Written Statement
North Korea's Negotiating Behavior
Submitted to the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
May 23, 2001
by
Chuck Downs
Former Senior Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor to the House Policy Committee, 1998-2000
Former Deputy Director, ISA/East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Department of Defense, 1991-1998
Author, Over the Line North Korea's Negotiating Strategy
(American Enterprise Press, Washington, D. C., 1999)

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your invitation to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today to discuss our nation's policy towards North Korea. Although I have, in the past, served at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, I am not here to speak on behalf of the administration, the Department of Defense, or the House of Representatives. As you mentioned, I have written a book about North Korea's negotiating behavior that tracks their negotiating strategy over the five decades. I think there are very clear patterns that emerge from this study that can inform our discussions of how to proceed with North Korea, and I appreciate the opportunity to share some of my conclusions with the Committee.

First, we need to recognize how crucial the process of negotiation is to the North Korean regime. Few nations put such strong emphasis on the importance of negotiation as a principal instrument of foreign policy. When other nations have done so, it has often been because they entered negotiations from a position of strength. The North Korean regime, however, pursues negotiation because of its weakness. Simply put, negotiation is North Korea's means of obtaining benefits its system cannot provide. It stands to reason that North Korea's leaders have more intimate familiarity with the failures of their own system than we do. They are unenviably aware of the conditions Dr. Vollertsen has described to us today. We talk of the regime's impending collapse, but they have been burdened with a failing system for fifty years.

Their behavior at the negotiating table reveals their fears about their system. The negotiating record shows that the North Korean regime has been overwhelmingly preoccupied with three principal concerns the regime's tenuous hold on its people's loyalty, the dismal performance of its disastrous national economic policy, and the need to enhance the regime's survival by maintaining military capabilities that can threaten foreign rivals. Coming to the negotiating table has always been a means for addressing these severe systemic problems that plague the regime. North Korea therefore manages negotiations to accomplish 3 objectives (1) to give esteem and power to the regime thereby strengthening its oppressive control over its people; (2) to obtain economic benefits that the regime's Socialist economy is unable to produce; and (3) to buy time and obtain resources for the development of threatening military capabilities. The North's military capabilities can then be used as a means of internal control and international extortion.

Because North Korea has little to bring to the negotiating table, it adopts negotiating stances that perpetually increase its leverage for subsequent negotiations. In How Nations Negotiate, Dr. Fred Ikle observed negotiations are not merely a question of reaching an agreement or not reaching an agreement. There are always at least three options at play, and one of the most important is developing the prospects for future bargaining. This is where North Korea excels. Even when no agreement is reached at the negotiating table, North Korea generally ends up in a stronger position than when it started the negotiations. In fact, it quite often extracts benefits from the other side merely for participating in the negotiation itself.

Despite the prevalent characterizations of "lunacy" in its negotiating style, North Korea has been extraordinarily consistent in how it accomplishes its objectives. It has repeatedly initiated negotiation by appearing to be open to fundamental changes in its policies, used its willingness to participate in talks to demand pre-conditions, benefits and concessions, and terminated discussions when it has gained maximum advantage, blaming the lack of agreement on the other side of the table. It manages negotiations so that its adversaries experience stages of optimism, disillusionment, and disappointment. Adversaries' disappointment, in turn, paves the way for North Korea to create an illusion of fresh cooperation in the initial stage of the next negotiation. It's all about increasing North Korea's leverage in the next round of talks.

It is worth recalling that not long ago, the United States and South Korea had to cajole North Korea to attend talks on missile proliferation by offering to give North Korea humanitarian aid-primarily food. Now, North Korea complains that the new Administration is dragging its feet on proceeding with such talks. Little, if anything, has changed in North Korea's position or its resistance to restraints on missile proliferation.

It certainly is no less committed to driving a hard bargain; but it knows that complaining about some perceived slight enhances its leverage by increasing pressure on the Bush administration.

Almost anything can be used to enhance leverage. A case in point is the anticipated visit of Kim Jong Il to South Korea in reciprocity for Kim Dae Jung's courageous visit to Pyongyang last year. The people of South Korea fervently hope to see it happen, and the outpouring of emotion if the visit goes well will be unparalleled. Knowing this, the North Korean regime delays and hedges regarding the proposed visit in order to increase leverage in its dealings with South Korea. It is on again, off again, depending on how Pyongyang wishes to express pleasure or displeasure with South Korea.

Meetings between North and South Korea have diminished since Vice-Marshal Cho Myung-rok visited Washington last October. At that time, North Korea shifted its attention from Seoul to Washington. Nevertheless, Pyongyang recently found a way to put additional pressure on Seoul and Washington. It said that North-South dialogue would be "suspended" until after the Bush administration completed its review of North Korea policy. It is common for analysts of North Korea to discuss the gestures that North Korea made during the past year as though they indicated fundamental changes in North Korea's character. The hospitality, even charm, of Kim Jong-Il has been viewed as evidence that North Korea wishes to change its offensive behavior. Kim Jong-Il's facility in handling policy discussions, the joint North-South appearance at the Olympics, the exchange of visits between Pyongyang and Washington, and the January visit of Kim Jong Il to Shanghai have all been applauded. Pictures of smiling faces from Pyongyang accompany news of increased diplomatic ties between North Korea and Italy, Australia, the Philippines, Canada, Germany, Belgium, the UK, Netherlands, Spain, New Zealand, and Turkey. Many hope these developments signal a reversal of years of tension on the Korean peninsula.

At the same time, North Korea's gestures could be inspired by the opposite purpose-to strengthen the regime, increase its oppressive control over its own people, and purchase time and resources for the North's expanding military machine. Although there is certainly a different tone in the regime's approach to other nations, there has not been a commensurate change in North Korea's internal or international policies or actions.

Unfortunately, North Korea's management of similar periods of "opening" in the past suggest that North Korea can be expected to reverse its approach whenever it concludes it has gained the maximum benefit for its show of charm. There were two earlier promising periods surrounding agreements in which North Korea was believed to be "opening up" toward the outside world the South-North Communique of July 4, 1972 and the agreements signed in 1992, one on denuclearization and another called the basic agreement on North-South relations.

The 1972 communique produced agreement on principles that were largely identical to the agreement reached a year ago. In the euphoric words of the 1972 agreement, "unification shall be achieved through independent efforts without being subject to external imposition or interference" and "through peaceful means, and not through the use of force against each other." A "South-North Coordinating Committee" (SNCC) was established ostensibly to carry out the objectives of the agreements. At Kim Il-Sung's insistence, however, the implementation terms required subsequent agreement by both parties. Thus, North Korea retained an ability to block the enforcement of agreements it had already agreed to.

In the thirteen months following the 1972 communique, the two Koreas convened six North-South Coordinating Committee meetings, seven Red Cross plenary meetings, and numerous related subgroup meetings. Despite the electrifying momentum behind the communique and the succeeding months of contact, however, all the talks failed when the North tired of the process and stopped attending meetings.

Another period of euphoria followed the important North-South documents signed in 1992. The 1992 agreements were considerably more detailed than any that have been signed between the Koreas before or since. In them, the North and South agreed not to "test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons" and to "use nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes." Both sides agreed they would "not possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities," and would verify denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through mutual inspections. This formal, signed document stated that South and North Korea would "establish and operate a South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission within one month."

Like the implementing arrangements of the 1972 communique, however, the implementing arrangements for the 1992 agreements required subsequent mutual agreement and therefore could be blocked by North Korea. The promising 1992 accords also came to naught.

Advocates of a conciliatory approach to North Korea suggest that times have changed, and North Korea's economic worries require North Korea to take a more accommodating approach to the outside world. The logic behind the Clinton administration's approach to North Korea rested on a pragmatic belief that the pressure from economic and political collapse would naturally bring about change in North Korea. One of the administration's leading experts on Korean issues, Ambassador Charles Kartman, observed in 1997, "dire prospects are pressing the North Korean leadership to review its traditional isolation, a development we, the ROK, and others want to encourage." Madeleine Albright, on her first visit to Korea as secretary of state, said the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula depended "basically on how much the North Koreans are hurting," and concluded, "North Korea has begun to move, ever so slowly, in the direction of greater contact and openness with the outside world." While Clinton administration officials claimed North Korea's difficulties would bring about reform, however, they supported efforts to ameliorate the difficulties that presumably spurred the impulse to reform. They contributed food and economic assistance to North Korea that made the Stalinist country the largest recipient of American aid to Asia. U.S. aid to North Korea went from zero before the Clinton administration to more than $270 million annually, a total of almost $1 billion over President Clinton's two terms.

This huge amount of aid was meant as a humanitarian gesture that would lure North Korea out of isolation, but when the regime controls the means of distribution, any benefit received from the outside can actually enhance the regime's oppressive control. The regime itself determines that food supplies, health services, and commercial investments are provided to those who are loyal and withheld from those who are not. On September 29, 1998, the charitable organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF--Doctors Without Borders) withdrew its aid workers from North Korea because it observed the regime "feeding children from families loyal to the regime while neglecting others." As the defector, former General Secretary of the Korean Worker Party Hwang Jang Yeop explained, "North Korea controls the entire country and people with food distribution. In other words, food distribution is a means of control." External assistance also permits the regime to redirect its people's labor and resources from addressing desperate economic problems to strengthening military capabilities.

While American policymakers believe collapse is inevitable, the policy of intervening to cushion collapse may yet prove it is not. The danger in providing aid to North Korea is that the United States will bear responsibility for prolonging the regime's survival. In economic, political, security, and moral terms, shouldering the burden of helping the North Korean regime survive is a dubious objective for American foreign policy.

North Korea, not surprisingly, does not subscribe to the notion that its collapse is inevitable. As deplorable as it may seem, North Korea's national objective is not to ensure its people's survival; it is to ensure the regime's survival. In this regard, weaponry is a more important investment than agriculture. Just as the North Korean regime can subvert the world's humanitarian impulses to reinforce its oppressive domestic policies, it can also take advantage of the world's confidence in security arrangements to gain time and resources to develop new military technology.

The Clinton Administration signed, on October 21, 1994, an informal bilateral arrangement called the Agreed Framework. It promised to deliver to North Korea light water reactors - nuclear electric generating plants -- in exchange for a freeze on construction of North Korea's nuclear energy facilities.

One of the terms of the 1994 agreement called for the United States and North Korea to "work together to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime." In spite of the North's commitment, after  1994, North Korea developed an extensive network for the proliferation of its missile technology.

It was able to sell missile technology to Pakistan, Libya and Iran. Pakistan put the North Korean technology to use in its launch of the Ghauri missile, a No-dong derivative, on April 6, 1998. Security analysts believe  that test launch tipped the scales in India's decision to test nuclear weapons a month later. Iran used the North Korean technology in its launch of a Shahab-3 missile, a Taepo-dong derivative, on July 21, 1998. The Shahab 3 has a range of 1,300 kilometers, allowing it to "strike all of Israel, all of Saudi Arabia, most of Turkey, and a tip of Russia...[and] put at risk all US forces in the region." After the tests, Iran and Pakistan returned important test data to North Korea that was useful in North Korea's own missile program.

The degree to which this technical exchange enhanced North Korea's capabilities was revealed at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the North Korean Workers Party. On August 31, North Korea launched a three-stage Taepo-dong 1 missile 1,380 kilometers across Japan and into the Pacific Ocean.

The missile launch was an undeniably threatening act. It revealed with absolute clarity that North Korea had attained a new capability to threaten every part of the territory of two American allies - Japan and South Korea - as well as the nearly 100,000 American troops stationed there. Asia's fragile confidence in America's ability to ensure security, which keeps South Korea from developing long-range missiles and Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea from developing nuclear capabilities, was called into question. The North Korean regime had apparently decided that lulling the West into a false sense of security was no longer as advantageous as threatening it.

Contrary to the Clinton administration's view that the agreed framework heralded a more accommodating North Korean approach to the outside world, North Korea actually undertook to develop a more threatening military posture after signing the agreed framework. North Korea's nuclear program did not stop, according to testimony the Director of Defense Intelligence gave before Congress in 1998. In fact, by the time of the Perry report in 1999, the Clinton administration could no longer claim that the "verifiable freeze" Under Secretary Slocombe had trumpeted in 1994 was still in effect.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives commissioned a special study of how North Korea's behavior had changed in the years following the Agreed Framework. That report concluded "the threat from North Korea has advanced considerably over the past five years, particularly with the enhancement of North Korea's missile capabilities." These findings were corroborated by CIA Director George J. Tenet when he told a Senate hearing on February 7, 2001, "the North Korean military appears for now to have halted its near-decade-long slide in military capabilities and is expanding its short- and medium-range missile arsenal."

In the context of a policy that has, at best, produced mixed results, it is highly valuable for the new administration to conduct a thorough and wide-ranging policy review. The current hiatus in direct negotiations between North Korea and the United States is not merely an opportunity for the Bush administration to decide what course it will pursue as it sorts out these and other issues surrounding American policy toward North Korea. It is also an opportunity to test North Korea's commitment to fulfill the promise contained in the rhetoric of cooperation that has flourished in the year since the summit between Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Il. Furthermore, it is an opportunity to test the theory that guided so much of the Clinton administration's approach. If North Korea recognizes that it must change in order to survive, that effort should continue even without direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

During this time, Pyongyang has been sending signals that it controls the pace and substance of negotiations. It has subtly emphasized that it can turn the heat higher or lower as it sees fit. In a move that appeared generous, but was actually coercive, Pyongyang said it would continue its informal commitment not to test missiles until 2003, depending on the outcome of the Bush administration's review. This is an understandable, perhaps even clever, ploy, but it should be recognized as an attempt to pressure both the Bush administration and South Korea where the implication is that the North's apparent cooperation may end when Kim Dae Jung leaves office.

Similarly, the flap over the Bush administration's statements on verification and reciprocity was also instructive. The notion that there should be verification and reciprocity in arrangements with North Korea is not a new idea-in fact, both terms were used in the Perry Report - but in January when (now) Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage mentioned the need for reciprocity and verification, North Korea's official news service unleashed a stream of invective. At about the same time, when Secretary Powell pointed out Kim Jong Il is a dictator, something Madeline Albright had also done, Pyongyang pushed back by calling Powell a "gangster-like criminal." It is valuable to recognize the relative unimportance of such posturing.

What matters is the thoroughness with which the Bush administration addresses the issues surrounding policy toward North Korea. The questions raised about the technical feasibility and proliferation dangers of proceeding with the construction of the light water reactors are among the questions that demand a serious re-assessment. For the Bush administration to have proceeded without a substantive review would have sent the wrong signals throughout Asia and weakened America's prestige. Moreover, the depth of on-going consultations with our allies and friends is sending strong signals to Pyongyang about the character and operational effectiveness of the Bush administration. Lengthy, collegial consultations between officials of the Bush administration and the government of the Republic of Korea have already demonstrated how strong and resilient the foundation of the U.S.-ROK alliance is. An additional meeting of American, Japanese and Korean officials is planned next week. The conclusions of the Bush policy review are expected to be announced in June. Nothing meaningful has been lost during this review, but much has been gained. This period of review is laying the foundation for the difficult tasks that lie ahead in dealing with North Korea.

Chuck_Downs@hotmail.com
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