[Cankor] Report #276

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CANADA-KOREA ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICE

CanKor # 276

Friday, 16 March 2007
*************************************************

A busy week for the Six-Party process, as working groups assemble (a) 
on energy and economic cooperation, (b) on peace and security in 
Northeast Asia, (c) on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, 
(d) on normalizing relations between the USA and DPRK, to be followed 
by a plenary session on how to shut down DPRK nuclear facilities.

An optimistic IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei returns from a "quite 
useful" visit to Pyongyang, saying that the DPRK is ready to "fully 
cooperate" with IAEA, and work with the agency to shut down the 
Yongbyon nuclear facilities.

DPRK-Japanese relations go from bad to worse when Japanese Prime 
Minister Shinzo Abe denies coercion by the Japanese Imperial military 
in recruiting "comfort women" for military brothels during World War 
II while continuing to berate North Korea over the abduction of 
Japanese civilians.

In the OPINION section of this issue of the CanKor Report, Don 
Oberdorfer examines what is really behind the Bush administration's 
course reversal on North Korea. He concludes that in addition to 
factors such as the changing security environment in Northeast Asia in 
the wake of the DPRK nuclear test, the electoral defeat of Republicans 
in congressional elections, the resignation of John Bolton and other 
foes of engagement, and the influence of China, the work of Assistant 
Secretary of State Christopher Hill stands out as a central factor in 
the change of US policy.

Former Australian diplomat Gregory Clark argues that Pyongyang may be 
eager to embrace Washington as a way to distance itself from Beijing 
and possibly even from Seoul.
*************************************************

Contents:

1.   NUKE ISSUE MAY SEE WATERSHED IN ONE WEEK
     http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200703/200703130028.html

2.   ELBARADEI: DPRK WANTS TO COME BACK
     http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-03/15/content_828798.htm

3.   JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER'S RECKLESS REMARKS ACCUSED
     http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2007/200703/news03/12.htm#1

4.   JAPAN'S ABE STICKS TO COMMENTS ON 'COMFORT WOMEN'
     http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-japankor18mar18,1,7382940.story?coll=la-news-a_section

OPINION
5.   HOW THE WHITE HOUSE LEARNED TO LIVE WITH KIM JONG IL
     http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17612517/site/newsweek/?nav=slate?from=rss

6.   NORTH KOREA PREFERS BUSH?
     http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/member.html?appURL=eo20070315gc.html
*************************************************

1.   NUKE ISSUE MAY SEE WATERSHED IN ONE WEEK
     Chosun Ilbo, 13 March 2007

Roughly a month after the six-nation North Korea nuclear accord was 
reached in Beijing on Feb. 13, follow-up events are due to get under 
way in earnest this week.

First, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based International 
Atomic Energy Agency, will arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday (13 March). 
Then a series of meetings between representatives from the six 
concerned parties will be held in Beijing from Thursday to next 
Wednesday. (...)

On Thursday (15 March), a working-group meeting on energy and economic 
cooperation will be held in the Chinese capital under the chairmanship 
of South Korea.
A working-group meeting on peace and security in Northeast Asia is 
scheduled for Friday (16 March),
to be followed by a working-group meeting on the denuclearization of 
the Korean Peninsula on Saturday (16 March).
The highlight of the series of meetings will be a working group on 
normalizing relations between the USA and North Korea on Sunday (17 
March), a follow-up to similar talks held in New York on March 6 and 
7.

The following Monday (19 March), the six participating countries will 
hold a plenary session, also in Beijing, to discuss in detail how to 
shut down North Korea's nuclear facilities. As such, a watershed in 
the North Korean nuclear issue may come a week from now.
*************************************************

2.   ELBARADEI: DPRK WANTS TO COME BACK
     China Daily (Xinhua), 15 March 2007

IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in Beijing Wednesday that the 
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) wanted to come back as a 
member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"I met with the DPRK authorities, and discussed how we can have a good 
relationship between IAEA and DPRK...the visit was quite useful..." 
said ElBaradei, who arrived here later Wednesday after a two-day visit 
to DPRK. The visit "cleared the air" and "opened the door for a normal 
relationship between IAEA and DPRK", ElBaradei told a press conference 
in the Chinese capital.

At the invitation of DPRK, ElBaradei paid a visit to the country from 
Tuesday to Wednesday. He met with Kim Yong Dae, DPRK's deputy top 
legislator and other senior officials, according to the country's 
official news agency KCNA. ElBaradei's trip to Pyongyang has been the 
first visit by an IAEA director-general since the last visit paid by 
its former head Hans Blix in 1992. The DPRK expelled IAEA nuclear 
inspectors in December 2002, and in January 2003, the country 
announced its withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 
(NPT).

ElBaradei told reporters that the DPRK said they are ready to "fully 
cooperate" with IAEA, and work with the agency to shut down the 
Yongbyon nuclear facilities. The DPRK is also willing to accept 
nuclear inspections but is waiting for the United States to lift its 
financial sanctions, according to ElBaradei. "I believe we are moving 
forward, but it is a complex process which requires input from all 
sides," he added. ElBaradei will also meet with Chinese Assistant 
Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai Thursday morning, according to a 
diplomatic source.

Top US envoy to six-party talks Christopher Hill called DPRK's 
receiving of ElBaradei "obviously a good sign".
"I hope to meet Mr. ElBaradei tomorrow," Hill told reporters upon his 
arrival in Beijing, adding he wanted to hear what ElBaradei will say.

During the last month's six-party talks in Beijing, the DPRK agreed to 
give up its nuclear weapons program and to shut down its Yongbyon 
reactor by mid-April. Soon after the talks in Beijing, the UN nuclear 
chief said on February 23 that DPRK invited him to visit within the 
next few weeks for talks on its nuclear program.
*************************************************

3.   JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER'S RECKLESS REMARKS ACCUSED
     Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), 11 March 2007

The reckless remarks made by Abe openly denying the coercive 
recruitment of the "comfort women" for the imperial Japanese army are 
nothing but a crafty and shameful attempt to conceal the Japanese 
imperialists' crimes against humanity and evade state responsibility 
for the crimes, an unbearable mockery of the victims of the crimes and 
their bereaved families and an unpardonable challenge to all the 
Koreans and other members of the international community urging Japan 
to make an apology and compensation for them. A spokesman for the 
Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the 
Fatherland declared this in a statement issued on Sunday.

His outbursts are nothing but vituperation intended to justify Japan's 
past crimes and accelerate militarization for reinvasion and most 
insolent remarks making a mockery of justice and human conscience, the 
statement noted, and went on:

Now the whole world is condemning Japan's above-said crimes as the 
worst flesh traffic in the 20th century and the most hideous sexual 
slavery unprecedented in history. The prime minister of a country 
dared again deny the sexual slavery. This clearly indicates how vulgar 
and shameful the Japanese reactionaries are.

This being a hard reality, Japan dares make a bid for permanent 
membership of the UN Security Council and pull up the dignified DPRK. 
Can there be any more hateful and cursed country of brutes than it? 
Japan coerced hundreds of thousands of Korean women into providing sex 
to the imperial Japanese army and hurled millions of young and 
middle-aged Koreans into battle fields and slave labor sites, killing 
many of them. It is nonsensical, therefore, for the descendents of 
Samurais to talk about someone's "abduction" and the like.

All the Korean people should not pardon this spate of remarks made by 
the Japanese reactionaries but roundly expose the crimes committed by 
Japan against the Korean nation and force it to pay for all its 
wrongdoings.
*************************************************

4.   JAPAN'S ABE STICKS TO COMMENTS ON 'COMFORT WOMEN'
     Bruce Wallace, Los Angeles Times, 18 March 2007

Premier denies coercion in World War-II era brothels, even as he 
berates North Korea over kidnappings of Japanese citizens.

Anyone struggling to understand the Japanese government's position on 
the morality of kidnapping people, taking them to another country and 
forcing them to work against their will can be excused for being 
confused by the declarations coming out of Tokyo these days.

On one hand, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems prepared to risk his 
country's reputation by saying that the Japanese military did not 
coerce the tens of thousands of women from other Asian countries cast 
into sexual slavery during World War II.

Yet his government cannot contain its fury over North Korea's failure 
to "sincerely" face up to its role in kidnapping a handful of Japanese 
civilians during the Cold War and forcing them to teach Japanese 
customs and language to North Korean spies.

There is no hint here of any awareness of the irony.

There has been almost no outcry in Japan against Abe's assertion that 
there is no evidence to implicate the Japanese military in the 
well-documented system of organized brothels in areas under its 
control. Major media organizations support Abe's position and have 
encouraged him to stick by it. In a sign that it feels no heat at 
home, the Abe Cabinet issued a statement Friday reiterating that 
government archives contain no evidence of official military 
involvement in recruiting what the Japanese euphemistically call 
"comfort women."

Contrast that with the national anguish over the 17 Japanese allegedly 
kidnapped by North Korea and who Tokyo says may still be alive. One of 
the abductees, Megumi Yokota, who was kidnapped at age 13 three 
decades ago, has become an icon of Japanese victimhood, and Abe has 
never missed a chance to affix his career to her tragedy. Last week, 
his government launched a $1-million TV ad campaign extolling its 
determination to free her and the other abductees.

"The Japanese people have little awareness about human rights," says 
Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a Chuo University professor and co-chairman of the 
Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility. 
He has received many requests about the center's scholarship since the 
controversy broke -- all form abroad. "There was no interest in 
Japan," he says.

"The Japanese become very emotional about the abductees because the 
victims are Japanese, but they don't feel so close to other Asian 
women, whose suffering they see as something in the past," Yoshiaki 
says. "What Abe is demanding from North Korea, an apology and 
punishment for the people who did it, should be the same standard he 
applies on comfort women."

NO DOCUMENTATION
But Abe has opted to play the lawyer rather than the moralist on the 
so-called comfort women. Despite the testimony of women who were 
victims of the brothels, Abe says there is no paper trail showing 
coercion in the narrow sense of soldiers breaking into homes and 
abducting women into forced prostitution. Any such suggestion is a 
"complete fabrication," he told parliament.

How, critics ask, could a prime minister who came to office vowing to 
create a "beautiful Japan" that spoke with credibility on global 
affairs, end up squabbling over details with now-octogenarian women 
about the degree of coercion that was used to conscript them into a 
network of serial rape? Some say it is rooted in his government's 
falling poll numbers, which has left him vulnerable to attack from the 
nationalist wing of his party. These conservatives once saw Abe as 
their champion but accuse him of going soft since becoming prime 
minister. Others argue he was merely speaking his mind, noting his 
record of criticizing what he described as Japan's masochistic culture 
of endlessly apologizing for World War II and its related crimes.

It's unclear whether Abe knows, or worries, about the damage his 
obfuscation has done to Japan's image abroad. He has dismissed 
criticism as Japan-bashing spawned by a misrepresentation of his 
position by foreign media. But the sex slavery issue comes at what was 
supposed to be a shining period of breakthroughs for Japanese 
diplomacy: a visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to repair Japan's 
shaky relations with its Asian rival, and a trip to Washington at the 
end of April to draw attention to the robust health of the alliance 
with Japan's one indispensable partner.

Eager to keep warming relations on track, the Chinese government has 
been muted in its criticism of Abe's statements about the wartime 
brothels. But the Washington visit seems certain to be dogged by 
protests by women's groups and to attract sharp questions about 
whether the United State's firmest ally in Asia is backsliding on a 
central moral question.

And it will come as Congress considers a resolution introduced by 
California Democrat Mike Honda of San Jose calling on Tokyo to issue a 
formal, unconditional apology over the comfort women. Abe has 
dismissed the Honda resolution as "not based on objective facts" and 
said his government would not apologize again, whether the resolution 
passed or not, a statement that cut the legs from under Japan's best 
supporters in Washington.

"There is no difference of opinion on the issue in the United States," 
said Thomas Schieffer, the US ambassador to Japan, who said he took 
the word of the women who recently testified to Congress about their 
enforced prostitution under Japanese occupation. "They were raped by 
the Japanese military," Schieffer said. "I think that happened. And I 
think it was a regrettable, terrible thing that it happened."

PLAYING TO EMOTIONS
Abe's dilemma is that although legalistic hair-splitting about 
responsibility may play well in Tokyo's political backrooms or with 
conservative academics, it is volatile material abroad, where Japan's 
former victims and its current friends alike demand that Japanese 
prime ministers deliver an unambiguous moral condemnation of the 
sexual slavery. And no one knows the emotional potency of defending 
the victims of kidnapping better than Abe, who fashioned his 
nationalist career on the back of the abductees' media soap opera. 
Just days before he stumbled into the sexual slavery fiasco, Abe used 
the weekly newsletter on his website to gush over a song that Noel 
"Paul" Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary fame wrote for Megumi Yokota.

"An image of a happy Megumi together with her family floated before my 
eyes," Abe wrote after hearing Stookey perform the song to Megumi's 
parents in "a gentle voice one would use when speaking to a small 
girl."
"How scared and lonely she must have been, separated from her 
parents," Abe wrote. "How deep and large the emotional scars must be 
for parents, whose dear child was taken away."

How true. And how extraordinary, critics say, that Abe was unable to 
conjure the same sympathy and moral outrage over the horrors inflicted 
on the thousands of women at the hands of the Japanese military.
*************************************************

OPINION

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

5.   HOW THE WHITE HOUSE LEARNED TO LIVE WITH KIM JONG IL
     Don Oberdorfer, Newsweek, 14 March 2007

[Oberdorfer is a former Washington Post diplomatic correspondent and 
author of "The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History." He is currently 
chairman of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University's Nitze 
School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.]

What's really behind the Bush administration's course reversal on 
North Korea-and can the negotiations succeed?

At 10:36 a.m. last Oct. 9, the first nuclear blast ever to shake the 
Korean peninsula created an artificial earthquake near P'unggye in the 
remote northeastern corner of North Korea. As nuclear detonations go, 
it was smaller than expected-less than 1 kiloton, the equivalent of 
1,000 tons (2 million pounds) of TNT. However, that would be enough, 
according to US expert Siegfried Hecker, former chief of the US 
nuclear laboratory at Los Alamos, to kill instantly many thousands of 
people if it exploded in a major city.

North Korea hailed the blast as a historic event that had been 
conducted entirely with "indigenous wisdom and technology." Following 
an unexplained delay of 11 days, it began holding mass celebrations of 
the country's nuclear status. Signs were erected on Pyongyang street 
corners declaring LET US MAKE SHINE FOREVER OUR BECOMING A NUCLEAR 
POWER, A HISTORIC INCIDENT IN THE 5,000 YEARS OF OUR PEOPLE'S HISTORY.

The widespread belief, which I shared at the time, was that North 
Korea's entry into the nuclear weapons club would mean the virtual end 
of the Six-Party Talks aimed at rolling back and eventually 
eliminating the country's nuclear materials and programs.

I was wrong.

In mid-January, US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and 
North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan held unannounced 
meetings in the embassies of the two nations in Berlin, where they 
agreed on the basic outlines of an accord that was formally adopted on 
Feb. 13 by all members of the resurrected Six-Party Talks.

Following up on that agreement, Hill and Kim met again on March 5 and 
6 across the polished dining table in the private suite of the US 
ambassador to the United Nations on the 42nd floor of the elegant 
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. There they worked to hammer out 
details of the actions each side is committed to take in the first 
phase of the agreement, by mid-April: North Korea is to shut down and 
seal its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and invite 
back the international inspectors who had been kicked out of the 
country three years earlier; and the United States is to end the US 
Treasury Department investigation of Banco Delta Asia, the Macao bank 
that was integral to many North Korean financial transactions, and to 
begin the process of removing the country from its list of states 
supporting international terrorism and from the list of official US 
enemies under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Hill made clear that 
successful negotiations could lead to the establishment of diplomatic 
relations between Washington and Pyongyang-so long as the North 
Koreans faithfully fulfill any promises they make.

Ironically, the suite where the two negotiators met had been only 
recently vacated by former ambassador to the United Nations John 
Bolton, an outspoken opponent of bilateral negotiations with the 
North. He was well known for calling North Korean leader Kim Jong Il a 
"tyrannical dictator" who presided over a country that is for many "a 
hellish nightmare." In return, a North Korean spokesman labeled Bolton 
"human scum."

For most of his six years in office, President George W. Bush had also 
been opposed to bilateral dealings with North Korea and supremely 
uninterested in normalizing relations with Kim's regime. Nor has he 
been complimentary about North Korea, labeling it in 2002 as part of 
an "Axis of Evil" along with Iraq and Iran, and volunteering to author 
Bob Woodward in August of that year, "I loathe Kim Jong Il!" 
Nonetheless, Bush's policy, if not his personal views, began to change 
dramatically late last year, making possible the negotiations that 
took place in New York last week.

How and why US policy has shifted dramatically is a matter of great 
speculation in Washington and a variety of other capitals. No 
definitive answers have been established, but the following are among 
the most frequently cited factors:

     -- The Oct. 9 test itself, the climax of at least four decades of 
effort by North Korea, which changed the security environment in 
Northeast Asia.

As a result of its activities at Yongbyon, North Korea is believed to 
possess about 50 kilograms of plutonium, enough to be the radioactive 
core of six to 10 nuclear weapons, depending on their size and 
efficiency. Unless checked, North Korea could continue to produce more 
weapons material and stage many more tests. This could touch off a 
nuclear arms race in Asia, potentially involving Japan, South Korea 
and Taiwan, among others. The nightmare for the United States is that 
North Korea could produce enough plutonium to have some to spare for 
potential sales to anti-American states or subnational groups. With a 
military attack on North Korea's military facilities virtually ruled 
out as too dangerous or ineffective, diplomacy emerged as the only 
credible way to protect US national security and world order.

Throughout the 20th century, Washington paid full attention to North 
Korea only when the isolated communist state was considered a credible 
threat to the United States or its allies: in the 1950-53 Korean War; 
during the 1993-94 North Korean drive for nuclear materials, leading 
to negotiations and the Agreed Framework; after the 1998 North Korean 
ballistic missile test, which generated the negotiations led by former 
Defense secretary William Perry, and after the collapse of the Agreed 
Framework and the start of North Korea's all-out drive to produce 
nuclear materials, which generated the Six-Party Talks. In the light 
of this history, it's not surprising that the nuclear weapons test of 
last October got the attention of US policymakers, although it is 
surprising that negotiations have proceeded so far, so fast.

     -- The dramatic political reverses of Bush's Republican Party in 
last November's congressional elections.

The elections brought to power the opposition Democratic Party in both 
houses of Congress. Leading Democrats have been highly critical of 
Bush's foreign policies, especially in Iraq but also in Asia. Unless 
it took some actions to deal with the new nuclear threat, the Bush 
administration would probably face hostile congressional hearings and 
perhaps congressional investigations of its policies in Northeast 
Asia.

     -- Internal changes within the Bush administration, including the 
resignation of John Bolton and of other foes of engagement with North 
Korea.

The shifting Washington landscape has also reduced the remarkably 
strong influence of Vice President Dick Cheney, whose office was 
believed to be the center of opposition to engagement with adversary 
states. When a senior South Korean diplomat asked William Perry why 
the Bush team had reversed course on North Korea, the answer was stark 
and simple: "Because Cheney wasn't there."

     -- The influence of China, which has become a crucial partner of 
the United States in opposing North Korea's ballistic-missile and 
nuclear weapons activities.

China has its own reasons for opposing a nuclear-armed North Korea, 
especially the potential impact on the nuclear weapons ambitions of 
forces within Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Moreover, its role as 
convener of the Six-Party Talks since 2003 has been important to 
Chinese prestige, regional authority and its relations with the United 
States. Chinese leaders seem determined to do everything 
possible-including persuading Bush to engage North Korea-to prevent 
the talks' collapse and a nuclearized Northeast Asia.

A central factor in the change of US policy, although with uncertain 
influence on Bush's personal thinking, is the work of Assistant 
Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who emerged as the 
administration's leader on negotiations with North Korea. A career 
Foreign Service officer, Hill served briefly in the US Embassy in 
Seoul early in his career but until 2004 had spent most of his 
diplomatic life in Europe. His language skills are in Polish, 
Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Albanian. He first came to widespread 
notice as an aide to Richard Holbrooke in the high-wire, high-stakes 
diplomacy in Bosnia in 1995-97. Holbrooke described Hill as 
"brilliant, fearless and argumentative." Recently, Hill earned all 
those adjectives as US ambassador to Seoul in 2004-05 and since April 
2005 as assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific 
affairs.

For much of the past two years, Hill's most important negotiations 
have been at home within the Bush administration rather than abroad 
with North Korea or others. Hill fought hard against restrictions on 
his negotiating authority imposed by Bush administration conservatives 
and, unlike his predecessor, Jim Kelly, sometimes managed to succeed. 
I wrote in my journal in August 2005, when he had been in the job only 
four months, "My impression is that Hill was given the ball and is 
running with it as far and fast has he can, with protection from 
[Secretary of State] Condi Rice and a consciousness of where USA 
danger points are." At times he boldly took steps on his own-such as 
holding social meetings with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye 
Gwan -- and defended his actions later against administration critics.

At times his efforts were complicated and even frustrated by enemies 
within who opposed negotiations with North Korea. After he quickly 
forged a positive working relationship with the North Korean 
negotiator, Kim invited Hill to visit Pyongyang in the autumn of 2005 
and in May 2006, but he was not permitted to do so. On the latter 
occasion, White House spokesman Tony Snow declared, "The United States 
is not going to engage in bilateral negotiations with the government 
of North Korea." In April 2006 unofficial experts of the Northeast 
Asia Cooperation Dialogue went to great trouble to invite both Hill 
and Kim to a meeting in Tokyo. Both of them attended but Hill was not 
permitted to have substantive, or even cursory, discussions with his 
counterpart. All of which makes remarkable the events of recent months 
following the Oct. 9 North Korean nuclear test and culminating--so 
far--in the intensive bilateral meetings between Hill and Kim across 
John Bolton's former dining table.

In the immediate aftermath of the nuclear test, the UN Security 
Council unanimously "condemned" the test and adopted economic and 
political sanctions against nuclear- and missile-related organs of 
North Korea. Significantly, China voted for sanctions against North 
Korea -- as it had done following the July ballistic missile tests --  
after maneuvering to water them down somewhat. North Korea, which 
depends on China for energy and food, as well as for political 
protection, took notice of the attitude and actions of its giant 
neighbor. Reports from the area suggest that to emphasize its 
unhappiness, China also cut off the supply of spare parts to North 
Korea's military and abruptly stopped building a bridge for the North 
Koreans across the Yalu River. On Oct. 19, just 10 days after the 
nuclear test, Kim Jong Il met Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, a 
former foreign minister, in Pyongyang to hear China propose that North 
Korea return to the Six-Party Talks and work flexibly toward a 
denuclearized Korean Peninsula. When he returned to Beijing, Tang 
informed Secretary of State Rice and asked her to arrange for Hill, 
then in the South Pacific, to fly to the Chinese capital to meet Kim 
Kye Gwan, who would fly in from Pyongyang. Seven hours of meetings 
between Hill and Kim, some with their Chinese counterpart, Vice 
Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, produced an agreement to resume the 
Six-Party Talks with North Korean participation.

After a great deal of diplomatic maneuvering in November, the formal 
talks in Beijing held Dec. 18-22 proved to be a disappointment. North 
Korea refused to engage with the others on the issues of its nuclear 
weapons program and passed word to the Americans that its negotiator 
lacked instructions from home. The night the talks ended, Hill sent 
his aide Sung Kim, director of the State Department Office of Korean 
Affairs, to the North Korean Embassy with the message that Hill would 
be willing to meet Kim Kye Gwan for bilateral talks in another city to 
carry on the nuclear dialogue. Two days after Christmas the word came 
back that Kim wished to meet Hill in Europe. This was the genesis of 
their meetings in Berlin on Jan. 16-18, which produced important 
breakthroughs toward halting and eventually eliminating North Korea's 
nuclear activities, but which also required US flexibility and 
compromises.

Secretary Rice stopped off in Berlin on Jan. 17 on her way back from 
discussions in the Middle East and was briefed in person by Hill. Rice 
then took the extraordinary step of calling Bush directly, as well as 
her former deputy, national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, to 
urge -- and obtain -- approval of the course that Hill had outlined in 
his talks with Kim. This action bypassed the Washington bureaucracy, 
some of whose officials have thrown up roadblocks in the past to 
meetings and agreements with the North.

Despite the progress made with the Feb. 13 accords and the meetings in 
New York in the past few days, many hurdles remain before solid 
progress is assured toward cessation of North Korea's nuclear weapons 
activities and eventual denuclearization.

One of the difficult issues is North Korea's acknowledgement and 
cessation of its activities to produce highly enriched uranium, a 
nuclear weapons material different from the plutonium that has been 
produced in the Yongbyon reactor. There is ample evidence from 
Pakistan that AQ Khan, the former illicit salesman of nuclear weapons 
materials and technology, supplied North Korea with at least a small 
number of centrifuges with which highly enriched uranium can be made. 
This information was the basis of the Bush administration's 2002 
accusation that North Korea was cheating on its obligations under the 
Agreed Framework. This charge led to the end of the US-North Korean 
pact at the end of that year and Pyongyang's resumption of full-scale 
weapons activity at Yongbyon, where it produced the plutonium used in 
the Oct. 9 blast.

There is growing doubt in US official and scientific quarters that 
Pyongyang has obtained or manufactured enough centrifuges and other 
materials to produce weapons-usable enriched uranium. The doubts 
surfaced publicly in the late-February testimony before Congress of 
Joseph DeTrani, the chief US national intelligence officer for North 
Korea, creating a sensation among critics who charged that the 
administration had needlessly destroyed the Agreed Framework in 2002, 
leading to the production of the radioactive materials that comprise 
the North Korean nuclear arsenal.

Kim Kye Gwan has told Hill on several occasions, including the recent 
talks, that North Korea is willing to discuss the highly enriched 
uranium issue with the United States, but it is uncertain whether the 
discussion he has in mind will satisfy US officials. Hill has demanded 
that North Korea "come clean" in laying out all that it has done to 
produce this weapons material.

The Feb. 13 accord, accepted and endorsed by all parties to the 
Six-Party Talks, contains many detailed commitments, any of which 
could be the subject of intense bargaining between the United States 
and North Korea, as well as other parties. Hill and Kim addressed some 
of those issues at the Waldorf-Astoria and emerged with expressions of 
satisfaction that these early talks had gone well.

Four months after North Korea's underground blast, it's astonishing 
how far the negotiations aimed at reversing North Korea's nuclear 
success have progressed -- and how much the Bush administration has 
changed course. None of this means that the road ahead will be smooth 
or that a positive outcome is guaranteed. Failure is still very much a 
possibility. But the fact that success is also a possibility is a 
direct result of the impressive efforts of the diplomats who are 
seeking denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
*************************************************

6.   NORTH KOREA PREFERS BUSH?
     Gregory Clark, The Japan Times, 15 March 2007

[Gregory Clark is a former Australian diplomat and longtime Japan 
resident.]

Japan's distress over the rapid progress in US-North Korean talks for 
normalization of relations is palpable. The government as well as the 
mainstream media seem united in hopes that Washington will delay 
normalization until North Korea meets Japan's demands over the 
abductee issue -- the return of a claimed 12 abducted Japanese 
additional to the five returned in 2002, and said to be still alive in 
North Korea.

Few seem to want to realize one reason why the United States is now so 
seemingly willing to ease its formerly hostile attitude to North 
Korea: that Washington is finally discovering that Pyongyang is still 
quite willing to abandon its nuclear ambitions once the USA begins to 
stick to its long-forgotten 1994 promises to normalize relations and 
assist North Korea's energy requirements.

Even less is there any realization of an even more important factor 
possibly at work -- namely, the strong hints now surfacing that 
Pyongyang is eager to embrace Washington as a way to distance itself 
from Beijing and possibly even from Seoul.

Any move along these lines would mean a complete revamping of the 
political and security situation in Northeast Asia. Tokyo might want 
to ignore this possibility because of the damage it would do to its 
own plans for alliances and armaments to meet the perceived North 
Korean threat. But why does the rest of Japan remain so impervious to 
something that is already the subject of open speculation in the US 
media?

Hints that Pyongyang is anxious to free itself from the Chinese 
embrace have been around for quite some time. Perhaps the strongest 
was the extraordinary reception given to former US Secretary of State 
Madeleine Albright on her pathbreaking visit to Pyongyang in October 
2000. A senior Chinese delegation was also in town at the time. One 
reliable source has said the Chinese were furious over the lack of 
attention they received as a result.

Also hurtful is North Korea's reluctance to show gratitude for the 
economic aid it receives from China, and in particular for the crucial 
way Chinese troops helped to force back US forces moving deep into 
North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War. According to one frequent 
visitor to North Korea -- Italian journalist and documentary producer, 
Pio d'Emilia -- war museums in North Korea pay little attention to the 
Chinese role.

In seeming retaliation, he says, the Chinese have recently placed in a 
war museum at Dandong near the North Korean frontier a copy of a 1950 
handwritten letter from then North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, begging 
the Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, to send troops urgently.

In the six-party talks leading to the current talks on normalization, 
nuclear and other questions Beijing has been surprisingly neutral 
toward its communist neighbor, voting even for UN sanctions after 
North Korea's recent nuclear test explosion. The assumption that the 
two communist neighbors should automatically support each other seems 
dead.

The Korean people have a tradition of seeking to ally with a strong 
power to protect themselves from other and rival powers. Many, 
including Albright, former Prime Minister Junichi Koizumi and even 
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have spoken about North Korean leader Kim 
Jong Il's rationality and quickness of thinking. There are many 
reports of his liking for Western culture. The idea that he could 
suddenly volte-face and seek to be accepted on the world stage as a 
friend of the USA is far from impossible. Certainly he shows little 
liking for China and its culture.

The North Korean regime is also very sensitive to "face." By opening 
to the USA, Kim also bypasses the humiliating admission of inferiority 
to his southern neighbor. Face also seems to underlie Pyongyang's 
seeming lack of gratitude for the generous economic and other aid it 
receives from South Korea and others.

Many, in Japan especially, have assumed that the reclusiveness and 
backwardness of the North Korean regime, would rule out any opening to 
the West. But in 1972 the equally backward and reclusive Chinese 
regime of Mao Zedong opened its arms to US President Richard Nixon. 
One of the advantages of being a communist dictator is that you can 
change course rapidly, and in whatever direction you want.

That Japan still seems unable or unwilling to grasp these 
possibilities is a measure of many things. One is its chronic weakness 
in diplomatic strategy and tactics. Another is the anti-North Korea 
emotion whipped up here over the abductee issue. Even Pyongyang's 
insistence that at least one of the claimed 12 abductees -- Megumi 
Yokota -- is dead, and that this can be easily proved if Tokyo 
cooperates, is being ignored.

Kim can suddenly push his rigid society in a pro-USA direction if he 
chooses to do so. If that happens, and as with the sudden US move to 
China in 1972, once again Tokyo will be left trailing in the dust, 
complaining bitterly.
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End CanKor # 276

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