[Cankor] Report #270

[cankor at cankor.ca]

Dear friends,

This is the final edition of the CanKor Report for the year 2006. Once 
more we apologize for the unintended technical problems that have 
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The CanKor team.
*************************************************
CANADA-KOREA ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICE

CanKor # 270

Saturday, 30 December 2006
*************************************************

In this double-sized OPINION issue, CanKor presents a number of 
interviews, articles and analyses from the last three months of 2006 
that should not have been missed.

University of Chicago professor of history Bruce Cumings states in an 
interview, "The worst failure has occurred in the Bush administration, 
where you have people inside that administration that can't decide 
whether they want to overthrow North Korea or negotiate with North 
Korea... If this is our enemy, we have to know it. And people in 
Washington have constantly underestimated, mischaracterized Kim Jong 
Il and the North Korean regime, and we're paying the price for it."

Dean of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service Robert 
Gallucci says, "We can't invade. Sanctions won't work. The only option 
left is to talk... While some have reduced a critical and complex 
foreign policy issue to a debating point in partisan politics, it is 
important to sort out the facts of what has happened in the past 
decade or so if we want to chart a more effective course for policy."

Former president of ROK Kim Dae Jung says neither military measures 
nor sanctions will work. "The third option, which I would like to 
propose, is to resolve the issue through dialogue between the United 
States and North Korea."

UCLA professor Tom Plate says, "The testy North Korean issue is a 
problem that will be with us for a while, so settle down and get used 
to it," but "North Korea's march toward a scary nuclear arsenal (with 
serious export capability) can be capped, at least to its current 
minimalist level."

Veteran journalist Donald Kirk analyzes how "those four tendentious 
initials, CVID (complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement) 
appear to have been dropped entirely from the vocabulary of US 
officials talking about talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons."

Stanley Foundation programme officer in Policy Analysis and Dialogue 
Michael Schiffer says that "the shortcomings of the six-party process 
thus far -- starting with its 'on-again, off-again' nature --  
illustrate the need for a stable multilateral security framework for 
the region, regardless of whether the six-party process meets with 
success any time soon."

President of the public relations agency Insight Communications 
Consultants Michael Breen asks what is the point of Six-Party Talks? 
"In case there's misunderstanding, yes, I am proposing a long-term 
vision of regime-change. But execution should be by North Koreans 
themselves, or, if their hands are tied, by Father Time and Mother 
Nature. Not by foreign countries. All the international community has 
to do is engage in talks, lots of them."

Junior fellow in the China programme at the Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace Oriana Skylar Mastro explains why it is a 
miscalculation to depend on China to solve the DPRK nuclear crisis. 
"This is all wishful thinking on the part of the United States. What's 
really happening is that Beijing simply sees what the United States 
describes as parochial interests as its own national interests --  
which it believes great powers are supposed to protect."

"The USA has argued, thus far unpersuasively," says President of the 
Pacific Forum CSIS Ralph Cossa, "that the pot of gold at the end of 
the cooperation rainbow would far exceed the $24 million in assets 
frozen as a result of the BDA action. This may be true, but totally 
misses the point. From Pyongyang's perspective, it is not just about 
the money."

CanKor Report #270 ends with an annotated list of additional important 
and interesting articles available on the Internet and worth reading 
in this context.
*************************************************

Contents: OPINION

1.   INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE CUMINGS
     http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/11/1430219&mode=thread&tid=25#transcript

2.   LET'S MAKE A DEAL
     http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1546330,00.html

3.   TALK TO KIM JONG IL, PRESIDENT BUSH
     http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/25/opinion/edkim.php

4.   LEARNING TO LOVE NORTH KOREA
     http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/columns.asp?parentid=57129

5.   CANNING CVID
     http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HL02Dg01.html

6.   TIME FOR A NORTHEAST ASIAN SECURITY INSTITUTION
     http://www.csis.org/pacfor/
     http://www.stanleyfoundation.org/reports/pac0659.pdf

7.   WHAT'S THE POINT OF 6-PARTY TALKS?
     http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200612/kt2006121417134854330.htm

8.   WHY CHINA WON'T SAVE YOU FROM NORTH KOREA'S NUKE
     https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=w061211&s=mastro121506

9.   THE SIX-PARTY TALKS: A SIGN OF HOPE ... OR HOPELESS?
     http://www.csis.org/pacfor/

10.  ADDITIONAL PAPERS WORTH READING
     Annotated web references assembled by CanKor

*************************************************

OPINION

*************************************************

1.   INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE CUMINGS
     by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! 11 October 2006

AMY GOODMAN: North Korea has warned that increased US pressure over 
its reported nuclear test would be considered an act of war. We get 
analysis from North Korea expert and University of Chicago professor 
of history Bruce Cumings. He is the author of several books on North 
Korea, his latest "North Korea: Another Country" and "Inventing the 
Axis of Evil." He joins us in the studio from Ann Arbor, Michigan. 
Welcome to Democracy Now!

BRUCE CUMINGS: Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you start off by 
talking about whether you believe North Korea did set off a nuclear 
bomb, test a nuclear bomb?

BRUCE CUMINGS: I really don't know. They announced in advance that 
they were going to conduct a nuclear test, which makes them the first 
nation in history to do that. All other countries have blown off a 
nuclear weapon -- you know, we found out about it the next morning. 
So, I think North Korea had to be in a position of assuring themselves 
that some kind of explosion would take place. It could be high 
explosives combined with nuclear material. It might be a small 
plutonium bomb with about half a kiloton. We just don't really know, 
but it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't really, you know, the 
plutonium bomb that everybody's talking about.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is the significance of this? The timing of 
this -- were you, yourself, as an expert on Korea, were you surprised?

BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, I think people have been predicting that North 
Korea would make an atomic test for about 15 years now, so it isn't 
surprising that they eventually went ahead with it, but I think what 
this represents is 15 years of failure on the part of the United 
States and the nonproliferation regime.

We nearly had a war in 1994, which forced the United States to 
negotiate directly with North Korea. We had the Framework Agreement in 
1994, which froze their plutonium reactor, kept it frozen for eight 
years. That was a great success, but the USA didn't hold up its side 
of the bargain to go ahead and normalize relations with North Korea, 
to provide light-water reactors as a substitute for the plutonium 
reactors, and eventually the North Koreans decided that we weren't 
upholding the agreement, and they started their second enriched 
uranium program, thanks to A.Q. Khan from Pakistan. That was a 
failure.

But the worst failure has occurred in the Bush administration, where 
you have people inside that administration that can't decide whether 
they want to overthrow North Korea or negotiate with North Korea, so 
they have essentially moved on two tracks with no consensus, and the 
President has not asserted himself to have a uniform policy. And now, 
after five years of this, North Korea has gone on its own to detonate 
a nuclear device, and we're really back to square zero.

AMY GOODMAN: What I think is astounding for some is the enormous 
pressure and attention right now on Iran, that many say does not have 
weapons of mass destruction or a nuclear bomb, and yet North Korea 
clearly further along, if not having one bomb, may have a number of 
bombs, but the same pressure has not been applied.

BRUCE CUMINGS: It's important to understand that North Korea is a 
garrison state with a million men under arms. It has another several 
million who have served for long periods of time in the military. It's 
been sanctioned since 1950, when the Korean War began. It's been 
isolated by the United States since the regime was formed in 1948. 
They are used to outside pressure. They've lived with it. And they 
continue to live with it. Sanctions will not make a difference with 
this regime. Even if China were to cut off its aid, it's not going to 
fall. So we have to negotiate with it.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what's happening right now at the 
United Nations?

BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, John Bolton wants to move to Chapter 7 sanctions, 
which would be backed up by military force eventually. And North Korea 
has said that would constitute an act of war. That puts us right back 
to where we were in 1993 and '94, when the USA was pushing the 
Security Council to do something about North Korea's plutonium 
program, and China and Russia resisted. They will resist any hint of 
military force, and so I don't think we're going to get Chapter 7 
sanctions.

I do think, though, that Mr. Bolton represents a point of view within 
the administration that the USA may go ahead and sanction North Korea 
regardless of what the UN does, possibly blockading their ports and 
things like that, which will be dangerous. But really, as I said 
earlier, the only way to resolve this situation is through direct 
talks between the United States and North Korea.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cumings, you just mentioned how A.Q. Khan had 
gotten nuclear material to North Korea. Three years ago, investigative 
reporter Seymour Hersh revealed that Pakistan was helping North Korea 
build the bomb. Hersh reported the CIA had concluded that Pakistan had 
shared sophisticated technology, warhead design information and 
weapons testing data with the Pyongyang regime. But according to 
Hersh, the Bush administration sat on the CIA report, because the 
White House didn't want to divert the focus from Saddam Hussein, and 
Pakistan had become a vital ally in Bush's war on terror.

BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, I think Seymour Hersh is right. Pakistan did have 
a nuclear Wal-Mart for North Korea, Iran and Libya, other countries. 
We did not punish Pakistan in any way for this, even though they were 
the worst proliferators by far in the world. And the Bush 
administration, when it came in, in 2000, was presented during the 
transition, by Clinton administration officials, with intelligence 
that North Korea had begun importing enriched uranium technologies 
from Pakistan, and they sat on it for 18 months until the preemptive 
doctrine was announced in September of 2002.

James Kelly then went to Pyongyang the following month, in October of 
'02, and confronted the North Koreans with this evidence of a second 
nuclear program. And the North Koreans, as they almost always do when 
confronted with their backs to the wall, said, "Fine, you know, we 
have it. We'll see you later." And they proceeded to kick out UN 
inspectors that had been on the ground for eight years, removed 
themselves from the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and reopened 
their reactors. Furthermore, they got control of 8,000 fuel rods that 
had been encased in concrete for eight years, and that probably is the 
plutonium that would be at the basis of this bomb test.

So, this was a complete and utter failure, because North Korea paid no 
penalty for jumping out of the NPT again, getting back their reactors. 
And the Bush administration continued to essentially argue inside the 
administration about whether to topple the regime or try and negotiate 
with it. So it was really quite a remarkable failure, and North Korea, 
let alone Pakistan, neither one of them, until now, has really paid 
much of a price for this.

AMY GOODMAN: Yesterday, Arizona Senator John McCain gave a speech in 
Detroit, and he said, "I would remind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton 
and other critics of the Bush administration policies that the 
Framework Agreement of the Clinton administration was a failure." 
Explain what that Framework Agreement was.

BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, it was an agreement that came after a very dire 
threat of war in 1994 that froze their entire plutonium facility at 
Yongbyon in North Korea. They had seals on the doors, closed-circuit 
television, and at least two UN inspectors on the ground, 24/7, all 
the time. So there isn't any possibility of that agreement having 
failed. It held for eight years and denied North Korea the plutonium 
that would have allowed them to make more bombs. Senator McCain is 
engaged in some sort of demagoguery here, because I don't know a 
single expert who would say that that Framework Agreement was not 
successful, at least for eight years, in keeping North Korea's 
plutonium facility shutdown.

Now, the enriched uranium program is not even clearly a program for a 
bomb. It may be to enrich uranium for light-water reactors that were 
expected to have been built by the United States and its allies. But 
even if it is for a bomb, it's much more difficult to enrich uranium 
to a weapons grade and create a uranium bomb than it is to create a 
plutonium bomb, plus they already have now, thanks to the Bush 
administration's policies, the wherewithal for six to eight plutonium 
bombs, so in effect they don't even need the other program.

People say North Korea cheated. Wow, isn't that really terrible? Kim 
Jong Il cheated. I don't know anyone who thinks that Kim Jong Il is a 
person who can be trusted, but I do know that North Korea kept that 
agreement made in 1994 and the USA did not. We pledged ourselves to 
normalize relations with North Korea. We didn't do that. We pledged 
ourselves to build light-water reactors. They got started in 2002. So 
when you actually look at that agreement between country X and country 
Y, rather than the endlessly demonized North Korean regime, you see 
that we are responsible, as well as the North Koreans, for the current 
situation.

But as far as Senator McCain is concerned, he is just flat wrong. It's 
not a partisan question. It's a question of knowing what that 
agreement was and whether it was carried out or not.

AMY GOODMAN: Bruce Cumings, right now the North Korean government, Kim 
Jong Il, is saying that if even sanctions, further sanctions are 
imposed, they would consider it an act of war. Can you tell us who Kim 
Jong Il is? And what do you make of that?

BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, Kim Jong Il, of course, is the son of Kim Il 
Sung. He's 64 years old. He was brought up alongside his father, from 
the Korean War onward, to be the successor to his father, in a very 
sort of Korean traditional manner. When you look at South Korean 
conglomerate firms, like Hyundai, they do the same thing. The eldest 
son succeeds the father. Now, this may not be communism, but it may be 
some form of feudalism, but it's very Korean. And Kim Jong Il 
certainly doesn't have the charisma of his father, but he's very 
smart, he's well informed, and he's been at the center of power since 
about 1970. We're talking 35 years.

So, he is a formidable individual, but much more than that, he is 
backed by a phalanx of hundreds and hundreds of leaders at the top of 
that regime that worked with Kim Il Sung. About six years ago, the top 
40 leaders, of the top 40 leaders only one was under 60 years old, and 
that happened to be Kim Jong Il. So you have a kind of a geriatric 
leadership with children of the leaders in their 40s and 50s and 60s 
running the place. And they are not going to bend to the United States 
or collapse or a change just because we want them to.

I must say that every time I turn on CNN, which I like as a channel, 
what do I see? A story on North Korea and goose-stepping soldiers come 
into view, and the goose-stepping soldiers stay there, as if this is a 
Nazi regime. The goosestep was done by almost all the communist 
regimes. It predates Hitler. It's not very edifying. But it is the 
case that we live in a democratic society where an attempt to get some 
sort of nuanced view of North Korea is almost impossible. You have to 
search for it in the fine print of our very best newspapers.

So I think it's -- let me just say that we have to know our enemy. If 
this is our enemy, we have to know it. And people in Washington have 
constantly underestimated, mischaracterized Kim Jong Il and the North 
Korean regime, and we're paying the price for it. These people wanted 
normalized relations with us. After 60 years, since we divided Korea 
in 1945, it seems to me that talking to them and normalizing relations 
is the only way to solve this problem. And what's so terrible about 
having an embassy in Pyongyang? We have embassies all over the world 
with countries we don't like.

AMY GOODMAN: Bruce Cummings, I want to thank you very much for joining 
us, professor at the University of Chicago, joining us from the 
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor today.
*************************************************

2.   LET'S MAKE A DEAL
     by Robert Gallucci, Time Asia, 15 October 2006

[Gallucci, dean of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, 
was the chief US negotiator of the Agreed Framework.]

We can't invade. Sanctions won't work. The only option left is to 
talk. The political consequences of the North Korean nuclear test are 
likely to be severe, domestically and internationally. Eventually in 
Seoul and Tokyo there will be serious discussion of the virtue of 
continued nuclear abstinence. And the North undoubtedly learned 
something from its test, so it is one step closer to mating nuclear 
weapons to an extended-range ballistic missile capable of hitting 
Tokyo today and Los Angeles tomorrow.

Most ominous of all, as we and our friends in the UN Security Council 
passed the toughest sanctions resolution we can--as we must, at least 
to set an example for others--we push the North Koreans ever closer to 
crossing the ultimate red line: selling fissile material to al-Qaeda. 
That poses a threat against which our country has no real defense and 
no effective deterrent. It is the most serious threat to our national 
security. While some have reduced a critical and complex foreign 
policy issue to a debating point in partisan politics, it is important 
to sort out the facts of what has happened in the past decade or so if 
we want to chart a more effective course for policy.

North Korea began building its nuclear-weapons program in the 1980s, 
just as it was signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. By the 
time President Bill Clinton was sworn into office, Pyongyang had 
already separated enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons. The 
President was told by his intelligence community that if the North 
Korean program was not stopped, the existing reactor and two others 
under construction would produce, within approximately five years, 
enough plutonium to manufacture 30 nuclear weapons annually. In close 
consultation with our allies in Seoul and Tokyo, the President 
authorized direct bilateral negotiations.

Sixteen difficult months later, with the US military presence on the 
Korean peninsula visibly enhanced and the threat of UN sanctions 
looming, the Agreed Framework was concluded. It clearly provided for 
the immediate freezing of the entire North Korean nuclear program and 
its eventual dismantlement--as well as the resolution of the vexing 
problem of the plutonium produced before Clinton took office.

This history is pretty clear, but what happens next, less so. The 
North complied with its obligations to freeze its nuclear program but 
later began to cheat by secretly receiving components for a 
gas-centrifuge uranium-enrichment facility from Pakistan. The Clinton 
Administration planned to take up the matter with the North, but time 
ran out. When President George W. Bush came into office, he, like 
Clinton, was confronted with a situation in North Korea--but one that 
was far less pressing: the plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons 
was still somewhere in North Korea, but no more had been separated. 
The entire plutonium-production program was frozen and under 
International Atomic Energy Agency inspection; and the other elements 
of the framework were on track. The problem was the secret North 
Korean effort to enrich uranium for a nuclear-weapons program.

The Bush Administration's approach to the problem quickly took shape 
when it confronted Pyongyang with the knowledge of the secret program 
and the demand that the North give it up before any further 
negotiations could take place. When Pyongyang refused, the USA 
abandoned the Agreed Framework, prompting North Korea to do 
likewise--kicking inspectors out, starting up the reactor, separating 
plutonium and announcing the acquisition of a deterrent.

What are we to make of this brief history? It is difficult to see how 
the current situation can be said to have resulted from the Clinton 
policy of engagement. Indeed, what has the current policy, which is 
far more resistant to negotiating, gained us? It may be righteous, 
denying North Korea the reward of bilateral talks, but it has failed 
to secure US interests.

There are now--and have always been--only three options available to 
deal with the North Korean problem: military force, sanctions and 
negotiation. Although the military option was available but 
unappealing a dozen years ago, it is barely so today. Limited targets, 
little reserve force to deal with retaliation and an ally in Seoul 
hostile to military action argue against that option. Sanctions, 
always limited by what China would permit, will not force North Korean 
compliance and amount to a policy of containment or acceptance of a 
growing North Korean nuclear-weapons program.

That poses unacceptable risks to our nation's security. That leaves 
negotiation--genuine negotiation in which we expect to get what we 
need and concede to the North at least some of what it wants. Our 
objective should be to focus on the country's nuclear program, 
insisting on its complete dismantlement and a full accounting of 
fissile material. We must be prepared to meet Pyongyang's concerns 
too--security assurances, energy assistance (including those 
proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors) and eventual normalization 
of relations. And there must always be an "or else"--that is, we must 
persuade Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing to support even more painful 
sanctions if necessary in the future so that the North is properly 
motivated. That is by far the best course, and we had better get on 
with it.
*************************************************

3.   TALK TO KIM JONG IL, PRESIDENT BUSH
     by Kim Dae Jung, International Herald Tribune, 25 October 2006

[Kim Dae Jung, the former president of South Korea, was awarded the 
Nobel Peace Prize for his "sunshine policy" aimed at a peaceful 
reconciliation with North Korea. This Global Viewpoint article was 
distributed by Tribune Media Services.]

A huge dark shadow of fear and danger lies over the Korean Peninsula. 
We in the South are adamantly opposed to North Korea's possession of 
nuclear weapons. This act goes especially against the "Joint 
Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," jointly 
agreed to by the two Koreas in 1992.

We strongly demand that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons 
program. However, because North Korea seems unlikely to abandon its 
nuclear weapons easily, we must figure out the appropriate measures to 
resolve this issue.

There are three options. The first is using military measures. 
However, neighboring countries will oppose this, and the resistance 
from North Korea when faced with such measures could result in 
catastrophe on the peninsula. It could reduce the peninsula to ashes 
and lead to the demise of the 70 million Korean people. Japan also 
will not remain unaffected. Therefore, we the Korean people are firmly 
against using military measures as a means of resolving this issue.

Second is using economic sanctions. Economic sanctions, of course, 
will inflict considerable suffering on North Korea. However, the North 
Korean people are already accustomed to economic depravation. North 
Korea could also receive assistance from China and other allies. In 
the past, North Korea has earned as much as $1 billion a year 
exporting missiles. If it adds nuclear weapons to its list of exports, 
it can earn even greater amounts of money. So there are limits to the 
effects economic sanctions can bring.

The third option, which I would like to propose, is to resolve the 
issue through dialogue between the United States and North Korea. 
North Korea has declared that it would give up its nuclear weapons if 
the United States agrees to direct dialogue and guarantees the 
security and unhampered economic activities of North Korea. North 
Korea has even said that it would allow direct inspection by the 
United States.

In effect, North Korea is saying, "Why would we need nuclear weapons 
if our security is assured? We will fully cooperate in the 
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

Of course, some say we cannot trust North Korea. But I believe it is 
necessary to give the North a chance. If North Korea keeps its 
promise, then that would obviously be best. But if it does not keep 
its promise, the remaining countries in the six-party talks, along 
with other countries in the world, can still take comprehensive 
countermeasures against North Korea.

We dearly hope that the United States makes a bold decision to change 
its present position and pursue dialogue with North Korea.

South Korea is the country most seriously affected by the North Korean 
nuclear issue. Therefore we are dearly committed to preventing this 
crisis from unraveling into catastrophe, and wish to resolve it 
peacefully.

The United States should fully respect the opinion of South Korea, a 
close ally, when dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue. The 
dearest wish of the Korean people is to induce North Korea to give up 
its nuclear weapons program peacefully.

I told President George W. Bush in 2002, when I was president of the 
Republic of Korea, that dialogue, when necessary for a country's 
national interest, can be pursued even with the evil. President Dwight 
Eisenhower held a dialogue with North Korea in 1953 during the Korean 
War and reached an armistice agreement, enabling peace to take root on 
the Korean Peninsula for 50 years.

President Richard Nixon went to China, which had previously been 
condemned for committing war crimes in its massive engagement in the 
Korean War, and held a dialogue with Mao Zedong. That laid the 
groundwork for China to pursue reform and open up.

President Ronald Reagan denounced the Soviet Union as the "evil 
empire" but still engaged in dialogue with its leaders. Pressure and 
containment never succeeded in changing communism in the course of 
history. Even Cuba, a small island on the coast of the United States, 
could not be changed through 50 years of containment.

However, there is not one case in which encouragement toward openness 
and reform has not worked. The Soviet Union, the Eastern bloc, China - 
they all have changed. The United States went to war with Vietnam, but 
now has good relations with the Vietnamese - through dialogue.

The United States must learn through the successes and failures that 
history teaches us. I hope President Bush makes the right decision 
now.
*************************************************

4.   LEARNING TO LOVE NORTH KOREA
     by Tom Plate, Pacific Perspectives, AsiaMedia, UCLA, 7 November 
2006

Let's not get seriously crazy -- no one is suggesting that North 
Korea's Kim Jong Il is anything like a male reincarnation of Mother 
Theresa. He's a real bad leader-type with a style of governing that 
dips well below the normal humanitarian standards.

But if you are worried about your own personal safety and that of your 
loved ones, and you reside anywhere between Singapore and Seattle, I'd 
be more scared of that bronzed Pool Boy now out on parole or that 
Pizza Delivery Boy with clandestine income issues. The guy in 
Pyongyang who has just presided over a semi-successful nuclear-bomb 
test is among the least of your personal worries for the time being.

So let's not jump into those designer bomb-shelters just yet. That 
recent underground mini-test was of a tiny atomic bomb scarcely more 
capable of destroying anything other than the best section of downtown 
Pyongyang, which in fact may have been more directly threatened than 
anyone given the erratic nature of recent North Korean misdirected 
missile launches.

So here are the two realistic options we face. One is that the testy 
North Korean issue is a problem that will be with us for a while, so 
settle down and get used to it. This is more or less the nuanced view 
of former American ambassadors Morton Abramowitz and Stephen Bosworth 
in their invaluable book, Chasing the Sun. All the back-and-forth 
between the United States and North Korea since 1994 (when a deal was 
supposedly cut to enrich North Korea's energy economy without 
enriching its atomic arsenal) is compressed in a handful of sharply 
written pages of this book.

The deal ultimately unraveled because of (a) misguided US assumptions, 
(b) way-belated Clinton diplomacy and (c) bull-headed Bush dogma. The 
authors do not see how this sad history can be rolled back now; too 
much poisoned water has gone under the bridge.

A slightly more optimistic view (that is to say, mine) holds that 
North Korea's march toward a scary nuclear arsenal (with serious 
export capability) can be capped, at least to its current minimalist 
level. But this would require an overall political settlement between 
North Korea, not simply with the six parties that will be negotiating, 
but with the world.

The 1953 cease-fire that ended the Korean War, with approximately 2.5 
million people killed on all sides, was inked by North Korea and by 
the United Nations -- not by the United States or by South Korea. 
Therefore, for the war to end and a new era to begin, a formal peace 
treaty must be executed with the United Nations and with no one 
else -- not China, not Russia, not George Bush and certainly not Dick 
Cheney.

By international law, therefore, no curtain can go up on any new era 
of peace without the direct involvement of the head of today's United 
Nations. Coincidentally, the head of the United Nations come January 
of next year will be Ban Ki-Moon, the current South Korean foreign 
minister -- to become the eighth UN Secretary General. Ban is a 
veteran diplomat deeply steeped in the long and bitter history and the 
long-running saga of North Korea versus the World.

At the appropriate time, the UN Security Council should arm UN 
Secretary General Ban with a broad legal and political mandate to 
conclude a long-awaited Korean peninsula peace-treaty. This historic 
resolution should offer newly appointed Ban a full range of authorized 
negotiating options, backed by the full faith and credibility of the 
five permanent council members, especially China, Russia and the 
United States. The authorizing resolution needs to explicitly take 
into account the unstable economic circumstances in North Korea -- as 
with the end of World War II, which led to massive aid for defeated 
Europe. Likewise, massive humanitarian aid and international 
reconstruction of North Korea must take place, even if it has been 
defeated more by its own absurd machinations than by those of anyone 
else.

Of course, an unmentioned third option exists. It is variously called 
regime change or collapse. With North Korea, nothing should be ruled 
out, including a China-promulgated coup. But if the North were to 
collapse, the impact would be quite a catastrophe for China. In 
response to that collapse, China could reflexively seize and occupy 
portions now within North Korea proper. Its own rigid geopolitical 
doctrines require worship of so-called buffer zones for protection. 
China would be no more tolerant of serious instability on its 
neighboring borders than it would be on its own domestic territory. 
(Note Tiananmen Square, 1989.)

This third option presumably is the least satisfactory for the West: 
new conquered territories for Beijing. Assuming this outcome is not 
exactly what the Bush administration pines for, and assuming its 
declared abhorrence of a nuclear North Korea is as publicly sincere as 
this administration ever gets, there is only one option. Call it the 
Ban-shoots-for-the-moon option: a true peace treaty for the long-tense 
peninsula.

Without this, it looks as if we may indeed have to learn to live with 
the Kim bomb.
*************************************************

5.   CANNING CVID
     by Donald Kirk, Asia Times Online, 2 December 2006

[Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea -- and the 
confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia -- for more than 30 years.]

Those four tendentious initials, "CVID" appear to have been dropped 
entirely from the vocabulary of US officials talking about talks on 
North Korea's nuclear weapons. They've fallen so precipitously from 
discussions that almost no one outside the negotiating process 
remembers what they mean: "complete, verifiable, irreversible 
dismantlement" of the whole nuclear program.

The Americans, judging from talks about talks this week in Beijing 
between US envoy Christopher Hill and his opposite number from North 
Korea, Kim Gye Gwan, apparently have forgotten all about their once 
commonplace demand for North Korea not only to give up all its nukes 
but also to open wide to inspectors tramping around the country to 
make sure Pyongyang was living up to his promises.

The reason, as was clear from Hill's meetings with Kim, is that 
Washington knows very well that Pyongyang is not about to abandon its 
program entirely. By now, the most the Americans seem to expect from 
six-party talks, if they ever resume, is that North Korea will submit 
to a "freeze" on development and production of nuclear weapons at its 
much publicized facility at Yongbyon.

Equally significant, the talks about talks had Hill and Kim yakking 
away for two entire days, all under the watchful eye of the Chinese 
envoy, Wu Dawei, playing the role of host, moderator and possibly 
arbitrator. The United States, it seemed, was ready to drop the 
pretense of avoiding direct negotiations with North Korea as long as 
they could place the give-and-take under the increasingly vague 
umbrella of the six-party process.

Besides giving up insistence on CVID, the Americans also appeared to 
have forgotten the origin of this phase of the nuclear impasse -- the 
alleged acknowledgement by North Korea in October 2002 of the 
existence of an entirely separate program for developing warheads with 
highly enriched uranium at their core.

That program, the Americans charged, had been going on in highly 
clandestine settings around North Korea even as Pyongyang put on a 
show of abiding by the 1994 Geneva framework agreement by shutting 
down the reactor at Yongbyon and opening the place to around-the-clock 
inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Americans like to say the North Korean nuclear test of October 9 
has changed nothing -- that, in fact, they still don't recognize North 
Korea as a nuclear power. Washington, however, appears resigned to 
accepting the reality that North Korea not only possesses nuclear 
warheads but is capable of testing them. All Washington is now saying, 
it seems, is let's deal on the basis of what you've got -- as long as 
you'll again shut down Yongbyon.

No one is saying so publicly, but that much appears to have been the 
crux of the demand made by Hill in Beijing. The quid pro quo, of 
course, is that the United States, as North Korea shows signs of 
imposing a freeze, will put together a massive aid program that 
exceeds the package agreed on a dozen years ago in Geneva under which 
South Korea was to bear most of the $5 billion cost of building twin 
light water nuclear reactors to help fulfill the North's energy needs.

North Korea's response to this proposal remains unclear despite the 
proud claim by Kim Gye Gwan that Pyongyang was not about to abandon 
its nuclear program in the face of Hill's oft-stated plea for North 
Korea to "get out of the business".

The Americans doubted if Kim Gye Gwan had the authority to come to 
terms on anything without definitive word from North Korea's leader, 
Kim Jong Il, presumably masterminding negotiations from Pyongyang.

The United States, said the Americans, would no longer demand that 
North Korea call a halt to everything before resuming aid. The 
inference was that the US -- in tandem with the other participants in 
the talks, including China, Japan, Russia and South Korea -- might now 
be willing to go for a program under which aid began arriving in 
stages timed with signs that North Korea was also shutting down the 
Yongbyon facility.

But where to begin? One possibility was that Washington might consider 
resuming shipments of heavy oil, agreed on at Geneva in 1994 and 
halted in November 2002 after North Korea acknowledged the uranium 
program. The new Democratic-dominated Congress might be willing to 
approve the shipments in keeping with the demands of some of its 
leading members for reconciliation with North Korea through dialogue.

There was, however, another thorny issue to circumvent before North 
Korea would return to talks -- or, having returned, to go beyond 
rhetoric.

That was the whole issue of BDA -- yet another set of initials that 
has entered the discussion ever since the US Treasury Department a 
year ago said that Banco Delta Asia in Macau could no longer conduct 
transactions in the US or with US firms anywhere as long as it served 
as a conduit for $100 "supernotes" counterfeited in North Korea.

That order undoubtedly has had as much to do with stymieing resumption 
of the six-party talks, last held in November of last year, as the US 
demands for North Korea to halt its nuclear program as a precondition 
for aid.

Hill for months made a show of saying the Treasury Department was 
solely responsible and the whole issue was separate from that of the 
nuclear program, but he's assumed to have hinted at some degree of 
leeway on the topic. BDA, having cut off business with North Korea at 
the behest of authorities in Macau, might conceivably resume after 
sifting through all its books and ensuring that North Korea no longer 
passed off counterfeit notes -- or, for that matter, used the bank for 
the sale of drugs and arms.

For Americans in search of a device for hitting North Korea's ruling 
elite where it would hurt the most, the Treasury Department order has 
worked amazingly well. North Korean officials have raised it at every 
turn. Kim Gye Gwan is assumed to have made it a priority item in his 
meetings with Hill, who, this time, had to come up with a coherent 
response for the meeting to get anywhere.

The ploy worked so well that Washington came up with yet another ruse 
for annoying the North Koreans just as Hill was winding up his talks 
in Beijing. What could be more fun than to watch Kim Jong Il writhe 
under a ban on some of the trinkets and toys he loves to bequeath on 
his underlings?

It was to deprive Kim Jong Il of the means to bestow such gifts as 
iPods, Rolex watches and expensive liquor that luxury items were 
included in the sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council after 
North Korea conducted the nuclear test. Washington, hoping to get the 
rest of the world to enforce the ban, has come up with a detailed list 
of goodies on which US officials are convinced Kim depends for 
bolstering his power and prestige.

The announcement of the list, however, appears unlikely to do much 
more than anger the North Koreans. On a practical level, Kim Jong Il 
can get all the luxury goods he needs by barter trade across the 
border with China. The Chinese might appear to go along with the ban 
but are not likely to infuriate their own wheelers and dealers by 
halting trucks carrying luxury goods across the Yalu River.

As the talks about talks wound down in Beijing, some observers 
suggested Washington was adopting a slightly skewed tactic for 
bringing North Korea to terms. Did the American strategists ever think 
of offering Kim Jong Il some payoffs of their own for Kim Gye Gwan to 
take back to Pyongyang?

If the notion of the US bribing the North Koreans with luxury items 
appeared far-fetched, no one doubted that Washington would eventually 
have to bite the bullet on a multi-billion program for North Korea if 
the North were ever to come to terms. Alternatively, of course, the 
talks, and talks about talks, could dribble on until Kim Jong Il 
decided he might have to order another nuclear test to get everyone's 
attention again.
*************************************************

6.   TIME FOR A NORTHEAST ASIAN SECURITY INSTITUTION
     by Michael Schiffer, PacNet Newsletter 59, 8 December 2006

[Michael Schiffer is a programme officer in Policy Analysis and 
Dialogue at the Muscatine, Iowa-based Stanley Foundation.]

With the Six-Party Talks appearing to be back on and the international 
community settling down to the long, tough slog of managing the 
consequences of North Korea's nuclear test, one of the clear lessons 
learned from the past few years is the need for an enduring 
institutional structure for Northeast Asian political and security 
issues.

The idea for turning the Six-Party Talks into a permanent security 
institution is not a new one. But the shortcomings of the six-party 
process thus far - starting with its "on-again, off-again" nature - 
illustrate the need for a stable multilateral security framework for 
the region, regardless of whether the six-party process meets with 
success any time soon. In fact, the creation of a permanent security 
mechanism in the region could be a key step toward resolving the 
impasse over North Korea and providing a means to address other 
potentially destabilizing issues.

While the Bush administration is right that direct bilateral talks 
between the United States and North Korea, by themselves, won't get 
the job done, ad hoc multilateralism isn't enough either. Assistant 
Secretary of State Christopher Hill deserves much credit for his 
efforts over the past year, but a genuine approach to multilateral 
problem solving that really tests the willingness of the North Koreans 
to deal - not to mention the US commitment to real multilateral 
problem solving - has yet to be fully tested.

It will take the cooperation of all nations in the region to manage 
the consequences of North Korea's nuclear test and ongoing nuclear 
program - be it the maintenance of effective sanctions; containing the 
spread of the regime's nuclear material or technology; or inducing 
North Korea to moderate its behavior by rolling back its nuclear 
program, ending its self-imposed isolation and integrating with the 
regional and global economy.

A permanent multilateral institution offers the best chance for the 
high level of policy coordination, close communication, and diplomatic 
synchronization that will be needed over an extended period of time, 
and offers the capacity and flexibility needed to cope with the full 
range of possible outcomes arising from the current crisis.

Moreover, a permanent multilateral organization might provide an 
important signal of goodwill in breaking the current impasse, 
especially given the implied security guarantees in the willingness of 
the parties to enter into such an institutionalized arrangement.

An enduring structure could also provide the space for the creative 
diplomacy and the additional flexibility needed at the bi- and 
trilateral levels to move the diplomatic process forward. The success 
of the recent round of talks in Beijing in getting the six-party 
process back on track notwithstanding, reliance on seat-of-the-pants 
diplomacy entails a high level of risk and invites failure out of 
proportion to the stakes involved. And, should the talks be 
successful, an enduring regional institution will be critical in 
providing the multilateral buy-in and leverage needed to make any 
potential deal that can lead to a peaceful and denuclearized Korean 
Peninsula a reality.

Moreover, holding out the possibility that North Korea will be able to 
join a regional security mechanism could in itself serve as an 
incentive for Pyongyang to change its behavior.

Indeed, to be effective any such institution needs to be open and 
inclusive. But given the immediate challenge of gaining traction in 
addressing the DPRK nuclear program, a functioning institution with a 
pragmatic problem-solving orientation should peg full membership to a 
commitment to basic international norms and standards, including 
adherence to at least minimal standards of responsible nuclear 
behavior such as International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.

If North Korea is unwilling to meet the requirements for full 
membership out of the box, but is willing to make a credible 
commitment to the larger undertaking, a "partnership for peace" style 
arrangement that benchmarks both the criteria of and actions necessary 
for full membership might offer a good model. Such an approach would 
also safeguard against dilution of the immediate functional goals of 
any fledgling mechanism.

As an outgrowth of the six-party process, the initial footprint of the 
organization would, for functional purposes, be limited to the 
six-party participants. But there is no reason why, if and as the 
institution gains traction and proves its worth, other states in the 
region could not join as well.

The initial institutional focus would thus be on the immediate 
requirements involved with managing North Korea's nuclear program, 
building on the agenda of the Six-Party Talks. In fact, a strong 
argument for seeking to embed the six-party process in a permanent 
institution is the simple fact that if the six-party process is 
successful - still a big if, to be sure - there are structural 
imperatives that will arise out of the implementation of the September 
2005 Joint Statement or any additional diplomatic agreements.

For example, if North Korea agrees to work with the international 
community to constrain or roll back its nuclear weapons and verifiably 
adhere to international standards in the management of any civilian 
program, a revived or reconstituted Korean Peninsula Energy 
Development Organization - or something new very much like it - will 
be needed. An institutional mechanism capable of day-to-day 
implementation will likewise be needed if the international community 
is able to encourage North Korea to end its self-imposed isolation and 
integrate with the regional and international economy. Getting ahead 
of the curve and providing an effective multilateral mechanism that 
can manage these functions will help mitigate against the sorts of 
friction in implementation that, although far from the sole cause, 
have helped contribute to the undoing of previous agreements.

And should diplomatic efforts fail, an already-existing institutional 
structure will provide the framework for the international community 
to manage the consequences of a nuclear North Korea that remains 
unintegrated with, and potentially hostile toward, its neighbors.

Looking beyond the Korean Peninsula, a pragmatically focused East 
Asian security institution could also help defuse and solve other 
issues on the regional agenda.

A host of diplomatic efforts in the region have been frustrated by the 
challenges and stresses created by the rise of China, Japan's quest 
for "normal nation" status, unsettled territorial disputes, booming 
populations, economic dynamism, increasing competition over resources, 
disputes over history, and concerns in Southeast Asia about a possible 
strategic contest between the United States, China, and Japan.

A permanent security mechanism that creates the space for the 
development of a regional security community with shared strategic 
values can help ease tensions and ameliorate potential regional 
flashpoints. And given that the most likely pathway to a destabilizing 
crisis or war in the region would be as the result of miscommunication 
or misunderstanding during a crisis - be it on the Korean Peninsula, 
across the Taiwan Strait, or elsewhere - an institution that can 
contribute to greater understanding and transparency and offer a 
mechanism, now lacking, for crisis and communication management could 
well prove to be crucial.

It is unlikely that Northeast Asia will develop anytime soon the sort 
of highly articulated institutional structures that have been 
developed in Europe. But the time has long since passed for a 
concerted effort to create a permanent multilateral mechanism to help 
maintain security and stability in the region.
*************************************************

7.   WHAT'S THE POINT OF 6-PARTY TALKS?
     by Michael Green, Korea Times, 14 December 2006

[Michael Breen is the president of the public relations agency, 
Insight Communications Consultants, and author of "The Koreans."]

With the six-party talks starting up again in Beijing on Monday, it is 
timely to ask whether Kim Jong Il will ever, as five of the six 
parties hope, give up his nukes. We could fill column space here, but 
the simple conclusion is, no. North Korea will have to give up Kim 
Jong Il first.

So, what is the point in the talks?

Plenty, but I think we need some lateral thinking to appreciate it. 
The allied negotiators might do well to accept the unspoken vision of 
a post-Kim era as their destination point. They should at the same 
time accept that getting there will likely require a long journey. 
North Korea will jump off the train and each time threaten not to get 
back on, but the steady and only objective of the five sensible ones 
should be to keep the engine running, if you know what I mean. That 
way, the end is more likely to come with a gasp than with a mushroom 
cloud.

In case there's misunderstanding, yes, I am proposing a long-term 
vision of regime-change. But execution should be by North Koreans 
themselves, or, if their hands are tied, by Father Time and Mother 
Nature. Not by foreign countries. All the international community has 
to do is engage in talks, lots of them.

If you live on the peninsula, you won't need persuading of this.

What I'm saying here is that we should not expect an outcome from the 
meeting in Beijing on Monday, nor from any of the subsequent meetings. 
The actual objective of the six-party talks is the six-party talks. 
The pretend objective, about nuclear weapons, may yield some pretend 
results. But we should accept that the northern dictatorship that 
mistrusts most of its own people will never trust foreigners enough to 
lay its weapons down. If it starts making serious concessions on the 
nukes, then we should fire up the satellites because we'll know it has 
switched the R&D focus to something equally as horrendous, like 
biological and chemical weaponry.

One danger here is boredom. Despite the press attention, the six-party 
talks are not exactly interesting, except perhaps for those directly 
involved in them, who don't realize that they are sent there as a 
punishment by their governments. You'll find when you read Tuesday's 
papers that by paragraph four the mind is wandering. But, boring 
doesn't mean unimportant. The talks are important. If the future of 
the world depends to some extent on the nature of the relationship 
with America and China, then how they deal with one another as they 
deal with North Korea will set the pattern.

We should therefore pay attention to how the five sensible ones 
relate. They can have different needs and viewpoints, but we need to 
be sure they act in concert and in good faith. They should not be 
undermining each other. China should not be sitting on its hands 
waiting for the US fall on its face. And the US should not play too 
rough so that the talks, hosted by Beijing, fail and cause China to 
lose face.

That said, it would spice things up if the allies could find a more 
creative way to deal with the North Koreans. It would be fun, for 
example, if Christopher Hill were to throw a North Korean-like tantrum 
and complain about the size of his chair. Or maybe if Japan were to 
make a PowerPoint presentation and accidentally play a Kim Jong Il 
spoof from YouTube (If you're having a bad day, check out this one: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtDovlVhGoI).

It would be exciting if the USA and South Korea threatened to bring 
nuclear weapons back to South Korean soil. They were removed by George 
Bush senior in the early '90s in response to North Korea's call for a 
nuclear-free peninsula. The USA could also get things going if they 
agreed to hand over control of the United Nations Command to a South 
Korean general, sign a Korean War peace treaty and withdraw most of 
their troops from South Korea. Actually, they've already suggested the 
first. My bet is the other two won't be too long. The North Koreans 
would have to scramble to come up with something new. Maybe they would 
demand an end to the death penalty in the United States.

But, humor aside, such games would only make us feel good. They 
wouldn't achieve much. And that is what negotiating with North Korea 
is all about. It's all about the dubious reward of getting nowhere to 
assure that you're not going anywhere worse. It's not a job for alpha 
males, but someone's got to do it.
*************************************************

8.   WHY CHINA WON'T SAVE YOU FROM NORTH KOREA'S NUKE
     by Oriana Skylar Mastro, New Republic, 15 December 2006

[Oriana Skylar Mastro is a junior fellow in the China program at the 
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.]

On Monday, the much-anticipated six-party talks, designed to rid North 
Korea of its nuclear weapons program, will resume with renewed hopes, 
and, this time, the focus is on China. Regardless of the last four 
failures these talks yielded, President Bush expressed optimism about 
Beijing's role this time. At an October 31 press conference, he said 
that he was "pleased" with the revival of the talks and wanted "to 
thank the Chinese" for their crucial role in making yet another round 
of talks possible.

But the Bush administration has miscalculated. Once again, it has made 
policy around how it wishes China would behave, rather than 
recognizing what China is actually thinking. That's why, as long as 
the United States is putting all of its hopes on China, the talks are 
going to fail.

The idea that the United States can convince other countries to act in 
its own national interest, even at their own expense, has deep roots. 
In an important speech given to the National Committee on United 
States-China Relations last year, Deputy Secretary of State Robert 
Zoellick asserted that it was time for China to start acting as a 
responsible stakeholder in the international system that "has enabled 
its success." Politicians and academics have echoed him, emphasizing 
that China will soon realize that it can never reach great-power 
status without learning how to put aside its parochial interests for 
the sake of the global community.

In the case of the North Korea, the US position has been that, 
eventually, China will have to apply more pressure and support broader 
sanctions in order to promote a positive international image. After 
the North's July 5 missile tests, some US scholars and policy-makers 
predicted that the incident would be enough to pull China on board 
with severe sanctions: One senior American official commented that the 
United States was banking on the Chinese being furious with North 
Korea, and some commentators even speculated that Beijing might 
withhold oil shipments as leverage against Kim Jong Il's regime.

It didn't. Instead, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations 
rejected a tough Security Council Resolution against North Korea, 
opting instead for a nonbinding statement with no real threat of 
punishment. He also called on the Council's members to act 
"responsibly and prudently."

In fact, even after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon in October, 
all Kim got for defying China were harsh words and mild sanctions. 
Although China approved UN resolution 1718--designed to punish North 
Korea for its flagrant disregard for international law by banning a 
variety of goods, both military and luxury, from entering or exiting 
and imposing an asset freeze and travel ban on people involved in the 
nuclear program--the body of the resolution had to be reworked 
multiple times at China's behest until the language was softened and 
several provisions (which were essential for implementation) had been 
cut. But that didn't stop Undersecretary for Political Affairs R. 
Nicholas Burns from calling the resolution "unprecedented" and 
praising the "strong leadership from the USA, Japan, China, and 
Russia."

This is all wishful thinking on the part of the United States. What's 
really happening is that Beijing simply sees what the United States 
describes as parochial interests as its own national interests--which 
it believes great powers are supposed to protect.

China has many national interests that its North Korea policy 
protects. The Communist Party's constant struggle for domestic 
legitimacy causes China to shield Pyongyang from international 
pressure, because any direct criticism of the North could open up a 
Pandora's box of discussion about pre-reform China as well as anger 
the families who lost loved ones in the Korean war. Furthermore, China 
wants economic development of its impoverished northeast--the region 
that borders North Korea and therefore has the most to lose from an 
influx of North Korean refugees. While China would like to see a 
denuclearized Korean peninsula, it is unwilling to compromise any 
important strategic interests for it. And, as the past four attest, it 
doesn't have to: China has achieved its goals (to maintain the status 
quo with North Korea and the United States) without actual 
denuclearization on the Korean peninsula.

In fact, China is even less likely to act now than it was before. 
After the North's nuclear test, whatever fears China harbored about a 
nuclearized Korea dissipated. Before, China's fears about a potential 
US invasion of North Korea or a nuclear domino effect in the region 
gave it at least some incentive to try to resolve the issue. In 
hindsight, those concerns seemed overblown: Japan declared that it 
would not seek nuclear weapons, South Korea didn't even pull out from 
its industrial park at Kaesong in North Korean territory, and we 
didn't hear a peep out of Taiwan. Furthermore, the United States 
seemed to accept defeat, as the discussions turned from disbanding 
North Korea's nuclear program to keeping Kim from proliferating his 
technology.

That's why trying to make Beijing push the North is even more futile 
than persuading it to fear proliferation to unsavory regimes. China 
sees its reluctance to impose sanctions on impoverished regimes and 
manipulate its neighbors' domestic politics as responsible, and China 
is not alone in its opinion. As the United States and Japan call for a 
hard line against North Korea, much of the world is quietly praising 
China for refusing to implement coercive and intrusive methods of 
"diplomacy." Indeed, China is not positioning itself to be a 
responsible stakeholder in this international system; it is looking to 
be a leader in a new, fairer, multipolar one.

Still, China's relations with the United States are important, so it 
spends energy and resources convincing the United States that it is 
responsible and cooperative power. In his October meeting with 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Chinese Foreign Minister Li 
Zhaoxing described his country's role in the international community 
as "constructive" and stressed that it has "an excellent track record" 
in maintaining its international commitments. Even if Beijing didn't 
believe this, Chinese diplomats will keep talking that way, because, 
if the United States loses faith in their ability to help, Washington 
may take unilateral measures that would destabilize the peninsula and 
put Chinese national security at risk. (It takes little to provoke 
Kim, and, after the US invasion of Iraq, the Chinese don't exactly 
count on Washington's level-headedness.

Before Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief US 
negotiator, joins China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and Russia 
next month, he needs to accept that Beijing does not see eye to eye 
with the United States on the North Korea issue. To break this cycle, 
the United States has to give China something it wants--such as more 
direct investment in China's poor northeastern region or more 
high-level meetings between American and Chinese officials. The 
package could also include assurances about US military and political 
intentions in the region; it all depends on how important 
denuclearizing the peninsula truly is to the Bush administration. But 
only by shifting the balance of interests can the United States expect 
China to broker a resolution on American terms.
*************************************************

9.  THE SIX-PARTY TALKS: A SIGN OF HOPE ... OR HOPELESS?
     by Ralph A. Cossa, PacNet Newsletter 61, 28 December 2006

[Ralph A. Cossa is president of the Pacific Forum CSIS]

The second session of the fifth round of Six-Party Talks, held in 
Beijing on Dec. 18-22, ended much the same as the first session had 
some 13 months earlier, with a vague promise to implement the 
September 2005 denuclearization agreement "as soon as possible," but 
with absolutely no forward progress toward that goal. Like November 
2005, the participants could not even agree on a date for the next 
session, promising only to "reconvene at the earliest possibility."

Prior to the talks, the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea or 
North Korea) had stated clearly, and on numerous occasions, that it 
had agreed to return to the dialogue "on the premise that the issue of 
lifting sanctions should be discussed and resolved." They were indeed 
discussed, but certainly not resolved, which was the clearly stated 
DPRK precondition for any movement toward denuclearization. What 
Washington approached as a negotiating point, Pyongyang stuck to as a 
prerequisite, assuring that no progress would be made unless the Bush 
administration somehow set US law aside and removed its restrictions 
(over allegations of DPRK money laundering and counterfeiting 
operations) against Macao's Banco Delta Asia (BDA).

The chief US negotiator at the Six-Party Talks, Assistant Secretary of 
State Christopher Hill, had made it clear that, from a US perspective, 
the nuclear and sanctions issues were completely separate and should 
not be linked: "I would rather not obscure the [denuclearization] 
problem by talking about finances," Hill asserted. At the end of the 
day, however, Hill acknowledged that the senior DPRK negotiator, Vice 
Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, apparently had "strict instructions" 
not to discuss nuclear developments until the sanctions issue was 
"resolved."

The USA has argued, thus far unpersuasively, that the pot of gold at 
the end of the cooperation rainbow would far exceed the $24 million in 
assets frozen as a result of the BDA action. This may be true, but 
totally misses the point. From Pyongyang's perspective, it is not just 
about the money (although the sanctions have reportedly hurt, 
especially since the BDA investigation has sharply curtailed 
Pyongyang's access to the international financial system as other 
banks have reportedly cut their own ties with North Korea out of fear 
of similar investigative action).

The sanctions are "proof" (in Pyongyang's eyes) of the Bush 
administration's "hostile policy" toward the DPRK. It is this policy, 
and not just the BDA sanctions, that must be demonstrably changed 
before Pyongyang would even consider giving up its nuclear weapons. In 
other words, even if the BDA issue is successfully resolved - through 
the lifting of US restrictions or, more feasibly, a finding that only 
selected accounts were suspect and restrictions against the others 
were withdrawn - this would not guarantee progress toward the 
denuclearization goal.

Previously, Pyongyang also insisted that the delivery of two 
light-water nuclear reactors, promised under the now defunct 1994 
Agreed Framework, was another prerequisite; North Korea's 
interpretation of the September 2005 Joint Statement reinforces this 
point. Pyongyang has also branded the US-led Proliferation Security 
Initiative (PSI) - aimed at preventing the illegal movement of weapons 
of mass destruction and especially their delivery to non-state actors 
(read: al-Qaeda) - as another clear example of Washington's hostile 
intent to "isolate and blockade" the DPRK.

For that matter, UN Security Council Resolution 1695 and 1718, issued 
after North Korea's July 2006 missile launches and October 2006 
nuclear test respectively, have also been condemned as "a product of 
the US hostile policy toward the DPRK"; Pyongyang has demanded that 
these too be rescinded prior to denuclearization, creating a 
"catch-22" of sorts, since UNSCR 1718, in particular, demands that the 
DPRK "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs in a 
complete, verifiable and irreversible manner," presumably as a 
precondition for lifting broad-based UNSC-imposed sanctions.

It is not clear from Pyongyang's declarations whether all these 
additional "proofs" of non-hostile attitude must be fully implemented 
before it will begin serious denuclearization discussions. However, 
North Korea has clearly signaled that it has no intention to actually 
give up its nuclear weapons until the USA has demonstrated (by the 
above-mentioned actions and more) that it has fully abandoned its 
hostile policy.

The other reason Washington's promised pot of gold is unattractive is 
that it comes with very heavy strings attached. In order to get, 
Pyongyang must give; it must give up its only ace in the hole and the 
only reason it is taken seriously today: its nuclear weapons programs. 
While this may appear a reasonable quid pro quo to Washington, it is 
too high a price to pay from Pyongyang's vantage point, at least as 
long as it can still get without giving from others, which continues 
to be the case.

(Truly resolving the BDA problem, from Washington's perspective, would 
also require Pyongyang abandoning its counterfeiting and illicit 
smuggling and money laundering operations, another too high to pay 
price. Ironically, it has become US efforts to stem such actions, 
rather than these DPRK illicit activities, that have been branded as 
"hostile" actions.)

Meanwhile, Pyongyang is still getting an abundant (and growing) amount 
of aid and development assistance from Seoul, primarily via the Mt. 
Kumgang tourist project and the Kaesong economic development zone, and 
from Beijing, through its economic investments throughout the DPRK, 
despite its missile and nuclear tests and UN-mandated sanctions. 
Notwithstanding its officially proclaimed policy to "not tolerate" a 
nuclear weapons-equipped DPRK, Republic of Korea assistance to its 
northern brothers reached record levels in 2006 and, if published 
reports are to be believed, is scheduled to grow even larger in 2007. 
While Chinese figures are harder to come by, it is assumed that PRC 
investments and aid will also continue, as Beijing incredulously 
argues that "punishment isn't the goal" of the UNSC sanctions.

Why then should we assume or even hope that another round of Six-Party 
Talks, if one occurs, will be any more fruitful than the last two have 
been? While North Korea would no doubt welcome another pot of gold, 
they are doing very well with the pots being provided by Seoul and 
Beijing, without any visible strings attached.

Until and unless Seoul and Beijing are prepared to increase the cost 
of non-cooperation, the best we can hope for, even if another round of 
talks occurs, is continued DPRK stalling and diversionary tactics and 
increased frustration, with little recourse, in Washington. The Bush 
administration is right when it says that China and the ROK share its 
denuclearization goal. Until they have crafted a common approach 
toward achieving that goal, however, North Korea is unlikely to 
cooperate.
*************************************************

10.  ADDITIONAL PAPERS WORTH READING
     Annotated web references assembled by CanKor

NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR TEST: THE FALLOUT
International Crisis Group Briefing, 13 November 2006
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4502&l=1

Though the resumption of six-party talks is welcome, serious bilateral 
negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington are also needed if there 
is to be any hope of resolving the North Korean nuclear issue. The 
latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the 
North Korean nuclear standoff in light of the events of October 2006, 
which included Pyongyang's test of a device, the world's strong 
condemnation as expressed in UN Security Council Resolution 1718, and 
the resumption of six-party talks.

CUBA 1963 AND NORTH KOREA NOW
by Leon V. Sigal, 14 November 2006
http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0696Sigal.html

Leon V. Sigal, director of the Northeast Cooperative Security Project 
at the Social Science Research Council in New York and author of 
"Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea", writes, 
"Will President Bush give Kim Jong-il -- and himself -- a similar 
face-saving way out? He could start by urging banks that have frozen 
North Korea's hard currency accounts to release the proceeds of its 
legitimate trade and then engage in sustained diplomatic give-and take 
for a change."

REPORT ON NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM
by Siegfried S. Hecker, 15 November 2006
http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0697Hecker.html

Siegfried S. Hecker, researcher at the Center for International 
Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, writes, "My general 
impression is that the Oct. 9, 2006 nuclear test, which followed 
DPRK's Feb.10, 2005 announcement of having manufactured nuclear 
weapons, will make it much more difficult to convince the DPRK to give 
up its nuclear weapons. The prevalent view we found in China, with 
which I concur, is that the United States must demonstrably address 
DPRK's security before there is any hope of denuclearization."

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SANCTIONS AGAINST NORTH KOREA
by Ruediger Frank, 28 November 2006
http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/06100Franks.pdf

Ruediger Frank, Professor of East Asian Political Economy at the 
University of Vienna, writes, "If pressure exerted through economic, 
political, or military means increases to a level that is high enough 
to trigger a qualitative change such as regime collapse, we might end 
up with a successful surgery, but a dead patient. Both sanctions and 
assistance naturally involve a great deal of uncertainty and risk. But 
while we can still change the engagement therapy after the failure of 
one type of medicine, the failure of a hard-line approach will leave 
us with irreversible damage."
*************************************************

End CanKor # 270

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