Marching to Kim's Tune
By Nayan Chanda/HONG KONG
Far East Economic Review
Issue cover-dated November 2, 2000The world's superpower, the United States, was until recently working toward Kim Jong Il's demise; now it seems to be guaranteeing his survival. Not a bad outcome for a communist dictator.
THEY TOASTED EACH OTHER, they smiled, she danced. As Madeleine Albright and Kim Jong Il sat together at a Pyongyang gala honouring 55 years of communist rule, North Korea--the great beast that not too long ago threatened to obliterate Seoul and blasted a missile across Japan--appeared to have been tamed.
But who has tamed whom? The United States has clearly abandoned its unstated goal of bringing about the collapse of North Korea. With talk of a visit by the world's other great leader--President Bill Clinton--North Korea can now claim to have steered the actions of the world's most powerful nation in war and peace. Kim might be forgiven for feeling a little pleased.
By contrast, the U.S. and its allies have yet to retake the initiative. While the objective of Washington's diplomacy may be to make Northeast Asia a tangibly safer place, that goal is distant and uncertain. And while Albright's October 23-25 visit produced hope that North Korea may be on the way toward shelving its missile programme, Pyongyang's exchanges with both Seoul and Washington have been chiefly symbolic, and of significantly greater value to Kim than to his interlocutors.
"An Albright visit to the North at a time when they are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War is hugely validating and legitimating to the North," says Jonathan Pollack, of the Strategic Research Department at Newport's Naval War College. But he adds: "It's not at all clear what the U.S. has got on its end of the bargain."
What is clear, though, is that North Korea is the driving force behind the recent diplomacy. Albright's trip followed that of North Korea's second most powerful official, Vice-Marshal Jo Myong Rok, to Washington earlier in October. That in turn came just as signs were starting to appear that the new rapprochement between the two Koreas was starting to slow. "The North Koreans woke up this fall and said 'Oh my God, Kim Dae Jung is gone in two years and Clinton is gone in three months,'" says Robert Manning, Asia programme director at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations. "That's why they rushed this thing through."
What may be propelling North Korea's haste is concern at the country's protracted food crisis and the dangers that this is posing to the long-term survivability of Kim's regime.
Washington-based analysts believe there is a realization in Pyongyang that outside help, at least in the form of trade and investment, will be needed if basic prosperity is to be achieved and maintained.
But analysts also point to signs that North Korea is concerned about its national security. In a dinner toast during his Washington trip, Vice-Marshal Jo stated that respect for sovereignty was key to any improvement in relations. A former Clinton official says the U.S. has long made clear it has no designs on North Korea's sovereignty, security or territorial integrity. "Perhaps the North has something more specific in mind, or perhaps this is a moment when they can more easily 'hear' what we've been saying," he says.
Still, important changes are now happening in Washington's Korea policy too. Until recently a peaceful collapse, or "soft-landing," of the North Korean regime was viewed as desirable. But a senior official who accompanied Albright told the media this view has now changed to acceptance that North Korea is not going away. For some this policy shift is cause for additional anxiety. There is a risk, argues Pollack of the Naval College, that the U.S. may get sucked into "paying a continuing price in underwriting this regime."
SIGNS OF DANGER
But it's one thing to accept the durability of the regime and another to allow it the power to do mischief. North Korea continues to represent a serious potential threat.Its ability to make nuclear weapons was curtailed in 1994 under an agreement whereby an international consortium agreed to provide fuel oil and two replacement reactors, at a cost of over $4 billion, in exchange for the closure of facilities that were capable of making weapons-grade fuel. But the United States wouldn't say publicly whether weapons-grade material was stockpiled before the reactors were shut down.
"We know that the North Koreans have nuclear material for making one-and-a-half weapons, and the amount of spent fuel they have can be turned into six to 10 bombs," says Joseph Nye, a former senior Pentagon official. In 1992, he says, the United States agreed that the International Atomic Energy Agency should hold off on seeking to account for the spent fuel as "to rub their noses in an IAEA inspection then would have served no purpose." However, the time is fast approaching when North Korea will be required to account for all nuclear material, in accordance with the terms of the replacement reactor deal.
Then there's the missile programme and the question of missile exports. Kim told Albright there would be no more testing of long-range missiles, but the terms of any formal agreement have yet to be worked out, and even then verifiable compliance may be difficult. Some analysts believe North Korea is unlikely to accept limitations that would cap the programme, as that would deprive it of a vital bargaining chip. Others are yet more sceptical.
"Even if we get rid of the missiles, we still have the most heavily armed border on the planet, 12,000 artillery tubes, chemical weapons and 600,000 troops within 100 kilometres of the Demilitarized Zone," says Manning of the Council on Foreign Relations. "That's the core issue of the confrontation."
Amid such uncertainty there remains perhaps the most unsettling issue of all: Whether Pyongyang's whirlwind romance of Seoul and Washington reflects a will to improve the lives of its 22 million people. Sadly, both U.S. officials and non-governmental organizations say they are hard-pressed to find any indication inside North Korea of a will to reform the country's collapsed economic system, let alone signs of any political opening.
In fact, Kim appears to be using his opening to the world to reinforce the legitimacy of his regime. There have been concerns for some time that humanitarian aid is being directed to the army and party, instead of to those who are most in need. Now, there's concern that the domestic propaganda value of having foreign dignitaries paying homage to Kim's late father, Kim Il Sung, is being used to further bolster a dictatorial regime.
U.S. officials are preoccupied for now with more immediate affairs. Significantly, they also dispute the notion that the current flowering of U.S.-North Korea diplomacy is a sudden development.
As one State Department official puts it: "Because the talks we have been having with the North Koreans have been sort of below the radarscope of the mass media, people tend to look at what's going on now as a bolt from the blue." In fact, the U.S. has held numerous meetings with North Korea since May last year, when President Clinton's special adviser on North Korea, William Perry, visited Pyongyang.
The visit to Washington this past month by Vice Marshal Jo is part of that 18-month-old process. A senior U.S. official said before the Albright trip that there was reason to believe that "North Korea may be prepared to take some very serious steps." Her trip then was chiefly to assess what, in fact, could be read into Pyongyang's intentions, and whether it would be meaningful for the president of the United States to travel to North Korea.
Thus far, easier matters have been undertaken. One such step is the likely opening of liaison offices in Washington and Pyongyang.
The move was first proposed and agreed to in 1994 after the Agreed Framework on the North's nuclear reactors was signed. But according to a U.S. official it hasn't been implemented because, among other reasons, North Korea's military opposes allowing American diplomats to make regular crossings of the Demilitarized Zone. However, since the summit in June this year between Kim Jong Il and South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung the border has been increasingly open for visits. Indeed, the U.S. army is working to de-mine the border in preparation for the opening of a North-South rail link.
TERRORISM CONCERNS
Other measures? Prior to Albright's visit officials said a decision on removing North Korea from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism was likely. The North Koreans took an important step toward this goal in early October by agreeing, in a joint statement with the United States, to support and encourage international efforts to combat terrorism.A key remaining obstacle is North Korea's refusal to expel three Japanese Red Army members involved in the 1970 hijacking of a Japanese airliner. One course is for a third country to take them. But Peter Brookes, a Republican staffer in the U.S. House of Representatives, warns that this won't satisfy concerns about Pyongyang's support for terrorism. "It won't answer the mail," he says.
It's apparent, though, that the U.S. has abandoned an unstated goal of bringing about a collapse of North Korea through multiple pressures. North Korea is meanwhile seeking what amounts to a U.S. guarantee of its survival. Success will take time. But now, more than ever, Pyongyang would do well to recognize that it needs to demonstrate more than just symbolic openness. The real test of this could be its continuing engagement with the South.