N. Korea aims to destroy armistice

By Harvey Stockwin

While all eyes have been focussed on the discord arising from North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons, the North Koreans have carefully pursued a sister strategy -- the demolition of the armistice agreement which has been instrumental in keeping the peace in Korea since 1953. This is the first of two articles.

HONG KONG (JP): Could it be that on Sunday June 25 South Korean President Kim Young-sam used all the considerable resources of the Korean intelligence apparatus to send a blunt and pithy message to his presumed counterpart in North Korea, Kim Jong-il?

Is it possible that, also on June 25, U.S. President Bill Clinton, belatedly wising up to the imperatives of international realpolitik, made a terse and forceful phone call to the chief North Korean operative stationed in North America with instructions that his comments be passed to Pyongyang?

It is certainly relevant to imagine that both incidents took place. Some tough talking to Pyongyang by both leaders had become long overdue.

The previous day the news was released that the North Koreans, with the breathtaking audacity which is often the father of military or diplomatic aggression, gave notice that they were about to climax what has been a sustained assault on a vital South Korean, Japanese and U.S. interest.

North Korean military officers had indicated that North Korea would use the 45th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War (on June 25) to formally announce the final and unilateral abrogation of the Korean Armistice Agreement -- the document which has sustained peace on the Korean peninsula since 1953.

The North Korean officers informed their counterparts in the United Nations Command (UNC) at Panmunjom, the Korean truce village, that a formal statement by the North Korean government ending the armistice was imminent.

The UNC made it clear that it rejected any unilateral attempts to "change, damage or destroy" the armistice agreement.

This surprise development for some, with its grave implications for security and stability in East Asia, was not unexpected.

Since March 1991, the North Koreans have made consistent efforts to undermine and negate the two key institutions set up by the armistice agreement: the Military Armistice Commission (MAC) and the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC). If North Korea now announced the abrogation of the armistice, it would be, in a sense, the logical conclusion of their campaign.

The MAC was set up as the highest armistice forum, where general officers representing those who signed the agreement in 1953 -- the UNC, North Korea and China -- met, at either side's request, whenever there was an incident along the heavily armed demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas.

South Korean general officers have attended the MAC as part of the UNC team because, in 1953, South Korea itself refused to sign the armistice.

Then South Korean President Syngman Rhee refused to sign it, on the nationalist grounds that to do so would be tantamount to agreeing to the division of Korea into two countries.

Since 1992, the North Koreans have refused to attend MAC meetings, consequent upon a South Korean general being appointed for the first time to lead the United Nations Command MAC team.

This questionable appointment was decided in Washington, despite warnings that it might provoke a hostile North Korean reaction. Amidst the euphoria engendered by both the ending of the Cold War and of the Gulf War, the warnings were ignored. To be fair, North and South Korea, at that stage, were concluding a whole series of agreements and therefore it seemed a logical move to put a South Korean in charge of the MAC.

Naively, it was thought that appointing a South Korean as MAC leader would fit easily into the growing North-South dialog. Foolishly, the then administration of President George Bush did not immediately and strenuously object when the North Koreans first instituted their MAC boycott, following the appointment.

Last year, the North Koreans succeeded in persuading China to also withdraw from MAC.

In 1994 Clinton instituted a policy of "comprehensive engagement" with China, aimed precisely at continuing to secure China's cooperation on vital issues such as Korea. On the vital matter of the Korean armistice, China has cooperated with its communist ally, not with the United States.

The Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission originally comprised two neutral nations on each side of the DMZ, with their teams authorized and able to go throughout the demilitarized area on both sides of the armistice line, and even beyond.

Czechoslovakia and Poland were the neutral but -- then -- communist nations in the north, Switzerland and Sweden the non- communist neutrals in the south.

However, when Czechoslovakia broke up, the North Koreas took the opportunity to further tinker with the armistice status quo. Pyongyang refused to accept the Czech Republic as the successor state of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs were effectively forced out of the NNSC by North Korea in January 1993.

More recently the North Koreans likewise pressured the Poles to leave by depriving them of normal facilities.

The Swedes and the Swiss have also been banned by the North Koreans from crossing into the northern half of the DMZ.

The UNC could not publicly protest each and every one of these flagrant North Korean violations of the armistice agreement because the obvious vehicle for such protests, the MAC, was not meeting, at North Korean insistence.

Much more important, the real guardian of the armistice, the United States, did not vehemently protest every time North Korea eroded the armistice which Kim Il-sung himself had signed.

As over the MAC, so over the NNSC, the U.S. has been seemingly reluctant to take firm issue with the remorseless North Korean campaign to undermine the armistice.