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PYONGYANG
WATCH
North Korea's long, subtle
game
By Aidan Foster-Carter
On Thursday, StratFor's
(Strategic Forecasting's) Morning Intelligence
Brief led its Geopolitical Diary thus: "Iran's
nuclear 
program
continues to dominate headlines."
Oops.
What a difference a few hours make. I say this
without schadenfreude, having been
similarly caught out myself. Days earlier, I wrote
a piece criticizing the six-way talks on North
Korea's nuclear issue as "Five caveats and a long
shot". You read it here in the February 11 edition
('We have nukes': The six-party
failure) - swiftly reworked to take account of
the analyst's lifeblood and nightmare: what former
British prime minister Harold Macmillan blearily
called "events, dear boy, events".
So what
did happen on Thursday? Pyongyang's official Korea
Central News Agency (KCNA) put out a statement by
North Korea's Foreign Ministry. The main point was
a refusal to return to the six-way talks, because
the United States under President George W Bush
was still hostile and plotting for regime change.
So, Pyongyang warned, "we ... have manufactured
nukes ... to cope with the Bush administration's
evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle
the DPRK" (Democratic People's Republic of Korea).
It was the nukes that most comment picked
up. But is this really the main news, or indeed
news at all? True, this is the North Koreans' most
explicit claim yet. But the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) reckons North Korea may
have had one or two nuclear devices for a decade
or so. For its part, after years of indignant
denial, for two years Pyongyang has boasted of
developing a nuclear deterrent; though no one
knows how far they've gotten, or even whether it
might all be a big bluff (better not bet on it).
But they do still deny having a second
program, using highly enriched uranium (HEU). It
was this charge, put in Pyongyang by a US
delegation in October 2002, that triggered the
ongoing second North Korean nuclear crisis. The
DPRK kicked out International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) inspectors, quit the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, and resumed reprocessing
plutonium.
It's strange how hard the
United States has found it, then and since, to
make the HEU claim stick. You'd think Pakistan's
Dr Abdul Qadir Khan, purveyor
extraordinaire of nuclear materiel, would
have sung like a canary by now: naming places,
dates, and batch numbers. Maybe he has.
One theory why Pyongyang has picked this
moment to take its bat home is that a White House
emissary, Michael Green - the new National
Security Council senior director for Asia - has
just been touring Beijing and other skeptical
Asian capitals; supposedly with proof that a
uranium compound, UF6, found in Libya came from
North Korea. UF6 is a strong indication of an HEU
program, while any hints of proliferation must be
a red line.
Well, maybe. But I reckon
other factors are in play, including domestic
ones. An earlier shock, the big missile fired
across Japan in August 1998 - and at least this
time we've not seen an actual nuclear test, just a
boast - was the DPRK's 50th-birthday present to
itself.
Look at the timing now, too. Such
fun to catch South Korea and China off guard, as
the Year of the Rooster kicked in. North Korea's
equivalent holiday comes next week: Kim Jong-il's
63rd (or maybe 64th) birthday on February 16. Also
due is the 10th anniversary of Kim's Songun
(army-first) policy, the Dear Leader's very own
doctrinal contribution.
What better way to
celebrate than to affirm proudly, "We got nukes,
and we ain't talking"? Moreover, as in Iran, the
nuclear umbrella may be one under which factions
divided over other issues, such as economic
reform, can huddle together. Kim Jong-il's purging
last year of his brother-in-law Chang Song-taek is
one sign that the veneer of unity is cracking. Or
the new hard line could mean, as some aver, that
the Dear Leader is in thrall to hardline generals
who won't let him do a Libya, make peace, disarm,
and collect loads of dough.
But whatever
the motives, it takes two to tangle. As ever,
whether or not North Korea's latest provocation
sparks a crisis depends on how others react. So
far, this has been calm.
Quite contrary to
the way Pyongyang purports to read Washington (and
you do wonder if denizens of one system could
possibly understand the other), both Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld sounded more sad and skeptical
(respectively) than angry. After all, the US is
busy for the duration in the Middle East. It
really does not want a crisis in Korea as well.
Which, of course, makes this an excellent time for
Kim to rattle the cage.
But it is the
responses (not just the immediate ones) of others
that will be crucial to track. South Korea, for
one, must surely rethink a "Sunshine Policy" so
one-sided that it continues to give aid, no matter
what the North does, without demanding any form of
reciprocity.
Indeed, the rethink had
already begun. Recently Pyongyang asked for
500,000 tonnes of fertilizer, even more than
usual. South Korean Unification Minister Chung
Dong-young's encouragingly robust response was
that this would be top of the agenda - just as
soon as North Korea returned to the various
inter-Korean committees that it has been
boycotting since last July.
But the real
challenge is to China. Having invested much time
and face in creating and hosting the six-party
talks, Beijing must be furious at Pyongyang's
insolent truancy. As North Korea's main partner
for trade and aid, China alone has the muscle to
squeeze Kim Jong-il - should it so choose. The
Dear Leader should be more careful of whom he
riles.
For both China and Russia (the
latter quick to deplore the official KCNA
statement, for once), one dilemma is how to vote -
or veto - if the North Korea problem is sent to
the United Nations Security Council, as the IAEA
long since voted that it should be. Neither
Beijing nor Moscow wants to burn its boats with
Pyongyang, even as it sorely tries their patience.
Japan is a case on its own, with the
kidnap issue driving everything. KCNA's statement,
which mainly was aimed at the US, also asked
rhetorically how North Korea could sit down with a
state that denies that victims' remains that it
returned are authentic. But DNA does not lie - so
what on earth was Pyongyang playing at? Even the
sober Economist speculated that one of Kim's foes
may have swapped bones, just to spite him.
Here's a rash prediction. Thursday's shock
headlines will fade as swiftly as, less than a
month ago, the brief hurrahs for an outbreak of
peace and love in Pyongyang. Then, just after two
US congressional delegations had visited, KCNA
said North Korea was ready to treat the US as a
friend. We really should know by now to avoid
knee-jerk reactions: be it to crack open the
bubbly, or run for cover. Kim Jong-il is playing a
long, subtle game. Whether it's a wise one, I
doubt. But the end of the world it ain't. Not for
today, at least.
Aidan
Foster-Carter is honorary senior research
fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds
University, England. He has followed North Korean
affairs for 35 years.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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