N. Korea wins U.S. concessions

In the second of an occasional series of articles on the deteriorating situation on the Korean peninsula, The Jakarta Post's Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin takes a look at the most recent agreement reached between North Korea and the United States, and suggests the Americans paid a considerable price for the concessions they were seeking.

HONG KONG (JP): On March 18, a letter was delivered in the South Korean truce village of Panmunjom. It was an interesting Korean development even though it secured no headlines outside Korea. The letter concerned one more effort to try and restart a North-South rapprochement.

Since North Korea most emphatically does not recognize South Korea, and since South Korea, much less emphatically, does not yet recognize North Korea, the North and South do not enjoy a diplomatic relationship.

But for many years now, Red Cross officials from the two Koreas have been stationed at Panmunjom providing a small degree of direct contact.

So on March 17, the South's Red Cross representative presented to his Northern counterpart a resolution of South Korea's National Assembly, plus a letter from the National Assembly Speaker Park Jyun-kyu to the chairman of North Korea's parliament, the second-ranking North Korean Kim Yong Nam.

The assembly resolution called for the faithful implementation of the accord reached between the two Koreas late in 1991, which was intended to be an agreement for inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation. It was the high point in a gradual opening up of inter-Korean contact that appeared to be taking place at the beginning of the 1990s.

After that agreement was reached, no follow-up action ever took place. North Korea retreated into its shell, perhaps for reasons of domestic politics which outsiders were quite unable to ascertain.

Speaker Park's letter to Chairman Kim requested a favorable response to the National Assembly resolution.

Whether there will be any response seems doubtful. In its present hardline propaganda posture, North Korean daily attacks the South Korean government, accuses it of being warlike, and refuses even to recognize the legitimacy of its institutions. President Kim Dae Jung is almost never referred by name. Instead in North Korea he becomes an anonymous "South Korean chief executive".

Almost certainly, the already remote possibility of the North Koreans reversing their present anti-South Korea course, and adopting a more conciliatory propaganda line, did not come any closer as a result of the Korean development on March 16 which did secure a lot of attention and headlines: The latest nuclear inspection agreement reached, once again after protracted negotiations, between the United States and North Korea.

Why should this be? Surely it seems logical that if North Korea is reaching agreements with the United States, it will also be willing to reach them with South Korea?

Unfortunately, North Korean logic does not necessarily work that way.

First, any U.S.-North Korea agreement tends to confirm the North in its hardline belief that it is the only legitimate Korean state with the right to negotiate a peace treaty with the United States.

Secondly, once again, U.S. appeasement of North Korea looks likely to result in the North Koreans, rather than the Americans, being much more likely to get what they want from an agreement. Such American appeasement hardly suggests a strong incentive for North Korea to negotiate seriously and on an equal basis with the South.

The protracted negotiations began with the American satellite discovery last August of a huge underground facility being dug at Kumchang-ri in North Korea. This seemed to be in violation of the 1994 agreement whereby the North pledged to suspend its nuclear weapons activities in return for two new nuclear reactors being provided by the United States, Japan and South Korea. Kumchang-ri lies about 25 miles northwest of Yongbyon, in central North Korea, which has been the main area so far for North Korean nuclear activities. The satellite view of the underground cavern suggested a good site for a nuclear reactor.

This satellite discovery raised all sorts of questions of what precisely the secretive North Korean state was doing, an anxiety further enhanced when the North Koreans test-fired a ballistic missile or a three-stage rocket (there is still controversy on this point) over Japan on Aug. 31.

By October, the U.S. Congress insisted that the Clinton administration must clarify the nature of the underground site by May 30, 1999, if funding of the reactor deal was to be continued.

Three rounds of United States-North Korea negotiations got nowhere, as the North Koreans initially demanded US$300 million for one American glance at the suspect facility. The fourth round of negotiations started in New York on Feb. 27, dragged on for two weeks, and finally ended when the agreement was announced on March 16.

The agreement allows for the Americans to inspect Kumchang-ri. But while the State Department spokesman initially claimed that there would be regular and repeated inspections, it transpires that the North Koreans have agreed to something much less than that.

All that the North Koreans have agreed is that the Americans will inspect Kumchang-ri this coming May -- and again in May 2000. That is hardly "regular and repeated" inspections in the true sense of the term. The modalities of each visit have yet to be worked out in detail. The Americans claim that further inspections will take place "on request". Such requests will no doubt require more negotiations and very likely more U.S. aid.

Clearly, the North Koreans -- who admit only that sensitive security work is being done at Kumchang-ri -- have plenty of time to move out the more damning evidence before the first American inspection takes place. Those involved in the inspections by the United Nations of similar suspect facilities in Iraq suggest that, while a similar cat-and-mouse exercise is in prospect in Korea, enough evidence will be left for the Americans to be able to deduce roughly what has been going on.

Yet, as in Iraq, so in North Korea inspections will only be conclusive if they can be undertaken more regularly than once-a- year, and also with complete surprise. The Americans were unable to take that modest concession away from the negotiating table. But the North Koreans took plenty.

By verbal sleight-of-hand, the American negotiators have claimed that no payment will be made for the two promised inspections. The reality is that the North Koreans are being rewarded by much more than the $300 million they originally demanded.

For a start, the Americans have recently pledged 500,000 tons of additional food aid to the World Food Program's current global appeal for aid for famine-struck North Korea.

Additionally, American appeasement has taken on a political edge as the United States dovetailed its pledges of aid with North Korea's prevailing political personality cult.

According to the leaked account of the negotiations in the New York Times, the negotiations were going nowhere until one of the Americans noticed that North Korea's Dear Leader, and military commander-in-chief, Kim Jong-il had talked about a new program to plant potatoes.

Now a U.S. government-encouraged private sector pilot potato project is also pledged to the North. Details will be announced soon. Korean sources report that 1,000 tons of potato seeds and 100,000 tons of special food aid for those working in the new potato farms are also part of the deal.

Thus if American potato technology is successfully transplanted to North Korea's famine-stricken soil, this will no doubt be hailed as a great success for dear and great leader Kim Jong-il.

The Americans continue to formally deny that they have conceded any "compensation" for inspections, as North Korea originally demanded. On the evidence so far available, that denial lacks credibility.

There are other weaknesses in this agreement. The suspicion remains that the North may be at hard at work at other secret nuclear sites which U.S. satellites have not yet spotted. The agreement says nothing about anxieties on the North's obviously advancing ballistic missile capability.

For some well informed sources, the very fact that the North Koreans are increasing their missile capability itself suggests continued clandestine nuclear activity.

There would be little value in developing longer-range missiles if they could not be fitted with nuclear warheads.

Missile negotiations between the United States and North Korea are due to begin in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on March 29.

There is one other U.S. pledge which has yet to be explained. The joint statement issued to announce the agreement ends by stating that "the United States has decided to take a step to improve political and economic relations between the two countries". It remains to be seen whether this means a unilateral U.S. step to set up a liaison office in Pyongyang to help handle all the aid it is giving to North Korea, or some additional concession not yet divulged.

But, so far, there has been no North Korean answer to that South Korean letter.