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Some Questions and Answers about U.S.-Korean Relations and the Korean Crises by The Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea The Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK) aims to encourage a peaceful solution to the present antagonism between the United States and North Korea . Many of our perspectives-on U.S. foreign policy, on South Korean domestic opinion, on the perspectives of other states in the region, on human rights, and on what should be done-can be found in the book Imbalance of Power: Transforming U.S.-Korean Relations , soon to be published by Routledge. Here, though, for those concerned about the Korean peninsula is a short list of questions and answers about the present crisis. What is North Korea ? What is South Korea ? The answers to these questions would seem to be obvious. North Korea is a communist country at odds with the United States ; South Korea is a U.S. ally. Both are nations in the same way that France and Germany and Ecuador and Burkina Faso are nations. Right? This presents at best a partial picture. Korea was unified for many centuries before being divided in half after 1945, and for most Koreans on both sides of the line the fundamental fact is that they are both Korea . From roughly the late 1940s to the 1980s there was a lot of hostility between North and South, but even then most Koreans saw this not as hostility between countries but as a struggle to reunite the people of a single nation. North Korea is nominally communist, but in substance has been since its early years primarily nationalist in its orientation-its commitment to "communist internationalism" of the old Soviet type was never very strong. North Korea may be dictatorial and repressive, but it is not a "Stalinist holdover," as often portrayed-it was never all that "Stalinist" to begin with, according to a strict definition of that term. Thus, likewise, the question of "why is North Korea still around" when most other communist states have disappeared since 1989 is based on the faulty assumption that it was like all those other communist states to begin with. In South Korea , likewise, ethnic nationalism remains very strong. As South Korea has grown into a vibrant and increasingly developed democracy, its people have become more willing and able to express their views to their longtime ally, the U.S. And for many South Koreans, the citizens of North Korea are, first and foremost, their brethren. Such South Koreans do not see eye-to-eye with the U.S. when the U.S. treats the North simply as another problem state to be dealt with, one way or another. What is the Present Crisis About? At present, there are two crises between the U.S. and the Korean peninsula. The first is with North Korea , and centers on questions surrounding its nuclear program. The second is with South Korea , our longtime ally, and centers in part on the present U.S. government's apparent determination to pursue its own agenda in the crisis with North Korea , regardless of Southern wishes. It is South Korea that has the most to lose if the present crisis with the North continues to deepen, and yet the South Korean government of Roh Moo Hyun is seeking to resolve the situation through engagement rather than the confrontation that has been central to President Bush's agenda. As the U.S. and North Korea have grown increasingly hostile to each other over the past several years, and especially since 2002, South Korea has expanded cultural exchanges, economic relations, and even tourism to the North-small but nonetheless valuable steps. The bottom line is that U.S. unilateralism with respect to North Korea exacerbates tensions in our relationship to the South: South Korea wishes it were treated as a partner of the U.S. , but feels it is being treated as a client. What is the North Korean nuclear weapons program? There are, allegedly, two separate nuclear programs in North Korea , and it is worth distinguishing them. One involves plutonium, while the other involves what is called highly-enriched uranium (HEU). HEU is uranium in which an isotope very prone to fission, uranium-235, has been increased in concentration to about 90% of the total. In naturally-occurring uranium, another isotope, uranium-238, is predominant. Plutonium cannot be mined, it has to be made. It is a by-product of the fission of uranium fuel in a nuclear reactor, and some types of reactors produce more plutonium than others. On the other hand, extracting plutonium from the fuel rods of a reactor is a matter of chemistry and thus relatively easy. While designing a bomb with plutonium is difficult, once that technique is mastered relatively little plutonium is needed to make bombs. The net result is that an up-and-running plutonium program is the quickest and most efficient way of producing material for nuclear weapons. The considerable U.S. nuclear arsenal uses plutonium. Uranium can be found as a mineral in several places on the earth, including North Korea . On the other hand, it requires a relatively large amount of HEU to make a bomb, and enriching uranium by separating its isotopes is a long slow process involving the extensive deployment of difficult technologies (there are several). Moreover, there are other reasons to enrich uranium: many nuclear power reactor types require fuel enriched to lesser concentrations of uranium-235. The 1994 nuclear crisis involving North Korea centered on its production and processing of plutonium in its existing reactor facilities, and the 1994 Agreed Framework between the U.S. and North Korea was designed to halt and, eventually, eliminate North Korean production of plutonium. As part of this deal, the North was promised a replacement nuclear power reactor of a type (light water) that gives off less plutonium. Though this was never delivered, the Agreed Framework succeeded in halting North Korean work with plutonium until 2002. In that year, a U.S. negotiator confronted his counterpart with evidence that North Korea also had a uranium enrichment program, and, in the ensuing atmosphere of crisis and threat, North Korea very deliberately and publicly restarted its processing of plutonium. There are ambiguities about North Korea 's uranium enrichment program. First, since the evidence that the U.S. presented dated from as early as 1998, the timing of the revelation suggests its place within a larger Bush administration shift towards a unilateralist and confrontational foreign policy. Second, because the light water reactor North Korea was promised in 1994 requires partially-enriched uranium, it is possible that its pursuit of uranium enrichment was an effort to guarantee that, whatever the political winds to come, it would have an autonomous ability to produce nuclear power if the exchange of reactor facilities were ever made. Even if we assume the worst about North Korean intentions, however, the net effect of U.S. confrontation of the North since 2002 has been the restart of the faster plutonium program because of worries about the slower HEU program. Is North Korean leader Kim Jong Il crazy? The assumption that the "doomsday scenario" rather than deterrence underlies Northern motives is often accompanied by a portrayal of Kim Jong Il as, to cite one Austin Powers -derived Newsweek caricature, "the real Dr. Evil." The underlying message is that Kim is malevolently bent on destruction to the point of willingness to risk the suicide of himself or his country. Most who have dealt with Kim personally, or with North Korean officials as representatives of a state, have however found them rational. Under difficult circumstances, they have goals to achieve, including national and regime survival, and they seek means to achieve them. They are hard negotiators because they have to be. North Korean political rhetoric-depictions of the U.S. or other enemies as "scrofulous dogs in need of a whipping" or the like-is also often cited as proof positive that the regime is divorced from reality. However humorous or offensive we might find such statements, they can better be understood if we realize that just because North Korea is a dictatorship does not mean that it lacks internal politics. When President Bush gave his "axis of evil" speech it was a statement of foreign policy, but it also played to domestic audiences that support an idealistic U.S. mission in the world. Some who have met with North Korea 's officials suggest that it has a variety of government constituencies, including more pragmatic technocrats and harder-line military officers, and extreme rhetoric may be in part a performance for one group or the other. What about terrorism? ASCK agrees that it is important for the U.S. to be clear that North Korean provision or sale of nuclear materials to third party organizations is unacceptable. It is important for us to see clearly, however, that for North Korea to do so would be a departure both from the logic of deterrence in which its nuclear weapon development is imbedded and from its own prior practices. In the 1980s, North Korean agents engaged in several bombings and other acts against South Korean targets. These, however, had as their apparent goal the destabilization of a Southern state that was largely illegitimate to its own populace, and with the democratization of the South since 1987 such attacks have basically ceased. North Korea has sold missile parts to other states. In this it is guilty of needing hard currency, and engaging in a practice that defense corporations undertake daily, often with more advanced weaponry. After 9/11, meanwhile, North Korea expressed not glee but its condolences to the U.S. , and it otherwise has shown little inclination to engage either with its "axis of evil" partners Iraq and Iran or with Islamic terror networks. If economic desperation is a concern, the best approach is to address the root cause of this desperation. Can North Korea be trusted to keep treaties? Many who would say "no" here base their answer on assumptions about one or another instance in which the North ostensibly violated international law or agreements. There are more complexities than usually realized. a) The Korean War : The usual American understanding of the Korean War is that it started with an unprovoked, unprecedented, bolt-from-the-blue invasion by the North across a recognized international boundary. However, prior to 1950 (and since), most Koreans on both sides of the dividing line that came into being only after 1945 have regarded it as an unnatural bifurcation of a country long united, a historical aberration and abomination. Both Southern and Northern governments before 1950 sought to enlist their superpower allies into military campaigns to reunite the country under the control of one leadership. Before 1950, there had already been considerable fighting, albeit on a smaller scale. b) The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) : One can treat the provisions of this treaty, originally established in 1970 and revised by international conference several times since, more or less legalistically. The Bush and, to a lesser degree, Clinton administrations have sometimes, and very selectively, sought to use it as a cudgel, as if all it said was that the original nuclear powers (the U.S., the U.S.S.R./Russia, China, Britain, and France) might have nuclear weapons while others must not. To shed light on North Korean actions, however, it is also necessary to grasp the broader framework of mutual obligation in this treaty. The renunciation of nuclear weapons by all other states was premised on a promise that the acknowledged nuclear weapons countries would assist them in the development of peaceful nuclear power, and indeed North Korea received its first reactor in 1985 from the (then) Soviet Union at the moment it first signed onto the NPT. Nuclear weapons states were barred from using their advantage to threaten their non-nuclear counterparts, as of course has been North Korea 's historical experience, and furthermore pledged to reduce their nuclear arsenals over time. Whether, given the end of the Cold War, enough of that reduction has occurred is obviously a matter of opinion. Finally, the NPT permitted states to withdraw from the covenant in situations in which their very existence is threatened. When North Korea claims in the face of U.S. demands that it has the sovereign right to peaceful nuclear power, or that threatened by others it is withdrawing from the NPT and will develop nuclear weapons, it is not flouting the NPT, it is quoting it. c) The 1994 Agreed Framework (AF) : The HEU nuclear enrichment program North Korea is alleged to be pursuing is sometimes treated as, again, a clear unilateral violation of its bilateral agreement with the U.S. It is actually debated whether, technically, uranium reprocessing represents a break with an agreement more clearly directed at the plutonium program. Regardless, it is important to see that the AF also set up a structure of mutual obligation. In exchange for North Korea's halt of plutonium reprocessing, the U.S. promised the provision first of fuel oil and then, eventually, the construction of the light water reactor, at which point the offending plutonium and the North's original plutonium-producing reactor would be eliminated. Moreover, there was a bilateral pledge of improved relations to culminate eventually in mutual diplomatic recognition, which, if ignored or treated as window dressing in the U.S. , was taken very seriously by North Korea . The U.S. implementation of its own material obligations under the AF was repeatedly delayed; the light water reactor was well behind schedule before it became a dead letter with the crisis of 2002. Nonetheless, at the end of the Clinton administration in 2000, U.S.-North Korean relations were at their post-Korean War high point , with talk of a summit meeting. Even before the 2002 crisis, however, the incoming Bush administration ignored North (and South) Korea . For the North, this shift was itself a reversal and a breach, and contributed to a sense of U.S. violation of the letter and spirit of the AF. The 1994 Agreed Framework has often been portrayed as a failed treaty, or even as a sellout of U.S. best interests. This would make more sense if the AF had been faithfully followed, only to be shattered by Northern double dealing. In fact, through the AF, in even its partial implementation, the U.S. for a time gained a great deal while risking very little. ASCK believes that the fundamental framework of the AF, which stressed not unilateral action but the stepwise implementation of provisions by both sides within an overall shared goal of the improvement of relations, remains the most productive formula for resolution of the present crisis. Ironically, given the partisan character of some of the attacks on the 1994 AF, its core assumptions were not all that far from President Reagan's maxim of "trust but verify." Are there viable military options? Not really, no, for either North Korea or the U.S. A repeat of the invasion scenario of the Korean War is unlikely, as North Korean invaders could be repulsed by technologically-superior South Korean forces, with or without U.S. assistance. North Korean nuclear facilities are dispersed and not amenable to "surgical strikes." While the U.S. and/or South Korea would almost certainly prevail in any general war, North Korea 's existing deterrent includes numerous artillery tubes targeted on the Southern capital of Seoul , a city of over 10 million. At the time of the 1994 crisis, the U.S. commander in South Korea famously gave the estimate of "a million and a trillion" for the number of lives and dollars a general war would cost. What about human rights? There are very serious human rights issues in North Korea , including prison camps and famines that have arisen from a mixture of natural and human causes. These have tended to affect disproportionately those that the regime considers politically unreliable. In recent years, large numbers of North Koreans have fled across the border with China , often with the goal of eventually reaching the South. Many, however, have been refused asylum by Chinese authorities and sent back to the North. We in ASCK believe that it is imperative to engage North Korea , as well as other regional states, in order to improve this situation. At the same time, we also regard both war, as destructive of life, and its constant specter, as a shadow over human experience, to be themselves human rights issues. Historically, furthermore, human rights has sometimes been advanced as a mandate for confrontation by opponents of the Agreed Framework and, more generally, by foes of positive engagement with North Korea towards the resolution of nuclear and other security concerns. The proposed North Korea Freedom Act of 2003, for example, conditioned any assistance to the North, such as that which might arise out of another Agreed Framework-type settlement, on improvement of the North's human rights record. The North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Bush, contains fewer such provisions, but the worry remains. It is noteworthy that even this second bill has been criticized by many South Korean NGOs concerned with the welfare of Northern refugees. A resolution of the current confrontation between the U.S. and North Korea , with all its potential catastrophic results, and the improvement of the human rights situation in the North are both important goals. Ethically and pragmatically, the first must not be subordinated to the second. |
