'Jekyl and Hyde' North Korea at crossroads
'Jekyl and Hyde' North Korea at crossroads
By Bill Tarrant
SEOUL (Reuters): North Korea is at a crossroads, with one path leading to confrontation and another to reconciliation, officials said during U.S. President Bill Clinton's weekend visit to South Korea.
Policymakers see North Korea as exhibiting Jekyll and Hyde tendencies.
In recent-months, North Korea has launched a rocket over Japan, been spotted in satellite photos building an underground facility that could be nuclear-related and has infiltrated commandos into South Korea.
But Pyongyang last week welcomed the first South Korean tourists to visit the secretive, Stalinist state since the Korean peninsula was divided.
It recently installed a new government and changed the constitution to allow the first, tentative moves toward a market economy.
And last month agreed to some procedural moves that allow peace talks, which would end almost a half-century state of war on the Peninsula, to resume next January in Geneva.
"This is a very complicated regime with a very complicated leadership picture and you see conflicting signals," U.S. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger told reporters last Saturday after Clinton held talks with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.
"North Korea is now at a crossroads," said Berger who took part in the talks.
"On the one hand, it can seize the opportunity afforded by the fact that...President Kim is extending a hand to North Korea and is probably more inclined to engagement and reconciliation," Berger said.
"Or it can continue to be a totally isolated, self-contained entity which obviously is failing economically and seeks to preserve its place in the world only through military means."
Since taking office in February, Kim has pursued a "sunshine policy" of increased cultural and business contacts with North Korea to gradually cement ties and open up the reclusive state.
Senior officials in Kim's administration have said the last thing their slumping economy needs right now is a sudden reunification with the North. The sunshine policy is aimed, in part, at staving off a catastrophic collapse in North Korea. Clinton made it clear after his Saturday talks with Kim that he supports that policy.
But he said the recent North Korean acts were of "deep concern" to him and warned Pyongyang not to do anything to force Washington to abandon its policy of engagement.
Washington has been particularly disturbed by North Korea's development of an underground site near Yongbyon where a Soviet- era nuclear power plant has been mothballed under a 1994 agreement between the United States and North Korea.
Under that deal, Washington agreed to provide North Korea with two advanced nuclear power reactors and alternative energy supplies in return for Pyongyang freezing its nuclear program. A U.S. official visited North Korea this week but failed to persuade Pyongyang to allow an inspection of the site.
The Washington Post last Friday reported North Korea is building at least two new launch facilities for the medium-range Taepo Dong missile it fired over Japan on Aug. 31 and has stepped up production of short-range missiles.
Hunger for cash seems to be one common thread running through North Korea's recent actions.
It is heavily reliant on outside aid to feed its 22 million people and so desperate for hard currency, that according to South Korea's intelligence agency, it is counterfeiting $15 million of U.S. currency a year.
Hyundai Group, which launched the historic first cruise to North Korea's "Diamond Mountains" last week, has agreed to pay Pyongyang almost $1 billion over the next five years to ship tourists to the resorts it is building there.
North Korea has reportedly asked Washington for $300 million in "reparations" for allowing an inspection of the underground site and $500 million a year in exchange for halting its missile exports.
"Having now been engaged for almost six years in negotiations with the North Koreans, this is not untypical of North Korean negotiating tactics," Berger said.