards North Korea. The problem with the earlier agreement (the 1994 Agreed Framework) was that both sides didn't live up to their side of the bargain. In the U.S. we focus on North Korean transgressions (the 2nd uranium project), but unfortunately the U.S. didn't fulfill it's side, either. The reactors we agreed to build were years behind schedule, The U.S. has also not opened a liaison office in Pyongyang, and has not provided formal written assurances against the use of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review still targets North Korea with nuclear weapons. All were stipulated in the framework, which you can download at www.kedo.org. So I think we have to test them sincerely with an agreement before assuming it won't work.
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Arlington, Va.: Most discussions over the danger of current Korean Peninsula crisis assume that North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons will lead to the domino effect of nuclear proliferation in East Asia; in other words, Japan, South Korea and then Taiwan are very likely followers in pursuing nuclear weapons and thus a nuclear arms race is in the making. Taking into account domestic politics of each and every country, plus the international pressures, to what degree does this domino-effect scenario go too far?
How will you evaluate the performance of China as the third party in the negotiations between North Korea and United States? Put into perspective, do you think that the United States would get a higher score in dealing with negotiations between China and Taiwan?
David Kang: I agree that the conventional wisdom is that if North Korea goes nuclear, so will Japan, and then South Korea, etc. But I'm a little skeptical of this. First, the official U.S. government estimate is that North Korea *already* has 2-8 nuclear devices. Many of us are withholding judgment on that, but certainly many smart people think North Korea is already nuclear. If that's the case, then Japan hasn't reacted with a nuclear program of its own. More importantly, I think the real issue for Japan is not the simple fact of a nuclear North Korea, but whether Japan feels threatened enough to actually arm itself in that way. Despite the 100km missile that North Korea just launched (I'll answer a question on that next), this is not actually that threatening to Japan. That is, few analysts believe that North Korea has any intention to take on Japan. So Japan's calculus is probably more influenced by its relations with the U.S. and China than with what North Korea does. Also, don't forget that Japan (and South Korea) are NPT signatories. They can always back out, but there would be significant costs to doing so. Furthermore, a nuclear armed Japan may find itself less secure, because it is scaring its neighbors. That's one reason even North Korea hasn't tested a device yet and removed all doubt in our minds.
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Los Angeles, Calif.: Don't you think North Korea's intentions of launching a small missile to Sea of Japan are meant to show hostility more to Japan than to the U.S.?
I also personally believe security and emotional nationalism are unifying as well as segregating countries with the same cause, such as China and Korea's hatred towards Japan for their past historical WWII issues and Taiwan's problems of independence against China. China, North Korea's only ally, is economically and militarily more than ready for war along with North Korea's nuclear weapons. I predict as soon as China's economy starts falling and tensions start rising between countries in East Asia, there will be a major disastrous war if not another World War. Do you agree?
David Kang: North Korea has tested these short-range (100km, or 62 mile) missiles a number of times in the past few years. They don't even have the range to hit Japan, and are aimed mostly at South Korea. So it's not quite as destabilizing as we think it is. As to the issue of unresolved history, that's important, for sure. As to Japan and China getting in an actual military conflict in the future, that seems to be an unlikely scenario. The economic ties between the two states are deeper than they ever have been, and while they are trying to work out their political relationship, the economic relationship continues to thrive. But that's a short answer to an incredibly complex issue.
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Detroit, Mich.: Do you think military action by the U.S. is a feasible option? (If North Korea is not able to deploy a nuclear weapon at this time, should not the U.S. consider this before it can?) Given that the leader of North Korea is willing to allow many of his citizens to starve while he pursues nuclear ambitions, it does not seem that this is someone with whom the U.S. will be able to reach a negotiated settlement.
David Kang: A number of you have posted questions along this line. No, the military option is not feasible, and no North Korea is not going to attack the south. (You heard it here first!). The basic reason is that war on the peninsula would have disastrous consequences for both sides. The capitals of Seoul and Pyongyang are less than 150 miles apart: closer than New York and Baltimore. Seoul is 30 miles from the de-militarized zone that separates the North and the South (DMZ), and easily within reach of North Korea's artillery tubes and missiles. Former commander of U.S. Forces Korea General Gary Luck estimated that a war on the Korean peninsula would cost the U$1 trillion in economic damage and result in one million casualties, including 52,000 U.S. military casualties. The result has not been surprising: although tension is high, the balance of power has been stable. Both sides have moved cautiously and avoided major military mobilizations that could spiral out of control. Thus, although we can deter the North, nobody wants to find out how the North would react if we struck first, or if we engaged in a selective strike. The risks are too great for either side to take. As for North Korea, even though they can do a lot of damage, ultimately they would lose the war, and North Korea would cease to exist. This is why they have been very cautious about ramping up tensions beyond the rhetorical level.
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Cabin John, Md.: I just finished reading Thomas X. Hammes' book "The Sling and The Stone" and his assessment of our involvement one the Korean Peninsula can pretty well be summed up as "irrelevant". The 37,000 troops we have there aren't doing much to ensure the security of our South Korean allies, though it is certainly doing much to antagonize both South Korean domestic politics and North Korean policy.
Seeing as South Korea has outspent North Korea militarily by orders of magnitude for the last two decades, doesn't it make sense that we should seriously rethink our policy there and consider one that favors South Korean military self-reliance and sovereignty?
David Kang: You have a good point. There is a strand of analysts who argue that the U.S. presence is not necessary and actually harms our relations with our neighbors. Currently the US-ROK alliance is in real transition, precisely because the alliance was forged during the Cold War as a front-line stance against the Soviets, as well as North Korea. Now that South Korea can basically deter the North by itself, the US isn't as central to the defense of South Korea as it used to be. So it's not surprising that some rethinking or rebalancing of the troops is going on in both Seoul and Washington. However, I would add that the U.S. gains a lot by having forward deployments. Certainly if (a big if), we get involved in a potential Taiwan conflict, US troops in the region get there more quickly than if we have to airlift them from Guam, for example. Also, if we remove our troops from South Korea, U.S. deployments in Japan will come under increasing scrutiny. That may be fine, but the spillover of a withdrawal would mark a major adjustment of U.S. policy in the entire Asian region. We may decide to do that, but we haven't yet.
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Munich, Germany: I was wondering if the recent problems between China and Japan had more to do with North Korea's nuclear aspirations than with Japan's colonial past.
If North Korea continues to increase its nuclear arsenal, wouldn't Japan feel compelled to invest in a nuclear arsenal as a counterbalance or deterrent? This potential nuclear build-up in China's backyard would certainly increase the tension in the neighborhood, and perhaps it already has.
David Kang: I think I mentioned a little while ago about why Japan will probably not go nuclear, so I won't repeat that here. But since China-Japan relations are so important, I'll take a minute to discuss those. You have a number of issues going on between China and Japan. Part is certainly unresolved historical issues. But it's important to note that they only rise to the surface occasionally. This is because both Japanese and Chinese political leaders are playing to their domestic constituencies, as well. Nationalism in both countries is an "easy win," and both leaders face domestic opposition to a number of their other economic and diplomatic policies. In Japan, Koizumi is not the big reformer people hoped he would be, and so playing to nationalists about "our islands" is a good way of gaining popularity. In China, the CCP's only claim to legitimacy is either economic growth or nationalism, so they play to that as well. But both sides are also cautious about letting the nationalism get out of hand, because it could so easily backfire on both leaderships.
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Washington, D.C.: Why should the West help starving North Koreans if that just allows Kim Jong Il to spend his country's resources on nuclear weapons? I think hungry people would lead to a revolt.
David Kang: There are two issues here. The first is whether the international community has an ethical obligation to help the starving citizens in North Korea -- after all, they are the direct victims of Kim Jong-IL's regime. There is suspicion that the North diverts humanitarian aid to its military, but U.N. and World Food Program assessments found that actually most of it was actually going to its intended recipients. The second question is whether coercion or engagement will be more likely to lead to regime change. I tend to think that encouraging capitalism in North Korea is the most likely way to change that country. Capitalism is a powerful force, and when it is unleashed, it is very difficult to turn it back. This will also transform the mindset of all North Korean citizens, not just the leadership. Give North Koreans a taste of economic freedoms and outside ideas and the next generation will view their own leadership and the outside world in different terms. Engagement is also gradual, and allows us to bring North Korea slowly back into the world, to acclimatize the North over the years, and that can ultimately be more smooth than a shock or collapse. A decade ago, North Korea was the most closed society in the world. Since then North Korea has abandoned the centrally planned economy and now allows supply and demand to set prices. In my opinion, the U.S. should encourage these trends, not retard them.
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Silver Spring, Md.: Are there any more real hardliners waiting in the wings after/if Kim Jong-il goes away? Is he surrounded by fellow zealots?
David Kang: Good question. We really have no idea. One thing people often overlook when advocating the overthrow of Kim is that whoever replaces him may be harder to deal with. At least Kim has fairly firm control over the country, if a hardline military figure replaces him, the situation could even get worse. Unfortunately, we have such poor information about the inner workings of the regime in Pyongyang that rumor and speculation rule the day. There is currently lots of speculation among analysts about whether one of Kim Jong-il's sons might be in line to follow him, but this is just guessing.
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Anonymous: A few years ago there was a spate of stories about South Korean public resentment of U.S. troops (and their occasional bad behavior). Haven't heard anything in a long time now.
Is it just crowded out by other news? Or has South Korean public opinion concluded that if they keep pushing for a withdrawal of U.S. forces, they may get it (and, possibly, regret it later)?
David Kang: South Korean public sentiment about the U.S. is fairly divided. The large protests have subsided, but opinion polls still show that many South Koreans views the U.S. as the one most likely to start a war on the peninsula, not North Korea. On the other hand, there is increasing recognition that the US is a fairly stable ally in the region, especially given the difficulties the states themselves have in their own relations. Certainly the South Korean leadership has been emphasizing the strength of U.S.-ROK ties. For example, South Korea has the 3rd largest contingent of troops in Iraq (3,000), after the U.S. and the U.K.
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London, United Kingdom: In your opinion, why is the U.S. more concerned at this time with Iran, when North Korea has proved itself to be more of a nuclear threat? They seem more willing to negotiate and less inclined to use force against the North Koreans, even though they have said outright that they possess nuclear weapons and left the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. There has been no tangible evidence that Iran has nuclear weapons and it has let United Nations inspectors in under its obligations in the NPT.
David Kang: I think there's a number of things going on. The range of options for U.S. policy towards North Korea is very limited. As I wrote above, war and real hardline measures are simply too risky. Alternatively, the Bush administration has said it will not negotiate or pursue economic engagement with the North. That leaves very little room in the middle -- so we see lots of tough rhetoric but not real options after that. I wouldn't characterize the US as willing to negotiate with the North, rather I'd say they're willing to negotiate if the terms are right, and the U.S. has set a pretty high hurdle for engaging in real negotiations (North Korea needs to disarm first). With Iran, the U.S. for now is willing to let the process play itself out, although there are a number of analysts who believe that the Middle East is so important that the U.S. has to get involved in Iran somehow.
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USA: It is so obvious: North Korea wants food and security guarantees, not war and destruction. They're all bark, no bite. But after Iraq they have discovered that having the bomb is a hell of a lot better then not having the bomb. So what I am getting at here is this: in the Bush administration's zeal to disarm Saddam of weapons he never had, has the White House indirectly spurred North Korea to arm itself?
David Kang: That's a genuine concern. Given the Iraq example, it's hard to see why the North would trust the U.S. not to invade if it disarmed. We're at a stalemate with the North: we say disarm first, then we'll discuss rapprochement; the North says why not have rapprochement first, then we'll disarm. So the US is in the position of hoping that pressure works, even though as I mentioned earlier, we don't have a lot of options for pressure.
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David Kang: Thanks everybody for participating in this, I enjoyed it very much. My own conclusion is that little progress is envisioned in solving the nuclear issue, due to the fact that America's attention is almost entirely focused on the Iraq situation at the present time. And even if the US does pay sustained attention to the North Korea issue, their mutual distrust is so deep that the prospect of either side giving an inch is remote at best. In other words, the issue has not got out of the starting gate, and the current stalemate is likely to continue in the future, for two main reasons. First, there is very little room to pressure North Korea. War, and even sanctions, are likely to find little support in the U.S. or the region. Second, North Korea has generally responded to pressure with more pressure. Pressure has not worked in the past, and it appears unlikely to work in the future.
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Editor's Note: If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions for future guests, e-mail them to [email protected]
By Martin Nesirky, Tue May 3, 9:20 AM ET (Additional reporting by Seo Hee-seung and Kim Yoo-chul)
SEOUL (Reuters) - If North Korea is one of the world's most impoverished countries, then those living in cities in the isolated communist state are close to the bottom of the food chain.
Trapped between vicious inflation and uncertain paydays, the 60 percent of North Korea's 22.5 million people that aid workers estimate live in urban settings are a new underclass in a country where the daily food ration is equal to about two bowls of rice.
"New vulnerable groups are emerging because of economic changes," wrote Kathi Zellweger of the Catholic charity Caritas in a report outlining a $2.5 million appeal.
The outside perception might be that those groups most at risk were largely in the countryside. The reverse is true; urban poverty is a growing concern for aid workers. Yet despite the trend, few believe the poverty gap will cause social unrest.
Caritas says North Koreans in general are among the most marginalized people in the world because of the closed nature of their communist system. Stop-start economic reforms have pushed many further to the fringes, notably in cities.
"The gap between rich and poor is widening," Zellweger said. "There is little opportunity for such dense and urbanized populations to directly engage in food production."
Of course, poverty is a relative term in a country with a per capita income of $818 in 2003. That compared with $14,162 last year in unabashedly capitalist South Korea, Asia's third-largest economy and the North's neighbor below the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone frontier that bisects the peninsula.
"Most urban residents are constantly living on the edge," said Richard Ragan of the World Food Program, which is studying the problem to work out how best to help further.
"They don't eat enough, and their diet is very narrow; typically cereal -- rice or maize -- and vegetable soup and kimchi. Very little protein. Very little fruit."
Kimchi is a Korean dish usually made from cabbage and radish.
Those most vulnerable in North Korea spend 70-80 percent of their meager wages on food, Ragan said in an e-mail interview. Runaway inflation means little is left for non-food items. Electricity is short. Homes are cold in winter.
RESOURCEFUL BUT DESPERATE
World Food Program assessments consistently show urban residents are at a disadvantage compared with those on the land, particularly cooperative farm families who get more than twice as much food because they are allowed to keep some of their crops.
Ever resourceful and often desperate, many North Koreans trade goods and gather wild foods such as grasses and acorns. But city dwellers have to forage further, almost always on foot, and compete with other city residents for the available flora.
Some city residents have plots of land. Many do not and have to rely on the Public Distribution System, which is the main source of staple food for 70 percent of the people but has all but collapsed as a reliable conduit because of crop shortfalls.
Others are getting an unexpected flavor of country life because they are being redeployed from idle factories to help on farms where fuel shortages mean most work is not mechanized.
Most have to trek to and from their city homes, and they do not necessarily benefit from the surplus crop handouts, which are a reform spin-off in the countryside. There is little upside from market reforms for average people in the cities.
At the other end of the scale, those in the political and military elite with access to hard currency have little trouble shopping at high-price markets and dining in new restaurants in Pyongyang, visitors to the North Korean capital say.
"The time of shared hardships is long gone," said the Brussels-based International Crisis Group in a report on the North's reforms. "North Koreans doing best now are the ones who are quickest to adapt to the new system, but most people inside and outside the bureaucracy are struggling to keep up."
Those struggling the most include the old, nursing mothers and children. Pyongyang is a showcase, although not immune to hardship. Regional cities, notably in the East, fare worse.
"The further you get from Pyongyang, the worse the poverty becomes," said Dong Yong-seung, head of the North Korea team at the Samsung Economic Research Institute.
An influx of South Korean video tapes and recorders, for example, has exposed many North Koreans to life outside their bubble. Word is also traveling faster these days about the positive market-reform effect on the elite. But if the rest of the people resent it, they have yet to show it.
Zellweger said most people were too busy figuring out how to find food or medicine to consider protests against the system.
"I don't know if there's much energy left to think about much else," she said by telephone from Hong Kong.
"It is also very hard to say when they reach the bottom line; how much belt-tightening they could do. They would say to us, 'We are used to a tough life. We can cope with this'."
WASHINGTON (AFP) - North Korea apparently fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, the US government said, calling on its allies to express concern to the nuclear-armed Stalinist country.
North Korea did not report any test. But Japanese and South Korean officials, quoted by media in their countries, confirmed they had been told of the event by the United States.
North Korea rattled its neighbours in 1998 by test-firing a Taepodong-1 long range missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. It has carried out other tests of short range missiles since then.
The latest North Korean action could heighten concerns about its intentions as it continues to boycott six-nation talks on its nuclear arms program.
Japanese broadcaster NHK said the missile was fired from the east coast of North Korea and flew about 100 kilometers (62 miles) until it fell into the sea. The United States informed Japan and South Korea after monitoring the launch of the missile, reports said.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card confirmed that North Korea had staged the missile test.
"We're not surprised by this. The North Koreans have tested their missiles before. They've had some failures," Card told CNN television.
The US State Department added: "It appears that North Korea on May 1 conducted a launch of a short-range missile in the Sea of Japan. We are continuing to look into this.
"We are consulting closely with governments in the region. We have long been concerned about North Korea's missile program and activities, and urge North Korea to continue its moratorium on ballistic missile tests."
The United States has backed international talks on North Korea's nuclear program. But the talks -- involving North and South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan -- have been stalled since last year.
"We have to work together with our allies around the world -- especially the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Russians and the Chinese -- to demonstrate that North Korea's actions are inappropriate," Card said.
"We don't want them to have any nuclear weapons, we don't want the Korean peninsula to have any nuclear weapons on it."
The director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency said last week that North Korea is believed capable of arming a long-range missile with a nuclear warhead and could deploy a two-stage intercontinental missile that could hit US territory.
DIA director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby made his remarks in testimony Thursday before the Senate Armed Services committee. He told lawmakers the North Korean weapons could reach "certainly Alaska and Hawaii, and I believe a portion of the northwest" United States.
Officials have since played down Jacoby's remarks, while not denying them.
"We don't know that he can, but there is increasing evidence of capability," Card said.
"We know that North Korea for a long time has been building rockets, variants of the Scud. And we don't think that they have had much success in their testing of all of these rockets, multistage rockets."
Japan's Jiji Press news agency said the missile was fired at about 8:00 am (2300 GMT Saturday). According to Kyodo News, Japan was informed of the test by the US military and cabinet members were told to prepare for an emergency.
"I think they (North Koreans) are looking to kind of be bullies in the world and they're causing others to stand up and take notice, but they're not very constructive leaders," Card told Fox News television.
Card renewed US condemnation of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. "He's someone that we don't have great confidence in terms of keeping his word."
North Korea has stridently rejected calls to return to the negotiating table. A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Saturday that Pyongyang "does not expect any solution to the nuclear issue or any progress in the DPRK-US relations during his ( President George W. Bush's) term."
The statement came after Bush Thursday described Kim Jong-Il as "a dangerous person" and said Washington was developing a "comprehensive strategy" to deal with North Korea, including work on a missile defense system.
The US president's remarks followed a series of bellicose statements by North Korea about its nuclear weapons amid warnings that Pyongyang was rapidly improving its capabilities.
The North's short-range missile launches have been more routine, but have often been timed to send signals. In March 2003, it lobbed two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan coinciding with the inauguration of South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun.
The North Korean test came one day before the opening of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference in New York. Some 190 nations are expected to attend the conference.
Since 1968, some 188 nations have signed the treaty, which bars the transfer of nuclear weapons and arms technology.