INTRODUCTION／HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

     A veteran American journalist and Korea specialist, Don Oberdorfer, who is the author of a famous book, The Two Koreas, describes the Korean Peninsula as the land of surprise.  Yes, for most Americans and Westerners, mostly from curiosity.  For the Koreans, however, it has been the land of tragedies, having their country colonized and then their families left split by outside powers for nearly a century.

     Korea is a peninsula of approximately 85,000 square miles with total population of some 70,000,000, who had maintained an integrated nation under a single government with a distinctive language and strong traditions for the past 1,300 years.  Unlike the Japanese, they created their own unique letters independent of the Chinese characters and invented a metal-type printing system even a century before German Gutenberg’s invention.  Ceramic and porcelain art is at the world’s highest level.

     Since the dawn of the 20th century, the peninsula has experienced outside political interventions; 35-year-long direct colonial rule by Japan and 50-year-old East-West ideological confrontation resulting in the partition into two rival states.  Japan’s colonization of the whole of Korea was acquiesced by the United Sates, which in a deal colonized the Philippines almost simultaneously at the beginning of the 20th century.

     The fundamental misconceptions inherent in the U.S. policy toward Korea seems rooted from that period.  For the Americans, Korea was nothing but a tiny peninsula for colonization by any outside powers.  A noted professor, Bruce Cumings, in his book, North Korea: Another country, quotes American officials in the 1910s, as saying that unlike the Filipinos, the Koreans were not ready yet for autonomy and democracy.

     After Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War in August 1945, the peninsula was divided into two military occupation zones and then two rival states, which were both thrown into stages of war with millions of Koreans killing each other for the sake of national reunification by force.  This is the Korean War which lasted for three years from 1950 to 53 and ended in a draw without winners or losers.

     The United States immediately intervened to counter what it regarded as the invasion by the communist forces from the North to protect its anti-communist “puppet” regime in Seoul in fear of possible Soviet domination of East Asia.  In 1948, the Truman Administration adopted a new doctrine to contain communism from expansion.  The Korean people were thus victims of American military intervention.

     In comparison with the Vietnam War, this should be questioned in retrospect.  It is an irony that the U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1975 resulted in a national reunification of the whole country by a socialist regime, which now successfully promotes economic reforms with the infusion of American-style market mechanism.  Washington normalized relations with Hanoi in 1995.  Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, is busy and active with American businessmen.

     It might be possible to legitimize the U.S. containment policy only in the context of the Cold War structure.  Except for a cluster of the non-aligned nations mainly in Africa and Asia, later called the Third World, the international community was divided into two major rival blocs; the American-led free world and the Soviet-controlled communist world.  For the Truman Administration, the Korean War was the first case of implementation of its containment policy, followed by the Berlin and Cuban Crises and the Vietnam War.

     The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in a new post-Cold War period characterized by the disorganization of the Soviet Empire and its Socialist allies belonging to the Warsaw Pact and the COMECON bloc.  The nations of Eastern Europe one after another introduced Western democracy and free-market economy systems, almost without bloodshed, except for Romania.

     In East Asia, however, the Cold War structure remains in force.  The two-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone along the thirty-eighth parallel dividing the two Koreas still constitutes a forefront of ideological confrontation.  Washington is responsible for the residual circumstances.  The 37,000 American soldiers are stationed in the South as a counterbalance, though the Pentagon, as part of its transformation policy, plans to withdraw one-third of the total by the beginning of 2006.

     Obviously, Washington has not got rid of its Cold War paradigm with regard to the Korean Peninsula, which prolongs solution of the whole issue and instead preserves tension over Northeast Asia.  “The threat of North Korea,” in turn, serves to legitimize the U.S. military presence in the region.  Whether it is really in the interest of the nations and peoples concerned, it should be questioned.

BIRTH OF THE DEMOCRATIC PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF KOREA (DPRK)

     It might be useful to recall the historical evolutions during the post-war period.  It was on September 2, 1948 that an ambitious young Korean partisan leader, Kim Il Sung, proclaimed independence of the DPRK in the north.  There was no other choice for Kim who had aspired for a free, independent and of course unified Korean state, once promised by the Allied Powers in their Cairo Declaration in November 1943, confirmed by the Yalta Conference in February 1945, and reconfirmed in the Potsdam Declaration in July 1945, which led to Japan’s unconditional surrender.  In Yalta, U.S.President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a five-year international trusteeship over Korea to prepare for a free election for independence.

     All this turned out an empty pledge with the outbreak of the East-West confrontation.  In fact, the end of the Second World War in 1945 was simultaneously the start of the Cold War which lasted for nearly a half century.  In the Korean Peninsula, the Americans propped up a staunch anti-communist politician, I Sung-man (Syngman Lee) in the Seoul presidency.  A general election was held unilaterally in the south, amid a fierce revolt by local Koreans mainly in the Cheju Island in the southern-most small island off the Peninsula.  Under heavy American military guard, I Sung-man declared independence of the Republic of Korea (ROK) on August 15, 1948, the third anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War.  Undoubtedly, it came as a great shock for Kim Il Sung, who in Pyongyang had been working hard to draft a constitution for a unified Korea.

     Bruce Cumings concludes that the United States brought to power the three wrong persons in East Asia; Chang Kai Shek in China, I Sung-man in Korea and Ngo Dien Diem in Vietnam, only because they were staunch anti-communists.  The lack of their popularity at home was totally ignored.  　  

     Anyhow, this is the origin of the birth of two rival Korean states.  According to Don Oberdorfer, the idea of the division came in Washington on August 10, 1945, on the eve of Japan’s defeat, when U.S. President Harry Truman proposed to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin a divided occupation of the hitherto Japanese-held territory  No American expert on Korea was involved in the proposal.  Oberdorfer quotes Gregory Henderson, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and noted Korea scholar as writing in 1974 that “No decision of a nation in the present world is so astonishing in its origin as the division of Korea; none is so unrelated to conditions or sentiment within the nation itself at the time the division was effected; none is to this day so unexplained; in none does blunder and planning oversight appear to have played so large a role.  Finally, there is no division for which the US government bears so heavy a share of the responsibility as it bears for the division of Korea.”

     Since the division, reunification by force; namely expulsion of the U.S. imperialist forces from the south, had been a preoccupation for Kim Il Sung, who finally obtained approval of his Big Brother Stalin for his reunification scheme and assurance of Soviet military aid in arms and ammunition for that purpose.  China’s revolutionary leader, Mao Tse Tung, also came in for help with hundreds of thousand Chinese soldiers, at a later stage after the War broke out.

     A Soviet secret document released in the early 1990s testifies that it was Kim Il Sung who advanced his troops into the south, triggering off the Korean War.  However, what should really be questioned is that the division of a country retaining one ethnic identity was planned and executed by the Americans without prior consultations with any Koreans at any stage.

     Facing a massive U.S. military intervention with UN Security Council resolutions labeling the North as aggressor and dispatching the American-led coalition forces under the UN flag, Kim Il Sung found his ambitions frustrated. The presence of the two mutually hostile states was thus perpetuated.  The principle of self-determination of peoples was thus ignored.  This should be questioned, although basically the Russo-American hegemony over the Korean Peninsulais to blame.

     The American-led forces who fought the Korean War were identical to the multinational forces deployed in the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War.  There was nothing to do with the UN Forces as defined by the UN Charter.  Spelled out in details by Chapter Seven of the Charter, the UN Forces have never been formed or dispatched in the history of the world organization.  The Korean War erupted while the USSR boycotted the Security Council over the Chinese representation issue.  Therefore, the US could easily railroad any resolutions through the Security Council without fear of Soviet veto.

     The collapse of the Cold War structure brought a political and economic isolation to the DPRK, which had been resorting to guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks in an attempt to topple the Seoul regime.  The Rangoon incident in 1983 and the South Korean airliner explosion over the Andaman Sea in the Indian Ocean, in 1987, were alleged to be typical examples of the DPRK’s terrorism.

     It was in the wake of these incidents that the United States called on its allies in Asia and Western Europe to invoke economic sanctions against the DPRK  The U.S. still refuses to remove the DPRK from the list of terrorist-supporting countries.  Washington is one of the few countries in the world, which has no diplomatic relations with Pyongyang for these reasons.  The others are Japan and France.  France, which attaches importance to the DPRK’s human rights violations, however, did not oppose the European Union (EU) opening diplomatic ties with Pyongyang.

     Instead of normalizing relations, the Bush Administration has even intensified its containment and confrontation policy toward the DPRK, which it included in the Exis of Evil, together with Iran and Iraq.  It should be reviewed and questioned whether it has been productive and successful in the interest of peace and stability of Northeast Asia.

DISCLOSURE OF A CLANDESTINE NUCLEAR PROGRAM

     Circumstantial evidence is that Kim Il Sung’s ambition for nuclear weapons was prompted by the abortive U.S. plan to drop nuclear bombs during the 1950-53 Korean War.  General Douglas McArthur, the commander-in-chief, had submitted to the White House a list of targets for nuclear bombing, which was later believed to have influenced Kim to compromise on a cease-fire agreement.  McArthur’s plan was turned down by President Truman in fear of the breakout of a Russo-American nuclear war.

      In 1956, the DPRK signed an agreement with the Soviet Union on technical cooperation in nuclear research, starting sending an average 50 young students to the Dubna Research Center near Moscow every year.  They were trained in basic nuclear science and engineering, which certainly served as a basis for the nation’s nuclear development program.  Hwang Jang Yop, ex-aide to Kim Il Sung and architect of the Juche ideology, told me in Pyongyang in 1996 before his defection to Seoul that one of those students was awarded the Lenin Prize for his studies of elementary particles.

     It is nothing but the flip of a coin whether a nuclear program remains limited to peaceful uses to generate electricity or is diverted for military purposes to manufacture weapons.  Both enriched uranium and plutonium, a by-product of uranium nuclear fission, are materials for dual purposes.  It is the safeguard system of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which gives assurance to its Member States as regards their nuclear-related activities for peaceful purposes.

     During the 1960s, the USSR provided a small experimental nuclear rector at Yongbyon, some 100 miles north of Pyongyang.  Placed under the IAEA safeguards, it started operations in 1965 as the nation’s first nuclear reactor.  Yongbyon thus became a center of the DPRK’s nuclear activities, where the North Korean engineers later started construction of two graphite-moderated reactors using natural uranium as fuel.  North Korea is rich in natural uranium ores.

     Construction of these two reactors detected by satellite pictures, came as a surprise to the American officials as a possible clandestine weapons program.  The first of the two, a five-megawatts reactor, suspended operations obviously to replace spent fuels for reprocessing.  Construction of another oblong-shaped building presumed to be a plutonium reprocessing plant in the same compound was also detected by satellite observations during the late 1980s.

     Concerned about the DPRK embarking on its own nuclear weapons program, the Soviet Union pressed Pyongyang leaders to sign and ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under which non-nuclear weapon states are obliged to place all nuclear materials under the IAEA safeguards by concluding an agreement with the IAEA within 18 months upon admission.  The DPRK signed and ratified it in December 1985.

     During my service with the IAEA from 1986 to 89, I witnessed the on-and-off negotiations held in Vienna with North Korean diplomats and nuclear experts to sign a safeguard agreement.  Refusing the IAEA’s request under the treaty obligation, the North Koreans claimed that the IAEA’s inspections should also be conducted on U.S. military bases in the South, where hundreds of Tomahawk tactical missiles mounted with nuclear warheads were presumed to be stockpiled. 

A joint U.S-ROK military exercise was performed every year in the south to counter possible attacks across the military demarcation line from the north.

     The IAEA simply responded that such a political matter should be discussed directly with the US government.  The North Korean diplomats confessed that Washington gives no ear to their arguments.  Conclusion of the IAEA-DPRK safeguard agreement was thus delayed until 1992, when Washington finally came closer to a full negotiation with Pyongyang.  I was convinced of the DPRK’s alleged nuclear program as a mere bargaining chip for a deal with the United States.

     It was in November 1989 that the first US-DPRK contact was made at the counselor’s level in Beijing.  The American diplomats insisted that the DPRK abandon the whole nuclear program, placing all related facilities under the IAEA inspections, while the Koreans urged the Americans to conclude a peace treaty, thus normalizing bilateral relations.  All this is more or less the same as the arguments still going on today, 15 years afterwards.

     Both sides are rigid and adamant.  Why?  The reasons should be questioned.

Briefly, Pyongyang is exremely proud of its nationalism and independence, while Washington, superpower-minded, tends to act as a policeman for the entire world.

     Basically, the DPRK, since the end of the Cold War, remains unchanged in its die-hard claim for political survival, demanding conclusion of a peace treaty or at least a non-aggression pact with the United States, officially putting an end to the Korean War, which is still at the level of a temporary cease-fire.  The Armistice Agreement was signed at Panmunjom on July 27, 1953, by the field commanders of the two main fighters, the U.S. (UN) and North Korean Forces.  From Pyongyang’s standpoint, therefore, the DPRK’s national security remains at stake, unless peace and security on the Korean Peninsula is guaranteed in the form of legally-binding documents.  It is only Washington who could guarantee it.

     Kim Jong Il and his close aides are suspicious that the Bush Administration might be tempted to cash in on an opportunity to topple his regime, thus shelving normalization of diplomatic relations.  President George Bush has, on several occasions, termed Kim Jong Il as dictator, saying that he has a strong sense of distrust on Kim who, he said, makes millions of Koreans dying of starvation.  He even called Kim a pygmy.  Such a direct, impolite and indiscreet personal criticism should be questioned.  His predecessor, Bill Clinton, had never done so.

     George Bush’ remarks only jeopardized the whole atmosphere surrounding the US-DPRK relations.  It must be remembered that the Koreans are highly prideful and honor-conscious people.

MYSTERY OVER THE DPRK’S URANIUM ENRICHMENT PROGRAM

     It was on October 3-5, 2002 that James Kelly, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State visited Pyongyang and showed to DPRK officials a copy of export license which the US had sub rosa obtained from the Pakistani military.  The copy indicated that the DPRK had imported a set of centrifuge machinery for uranium enrichment from Pakistan through Dr. Abdel Khadir Khan, the father of Pakistani nuclear bombs.  Kim Kye Gwan, DPRK Vice Foreign Minister, remained silent and at least did not deny, according to a State Department announcement.  After a recess, Kang Sok Ju, First Vice Foreign Minister, was reported to have come to admit Kelly’s allegation.

     On the basis of Pyongyang’s “affirmative” response, the U.S. decided to suspend heavy oil supplies to the DPRK under the arrangement of the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO), kicking off a new spell of North Korea’s nuclear crisis.  The KEDO suspended construction of one of the two light-water reactors at Kum Pho, north of Pyongyang.  In retaliation, the DPRK withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), expelled two IAEA inspectors and openly resumed plutonium reprocessing operations.

     This should be questioned.  It is still unclear what was the exact reaction of the Pyongyang officials to James Kelly.  The DPRK has officially denied that they had admitted Kelly’s argument and that they have any uranium enrichment program at all.  Pyongyang’s official Central Korean News Agency quotes Kang as having negatively responded to Kelly, saying that the DPRK is entitled to develop weapons even stronger than nuclear arms, that is the force of the people’s unity. 

     The uranium issue is still pending, as Pyongyang keeps denying.  It is highly unlikely that the DPRK has embarked on uranium enrichment work, even if some instruments were imported from Pakistan.  A uranium enrichment plant requires an extensive site with high-power electricity supplies, which U.S.intelligence has not been able to detect anywhere.

WHO BROKE THE AGREED FRAMEWORK

     In retrospect, the Clinton Administration was initially suspicious of  Pyongyang’s real intention in pursuing a nuclear development program.  Since it is the fundamental policy of any U.S. administration to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons, President Clinton was prepared to wage a second Korean war by alerting the American forces in South Korea, Japan and the Western Pacific region to counter the DPRK’s brinkmanship policy.  Tension mounted in Northeast Asia in early June 1994, when Washington brought the case to the UN Security Council to draft a resolution to invoke economic sanctions against the DPRK, which had announced any UN sanctions would mean a declaration of war against Pyongyang.

     It was Jimmy Carter, former U.S. President, who crossed the DMZ from the South to the North on June 15, 1994, and held face-to-face talks with the DPRK’s Head of State Kim Il Sung to avert a confrontation.  Carter did it.  Since he retired, Carter had been vigorously pursuing preventive diplomacy in his personal capacity.  His title of a former president of the world’s super-power as peace emissary was more than enough to satisfy the prestige-conscious Pyongyangleadership.

     Briefly, Carter and Kim Il Sung agreed on a deal to freeze the DPRK’s nuclear facilities in question in Yongbyong, including two graphite-moderated reactors, in return for two proliferation-resistant light-water reactors to be supplied by the U.S. side (actually by South Korea and Japan in large part.)  The compromise formula had been worked out by a group of American experts including Serig Harrison, former Washington Post correspondent in the Far East, who had held prior contact with North Korean leaders in Pyongyang in April and May, while tension was mounting around the Korean Peninsula.  Both sides found it necessary to give a ceremony to be transmitted all over the world on CNN TV network.

     In less than a month, “the Great Leader” Kim, suddenly died of a heart attack on July 8, 1994, while preparing for a North-South summit with Seoul’s President, Kim Yong Sum, scheduled for later in July.  This was also part of the Kim Il Sung-Carter agreement.  Though the North-South summit became abortive, President Clinton welcomed Carter’s achievements.  He instructed Robert Gallucci, Assistant Secretary of State, to hammer out a detailed agreement with the DPRK.  Negotiations started in Geneva in July and, after a brief recess due to Kim Il Sung’s death, ended successfully with the conclusion of an Agreed Framework on October 21, 1994.  His DPRK counterpart was Kang Sok Ju, Vice Foreign Minister, later promoted as First Vice Foreign Minister.

     Kenneth Quinones, a former State Department official on hand to attend the Geneva talks, recalls Kang as a tough and competent negotiator and admits that Gallucci and Kang could reach a degree of mutual understanding and respect after three months of intensive talks in Geneva.  The Korean crisis would have been overcome, provided the Agreed Framework were implemented at least by the US side faithfully.  This should be questioned.

     A Japanese-born Korean journalist of the Chosen Jiho, who happened to be at Pyongyang airport in early November 1994 on his way home to Tokyo, testified to me that upon his return, Kang was receiving a triumphant welcome from hundreds of Party and Government officials in appreciation of his successful negotiations with the Americans in Geneva.  He witnessed that a red carpet was unrolled on the airport field to welcome Kang? evidence to hail the DPRK’s diplomatic victory.

     In addition to the freeze of North Korea’s nuclear facilities and the supply of two light-water reactors, the Agreed Framework, in its second article, stipulates that both sides have agreed to lower barriers in trade and investment, including restrictive measures in communication services and financial transactions within three months・・・・and to open a liaison office respectively in each other’s capital in the understanding that it will be upgraded to an ambassadorial level.  This was exactly what Pyongyang had been seeking as its diplomatic goal.  At least for the DPRK, it was a first step toward normalization of diplomatic relations with Washington.

     Therefore, it is my understanding that there should be no reason for the DPRK to break, from their side, the Agreed Framework, which is so advantageous in its provisions that Kang was accorded a hero’s welcome at the airport, and that soon afterward he was promoted to First Vice Foreign Minister with the privilege of direct access to “the Dear Leader”, Kim Jong Il.

     To the deception of Pyongyang, however, the Clinton Administration neglected to implement the Agreed Framework, once the NPT was given an indefinite and unconditional extension at the Treaty Review Conference in New York in April-May 1995.  Since the crisis was gone, Gallucci was optimistic about the DPRK’s nuclear program, which he believed would be phased out under the KEDO scheme.  All in all, he admitted, many people had anticipated that the Kim Jong Il regime would collapse in the near future.  Nicolas Everstadt, author of the End of North Korea, was one of the American intellectuals who had made such a prediction, saying that the DPRK was on the verge of collapse.  ROK President Kim Yong Sam was also responsible for having influenced Washington with a similar prediction.  Kim Yong Sam, anxious to be the first President of a unified Korea, was, however, hated by Pyongyang for his anti-DPRK remarks.

     The second article of the Agreed Framework was thus not followed up by Washington almost at all, while the Clinton Administration came to realize the need to implement it only in the last months and days of its term.  It was an irrevocable miscalculation on the U.S. side.  This should above all be questioned.

     Disgruntled, the DPRK fired a Taepodon missile over the Japanese Archipelago in the Western Pacific on August 30, 1998, and fabricated another clandestine nuclear site in Kum Changli in the north, which was later identified by a visiting American expert team as merely a huge cave.  These were regarded as a series of gestures by Pyongyang in protest against the American negligence to fulfill the Agreed Framework as provided.

     The newly-alleged uranium enrichment program should also be interpreted within this context.  It would not be surprising if the DPRK leaders might have been tempted to develop uranium-made bombs in technical cooperation with Pakistan, which is believed to have been a good customer of medium-range North Korean missiles, code-named Nodong.  In addition, the Agreed Framework itself does not prohibit the DPRK from embarking on uranium enrichment.  The only reference in the Geneva accord is to the DPRK’s respect for the 1991 North-South Denuclearization Declaration, which bans uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing on both North and South.  However, the prohibition is indirect and the declaration itself was regarded as a dead document. 

     What really dealt a heavy blow to Kim Jong Il was the last-minute victory of George Bush Jr., in the 2000 Presidential Election.  Upon assuming presidency in January 2001, Bush reversed the final moves of the Clinton Administration toward normalization of diplomatic relations with Pyongyang.  Former Defense Secretary William Perry, nominated by Clinton as special envoy, had submitted a comprehensive report in September 1999, proposing a direct deal with the Kim Jong Il regime as it is.  A military confrontation, the report had said, would involve millions of victims, both American and Korean.  Following the so-called Perry Process, Secretary of State Madelene Albright visited Pyongyang in October 2000 to wind up a final stage of negotiations and prepare for Clinton’s own visit  The year 2000 should also be remembered with the historic North-South summit held in Pyongyang in June.  President Kim Dae Jung flew from Seoul, implementing his Sunshine Policy toward the DPRK.  President Kim was thus awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2000.

     However, as reiterated in other parts, Kim Jong Il’s real target as counterpart is not Seoul, but Washington.  Under the existing security arrangements, the entire South Korean forces are placed under the U.S. Command, should a crisis once happen.  Peace and security all over the Korean Peninsula is in the hands of the Americans.

     Bush’s victory was a nightmare for Kim Jong Il.  Washington’s move toward detente and thaw was halted and reversed by Bush’s ABC (Anything but Clinton) policy.   Pyongyang learned a bitter lesson.  Nothing could be trusted unless a legally-binding bilateral treaty were concluded with Washington.  This should be questioned.  The DPRK again became a victim of the Big Power egotism.

     Furthermore, President Bush, in his State of Union message in January 2002, branded the DPRK as well as Iran and Iraq, as the Axis of Evil, setting them as target of “pre-emptive attacks.”  In July 2002, President Bush suddenly demanded unilateral dismantlement of all nuclear weapons as well as conventional arms, as pre-requisite to any deal with Pyongyang.  Is it unrealistic if Kim Jong Il and his leadership interpreted all this as hostile to them and regarded the Agreed Framework as no longer valid?  George Bush had refused to negotiate with the DPRK, even before James Kelly visited Pyongyang in October 2002 with uranium enrichment suspicions.

     All the media in Japan was a mere rubber stamp of the U.S. claim in accusing the DPRK of violating the Agreed Framework with the clandestine uranium enrichment program.  This should be questioned.

   

ROAD TO A SOLUTION／FUTURE OF THE SIX-PARTY TALKS

     Solution of the Korean crisis over the DPRK’s nuclear issue is simple.  It is to recognize the Kim Jong Il regime, open diplomatic relations, conclude a peace treaty officially ending the Korean War, and lift economic sanctions by removing it from the list of terrorist-supporting nations.  All should and could be done by the United Sates.  Washington has often been puzzled and confused with the real intention of Pyongyang, which has been using its nuclear program not only as a bargaining chip, but also as a tool for blackmail and threats.

     The Bush Administration, emerging as the world’s sole super-power, did not like to yield to any blackmail or threat, especially after the 9.11 terrorist attacks in 2001.  The whole game was put back again to the start. This should be questioned.  Bush’s attitude is a Super-Power arrogance.

     However, the third round of the six-party talks in Beijing in June 2004 marked a turning point.  For the first time since the inauguration of the Bush Administration, James Kelly, US Assistant Secretary of State, showed flexibility by presenting a compromise proposal.  Withdrawing from its hitherto demand for comprehensive, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement (CVID), Kelly said that the US would be ready to approve its allies’ energy and other economic assistance, and provide temporary security assurance to the DPRK in reprocity if Pyongyang agrees to freeze its nuclear program with verification.  It will take time before details are worked out since there is deep distrust between the two sides.

     The policy change in the Bush Administration was taken as a result of persuasion by Seoul and Tokyo. ( It should be noted that the Beijing talks came just weeks after Prime Minister Koizumi’s second visit to Pyongyang.)  It was also interpreted as a countermeasure to John Kerry, Democratic Party Presidential candidate, who insists upon a direct deal with Kim Jong Il for an immediate solution of the crisis.

     Here is one episode.  Kim Jong Il, during his second talks with Prime Minister Koizumi on May 22, 2004, confessed to him; “I would like to sing a song in a duet with President Bush until the limit of my voice.”  George Bush showed no response.

     A solution, therefore, would be easier with Kerry’s victory.  During his campaign speeches, Kerry said he would follow what his Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton had tried to achieve.  The Democratic Party adopted an election platform along this line.  Pyongyang is expecting Kerry winning the race.  However, I believe Bush’s re-election would also warrant some optimism.  Future progress is expected on the basis of the discussions accumulated so far during the three rounds of the six-party talks in Beijing.

     With the deteriorating situation in Iraq on the one hand, George Bush would find no other choice than accommodating a multilateral solution formula, as being focused in the six-nation forum in Beijing.

     The four other participating nations, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, have reached a broad consensus seeking an early solution to the pending issues, which they consider will be settled on a step-by-step basis with the IAEA and some other international verification system to achieve the DPRK’s final abolition of nuclear weapons program.

ECONOMIC REFORM AND SUCCESSION ISSUE

     Much is rumored about who would be a successor to Kim Jong Il, who is now 62 years old.  At this age of his father in 1974, he had already been picked up as the de facto successor to Kim Il Sung, though officially nominated in 1980.

     Kim Jong Il has at least three sons by two different wives.  However, nobody has been designated as an heir to the throne, apparently because the Pyongyang leaders are aware that a hereditary system for a socialist state is a contraction, and because Kim Jong Il himself is in good health.  The possibility is low that Kim Jong Il may be retiring soon.  Born on February 16, 1942, Kim reportedly told his close aides that he would remain active until the age when his father died.  His father died at 82. 

     Korea experts in Tokyo and Seoul predict that, in fact, there is rivalry between Kim Jong Nam, the eldest son by the now-dead second wife, and Kim Jong Chol, the eldest by the Japan-born fourth wife, as a prospective successor.  (Even Kim Jong Il is not polygamous. The words, second and fourth, are used exclusively to denote in the order of his marriages.)  In any case, the most probable choice for the DPRK’s future political system would be a collective leadership with competent technocrats in each post given the chance to take their own initiatives and make decisions.  This could be a step toward gradual democratization.

     I have visited the DPRK six times since 1994.  Whenever I go to Pyongyang, I have been impressed with junior Government and Party officials fluent in several languages and informed of up-to-date developments in the outside world.  University graduate elites, mostly sons and daughters of the high-ranking Party officials, are allowed to watch satellite TV news for 24 hours and access to Internet services.

     The DPRK’s dictatorial power structure may eventually result in either of Kim Jong Il’s sons being picked up as his successor, who, however, is highly likely to remain a figure head as a symbol under a collective leadership system.  Succession of power within a family is no exception in modern States.  Practically, the same thing happens in India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Singapore, as well as the United States, 

     The introduction of free-market economy system, as in China, has been in progress, as one of the most important tasks facing the Kim Jong Il regime.  The DPRK Government introduced economic reform measures in July 2002, in anticipation of a huge-scale economic cooperation from Japan, which the DPRK had expected in the wake of Prime Minister Koizumi’s visit to Pyongyang in September.  In fact, signing the Joint Pyongyang Declaration, Koizumi apologized for Japan’s colonial rule in the past and agreed to extend economic cooperation, which, however, has not been implemented due to the escalation of the abduction issue.

     In the absence of foreign capital investment and consumer goods, therefore, commodity prices have recorded hyperinflations with black-market stalls mushrooming in local towns and villages.  On the other hand, food and energy shortages are still chronic and perennial.  The nation is short of an average one-million tons of grains every year.  Normalization of relations with Japan and the United Sates is, therefore, needed not only for allowing political survival of the Kim Jong Il regime for the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula, but also for ensuring, for humanitarian reasons, physical survival of the 22-million people living in the North.

     It is exactly 10 years ago that the Institute of International Strategic Studies in London expressed a surprise and amazement at docility and obedience of the Korean people suffering from chronic food and energy shortages.  Elsewhere in the world, it pointed out, any government would not be able to survive; it would be collapse under popular revolts and mutinies.  Bruce Cumings, at the end of his most recent publication, North Korea: another country, quotes a CNN executive, Eason Jordan, as telling HarvardUniversity students, that the North Koreans would keep surviving and that the Pyongyang regime could not be toppled by the United States or any other countries in the world.

     In this sense, as Don Oberdorfer put it, the Korean Peninsula is exactly the land of surprise.    (2004-8-15)

【References】

Cumings, Bruce. The Origin of the Korean War, vol.2, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1981

Cumings, Bruce. North Korea: Another Country, The New Press, 2004

Eberstadt, Nicolas. The End of North Korea, American Enterprise Institute,Washington, 1999

Gertz, Bill. Betrayal, How the Clinton Adminisration undermined American Security, Regnery, New York, 1999

Harrison, Selig S. Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S.Disengagement.  Princeton, N.J; Princeton University Press, 2002

Kim Hak-joon, Whether Path for the Two Koreas in the 21st Century, Jimoondang Publishing Company, 1998, Seoul

Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, New York, Addison

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