COMMENTARY ON PAPERS BY CHUNG-IN MOON, CHAESUNG CHUN AND HAKSOON PAIK

James Hoare

These are three very different papers. There are common themes running through them, but they are treated in different ways. What they do show is that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK—North Korea) needs careful handling, that there is little sign of that careful handling, and that dealing with the DPRK highlights the problems of any attempt at establishing an Asian regional security organisation. Professor Foot, in her comments on the first set of papers, has made it clear just how far off that is. The sheer diversity of Asia, in terms of peoples, systems of government and complex inter-state issues makes an idea of an effective regional secu- rity organisation far more difficult than in Europe, so often seen as the model of how to do things. In his paper, Professor Moon Chung-in looks at the issue of the Six Party Talks with the eye of a pragmatist rather than a theoretician, although, as is well known, he can play that role as well. The Six Party Talks, as he makes clear, developed as a way of handling the DPRK nuclear issue after US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly’s confrontation in Pyongyang in October 2002 led to the collapse of the 1994 Agreed Framework.1 There is no evidence that the Bush administration had any idea of what was to happen after the end of the Agreed Framework; it was sufficient to end it and to cease “negotiating with evil”, as Vice-President Cheney is supposed to have put it. As Moon makes clear, the Six Party Talks were by no means the only option considered. Some favoured neglect, others military action. But the first would do nothing to stop the DPRK from developing nuclear weapons, and the second ran the risk that, if it did not work, the Asian region might be plunged into conflict. Given our uncertain knowledge of

1 See Robert Carlin, “Negotiating with North Korea: Lessons Learned and Forgotten”, in Rüdiger Frank, James E Hoare, Patrick Köllner and Susan Pares, eds., Korea Yearbook 2007: Politics, Economy and Society (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2008), 235–251 for a succinct account of these developments. They are also covered in more detail in works such as Yuichi Funabashi, The Peninsula Question: A Chronicle of the Second Nuclear Crisis, (Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 2007), and Mike Chinoy, Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, (New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 2009). 242 james hoare exactly what nuclear facilities the DPRK has and where they are situated, a pre-emptive strike would be a risky business. What is certain is that the nuclear issue did not go away and neither did the concerns about it. The Kelly visit added complications to an already difficult situation. Having clambered on to the moral high ground, the Bush administration refused to go back to direct negotiations with the DPRK. For its part, the DPRK, seeing the benefits of the Agreed Framework slipping away, turned back to what it may have wanted to do all along: develop some form of nuclear deterrent that would keep its enemies at bay. It also made it clear that since it was the US that it saw as its main enemy and thus the main threat to its continued existence, it would deal only directly with the US. So the problem was not solved, but new and more dogmatic positions had been taken up on both sides. It was China that provided the way out. Neglect was not going to solve the issue—as would be made abundantly clear on several occasions in the coming years—so some means had to be devised to get the DPRK and the United States back together. The first attempt, in April 2003, was to get the US, the DPRK and China to the negotiation table. It failed when the US refused to accept anything less than complete, verifiable and irre- versible (CVI) denuclearisation. There would be no more Clinton- style “appeasement”, even if nobody was quite sure what CVI meant; as some commentators noted, it would not be easy to eradicate knowledge of nuclear weapons and how to make them, even if programmes were closed down. Eventually, after various other multilateral routes were examined and dismissed, the Chinese came up with the formula of the Six Party Talks. The US and the DPRK would not have to face each other alone. Instead, the major regional powers would all sit down and discuss the nuclear issue. And although in origin the Six Party Talks were merely a device to get the US and the DPRK in the same room, gradually they took on a more complex role. There was something in them for everybody, whether status or an opportunity to raise issues of concern beyond the nuclear issue that if solved, would contribute to the peace and security of East Asia. Thus the Six Party Talks, like the Agreed Framework, worked, although there were some difficult moments on the way, when different agendas were pursued by one party or the other. Indeed, they worked so well that there were those who saw them as the possible basis for the regional security regime that (East) Asia has so far conspicuously lacked. This pious hope ignored the fragility of the arrangement, which had always been evident. The talks nearly foundered in 2005, when different parts of the US administration seemed to pull in opposite directions and