North Korea: Difficult Questions Hard Diplomacy

You would have to believe in miracles to think that North Korea would ever give up its nuclear weapons program. That’s the view of a distinguished professor from China who talks with an air of authority that seems to reflect an insider’s understanding of what’s really going on in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

Wang Jisi of Beijing University may not speak for his government, the Chinese Communist Party or his country, but his opinion of efforts to get North Korea to give up its nuclear program provides a startling note of realism that seems to have escaped non-Chinese negotiators. “The DPRK ” – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or simply North Korea – “will keep going nuclear period,” he told a small audience in Seoul recently. “There is no other ‘endgame,’ at least from Pyongyang’s point of view.” That’s the kind of blunt declaration that U.S. and South Korean nuclear envoys do not seem capable of making or even thinking, to judge from their public utterances.

The U.S. envoy, Stephen Bosworth, on a swing through the region, repeated the mantra of urging North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nukes and promising all topics would be open for discussion. South Korea’s negotiator, Wi Sun-lac, meeting Bosworth after both of them had conferred with China’s negotiator, Wu Dawei in Beijing, spoke of “the need for the parties to resume six-party talks.” Both the Americans and South Koreans acknowledged, however, that the whole process remains stuck on North Korea’s insistence on conditions that have no immediate chance of acceptance. These include the demand for a Korean War peace treaty – a deal the North couples with withdrawal of the remaining 28,500 U.S. troops from the South – and an end to UN sanctions imposed after its long-range missile test and its subsequent nuclear test last April and May.

Just in case anyone doubted the North’s position, the North Korean military came out with an appropriately tough statement warning of the consequences of joint U.S.- South Korea war games in March. It was one thing to vow to “mercilessly destroy the bulwark of aggression,” as the Korea People’s Army warned, but another to promise “all the offensive and defensive means including nuclear deterrent.” Ok, nobody expects North Korea to drop any atomic bombs from its decrepit fleet of MiG fighters or attach a nuclear device to one of its vaunted missiles. In fact, it’s quite uncertain whether North Korean engineers and scientists have actually figured out how to “deliver” the fearful warhead. Nonetheless, the statement would seem to leave one point indelibly clear: North Korea intends to remain a nuclear power.

Wang Jisi made his remarks in a paper delivered at a forum on the North Korean nuclear problem held at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank financed in large measure by Hyundai money and led by Han Sung-joo, a former foreign minister noted for his moderately conservative views. Wang’s realistic outlook seemed difficult to dispute in the face of the wishful thinking of U.S. and South Korean negotiators. He did not have to refer specifically to Bosworth’s mission to Pyongyang in December to get across the futility of it all. From all that’s gone before, he said, “it is hard to imagine any genuine progress on denuclearization – even if the North Korea- U.S. contact were upgraded or the six-party talks were to be resumed soon.”

Wang did not claim any real inside knowledge of whatever North Korean leader Kim Jong-il talks about in meetings with the generals he commands as chairman of the national defense commission, the center of power in Pyongyang. For that matter, he did not let us know if Kim talks to his generals at all. For all anyone knows, maybe the Dear Leader just tells them what to do and think, they bow in assent, and that’s it. “It is almost impossible for outsiders to know whether there were any debates within the North Korean leadership about the pros and cons of going nuclear,” he said. “Why bother?” was the rhetorical implication. “Even if there had been any doubts and hesitations,” he said, clearly “the perseverance to attain nuclear weapons is serving the leaders’ interests very well.”

The logic was simple from Wang’s perspective, and the price was right. “Achievement of nuclear arms should help consolidate their position at home and increase diplomatic leverage,” he said. “They feel little increased military pressure while they know how to take one step forward in nuclearization and then pause to show an ostensible readiness to negotiate over denuclearization. All the while, humanitarian aid and economic assistance continue to flow into the North.”

The degree to which Wang reflects the outlook of Wu Dawei and others in Beijing is not exactly clear, but it seems more than likely that he gets to lecture at home and abroad as both analyst and a messenger of high-level thinking. Looked at that way, Wang’s pessimism about North Korea’s giving up its nukes comes across as a sign of what Beijing sees as a higher priority, that is, propping up the North Korean regime against the danger of collapse and chaos. Wang got that point across too with a candor that’s not readily apparent in narrowly official pronouncements from Beijing.

“Unlike other partners,” he said, in a dig at the Americans and possibly the South Koreans, “Beijing would look at a possible political implosion in North Korea in most negative terms.” For that reason his government “would never try to destabilize that country or join others” in attempting “to do so.” Indeed, he added for good measure, it was “a consensus among many observers in China that the Pyongyang government, with the social order it maintains, may survive for a long time to come” in view of “traditional friendship” between Beijing and Pyongyang, a not-too-subtle allusion to Beijing’s rescue of North Korea in the Korean War, as well as “shared interests.”

Not that China is supporting whatever North Korea does. Reports persist that China is anxious somehow to tamp down North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, to discourage the North from another nuclear test that many observers here are predicting will happen this year – and, of course, to engage in serious, effective economic reform.

Japan’s influential national daily, Asahi Shimbun, for instance, cited diplomatic sources in Beijing as saying that China had responded with “an unexpectedly harsh reaction” to the North’s nuclear test of May 25 last year. “The Communist Party of China told North Korea to reform and open up its economy, end its hereditary succession of political power and abandon its nuclear development programs,” said Asahi, attributing those sweeping demands to party sources. It was against this background, said the article, that Kim Jong-il’s third son, Kim Jong-un, visited Beijing while his father eased up on disastrous economic reforms.

The Japanese may be the toughest of all when it comes to belief in a firm approach toward North Korea. Hitoshi Tanaka of the Japan Center for International Exchange, at the same Asan Institute gathering, seemed extremely ambivalent about the future of the U.S.-Japan relationship, but absolute in his convictions about North Korea. “It is no secret that the new government in Tokyo has expressed a desire to develop a more ‘equal’ relationship with the United States,” he said, citing controversy over “the realignment of U.S. military bases in Japan,” notably in Okinawa, as “the major irritant in the alliance.” Nonetheless, he said, “Japan seeks to strengthen existing security arrangements in the region as a hedge against uncertainty.” Tanaka pinned his hopes on an unlikely trilateral relationship of Japan, China and the United States that he recommended engage in “strategic dialogue” for the sake of “confidence-building” and “military and strategic transparency.”

The notion of Japan and the United States, bound in alliance under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty signed half a century ago, working together with China might seem preposterous considering China’s role in saving the North in the Korean War. Tanaka preferred to ignore that detail in his passion for unity vis-à-vis North Korea. “In order to have any hope of success in the six-party talks, the international community’s approach to this issue must henceforth obey five guiding principles” that seemed to reflect top-level Japanese thinking just as Professor Wang’s remarks might be seen as an expression of China’s leaders.

“North Korea,” said Tanaka, “must never be recognized as a nuclear state… policy consistence among and within the five nations is essential… contingency planning is imperative… a comprehensive, negotiated settlement is the only practical way forward… the six-party process must continue with informal negotiations before the talks resume.” Like Professor Wang, Tanaka believed that “North Korea’s recent movements have raised serious doubts about whether its leaders have any intention of negotiating with the international community in good faith.” The real reason for espousing the five principles, he said, was “to ensure a soft landing” – that is, to work together to avoid bloodshed and chaos in case of the total collapse of the North Korean ruling structure.

Tanaka advanced from that general idea to the concept of an “East Asia Security Forum” – a term that sounded very much like a de facto alliance, but without actually suggesting military cooperation. Rather, he said, “Japan should work with the United States, China and other partners in the region to establish an East Asia Security Forum as the core component of a new multilateral security architecture focused on inclusive, action-oriented and functional cooperation.” In the end, he said, such a forum’s “primary mandate deals with transnational and nontraditional security issues” and “would serve as a complement to more traditional security frameworks in the region, in particular the ‘hub and spoke’ system of bilateral security arrangements with the United States.” In other words, an East Asia forum might eventually take precedence over Washington’s bilateral alliances with Japan and South Korea – though Tanaka avoided the suggestion that these alliances might sooner or later seem irrelevant. The forum, he said, “would be most effective” if membership were limited to ASEA N, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

That kind of talk, however, may not have convinced influential North Korea watchers in the United States. Evans Revere, president of the Korea society in New York and a former diplomat with a long background in Korea, Japan and China, warned that “China could be forced to make hard choices between traditional support for its ally/partner and a new approach.” The North Korea nuclear issue had reached “a critical inflection point,” he said, “posing an obstacle to efforts to create a stable and predictable Northeast Asia security architecture.” Very soon, Revere believed, North Korea’s “actions and rhetoric” would “make clear the path we are on.” Under the circumstances, he said, such actions “may require fundamental reassessment” by the United States, South Korea, Japan and China of how to “manage the whole issue.

Nor was Revere entirely happy about the outlook of South Korea’s government. He did not seem all that impressed by President Lee Myung-bak’s repeated declarations that North Korea must give up its nuclear program as a precondition for the aid the North was accustomed to receiving in the decade of the Sunshine policy of reconciliation initiated by the late President Kim Dae-jung in 1998. The South “will need to decide whether it must now get tougher,” said Revere, while the North “must ask itself whether intransigence risks sowing the seeds of even further isolation.”

Revere posed difficult questions without necessarily providing answers. It was “important to ask,” he said, whether “core DPRK positions had changed for better or worse.” And was it conceivable, he wanted to know, that “the DPRK has made a ‘strategic decision’ – but not the one we had hoped for?” Revere doubted “strategic patience” would really be enough “in light of proliferation concerns.” Rather, he said, there was a need for “a proactive strategy, and one that takes into account both changing internal dynamics” of North Korea and the “likelihood that Pyongyang is not inclined to give up its nuclear weapons.” That pessimistic view jibed with the outlook of the Chinese and Japanese experts -- no matter how much they might otherwise disagree on how to bring North Korea to terms on its nukes.