North Korean apology fails to end Cold War

Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin examines the circumstances surrounding North Korea's apology for its recent armed incursion into South Korea via a submarine which ran aground on the east coast of South Korea.

HONG KONG (JP): As 1996 drew to a close, North Korea sent a rare positive signal, in a year which otherwise heavily underlined that the Cold War endures on the Korean peninsula. Whether the "apology" was actually worth the praise, and hopes, heaped upon it, especially by the United States, is definitely open to doubt.

Pyongyang offered an anonymous external apology for the incursion last September of one of its submarines into the coastal area well south of the demilitarized zone which divides the two Koreas, and the consequent landing of 26 infiltrators on the east coast of South Korea.

President Bill Clinton's Asia advisor on the National Security Council, Sandra Kristoff, hoped that "the negative atmosphere which hung over us (regarding Korea) for nearly two months has been cleared away," while Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Winston Lord hailed the North Korean apology as "a very forthright statement indeed."

For those who cannot forget the negative, not to say frigid, atmosphere which has hung over the Korean peninsula for most of the 33 years since the Korean armistice was signed, North Korea's meaning seemed more oblique.

Last September the South Korean security system was shown to be inadequate as the authorities were initially warned by a passing taxi driver that the North Korean submarine had run aground on the east coast. In the subsequent massive manhunt, 24 of the infiltrators were either killed or found to have been killed by their own comrades. One was captured and another has yet to be found. Altogether 13 South Koreans, some of them civilians, were killed during the manhunt.

During the last four months, as tensions inevitably increased between the two Koreas as a result of this blatant provocation, the infiltration has perfectly illustrated the customary intransigence with which North Korea normally brings to its conduct of international relations.

At one stage the North demanded the return of the submarine and an apology from South Korea, as it cast itself in the role of the offended party. Pyongyang even threatened retaliation against the South for its actions even though the South was clearly the Korea which had the right to be aggrieved.

The North's only excuse was that the submarine had lost power and drifted south with the prevailing currents. It evidently mattered little to North Korea's propagandists that this would have been impossible, given the fact that the prevailing currents would have taken the submarine further north, not south.

The North's intransigence was the more inexplicable because of the objective circumstances in which the communist regime in the North now finds itself.

On the one hand, it has signed an agreement with the United States under which it will be supplied with two largely Japanese- financed South Korean-made light water nuclear reactors, in lieu of which it has promised to halt its nuclear weapons program. (A new development in the situation is that the European Union will be making an annual contribution of US$20 million to the financing of the nuclear reactors.)

On the other hand, after suffering several disastrous crop failures, North Korea, already burdened with widespread malnutrition, is all set to experience famine. In 1995, it received 150,000 tons of rice free from South Korea and even more from Japan. Now its needs are, if anything, far greater, and yet it has, until now, fully sustained its Cold War posture, thereby discouraging those nations which might otherwise offer aid. Despite its dire economic straits, North Korea still sustains and even increases its army of over one million heavily armed troops close to the DMZ.

There were two other ironies connected with the submarine intrusion. It came just days after Pyongyang had sought to attract foreign investment at a large scale conference in a special economic zone in northeast North Korea. Naturally the submarine incursion tended to offset whatever modest improvements to North Korea's generally adverse image had been accomplished by the conference.

It was not only the North Koreans who failed to recognize that South Korea had a right to be aggrieved. Amazingly, South Korea's ally, the United States, added to the emotional crisis in the peninsula when Secretary of State Warren Christopher called upon both Koreas to exercise restraint. Given the circumstances, that was hardly the comment of an ally. Naturally it was seen by some critics in Seoul as one more example of the Clinton Administration's dangerous tendency to adopt a position of equidistance between the two Koreas.

Against the background of North Korea's dire straits, it might have been expected that the submarine intrusion would have not taken place at all -- or, at least, would have been diplomatically smoothed over within weeks.

North Korea itself should have quickly realized the need to at least regret its incursion. Instead, the apology required 11 sessions in New York in protracted negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea, after months of bitter exchanges between the two Koreas, and after South Korea had refused any further dealings with the North until an apology was made. Since this last condition threatened to help unravel the nuclear agreement, the U.S. was anxious to secure an apology as a way out of the impasse. Conversely, the North Koreans used the submarine incident to increase their bilateral contacts with the United States.

The apology, broadcast over North Korean external radio, read: "The spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is authorized to express deep regret for the submarine incident in the coastal waters of Kangnung, South Korea, in September 1996, that caused the tragic loss of human lives. The DPRK will make efforts to ensure that such an incident will not recur, and will work with others for durable peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula."

The first thing to notice is that, precisely because of the North Korea's proven track record for intransigence, this statement seems to be a remarkable document.

This is the first time that anyone can remember North Korea expressing "deep regret" for any of its actions. Likewise the promise to at least "make efforts" to prevent a reoccurrence of the "incident" is unprecedented, at least in the last two decades. Such pledges were not forthcoming after the North Koreans tried to blow up the South Korean president and cabinet in Yangon, nor were they made available after the North blew up a South Korean airliner prior to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

The ostensible North Korean commitment to work with others for "peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula" is similarly welcome. But it comes after North Korea has done its best, since 1993, to demolish the institutions which kept the peace for 30 years -- those set up by the Korean Armistice Treaty.

As a result of this demolition, when the submarine incident happened, there were no formal meetings of the Military Armistice Commission, as required by the treaty. Surprisingly, the Clinton Administration has never taken a firm stand on the explicit armistice-breaking by North Korea. Kristoff and Lord never even mentioned complete restoration of the armistice institutions as one of the key Korean issues in need of resolution.

This being so, it has been natural to wonder what inducements were given by the U.S. to secure the North's belated apology. When North Korea loudly announced that it was expecting economic gains from the apology, the question inevitably arose whether the U.S. was giving more than it actually got.

The U.S. was able to orchestrate a reciprocal South Korean response when the remains of 24 North Koreans were handed over at Panmunjom within 24 hours of the North Korean apology. (As Secretary Lord noted there was a meeting between the UN Command and the North Koreans prior to the remains being handed over. But Lord failed to mention that there was more meeting of the MAC, as there should have been.)

The Washington Post quickly revealed the specific economic inducement of barter trade as famine relief, offered to North Korea in New York by the U.S. negotiators. In return for the apology, the U.S. grain trading firm Cargill Ltd -- which is said to regularly handle a quarter of all U.S. grain exports -- will be granted a license to negotiate substantial grain exports to North Korea. The deal will be complex. North Korea will sell unspecified items to an as yet unidentified third party which will, in turn, pay Cargills for their grain. The whole deal is an exception to the still continuing embargoes on U.S. trade with North Korea.

Since the U.S. was offering specific incentives, it ought to have secured a more specifically worded apology. Sufficient to note that the spokesman is unnamed, who authorized the Foreign Ministry to apologize is not stated, and the DPRK is unable to promise that such incidents will definitely not take place in future -- only that there will be efforts.

Most important, the North Koreans only broadcast the "apology" externally. The unnamed spokesman referred to the intrusion as an incident, and regretted the loss of life in words that applied to their own intruders as well as to the South Koreans. The North Korean people did not hear about the apology. Additionally, the apology, while unprecedented, is not addressed to South Korea as it should have been.

Nonetheless, no doubt under U.S. pressure, the South Koreans have welcomed the North Korean apology. Some fresh additional aid from Seoul may be offered to the impoverished North as a consequence. The South Koreans continued to welcome the apology, even after the North Koreans denounced South Korea for having killed their intruders when the North Korean remains were handed over at Panmunjom. "We will curse the enemy murderer forever" a North Korean officer said about South Korea over the Panmunjom loudspeakers -- as the South made the goodwill gesture of returning the remains of those who had sought to invade or sabotage their country.

So strong doubt remains whether the Clinton Administration, on this as on other occasions, negotiated hard and well with North Korea.

The Americans can point to the fact that North Korea has now agreed to attend a briefing by South Korea and the U.S. on the proposed four-party negotiations (with China) for a Korean peace treaty. But even that is a very modest achievement. The four- party proposal is already nine months old. The North is not yet committed to accepting it and prefers its own proposal for a bilateral peace treaty with the U.S., excluding South Korea.

So doubt must remain as to North Korea's good faith unless, following the apology, there is a resumption of the North-South dialog, the North Koreans diminish the arms buildup at the DMZ, and the North starts to revive the armistice institutions at Panmunjom which it has rejected. A single paragraph apology, while welcome, cannot by itself melt much of the accumulated ice in the continuing -- and still frigid -- Korean Cold War.

Window A:

Surprisingly, the Clinton Administration has never taken a firm stand on the explicit armistice-breaking by North Korea.