Monty Wolverton. Wolvertoons

For years, there have been rumors of a secret uranium-enrichment facility, but the discovery that North Korea was trying to acquire the high-strength aluminum to be used in gas centrifuges was described as the first hard evidence that the country had an active nuclear program. Hard details, including where the aluminum originated or how much North Korea acquired was not revealed by the U.S. government. The location of the uranium-enrichment facility which had "significant construction activity" was not revealed. Speculation have centered on three locations, including a suspected underground facility in Changang province known as Hagap. Then a North Korean defector, Kim Duk-hong, said that Pyongyang had already developed nuclear weapons using uranium, instead of plutonium, in an interview with a Japanese weekly magazine in April 1999. Then in 1999, The ROK Defense Ministry learnt of North Korea's attempt to import uranium-enhancing equipment from abroad. Though the info was rudimentary, the pieces were starting to fall into place.

Chronology of Nuclear Events in North Korea:

Mid-1960s: North Korea sets up atomic energy research complex in Yongbyon North of Pyongyang.

1965: Soviet IRT-2M research reactor assembled.

Mid-1970s: North Korea adds second nuclear reactor.

1985: United States says it has evidence North Korea is building a secret nuclear reactor near Yongbyon.

1985: North signs the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but refuses to sign safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

Dec 1991: North and South Korea adopt declaration on denuclearization of Korean peninsula.

Jan 1992: North Korea signs nuclear safeguard agreement.

Feb 1993: North rejects IAEA request for special inspections of two suspected nuclear fuel storage sites at Yongbyon

March 1993: North threatens to withdraw from NPT.

May 1993: North test-fires missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets within a 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) radius.

June 1993: North agrees to suspend its threatened NPT withdrawal during high-level US-North Korean talks.

June 1993: US president Bill Clinton, visiting Seoul, warns that North Korea will be annihilated if it uses nuclear weapons.

Dec 1993: North softens stand and agrees to talks with IAEA.

July 1994: North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung dies, prompting cancellation of scheduled summit with South leader Kim Young-Sam.

Oct 1994: North Korea and the United States sign a deal in Geneva in which Pyongyang agrees to freeze its suspect nuclear weapons programme in return for the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors.

Jan 1995: US eases economic sanctions on North Korea.

Apr 1997: The United States says that by 1994 North Korea had produced enough plutonium for "at least one nuclear device". This is the first time the United States has said North Korea has plutonium.

Dec 1999: Deal signed between both Koreas and US-led international consortium to build two "safe" nuclear reactors in North Korea.

July 2000: North Korea threatens to restart nuclear development program in protest to delays in nuclear plant construction.

Apr 2001: IAEA says North Korea "probably has one or two nuclear bombs" although it has been unable to carry out inspections since 1994.

Aug 2002: Concrete-pouring ceremony in North Korea to build two light-water nuclear reactors.

Oct 2002: North Korea admits in meetings with US special envoy James Kelly that it has a programme to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

An excellent article published in the New York Times on 20 March 2003 from the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs covers the history of the nuclear impasse and the events leading up it. The authors of the article are eminently qualified to speak on the issues having dealt with them in a hands-on manner. The recommendations are the what has been espoused by the U.S., but the key stressed by the article is the timing of the actions. However, a multi-national agreement after Bush has unilaterally gone to war with Iraq in March does not seem like a possibility -- especially since the UN members who vetoed this U.S. request for support are the same members the U.S. wishes to be part of the multi-national group to guarantee North Korea's sovereignty. (MUST READ ARTICLE)

How to Deal With North Korea

By JAMES T. LANEY AND JASON T. SHAPLEN

From the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs.

James T. Laney is President Emeritus of Emory University and Co-Chairman of an independent task force on "Managing Change on the Korean Peninsula," sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea from 1993 to 1997. Jason T. Shaplen was Policy Adviser at the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) from 1995 to 1999 and is a member of the task force.

MIXED MESSAGES

Progress in reducing tensions on the Korean peninsula, never easy, has reached a dangerous impasse. The last six months have witnessed an extraordinary series of events in the region that have profound implications for security and stability throughout Northeast Asia, a region that is home to 100,000 U.S. troops and three of the world's 12 largest economies.

Perhaps the most dramatic of these events was North Korea's December decision to restart its frozen plutonium-based nuclear program at Yongbyon -- including a reprocessing facility that separates plutonium for nuclear weapons from spent reactor fuel. Just as disturbing was the North's stunning public admission two months earlier that it had begun building a new, highly-enriched-uranium (HEU) nuclear program. And then came yet another unsettling development: a growing, sharp division emerged between the United States and the new South Korean government over how to respond.

But recent events have not been entirely negative. In the two months prior to the October HEU revelation, North Korea had, with remarkable speed, undertaken an important series of positive initiatives that seemed the polar opposite of its posturing on the nuclear issue. These included initiating an unscheduled meeting between its foreign minister, Paek Nam Sun, and Secretary of State Colin Powell in July -- the highest-level contact between the two nations since the Bush administration took office; inviting a U.S. delegation for talks in Pyongyang; proposing the highest-level talks with South Korea in a year; agreeing to re-establish road and rail links with the South and starting work on the project almost immediately; demining portions of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and wide corridors on the east and west coasts surrounding the rail links; sending more than 600 athletes and representatives to join the Asian Games in Pusan, South Korea (marking the North's first-ever participation in an international sporting event in the South); enacting a series of economic and market reforms (including increasing wages, allowing the price of staples to float freely, and inaugurating a special economic zone similar to those in China); restarting the highest-level talks with Japan in two years; holding a subsequent summit with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, during which Pyongyang admitted abducting Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s; and finally, allowing the surviving abductees to visit Japan.

Viewed individually, let alone together, North Korea's initiatives represented the most promising signs of change on the peninsula in decades. Whether by desire or by necessity, the North finally appeared to be responding to the long-standing concerns of the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Equally important, Pyongyang seemed to have abandoned its policy of playing Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo off one another by addressing the concerns of one while ignoring those of the other two. For the first time, the North was actively (even aggressively) engaging all three capitals simultaneously.

Until October, that is, when North Korea acknowledged the existence of its clandestine HEU program -- ending the diplomatic progress instantly. Once the news broke, Pyongyang quickly offered to halt the HEU program in exchange for a nonaggression pact with the United States. But Washington, unwilling to reward bad behavior, initially refused to open a dialogue unless the North first abandoned its HEU effort. In November, the United States went a step further: saying that Pyongyang had violated the 1994 Agreed Framework and several other nuclear nonproliferation pacts, Washington engineered the suspension of deliveries of the 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil sent to the North each year under the 1994 accord. The Agreed Framework had frozen the North's plutonium program -- a program that had included a five-megawatt experimental reactor, two larger reactors under construction, and the reprocessing facility -- narrowly averting a catastrophic war on the Korean Peninsula.

In the weeks following the suspension of fuel shipments, the United States hardened its stance against dialogue with the North -- despite the fact that most U.S. allies were encouraging a diplomatic solution to the situation. North Korea responded by announcing plans to reopen its Yongbyon facilities. It immediately removed the seals and monitoring cameras from its frozen nuclear labs and reactors and, a few days later, began to move its dangerous spent fuel rods out of storage. Pyongyang subsequently announced its intention to reopen the critical reprocessing plant in February 2003. On December 31, it expelled the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). And on January 9, it announced its withdrawal from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Although Washington, strongly urged by Seoul and Tokyo, ultimately agreed to talks, the situation appeared to be worsening almost daily. Depending on how it is resolved, the standoff could still prove a positive turning point in resolving one the world's most dangerous flash points. But it could also lead to an even worse crisis than in 1994. The proper approach, therefore, is to now re-engage with North Korea without rewarding it for bad behavior. Working together, the major external interested parties (China, Japan, Russia, and the United States) should jointly and officially guarantee the security of the entire Korean Peninsula. But the outside powers should also insist that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons program before offering it any enticements. Only when security has been established (and verified by intrusive, regular inspections) should a prearranged comprehensive deal be implemented -- one that involves extensive reforms in the North, an increase in aid and investment, and, eventually, a Korean federation.

THE NORTH GOES NUCLEAR

To understand how the most promising signs of progress in decades quickly deteriorated into nuclear brinkmanship, it is necessary to first understand the origins and motivation behind the North's HEU program and Pyongyang's subsequent decision to restart its plutonium program. Even before North Korea admitted that it was building a new HEU program, the United States had long suspected the country of violating its relevant international commitments. Three years ago, such concerns had led to U.S. inspections of suspicious underground facilities in Kumchang-ni. Although those inspections did not reveal any actual treaty violations -- in part because Pyongyang had ample time to remove evidence before the inspectors arrived -- suspicions lingered. These doubts proved justified in July 2002, when the United States conclusively confirmed the existence of the North's HEU program.

It now seems likely that Pyongyang actually started its HEU program in 1997 or 1998. Although Kim Jong Il's motives for doing so will probably never be clear (his regime has a record of confounding observers), there are two plausible explanations. The first focuses on fear: namely, North Korea's fear that, having frozen its plutonium-based nuclear program in 1994, it would receive nothing in return. Such a suspicion seems unreasonable on its face, since, under the 1994 Agreed Framework negotiated with Washington, Pyongyang was to be compensated in various ways for abandoning its nuclear ambitions. But from the perspective of a paranoid, isolated regime such as North Korea's, this concern was not without justification. Almost from its inception, the provisions of the 1994 accord fell substantially behind schedule -- most notably in the construction of proliferation-resistant light-water reactors in the North and improved relations with the United States.1 North Korea may thus have started its HEU program as a hedge against the possibility that it had been duped, or, more likely, that new U.S., South Korean, or Japanese administrations would be less willing to proceed with the politically controversial program than were their predecessors. A second, darker, and more likely explanation for Pyongyang's decision to start the HEU program holds that the North never really intended to give up its nuclear ambitions. Whether motivated by fear, honor, or aggression (the determination to stage a preemptive strike if threatened), Pyongyang views a nuclear program as its sovereign right -- and a necessity.

Whichever of these theories is true, the North seems to have undertaken its HEU program slowly at first, ramping it up only in late 2000 or 2001. And it was able to hide the program until July 2002, when U.S. intelligence proved its existence. Although Bush administration officials insist otherwise, it is possible, as North Korean officials have suggested, that Pyongyang decided to step up its nuclear program in response to what it perceived as Washington's increasingly hostile attitude -- a hostility demonstrated to North Koreans by President Bush's decision to include them in the "axis of evil" and to set the bar for talks impossibly high. This perceived hostility was further encouraged when the administration announced its new doctrine of preemptive defense. Notwithstanding the president's remarks to the contrary, Pyongyang views the new defense doctrine as a direct threat. After all, if Washington is willing to attack Iraq, another isolated nation with a suspected nuclear program, might it not also be willing, even likely, to do the same to North Korea?

This fear helps explain why the North decided to restart its plutonium program. Many within the senior ranks of the North Korean military believe that if the United States attacks, Pyongyang's position will be strengthened immeasurably by the possession of several nuclear weapons. North Korean planners thus reason that they should develop such weapons as quickly as possible, prior to the American attack that may come once Washington has concluded its war with Iraq.

HIGH-STAKES POKER

There are again two plausible explanations for why the North revealed its HEU program in October 2002. Since its earliest days in office, the Bush administration has made clear that it favors a more hard-line approach to North Korea than did the Clinton team. Even prior to the North's HEU admission, Bush's support for the 1994 Agreed Framework was lukewarm at best. His administration considered the accord a form of blackmail signed by his predecessor -- even though, after a long review of North Korea policy in 2001, the Bush administration found it could not justify abandoning the pact without having something better with which to replace it. In short, Washington grudgingly considered itself bound by a diplomatic process it viewed as distasteful -- if not an outright scam.

When U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly visited North Korea in early October, he took with him undeniable evidence of the North's HEU program. He also took with him very narrowly defined briefing papers, hard-line marching orders that reflected the influence of the Defense Department and the National Security Council.

Anticipating isolation and a worsening of already strained relations in the face of Washington's evidence, Pyongyang opted to play one of its few remaining trump cards: open admission of its nuclear program. This openness, Kim may have hoped, would keep the Bush administration from disengaging entirely. By acknowledging its HEU effort, Pyongyang essentially sent Washington the following message: "We understand that despite everything we've done over the past several months you want to isolate or disengage from us. Well, we admit we have a uranium-based nuclear program. You say you don't want to deal with us. Too bad -- you can't ignore a potential nuclear power. Deal with us."

Another hypothesis to explain the timing is that Pyongyang simply miscalculated. North Korea watchers learned long ago to expect the unexpected, but even the most jaded observers were surprised in September 2002 when Kim admitted to Koizumi that the North had abducted 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies. Kim apologized for the abductions and, with remarkable speed, subsequently authorized a visit of five of the surviving abductees to Japan. In doing so, he removed a decades-old barrier to normalization of relations between the two nations (and to the payment of billions of dollars in hoped-for war reparations from Tokyo).

Kim's gamble on coming clean about the abductions appeared at the time to have paid off. Notwithstanding the predicted public backlash in Japan, further talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang took place in October (after the HEU admission).2 Having experienced better-than-expected results in admitting to the abductions, Kim may have hoped for the same by confessing to his HEU program. His thinking may have been that, in view of Washington's evidence, Pyongyang would eventually have had to come clean anyway. That being the case, it was better to do so sooner rather than later, thereby removing one of the primary obstacles to improved U.S.-North Korea relations. Kim may further have surmised that the timing of such a revelation in October was advantageous, given recent progress in talks with Japan and South Korea. He probably hoped that Tokyo and Seoul would pressure Washington to mitigate its response.

In the weeks immediately following Kelly's visit, Washington made it clear that it did not see a military solution to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula. This left isolation, containment, and negotiation as the only viable alternatives. A policy of isolation would seek the North's collapse but would not address the HEU problem and would likely result in the North's restarting its plutonium-based nuclear program. Containment, or economic pressure designed to squeeze the North, would seek to punish Pyongyang while leaving the door open to future negotiation. It too would not address the HEU problem but, it was hoped, might maintain the freeze on the plutonium program. Negotiations, meanwhile, would seek to address the nuclear problem but could be viewed by some as a reward for bad behavior.

If a successful isolation or containment policy wins the day, the North will have miscalculated in coming clean. If, however, a policy of dialogue and subsequent negotiation ultimately emerges -- or if isolation or containment fails (in part because Washington is unable to persuade China, South Korea, and Russia to endorse it over a sustained period) -- Kim will have played his cards exceedingly well.

BEST OF A BAD SITUATION

Many pundits and policymakers in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, argue that the revelations about Pyongyang's clandestine HEU program prove that President Clinton's policy of engaging the North was a mistake. This argument maintains that giving in to blackmail leads only to more blackmail.

Although it is inherently valid, such analysis is too simple. In 1994, the United States was on the edge of war with North Korea. Washington had beefed up its forces in the theater, installed Patriot missile batteries in the South, and was reviewing detailed war plans. The White House had even begun to consider the evacuation of American citizens. The 1994 Agreed Framework, although deeply flawed, represented the best deal available at a far from ideal time. It remained so for several years. And although it has been disappointing on many levels, the agreement has not been useless.

Indeed, it averted a potentially catastrophic situation. Instead of a war (which the U.S. military commander in South Korea, General Gary Luck, estimated would have killed a million people, including 80,000 to 100,000 Americans), Northeast Asia has experienced eight years of stability. This has had vast implications beyond security. In 1994, South Korea's GDP was 323 trillion won; today, even after the 1997 financial meltdown, its GDP is approximately 544 trillion won.3 This transformation would have been unlikely in the face of imminent armed conflict. China has similarly experienced explosive growth, much of which might also have slowed had there been a major confrontation on its porous border with North Korea.

The Agreed Framework also provided the parties with critical breathing room, which has allowed new realities to emerge both within North Korea and among the United States and its allies -- developments that improve the chances for a better, more comprehensive deal today. To cite one example, in 1994, Kim Jong Il had only recently succeeded his father, North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung. Viewed as weak, mentally unstable, and without a power base of his own, Kim was expected to last a mere two weeks to several months. Today, however, he is acknowledged as the only power in North Korea and has established diplomatic relations with scores of nations, including many of Washington's closest allies in NATO and the European Union. This puts him in a vastly better position to strike a deal.

For its part, the United States in 1994 could not have counted on Russia or China to support its position toward North Korea. Today, however, Washington is likely to receive baseline support -- albeit not carte blanche -- from both. Indeed, although there has hardly been unanimity among the outside powers, there has already been evidence of such cooperation, in the form of a joint Chinese-Russian declaration issued in early December stating that the two powers "consider it important ... to preserve the non-nuclear status of the Korean Peninsula and the regime of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

Another benefit of the breathing room created by the 1994 accord is the North's economic dependence on the South. South Korea today is North Korea's largest publicly acknowledged supplier of aid and its second-largest trading partner. Although not as successful as he would have liked, former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's "Sunshine Policy" of engaging the North has, in conjunction with the North's economic collapse, given Pyongyang a strong economic interest in avoiding a crisis. (Although the numbers are much smaller, the situation is not wholly unlike that between Taiwan and China.) Should the North exacerbate current tensions, the economic fallout would be traumatic, and the loss of South Korean investment could destabilize the North.

THE WAY OUT

The timing of the steps now taken to resolve the current crisis will be crucial to their success. Indeed, timing is important to understand because the North's HEU program does not pose an immediate threat. Although it has the potential to eventually produce enough uranium for one nuclear weapon per year, it has not yet reached this stage and is not expected to do so for at least two to three more years, according to administration officials and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The North's decision to reopen its plutonium-based nuclear program at Yongbyon poses a more critical and immediate threat, however. Prior to its suspension in 1994, most experts believe this program had already produced enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons. The 8,000 spent fuel rods from the five-megawatt reactor contained enough plutonium for an additional four to five nuclear weapons.4 The IAEA monitored the freeze via seals, cameras, and on-site inspectors. It also canned the 8,000 existing spent fuel rods, placed them in a safe-storage cooling pond, and monitored them until its inspectors were expelled from North Korea on December 31.

The five-megawatt reactor, when operational, will produce enough plutonium for one or two additional nuclear weapons per year. But the 8,000 rods represent an even more immediate challenge. If the North follows through on its threat to reopen the reprocessing facility in February, it would take just six months to reprocess all of its spent fuel and extract enough plutonium to make four or five additional weapons. This would bring Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal to between five and seven weapons by the end of July. It could have enough plutonium for one to three weapons even sooner.

Thus there exists only a short window of opportunity before the North's recent action translates into additional nuclear-weapons material on the ground. The trick to unraveling the current impasse is to avoid rewarding the North for its violations of past treaties with a new, more comprehensive agreement. Blackmail cannot and should not be condoned. The starting point for future discussions should therefore be that the North must completely and immediately abandon its HEU and plutonium-based programs. This pledge must be accompanied by intrusive, immediate, and continuous inspections by the IAEA.

It is a tenet of all international negotiations, however -- particularly those that involve the Korean Peninsula -- that all crises create opportunity, and this one is no different. At its core -- politics stripped aside -- the current standoff will allow Washington to scrap the flawed Agreed Framework and replace it with a new mechanism that better addresses the concerns of the United States and its allies. In many ways, the North's HEU admission and its subsequent decision to reopen its plutonium program might therefore be viewed as a blessing in disguise. The Bush administration can finally rid itself of a deal it never liked and never truly endorsed and replace it with one that addresses all of Washington's central concerns, including the North's missile program and its conventional forces. Washington must, however, be willing to make such a deal attractive to the North as well.

Yet timing poses an immediate barrier to negotiating a new mechanism. Pyongyang has insisted it will give up its HEU and plutonium programs only after Washington signs a nonaggression pact with it. But the Bush administration, while publicly reassuring the North that it has no intention of invading, has justifiably insisted that Pyongyang give up these programs before there is any discussion of a new mechanism. The North seems unwilling to lose face by giving up this trump card without a security guarantee, and Washington is unwilling to take any action that appears to reward Pyongyang before it has fully dismantled its nuclear programs.

Those who think they can outwait Pyongyang by isolating it or pressuring it economically, as the Bush administration proposed in late December, are likely to be proved wrong. North Koreans are a fiercely proud people and have endured hardships over the last decade that would have led most other countries to implode. It would therefore be a mistake to underestimate their loyalty to the state or to Kim Jong Il. When insulted, provoked, or threatened, North Koreans will not hesitate to engage in their equivalent of a holy war. Their ideology is not only political, it is quasi-religious. Pyongyang also enjoys an inherent advantage in any waiting game: Beijing. Although China might initially support a policy of economic pressure, Beijing is afraid that it will face a massive influx of unwanted refugees across the Yalu River should the North collapse. To guard against this event, it will ultimately allow fuel and food (sanctioned or unsanctioned) to move across its border with the North. Similarly, South Korea, which also wants to avoid a massive influx of refugees, is unlikely to support a sustained, indefinite policy of squeezing the North. In mid-December, it elected by a larger margin than predicted a new president who ran specifically on a platform of expanding engagement with Pyongyang.

The way to cut the Gordian knot of who goes first is through a two-stage approach. The first stage would provide the North with the security it craves while also ensuring that Pyongyang is not rewarded for its bad behavior. To achieve this end, the four outside interested powers (the United States, Japan, China, and Russia -- each of which has supported one side or the other in the past) would jointly and officially guarantee the security and stability of the entire Korean Peninsula. Washington may not be able or willing to convene a meeting of the four powers to this end. If not, back channels or unofficial initiatives should be used to encourage Moscow or Beijing to take the lead. Both Russia and China have sought to increase their influence on the Korean Peninsula in recent years. This plan would solidify their places at the table.

Once the security of the peninsula has been guaranteed by the outside powers, it will be time for stage two: a comprehensive accord, again broken into two parts. The North must completely give up its HEU and plutonium programs and allow immediate, intrusive, and continuous inspections by the IAEA; end its development, production, and testing of long-range missiles in exchange for some financial compensation; draw down its conventional troops along the DMZ (although there will be no reduction of U.S. troops at this time, and only a very limited reduction of U.S. troops in five years, should the situation permit); and, finally, continue to implement economic and market reforms.

In exchange for the above, Japan would normalize its relations with the North within 18 months of the agreement's coming into effect. This normalization would include the payment of war reparations in the form of aid, delivered on a timetable extending five to seven years. Both halves of the peninsula would also enter a Korean federation within two years of the agreement's coming into effect. And as soon as the IAEA had verified that the North has dismantled its nuclear weapons programs, Washington would sign a nonaggression pact with Pyongyang. This pact, which by prior agreement would automatically be nullified by subsequent signs that the North was not cooperating or was initiating a new nuclear program, would include the gradual lifting of economic sanctions over three years.

The United States, South Korea, Japan, and the European Union -- the primary members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (or KEDO, which was set up to administer the Agreed Framework) -- would further maintain the organization and provide the two new light-water reactors stipulated in the original deal. KEDO would also resume delivery of heavy fuel oil until the first reactor was completed.

In addition to the above measures, China and Russia would agree to support the North economically via investment. All outside parties to the deal -- the United States, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia -- would also contribute to the compensation the North would receive in return for ending its long-range missile program.

Finally, five years after the above accord is signed, a Northeast Asia Security Forum, consisting of the four major powers plus South and North Korea, would be created to ensure long-term peace and stability throughout the region.

The timing of the various parts of stage two will be critical to its success. To this end, the leaders of all the countries involved (or their high-ranking representatives) should meet in person to negotiate the deal. North and South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States must all sign on if the plan is to work.

Certain components of the comprehensive deal (such as the U.S.-North Korea nonaggression pact and the missile accord) should exist as separate agreements, referenced in but not attached as appendices to the main text. They should be fully agreed and initialed prior to signing the comprehensive deal. Immediately after signing the comprehensive agreement, the North would have to take the first step by fully dismantling both its HEU and its plutonium programs and allowing IAEA inspections to verify these steps. Only after the IAEA had certified the dismantling would the nonaggression and missile pacts be signed: in the case of the nonaggression pact, by Pyongyang and Washington alone, and in the case of the missile pact, by Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington.

THE SUM OF TWO PARTS

Initially, Washington's response to North Korea's HEU and plutonium programs consisted mostly of condemning Pyongyang. Then, in early January, President Bush and Secretary of State Powell took steps to ease the tension. Following a trilateral meeting with South Korea and Japan (during which Seoul and Tokyo pressed for a diplomatic approach), Washington finally agreed to open a dialogue with Pyongyang. The Bush administration, however, limited the scope of the meetings to discussion of how North Korea could abide by its international commitments. It is now time to move beyond this narrow agenda to a policy of resolution -- one that addresses all concerns on the Korean Peninsula.

Such a shift is particularly important given the very serious rupture that has opened between Washington and Seoul. At precisely the time that the situation in North Korea has reached a crisis stage, U.S.-South Korean relations have hit their lowest level ever. Korean anti-Americanism -- far more than just a difference of opinion on how to deal with the North -- was responsible for the election of Roh Moo Hyun as president in December. Roh beat a more hard-line rival specifically by distancing himself from Washington's position on the North and by promising to continue Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy. More critically, he promised a new, more prominent role for South Korea in its relationship with the United States. America will therefore no longer be able to force its position on the more assertive and restless South Korean population.

The process above, fortunately, will address the major concerns of all the parties involved. It will assure North Korea of the underlying security it seeks, without requiring Washington to sign a nonaggression pact until after Pyongyang has dismantled its HEU and plutonium programs. If the North balks despite a security guarantee by all major outside powers and the prospect of a comprehensive accord, isolation or economic pressure by Washington and its allies will not only remain a viable alternative, it will be stronger and more fully justified than it would be otherwise, and will more easily win the unified, sustained support of major players in the region. The upside to exploring the path presented above is therefore massive, and the downside very limited. Doing nothing, meanwhile, could become the most dangerous option of all.

An excellent research paper by the Japan Policy Research Institute JPRI Working Paper No. 91, January 2003 by Gavan McCormack provided an excellent overview of the North Korean situation. (A MUST READ PAPER) We have pasted it here as a historical resource.

North Korea: Coming in from the Cold?

by Gavan McCormack

As the sands of 2002 drained away, tension was rising steadily around the Korean peninsula. In late December the Bush administration's formal position changed from "the U.S. has no plans to attack North Korea" to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's declaration of readiness to fight wars on two fronts (meaning Iraq and North Korea) and confidence of "winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other." They changed again when Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that a diplomatic solution would be sought. Steps to refer the disputed nuclear issues to the U.N. Security Council were foreshadowed and the possibility of sanctions, intrusive inspections, and an "Iraq scenario" loomed.

The sticking point, on the surface, is North Korea's decision to resume its nuclear program in order to generate power to make up for the oil shipments suspended by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) in November. North Korea insists that it has no intention of producing nuclear weapons, but Washington quotes CIA sources to the effect that it may have two or three already, not to mention the uranium enrichment centrifuge technology that Pyongyang admits purchasing (but not yet operating). The 8,000 spent fuel rods that sit in storage ponds at Yongbyon already contain enough weapons-grade plutonium to produce several nuclear bombs, and once the reactors resume operation more would accumulate. The removal of the seals from the monitoring equipment and ordering the U.N. inspectors to leave the site drove home North Korea's decision to defy the U.S., its allies, and (through the International Atomic Energy Agency) the international community.

However, as the denunciatory campaign against North Korean irrationality, unpredictability, and provocation gathers strength, it is easy to lose sight of some fundamental facts. Pyongyang insists that it has no weapons of mass destruction, nor any intention of making or deploying them. It declares its readiness to enter into formal, internationally-binding commitments—or, strictly speaking, to honor those it has already entered—if only the U.S. will do what it promised in 1994. The Agreed Framework that Jimmy Carter at that time helped negotiate was not a unilateral North Korean promise to give up its nuclear ambitions in return for the construction of two light-water reactors but a complex web of commitments. For North Korea, the provision that the two sides would "move toward full normalization of political and economic relations" and that the U.S. would provide "formal assurances to the DPRK against the threat or use of force of nuclear weapons by the United States" were crucial. Pyongyang has reason to feel that all emphasis has been unfairly placed on its obligations, and none on the broken commitments of the U.S. North Korea, it must be recalled, has faced the concentrated hostility of the United States since fighting it to a standstill in 1953. Beginning in early 2000, the North began to take steps to break out of its isolation. If Pyongyang's leaders are indeed seeking a way in from the cold, they deserve some sympathy and understanding, but no state and no people in modern times can have less expectation of getting it.

In June, 2000, the South Korean President Kim Dae Jung went to Pyongyang to meet the North's leader, Kim Jong Il. A North-South Joint Declaration committed the two sides to work for reunification, the settlement of humanitarian issues, including that of separated families, and to promote economic, social, cultural, sporting, and other exchanges. The agreement was signed in a mood of euphoria and anticipation, and a more detailed memorandum was drawn up between the two governments in December, 2001.

Some separated families, albeit a tiny fraction of the total, were soon reunited via visits, a joint tourist development was opened in a mountain district in North Korea with sacred significance to all Koreans, and South Korea's Hyundai Corporation began work to develop the region around the city of Kaesong, just north of the DMZ, as a special economic zone. Teams of bureaucrats, politicians, and experts from Pyongyang scoured the world for development models and technical and financial assistance. Relations were normalized with many countries, including most of Western Europe (with the exception of France) and Australia. The mines began to be cleared from the DMZ and the railway tracks to be repaired. The reopening of the Seoul-Pyongyang line, and beyond that to China, Russia and Europe, looms as an early, and dramatic, symbol of the transformation.

However, the country is in desperate economic straits: refugees speak of starvation and malnutrition on a wide scale. Factories operate at around 20 per cent of capacity. In July, 2002, a series of drastic economic reforms was adopted, affecting virtually all aspects of economic life. Rationing of goods was abolished in all but a very few categories. Wages were increased by large amounts, and differentiated by category in terms of social productivity; with important categories of workers such as coal miners given a 20 times increase. The purchase price paid to farmers for rice rose by more than 500 times, but public transportation charges also went up by twenty times. The national currency was devalued to one seventieth of its current (purely nominal) rate. These were dramatic developments. By some scrapping of centralized economic controls in favor of market principles for the determining of wages and prices, Pyongyang was opening the door to capitalism.

In September, 2002, a special law was passed to set up a Sinuiju Special Economic Zone on the North Korean side of the Yalu River frontier with China. It is intended to be a walled, capitalist enclave of international finance, trade, commerce, industry, advanced technology, leisure and tourism. Its currency would be the U.S. dollar, and it would be administered independently, with its own legislature, judiciary and administration. The existing population, some half million people, would be moved out over the initial two years to accommodate the influx of young and skilled Chinese and Korean workers. The Zone began inauspiciously, however, when the newly appointed Governor, a millionaire Chinese businessman, was detained by authorities in China over alleged tax and other financial irregularities. China may have been less than enthusiastic at the prospect of a potential haven for hot money, speculators, gamblers, and others likely to be drawn by the prospect of an extremely unregulated environment. It was scarcely a good start, but well-informed Japanese sources predict that the same liberalization will be adopted in the near future for the much more sensitive zone around Kaesong, just north of the DMZ and adjacent to both Pyongyang and Seoul.

Pyongyang appears to be moving with a kind of desperate haste. The grandeur of the Sinuiju design contrasts sharply with the reality of continuing economic crisis, the virtual collapse of the energy sector, near collapse of manufacturing and mining, and drastic cuts in agricultural production due to a combination of shockingly bad natural conditions (successive years of drought and flood) and a decline in chemical fertilizer production. To the world, North Korea became best known from the mid-1990s for its famine and for the steady flow of refugees, especially into Northeast China.

The conclusion that seems to have been drawn in Pyongyang is that it will be impossible to achieve its goals unless relations with Japan and the U.S. are normalized. In Washington, the label "terrorist state," the charge of membership of the "axis of evil," and suspicions related to "weapons of mass destruction" mark North Korea with a special hostility. In Japan, there were sporadic meetings during the 1990s to try to resolve differences, but little progress was made. Suspicions remained that during the 1970s and 1980s North Korea had abducted at least a dozen Japanese nationals. The 1998 firing of a Taepodong missile into Japanese waters was seen as an outrageous provocation, and the periodic sighting in Japanese waters thereafter of "mystery ships," thought to be conveying North Korean special agents on espionage missions or engaged in counterfeiting or drug running, served to heighten fear and hostility.

Only from Japan, however, can an immediate flow of investment and aid funds be expected, and only normalization with Washington can create the context within which the path to "normalcy" as a state can be pursued. Without a comprehensive settlement, stagnation could deepen into economic collapse and perhaps the collapse of the state itself. In October, 2001, therefore, the North Korean government sent out feelers to Tokyo for a renewal of negotiations leading towards normalization. During the subsequent year, quiet diplomatic exchanges continued with at least 30 meetings between Japanese and North Korean diplomats. Eventually broad principles were agreed to and the stage was set for Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to Pyongyang.

Apologies: The Unequal Exchange

When the visit took place, on September 17, 2002, the tension was palpable. The Japanese Prime Minister brought his own boxed lunch with him, but it remained unopened throughout the day. It was perhaps the first summit whose main agenda consisted of apologies on both sides. Kim Jong Il apologized for the abduction and detention of a dozen or so Japanese people in the 1970s and 1980s, and for the December, 2001, spy ship encroachment into Japanese waters (actually sunk in an encounter with Japanese coastguard ships in the East China Sea). Koizumi apologized for the four decades of Japanese colonialism, which ended 57 years ago.

Since the abductions and the spy ship incident had been denied by North Korea, long and strenuously in the former case, the apology was astonishing and dramatic. Kim Jong Il admitted that a dozen Japanese people had been abducted, including a school girl, a beautician, a cook, three dating couples (whisked away from remote beaches) and several students touring Europe, all of whom were taken to Pyongyang either to work in Japanese language programs at a training institution for North Korean special operatives or else so that their identities could be appropriated by North Korean agents for covert operations in South Korea, Japan, or elsewhere. "Some elements of a special agency of state" had been "carried away by fanaticism and desire for glory" in carrying out the abductions, Kim explained. He also admitted sending spy ships into Japanese territory, and blamed "some elements" of the military for that. He insisted that those responsible for all the offenses had been punished, and gave his assurance that there would be no recurrences.

The organization most likely responsible for the abductions of people from Japan was thought to be something known as "Room 35," formerly the Overseas Intelligence Department of the Korean Workers Party. Japanese government sources believed this same organization was responsible for a series of spectacular operations in the past, including the guerrilla attack on the South Korean presidential residence (The Blue House) in 1968; the October, 1983, bomb attack in Rangoon, Burma, that killed 17 members of a South Korean presidential delegation; and the November ,1987, destruction by bomb of KAL 859, over the Andaman Sea, in which 115 people died. A separate "Section 56," under the same ruling party's External Liaison Department, is suspected in the abductions from Europe.

Kim's acknowledgment of these acts was a truly momentous event. Alexander Fedorovsky, a Russian observer commented that "in a totalitarian state, an apology affects the very basis of the state system. The sense of crisis in North Korea is so deep that they had no alternative but to take this risk" (Asahi shimbun, September 18, 2002). Having admitted responsibility for one set of acts, Kim Jong Il is now bound to face a rising tide of demands, probing further into the already admitted incidents and raising others strongly suspected, at the same time as he faces the problem of shoring up his own authority.

At the "summit of apology," Koizumi for his part expressed "deep remorse and heartfelt apology" for the "tremendous damage and suffering" caused the Korean people through Japan's four decades of colonial rule. His words followed very closely the formula established in 1995 during the brief interlude when the government in Tokyo was headed by the socialist party leader, Murayama Tomiichi, and repeated in the Japan-South Korea talks between Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in October, 1998. By the time Koizumi issued it, there was nothing controversial about it. It was a perfunctory formula, acceptable to the Tokyo bureaucracy precisely because it carries no legal implications. While a heartfelt apology might properly have been expected to be accompanied by the offer of reparations, Japan only came to the table with Pyongyang when assured that any such claim had been dropped.

The Pyongyang meeting was a huge step for North Korea, but it may also be that Kim Jong Il miscalculated that his confession would lead to a quick resolution of the abduction issue, followed by "normalization," not foreseeing the huge uproar and massively negative impact it would cause in Japan. Kim had hoped that by giving up any claim to "compensation" for the crimes of Japanese colonialism, he would receive approximately ¥1.5 trillion (or circa U.S.$12 billion) in "aid" funds. This would be roughly equivalent to the $500 million Japan paid to South Korea on the opening of that bilateral relationship in 1965. However, although it would be a very substantial sum for financially destitute Pyongyang, it will now come only in a tied, project-related form, and be at least as beneficial to the Japanese construction industry as to North Korea. Nor will it be easy to appropriate such a sum through the Japanese Diet in its fiscally straitened circumstances and in the present climate of revulsion against North Korea.

On the Japanese side, the revelations of 17 September stirred a mood of public anguish and anger compared by some to the mood that swept over the U.S. in the wake of September 11, 2001. Anger and distrust of Japanese institutions, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for its vacillation, incompetence, and dissembling, combined with fear, outrage, and desire for revenge against North Korea. The Japanese National Police Agency now thinks that there may be more Japanese abductees than at first suspected, perhaps as many as forty. There are also said to be abductees of various other nationalities—European, Arab, and Chinese—not to mention something like 500 people that South Korea claims have been abducted since 1953. Abduction, however, is a curious phenomenon. In a number of cases, those abducted appear to have successfully accommodated to the North Korean system. By the time the five Japanese abductees returned to Japan in October 2002, after more than 20 years, they did so, apparently, as loyal followers of Kim Jong Il.

Perhaps the most extraordinary case of abduction is that of the South Korean film director, Shin Sang-Ok and the actress Ch'oe Hyun-hi. In 1978, they were abducted and taken to North Korea, where Shin made, and Ch'oe starred in, several films at Pyongyang studios until both eventually escaped in 1986. Both insist that Kim Jong Il was directly involved in their abduction, driven by his obsession to improve the quality of Pyongyang films. In November, 2001, Shin chaired the jury at the Pusan (South Korea) International Film Festival. Looking back on a career making films in Seoul, Pyongyang, and Hollywood, he commented that he thought his best film was one he made for Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, entitled "Runaway." Ironically, however, this film was withdrawn from screening on orders of the South Korea's Supreme Prosecutor.

Re-Abduction by Japan?

In the weeks following the dramatic September meeting, North Korea provided further information about the abductions. It transpired that the eight who had died did so in very strange circumstances—two poisoned by a defective coal heater, two killed in traffic accidents (in a country with very little traffic), two dead of heart failure (one while swimming), one of cirrhosis of the liver, one who committed suicide while depressed—and that the remains of almost all had been washed away in floods. In Japan, the families of the victims examined the documentation provided by Pyongyang and pronounced it full of holes. Angry and disbelieving, they insisted the survivors be brought back, even if necessary by force (muriyari ni).

South Korean sources suggest the possibility that those who died may have been sent to mountain labor camps for refusing to do what the Koreans call chonhyang and the Japanese tenko, that is, paying obeisance to the ideology of Juche/Kim-ism. In Japan it was speculated that they might simply have known too much. When the five survivors told Japanese Foreign Ministry officials in late September that they were "reluctant to return to Japan," it was almost universally attributed to brain-washing. In due course, after heavy Japanese government pressure they, but not their six children, returned to Japan for a visit starting on October 15. When they refused to speak ill of North Korea, this was seen as proof positive that they were unable to express themselves freely. Their subsequent statement that they would visit Japan only briefly and then return to Pyongyang was dismissed as inconceivable, and a frenzied Japanese campaign followed with demands that they be restrained from doing so. On October 24, The Chief Cabinet Secretary, Fukuda Yasuo, announced that, despite the initial agreement with Pyongyang that the former abductees would be returned after two weeks, the hapless five would not be allowed to go back.

When Japanese and North Korean delegates met in Kuala Lumpur at the end of October, the Japanese demand for the "return" (i.e., the handing over) of the children was a major bone of contention. For Japan, the children are unquestionably "Japanese," whether they know it or not. They therefore belong to Japan. For Pyongyang, Japan was in breach of the agreement under which the five abductees came to Japan for up to two weeks, and the children could not simply be "handed over" (by force if necessary, as the Japanese side implied). By taking the view that the families themselves should decide where they wish to live, for which it is indispensable that they first be reunited, North Korea was, for once, on the side of the angels.

Perhaps the most poignant case is that of fifteen-year old Kim Hye Gyong. Kim's mother, Yokota Megumi, was snatched on her way home from a badminton game in 1977, when she was only thirteen, and taken to North Korea. In 1986, she married a North Korean man, Kim Chol Ju, and a year later gave birth to her daughter. According to Pyongyang, Yokota, suffering from depression, committed suicide in 1993, when her little girl was five. The wisdom of Solomon would scarcely suffice to decide how to address the demand of the Japanese grandparents for the "return" of their grand-daughter, brought up entirely in North Korea by her father. A barrage of Japanese efforts was launched to persuade this young girl to leave home and "visit" her grandparents in Japan. Interviewed by Japanese television, she tearfully asked why her grandparents, having promised to visit her, now insist that she come to see them instead. Her grandparents responded with the enticing offer of a visit to Tokyo's Disneyland. Meanwhile, Japanese government statements have made it clear, although perhaps not to the girl, that any such "visit" would be a one-way trip, as it has become for the five "returnees." The tragedy of the abductees thus seems to continue, their rights and wishes once again ignored or compromised.

Shortly after the Pyongyang meeting, a "mystery ship" that had been sunk in December, 2001, after a gunfight in Japanese waters in the East China Sea was lifted from the seabed. Its North Korean origins were confirmed, and it was found to have been armed to the teeth. No evidence was found to suggest it had been involved in drugs, counterfeiting, smuggling or other operations, but it was plainly a spy ship. The incomprehensible, threatening, evil image of North Korea was reinforced.

During October, 2002, mass opinion in Japan was swayed by a tumult of emotions—sadness shared with the victims' families, rage at Pyongyang and desire for revenge, anger at the Japanese government, and the belief that Japan would have to teach North Korea how to be a "normal state." Prime Minister Koizumi, responding to the popular mood, denounced North Korea as a "disgraceful (keshikaran) state that abducts and kills people." At Kuala Lumpur, when the follow-up talks on normalization were held in late October, the North Korean delegates were asked to show more "sincerity," and were told that "concerning the life of human beings, Japan and North Korea seemed to place a different value on people's lives."

One commentator, Yamazuki Masanori (Shukan Kinyobi, September 27, 2002), tried to set this in context by reminding his readers that Japan "invaded a neighboring country and turned it into a colony, appropriated people's land, names, language, towns and villages, killing those who resisted, forcibly grabbing and abducting and sending off around various war zones young men as laborers and soldiers for the imperial army and women as 'comfort women,' at the cost of countless lives, and then for 57 years did not apologize or make reparation." The respected Korean-in-Japan novelist, Kim Sok Pon, denounced both North Korea for the abductions and for its "traitorous and shameful" act of abandoning claims for reparations, and Japan for its "historical amnesia." Such voices were, however, drowned in the chorus of self-righteous Japanese anger. In North Korea the talks were nonetheless declared a triumph in that the Japanese Prime Minister had come to Pyongyang at last to apologize and a normal relationship could be expected, all thanks to Kim Jong Il's extraordinary intellect and resourcefulness. Sooner or later, however, Japanese pressures for open access to investigate the fate of the other abductees will perhaps cause Kim to lose face. One of the world's leading authorities on North Korea, Wada Haruki, believes that North Korea may now be in the throes of a power struggle, with Kim Jong Il's commitments to openness and reform, scarcely reported in the North Korean media, contested by "hard-liners." Incidents such as the December, 2001, spy-ship intrusion and the May, 2002, clash between fishing fleets of North and South Korea in the West Sea (for which Kim was quick to apologize) may well have been orchestrated in an attempt to block his reform moves. Wada thinks Kim is in a position similar to Gorbachev's, isolated in a rigid and conservative establishment and able to advance reform only by a zigzag process.

Terror in East Asia: A Historical Note

North Korea's regime has little if any international support and is widely, especially in the U.S. and Japan, treated as an outlaw, terrorist state. Yet simply to label North Korea "terrorist" is neither to understand the burden of the past, nor to offer any prescription for the present or future. "Normalcy" has not been known in the area of East Asia surrounding the Korean peninsula for a hundred years. The frame of state and inter-state relationships has been so distorted by colonialism, division, war, Cold War and confrontation, that the warping has affected not only state systems but also minds and souls.

At the heart of the terror of the 1930s and 1940s was the abduction by imperial Japan of hundreds of thousands of young Korean men for forced labor and young women for forced prostitution. Responsibility for that is only slowly being forced upon an extremely reluctant government in Tokyo. Compensation is still refused. As the abduction issue raged in Japan, media and government sources urged that compensation for the abductees' families be sought, and in late October it was announced that, indeed, Japan would demand compensation from North Korea. However, it is extremely difficult to argue a moral justification for demanding compensation for the abductions of the 1970s and 1980s, while at the same time persisting in the denial of compensation to the former "comfort women," slave laborers, and the countless other victims of the colonial era.

In South Korea, until the democratic revolution of 1987, kidnapping, torture and murder by organs of the state were also common. In 1967 and 1969 over one hundred students, artists and intellectuals who were studying or resident in Europe and North America were dragged back to Seoul, accused of spying, tortured, tried, and a number of them sentenced to death or long terms of imprisonment. The most eminent was the renowned composer, Yun I-Sang (who died in 1995), now regarded as one of both Korea's and Germany's greatest composers of the 20th century. His death sentence was eventually commuted, but the torture left a mark on him from which he never fully recovered. Others, such as the then Oxford university student Park No Su (Francis Park), were executed. A few years later, in 1973, Kim Dae Jung (now South Korean president) was abducted by agents of the South Korean CIA from a Tokyo hotel room. He too barely escaped with his life. The affair was quietly buried by the two governments in 1975 and to this day it has never been properly investigated, much less resolved by apologies and compensation. The terrorist quality of the South Korean regime reached its apogee in 1980, when hundreds, if not thousands, of people were slaughtered in one of the century's worst state atrocities—the Kwangju massacre.

The historical process underway today may be seen as that of "normalizing" relations between three states—Japan, North Korea and South Korea—all of which at one time or another and to varying degrees have deployed terror, and creating institutions that will diminish the risk of such terror recurring in future.

The Nuclear Contest: North Korea Versus the U.S.

The issue between North Korea and Japan was complicated enough by the abductions, but that between North Korea and the U.S. has been even more vexed because it centers on the nuclear question. If U.S. hostility toward Iraq has a peculiar intensity because of the failure to unseat Saddam Hussein in 1991, that between the U.S. and North Korea is no less visceral because North Korea, under Kim Il Sung, the father of its present leader, fought the U.S. to a standstill in 1953 and has resisted it ever since. The nuclear threat is familiar to North Korea because it faced it, living under its shadow, for almost its entire history. In the early winter of 1950, General MacArthur sought permission to drop "between 30 and 50 atomic bombs" and lay a belt of radioactive cobalt across the neck of the Korean peninsula. The Joint Chiefs of Staff several times deliberated and came very close to using the atomic bomb, and during the autumn of 1951, one U.S. operation known as "Operation Hudson Harbor," involved the dispatch of a solitary B-52 to Pyongyang as if on an atomic mission, designed to cause terror, which it undoubtedly did. Four years after the war ended, the U.S. introduced nuclear artillery and missiles into Korea, adding thereafter to its stockpile kept adjacent to the Demilitarized Zone and designed to intimidate the then non-nuclear North. When nuclear weapons were withdrawn in 1991, at South Korea's insistence, the U.S. continued its rehearsals for a long-range nuclear bombing strike on North Korea. North Korea seeks no apology, but it seeks an end to the threat of nuclear annihilation under which it has lived longer than any other nation.

North Korea knows that the world is full of nuclear hypocrisy. Non-nuclear countries bow to the prerogative of the great powers that possess the bomb, while resenting their monopoly. They recognize that entry into the "nuclear club" paradoxically earns the respect of current club members—at the same time that it threatens annihilation for those outside. While Washington demands that other nations disavow any nuclear plans, it has refused to ratify the test-ban treaty and signalled its intent to pursue the militarization of space. In addition to an estimated 9,000 nuclear weapons, the U.S. has on several occasions deployed depleted uranium, both in the Gulf War and in the Balkans. Congress is being pushed to authorize production of "robust nuclear earth penetrators," designed for use against underground complexes and bunkers.

In 1993, U.S. intelligence reports that North Korea was developing a plutonium-based nuclear program led to the threat of war. In the end, however, President Clinton was advised that if "Operations Plan 5027" were implemented "as many as one million people would be killed in the resumption of full-scale war on the peninsula, including 80,000 to 100,000 Americans, that the out-of-pocket costs to the United States would exceed $100 billion, and that the destruction of property and interruption of business activity would cost more than $1,000 billion (one trillion)" (Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, p. 324).

Much as the U.S. would have liked to force a "regime change" in Pyongyang, it was obliged to negotiate. Jimmy Carter was dispatched to North Korea, and in June, 1994, a deal was done that became known as the "Agreed Framework." North Korea would drop its nuclear program—which had been based on natural uranium abundantly available in the country—in return for two electricity-generating light-water reactors, to be installed by 2003, and an interim annual purchase of 3.3 million barrels of oil, while the U.S. pledged to "move towards full normalization of political and economic relations." As Don Oberdorfer concludes in his study of these events, Pyongyang played the nuclear card "brilliantly, forcing one of the world's richest and most powerful nations to undertake negotiations and to make concessions to one of the least successful nations" (p. 336).

The U.S. was reluctant about the Agreed Framework from the start, probably hoping or expecting that North Korea would collapse long before the reactors were installed. The "2003" date was never taken seriously: delays were chronic and construction on the site only began in 2002. No electricity could possibly be generated until around the end of the decade at the earliest. On the move toward "full normalization" of relations—a crucial part of the deal for Pyongyang—progress was equally slow, speeding up only in the last months of Clinton's presidency, when visits were exchanged between Kim Jong-il's right-hand man, Marshal Jo Myong Rok, and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Clinton himself would probably have gone to Pyongyang had time not run out on his presidency.

Under the (George W.) Bush administration, however, it was back to square one. The Agreed Framework came to be seen as a one-sided North Korean commitment to abandon its nuclear program, while moves towards rapprochement were set aside. The January, 2002, "Axis of Evil" speech and the June, 2002, commitment to preemptive war were stark signals to Pyongyang. The formal presidential statement of strategy presented to Congress in September, 2002, referred to only two "rogue states" (Iraq and North Korea), which were said to constitute "a looming threat to all nations."

From around 1998, American intelligence agents appear to have discovered that North Korea was engaged in the enrichment of uranium. Uranium enrichment, it should be noted, was not covered by the Agreed Framework. Nor is it entirely clear what processes Pyongyang has been using. Only highly enriched uranium can be used to create nuclear weapons; at lower levels of enrichment it is used in reactors—although not in the type of reactors that North Korea was building in the early nineties. On October 3, 2002, a special U.S. envoy, Deputy Secretary of State James Kelly, was dispatched to Pyongyang to "stress the nuclear issue more forcefully." The expectation was that Pyongyang would deny the charges, which could then be taken as an excuse to scrap the Agreed Framework. Instead, however, First Vice-Minister Kang Song Ju—according to Kelly—admitted to a uranium-enriching program as well as possession of "other weapons" that were "even more powerful."

There are several questions as to what really happened. What exactly did Kang, Pyongyang's most experienced negotiator and a central figure in the 1994 talks, admit to, and with what intention? An official statement from North Korea's Central News Agency merely declared that Pyongyang "made itself very clear to the special envoy of the U.S. President that the DPRK was entitled to possess not only nuclear weapon (sic) but any type of weapon more powerful than that so as to defend its sovereignty and right to existence from the ever-growing nuclear threat by the U.S." To the United Nations, North Korea declared that it had indeed purchased uranium-enrichment devices but not yet put them into operation. North Korea does have an obligation under the Agreed Framework to allow inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but only when "a significant portion" of the reactors are completed and before "key nuclear components" are delivered.

In early December, Pyongyang announced that it would soon restart its plutonium reactors, which could be used to produce nuclear weapons as well as electricity, because work on its other light-water reactors has been stalled and the Bush administration was curtailing further oil shipments. The discovery of a North Korean ship filled with Scud missiles bound for Yemen (and perhaps for Iraq?) further agitated not only the U.S. but also Japan and South Korea.

Perhaps the most likely interpretation of North Korea's actions is that offered by Seoul's Ministry of Unification: "their true aim is not to continue the nuclear development program, but to seek a breakthrough in relations with the United States." Alexandre Mansourov, of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, argues in similar vein: "The DPRK has been pursuing a clandestine alternative nuclear R&D program, as a hedge against possible collapse of the agreed framework since as early as the late 1990s . . . On the one hand, Kim Jong Il responded to what he apparently perceived as Kelly's threats with a disguised nuclear threat of his own. On the other hand, he extended an offer of comprehensive engagement." In this view Kim's actions are not "irrational brinkmanship" but "premeditated coercive diplomacy." Pyongyang's calculation may be seen as coldly rational in recognizing that a nuclear program is one thing the U.S. is bound to treat seriously. More recently, Mansourov has also pointed out that the U.S. can never again go to war on the Korean Peninsula without South Korean acquiescence, since such a war would instantaneously devastate Seoul and produce the deaths of thousands of South Koreans.

The South Korean Election

In South Korea, however, the cause that in late 2002 was bringing large crowds into the streets to demonstrate was not anti-North Korean but anti-American. Outrage was especially strong following the acquittal by an American military court of two soldiers accused of negligent homicide of two young girls. On December 19, Seoul erupted in celebrations of the kind last seen during the Soccer World Cup when Roh Moo-Hyun, of the Millennium Democratic Party was elected president. Most saw it as a victory for Korea, especially its younger generation, a commitment to continue the "sunshine" policies of Kim Dae Jung and to steer a course more independent of either Washington or Tokyo than ever before. Roh promised to be even more sympathetic to Pyongyang and deaf to U.S. pressures than the present Kim Dae Jung.

Roh is a remarkable figure: 56 years old, he is the fifth son of a poor farmer, whose formal education stopped at Commercial High School. He educated himself, passed the country's notoriously difficult bar examination and became a renowned human rights advocate and a leading figure in the struggles that led to the democratic revolution of 1987. Roh has visited Japan only once—in 1983 to attend a short course in yachting—and the United States not at all. The best testimony to his honesty is the fact that his personal "fortune" amounts to the almost derisory sum of slightly more than $200,000 (260 million won).
,br> During the campaign, Roh insisted that "I don't believe the problem can be solved by pressuring North Korea." If elected, he said he would not kowtow to Washington, he would not support the imposition of a deadline for Pyongyang's compliance with international demands to end its nuclear program and, if necessary, he would "guarantee North Korea's security." However unappetizing such views are in Washington, Roh was simply expressing the majority view of his countrymen. Gallup polls show nearly 60 per cent of South Koreans no longer believe North Korea poses a security threat, and a majority also believes that Pyongyang is sincere in its efforts for reunification. As president of South Korea, Roh can be expected to convey those views to Washington and to coax Pyongyang to live up to them.

So, although Rumsfeld was beating the drums of war, it was as if the entire, Seoul-based, string section of his orchestra was playing a different tune. War on North Korea, whatever the noises from Rumsfeld, is virtually impossible if South Korea says "No." Even during the crisis of 1994, when war was avoided at only the last minute, Jimmy Carter was shocked to find that South Korea, then under the conservative leadership of Kim Young Sam, refused to commit a single one of its own soldiers to the U.S. cause. Kim Dae Jung during his presidency starting in 1997, made it plain that he held even more strongly to such a view. His "sunshine" policy has engaged Pyongyang on a broad range of economic and social fronts. When he met George W. Bush in February, 2002, he spoke strongly against any thought of war, reminding Bush of the 1994 Pentagon assessment that any war would be likely to cause casualties of astronomical proportions, including around 50,000 American dead, matching the casualty list for the entire, decade-long Vietnam War.

Japanese intelligence sources believe it may well have been an emissary from Kim Dae Jung (in April, 2002) who persuaded Kim Jong Il to apologize to the Japanese and attempt to resolve the abduction issue, thus opening the way to the Koizumi visit. When Richard Armitage visited Seoul in early December to bring South Korea into line on policy towards the North, he was disconcerted to find the government there more interested in securing a revision of the Status of Forces Agreement, so that it could discipline U.S. soldiers in Korea in future, than in any talk of war. Under President Roh, this "recalcitrance" will almost certainly intensify. His readiness to "guarantee North Korea's security" certainly implies that in a showdown with the U.S. South Korea would side with Pyongyang, rather than against it.

Could the U.S. rely on cooperation from Japan in such a showdown? Plainly not. Even though the Japanese pacifist commitment under Article 9 of its constitution is being steadily subverted (under American and right-wing Japanese pressure), the use of Japanese forces is out of the question for the simple reason that both North and South Korea share such a fierce anti-Japanese resentment. The first report of Japanese soldiers landing on the peninsula would be enough to unite them in opposition. Tokyo is also well aware that any Korean War today would be nuclear (statements from the Pentagon during 2001 leave little room for doubt on that) and would devastate and destabilize the entire Northeast Asian region. For such reasons, Tokyo is likely, whatever its rhetoric, to be actively seeking a way to normalize its relations with Pyongyang.

For its part, Pyongyang most likely is counting on precisely such a shift. It has therefore been muted in its comment on the extraordinary outpourings of anti-North Korean sentiment in Japan in late 2002. The obstacle to implementing the September 17 accord signed by Koizumi is the still-unresolved problem of the abductees. The question of Japan's original commitment to return the "Pyongyang Five" is no longer relevant following their decision, announced on December 19, not to return to North Korea. The problem of what to do about their children, however, remains. So far as is known, the children of two of the families to this day go about their lives in Pyongyang with no idea that both of their parents are Japanese and were forcibly abducted 25 years ago. The children consider themselves normal North Koreans; therefore Pyongyang can scarcely just "hand them over" as Tokyo is demanding. The only way to break the impasse without blatantly infringing on their human rights may be to have them meet with their parents in some third country to decide how they, as families and as individuals, wish to conduct their lives hereafter. A January reunion in the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk is now reported to be under consideration. Meanwhile, Kim Hye Gyong's grandparents, the Yokotas, breaking ranks with the national coalition of support groups that has formed in Japan, announced that they might, after all, go to Pyongyang to meet their grand-daughter.

Although Seoul displays increasing confidence about dealing with Pyongyang as the mesh of the relationship thickens, elsewhere there is little understanding and less sympathy for Pyongyang's plight. There will be no easy path in from the cold. How can Kim Jong Il be serious about reform when established state structures still depend on unquestioning allegiance to the order that reform must negate? Observers in Japan and South Korea see parallels between North Korea today and Japan in the last stages of the Pacific War: embattled, desperate to survive, ready to sacrifice almost anything in the hope of preserving some core value. In Japan, that core value was what was called kokutai, literally the "national polity" but in fact the emperor system. In North Korea the core value is the ideology of juche, which means essentially the guerrilla state myth as now preserved by Kim Jong Il, handed down to him by his father Kim Il Sung. Since the state is to an extraordinary degree identified with its leader, his will to change it may be decisive.

Two psychological factors, pride and face, are also immensely important to all North Koreans and they will cling to them with utmost tenacity. At the end of 2002, the readiness to make any concessions to Pyongyang and to understand in a historical context the pain and sense of justice, however perverted, that drive the regime, were conspicuously absent. For this reason, the more the U.S. resolves to ratchet up the pressure and force Pyongyang into submission, the less likely it is that there will be a successful outcome.

GAVAN McCORMACK is a professor of history at the Australian National University and co-author of Korea Since 1950 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993) and Japan's Contested Constitution (London: Routledge, 2001). Also see his "North Korea in the Vice," in New Left Review 18, November/December 2002, and Sekai, January 2003.

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