N. Korea nuclear crisis comes to a head
Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin explains why the Korean crisis has come to a head, and why the imposition of sanctions may not be easily achieved.
HONG KONG (JP): The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "has concluded that the limited opportunity which had remained for it to select, segregate and secure fuel rods for later measurements has been lost."
With these simple words, taken from IAEA director Hans Blix's letter to UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali last Thursday, the crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapon's program has finally come to a head.
After 15 months of toing and froing, dithering and debating, and of endless unresolved policy arguments in Seoul and Washington DC between "hawks" and "doves", the North Koreans appear to have finally stepped over the brink.
The immediate issue was IAEA's ability to monitor the replacement of the fuel rods in the North Korean nuclear reactor in Yongbyon.
As they have done so often since March 1993, the North Koreans wanted to lay down their rules, rather than follow those laid down by IAEA under the safeguards agreement attached to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NNPT). The North Koreans said they would chose the rods for inspection, and put them aside until other matters had been settled.
The IAEA, backed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) earlier last week, said no. It alone must chose the rods, from which it would be able to deduce whether the North Koreans had already extracted plutonium, usable in atomic bomb-making. The North Koreans hastily pushed ahead regardless.
So, said Blix, "any future measurements of that fuel would have no practical value. The situation, resulting from the (North Korean) core discharge, is irreversible."
The North Koreans had not fulfilled their NNPT obligations on two crucial counts.
They have blocked the IAEA from inspecting two suspected nuclear-related sites amid the Yongbyon facilities -- sites over which U.S. satellite photographs had aroused justified suspicion.
Now they have also blocked the mandatory IAEA verification of a fuel change in a declared reactor.
Essentially North Korean brinkmanship has created two crises, not just one.
First, were the latest North Korean moves allowed to stand, it would be tantamount to tearing up the NNPT, one year before it is due to be extended. None of the five major nuclear powers (the U.S., Russia, China, France and Britain), who are also the five permanent members of the UNSC, have come out in favor of scrapping the treaty. But if North Korea is allowed to get away with setting its own verification procedures, and ignoring IAEA, the treaty is already dead.
Second, the latest North Korean moves inevitably further heighten tension on the perennially troubled Korean peninsula. No peace treaty was ever concluded in the wake of the armistice ending the 1950-53 war, itself brought about by North Korea's attempt to overrun South Korea. In the last few weeks, another facet of North Korean brinkmanship has been its threat to abandon that armistice.
Backing up this threat, on May 30 the North Koreans withdrew their equipment from the hall housing the Military Armistice Commission (MAC) in the truce village of Panmunjom, which lies in the middle of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas.
The MAC is the key institution overseeing the armistice. The North Koreans withdrew their MAC personnel early in May. They are demanding that the United States negotiate a peace treaty with them alone, since South Korea was never a signatory to the Korean armistice.
Faced with the twin threat to the NNPT, and to peace on the Korean peninsula, it is obviously of critical importance that North Korea now gets the right message from the UNSC and the international community.
North Korean intransigence is built upon the fact that, in Pyongyang, the Great Leader President Kim Il-sung, and his son the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il are believed to have constructed a "worker's paradise", fit for all Koreans to enjoy.
More graphically, as former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea (and subsequently to China) James Lilley put it in a May 31 speech in the US -- "if you pet these guys, you end up missing an arm, because they do have a track record of blowing up airplanes, assassinating presidents, blowing up cabinets, digging tunnels, (and of) surprise attacks. You have to be very careful with them that you don't give the wrong message".
Three difficult calculations surround the message which the U.S. is now asking the UNSC to give: the imposition of sanctions on North Korea.
First, sanctions inevitably involve the issue of war and peace. From the start of this crisis. North Korea has threatened to regard sanctions as an act of war to which it will respond in kind. On June 2 North Korean Foreign Minister Kim Young-Nam warned of "devastating consequences menacing peace in Asia and the rest of the world" if the United Nations imposed sanctions.
Clearly these continuous threats have had a sobering effect, especially upon "doves". North Korea has nearly a million armed men close to the DMZ. Even with its intelligence on high alert, the US and South Korea would have little warning if that army decided to move.
Noting the impact of its threats, the North Koreans have gone on repeating them. But now the issue of IAEA. NNPT, UNSC and U.S. credibility is involved. As President Clinton put it in Rome May 2, inadvertently emphasizing where past policy had fallen down. "I believe that in the end, when we move to Security Council discussions, we will come out with a policy that will show resolve".
Second, there is the issue of whether sanctions will do any good. As Kim II sung himself blithely observed in a recent rare interview, North Korea is so isolated, sanctions can hardly make much difference.
Kim's word may have concealed his anxiety. It can be argued that North Korea's few substantial links with the outside world are crucial simply because they are so few. China provides North Korea's food imports, its oil and some other fuel requirements. Japan and to a lesser extent Russia provide foreign exchange.
Without the continuous legal or illegal flow of profits from Korean-owned Japanese pachinko parlors, Pyongyang lacks the foreign exchange which China is now demanding for its oil. Without Chinese petrol the 11,000 North Korean tanks cannot even begin to hope to drive again towards the southern South Korean post of Pusan.
Third, what holds the UNSC back from imposing sanctions is the very real fear that an even more isolated North Korea might collapse.
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Additionally all four nations worry an exodus of refugees from the North, with China having the most to fear on this score. For now, the DMZ keeps North Korean refugees out of South Korea.
In view of these complexities, UNSC agreement on the imposition of sanctions is by no means assured. In 1950 the UNSC agreed to oppose North Korean aggression because the Soviet Union was boycotting it meetings, and communist China was not a member. Today. Russia has reservations and so do the Chinese.
Conceivably Beijing may feel obliged to reciprocate Clinton's gesture of extending its MFN trade status. It is not yet clear whether China, as the only other signatory to the Korean armistice, will insist upon staying in the MAC even as North Korea departs.
Clinton can argue with the Chinese that he has gone the furthest mile diplomatically with the North Koreans, as Beijing has urged, but now sanctions must be tried. Japanese banks have already curtailed legal dollar flows to North Korea. It Tokyo also ends the ferry run between Niigata and the North Korean port of Wonsan that will radically reduce North Korea's foreign exchange cash income.
The only certainly is that some highly complex diplomacy is in prospect, as the war clouds darken dramatically over Korea. The riddle remains -- how to make "paradise" obey the rules which apply to all other nations?
Window 1: North Korean intransigence is built upon the fact that President Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il are believed to have constructed a "worker's paradise", fit for all Koreans to enjoy.
Window 2: Faced with the prospect of North Korean collapse, the South Koreans fear the cost, the Chinese government fears the communist casualty, the Japanese fear the chaos, and the Americans fear the ensuing crisis.