Pyongyang flirts with 'two-track' strategy
By Donald Kirk
CHORWON, South Korea - The skeletal remains of the one-time local Workers’
Party headquarters of North Korean forces during the Korean War remind visitors
of the fighting that raged across this mountainous district south of the line
that has divided the Korean peninsula ever since the fighting ended well over
half a century ago.
"This place has been desolate and unused ever since then," said a local
official when showing this reporter around the observatory that overlooks the
demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas. "Over there is Bloody Ridge.
It got its name when the rains came and the ground turned red with the blood of
battles."
A view of old battlegrounds in this district center about 100 kilometers
northeast of the capital of Seoul may fortify the tough-talking strategy the
country's conservative leaders have taken to
decode recent of signs of reconciliation from above the DMZ.
Near the western end of the DMZ, in the economic complex at Kaesong, the
ancient capital of all Korea, negotiations started on Friday about more family
visits and aid for North Korea in another attempt at reviving the stalled
process of inter-Korean reconciliation.
South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-taek has hinted at resuming aid to
North Korea, albeit at an extremely modest level, while talking tough about the
need for the North to talk to South Korea about abandoning its nuclear program.
The problem is that North Korea has steadfastly refused to mention nuclear
devices in any meetings with South Korea. It has also denounced South Korean
President Lee Myung-bak's idea of settling all problems in one "grand bargain"
as "ridiculous" and "rubbish".
Whether moves toward reconciliation will go on seems now to revolve around the
will of the Americans to stick up for their South Korean allies in
negotiations, just as they defended them here in some of the heaviest battles
of the Korean War.
Hyun smiled when asked whether he had confidence in the Americans, saying he
was in "close contact" with them and coordinating on just about everything.
North Korean strategists, though, are pursuing their own two-track strategy,
calling relentlessly for two-way dialogue with the US while warning darkly of
the consequences that await South Korean naval forces for repeated "intrusions"
into North Korean waters off the west coast of the peninsula.
North Korea's eagerness for talks with the US, and only with the US, is matched
only by South Korea's repeated insistence on the relatively "hardline"
declarations of high-level officials here.
Hyun mingled the South's officially tough outlook with indications of at least
an open mind when it comes to judging what North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il
really has in mind.
"We need to mount a really effective strategy," he told a conclave of European
business leaders and diplomats in Seoul before Friday's talks at Kaesong.
Hyun acknowledged that North Korea had "in the last month or so made some
conciliatory gestures", including the lifting of restrictions on access to the
Kaesong complex, where 110 small and medium South Korean factories employ
40,000 North Korean workers. The North also offered a rare apology on Wednesday
for releasing a torrent of water from a dam that caused a deadly flood in South
Korea.
"We are cautiously observing what is the true intention of North Korea," said
Hyun.
Almost at once, however, he followed up the words of reconciliation with a
request that North Korea is never likely to accept. North Korea "must make a
strategic decision to discard its nuclear program", he said. "North Korea has
flatly rejected our proposal to discuss the nuclear issue. This is absurd. To
advance inter-Korean relations, we must advance this message through
inter-Korean dialogue."
Nor did Hyun evince much if any confidence in the outcome of recent talks in
Pyongyang between Kim Jong-il and China's Premier Wen Jiabao. The real issue
was what Kim meant when he said he would be okay with "multilateral dialogue" -
depending, as Kim put it, on "the outcome of bilateral dialogue with the US".
"The North Korean leader has stated his willingness to engage in multilateral
talks," said Hyun, "but it is unclear whether he stated his willingness to
return to six-party talks". The last round of the talks, always hosted by China
but that include South Korea, Japan, Russia and the US, was held in December
2008.
South Korean officials are intensifying pressure on the US to follow through on
its pledge to use bilateral talks only to get the North to back to the
six-party talks. As far as the South Korean government is concerned, the US
would be violating all solemn assurances if bilateral US-North Korean dialogue
veered over into serious talking about North Korea's nuclear program and other
issues.
It may be wishful thinking, but some South Korean officials give the impression
that they think there is a real chance that North Korea, in the spirit of
reconciliation, will go for the enormous bait that President Lee is dangling in
his offer of a "grand bargain" - a vast program for building up the North's
economy.
"The grand bargain is a comprehensive and integrated approach," Hyun insisted.
"It is a truly solid proposal based on trust." Most of all, he said, it "allows
us to get away from the salami tactics". Officials in Seoul use the term
"salami" to describe years of talks in which the US more or less forced others,
notably South Korea and Japan, to go along with piecemeal, step-by-step deals
that failed to cover the issue of North Korea's enriched-uranium program, which
was going on entirely separately from the North's program for building nuclear
devices based on plutonium.
South Korean senior officials talk in ornate detail of the grand bargain, as if
all that is needed is for North Korea to understand its appeal and then to
agree to its terms. One official, giving an elaborate background to the media
on the plan, seemed to have forgotten that Kim Jong-il is not likely to enter
into any "multilateral" talks at all unless the US in bilateral dialogue agrees
on an "outcome" to his liking.
De facto recognition of North Korea as a nuclear power appears to many
observers to remain its ultimate goal. North Korea reinforced that point on
Monday by test-firing a volley of short-range missiles amid signs of plans to
test medium-range missiles - and perhaps conduct another test of the long-range
Taepodong-2 that the North tested on April 5.
Then there is always the distinct possibility of another nuclear test, a
follow-up to the test of May 25 that resulted in stringent sanctions. Kim
Jong-il may postpone the test while awaiting dialogue with the US, but he's
expected to order another one if the US won't ease up on global attempts at the
enforcement of the the sanctions.
A visit to Chorwon district, in craggy hills and ridges where tens of thousands
of North Korean, Chinese, South Korean and American troops died before the guns
fell silent in July 1953, is a reminder of the way war was fought in those
days. The next war, as everyone knows, will be far more deadly.
"This city has a 1,000-year history," said the tour guide, advertising
Chorwon's heritage. "It was wiped out in three years of war. The area has never
recovered."
The region, she said, "Has never been the same." This is a reminder of a far
worse war that could erupt if diplomats fail to resolve the nuclear issue that
has hung like a sword over the Korean Peninsula through talks and crises going
back to the 1970s.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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