Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea by Leon V

DISARMING STRANGERS PRINCETON STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY AND POLITICS Series Editors Jack L. Snyder and Richard H. Ullman Recent titles: The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations by Christian Reus-Smit Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in Its Century by David Lake A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 by Marc Trachtenberg Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn: Global and Domestic Influences on Grand Strategy by Etel Solingen From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role by Fareed Zakaria Changing Course: Ideas, Politics, and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan by Sarah E. Mendelson Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea by Leon V. Sigal Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars by Elizabeth Kier Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision-Making by Barbara Rearden Farnham Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 by Thomas J. Christensen Satellites and Commisars: Strategy and Conflict in the Politics of the Soviet-Bloc Trade by Randall W. Stone Does Conquest Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies by Peter Liberman Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History by Alastair Iain Johnston The Korean War: An International History by William Stueck Cooperation among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy by Thomas Risse-Kappen The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change by Hendrik Spruyt DISARMING STRANGERS NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY WITH NORTH KOREA Leon V. Sigal PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY COPYRIGHT1998BYPRINCETONUNIVERSITYPRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET, PRINCETON,NEWJERSEY08540 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, CHICHESTER,WESTSUSSEX ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THELIBRARYOFCONGRESSHASCATALOGEDTHECLOTHEDITION OFTHISBOOKASFOLLOWS SIGAL,LEONV. DISARMINGSTRANGERS:NUCLEARDIPLOMACYWITH NORTHKOREA/LEONV.SIGAL P.CM.—(PRINCETONSTUDIESININTERNATIONALHISTORYANDPOLITICS) INCLUDESBIBLIOGRAPHICALREFERENCESANDINDEX. eISBN 1-4008-0738-7 1.NUCLEARNONPROLIFERATION.2.UNITEDSTATES— FOREIGNRELATIONS—KOREA(NORTH) 3.KOREA(NORTH)—FOREIGNRELATIONS—UNITEDSTATES. 4.DIPLOMACY.I.TITLEII.SERIES JZ5675.S551997327.1′747—DC2197-24502CIP THISBOOKHASBEENCOMPOSEDINGALLIARD HTTP://PUP.PRINCETON.EDU CONTENTS PREFACEix ABBREVIATIONSxiii 1 UncooperativeAmerica3 AHistoryofFailure5 SharedUncertainty,SharedCertitude10 ThePoliticsofDiplomaticParalysis13 PARTI:COERCIONFAILS15 2 TheBushDeadlockMachine17 DealingwithKoreanInsecurities20 NorthKoreaReciprocatesforU.S.SecurityAssurances25 “OneMeetingMeansOneMeeting”32 IgnoringtheNorth’sOffer38 WitnessesfortheProsecution42 InterregnumPolitics:NoOneStandsUptoTeamSpirit44 3 TheClintonAdministrationTiesItselfinKnots52 CoaxingNorthKoreaPartwayBackintotheTreaty55 TheReactorDealRedux65 EmptyThreats71 AnEmpty“PackageDeal”77 SeoulGetstheShakes84 4 A“BetterthanEven”ChanceofMisestimation90 TheCollapseof“SuperTuesday”95 LetBygonesBeBygones,forNow108 StumblingtotheBrink113 5 Deadlock124 vi CONTENTS PARTII:COOPERATIONSUCCEEDS129 6 OpenCovenants,PrivatelyArrivedAt131 PrivateContactswithPyongyang133 PyongyangReachesOut137 TheHiddenHandintheFirstJointStatement140 TwoFoundationsTrytoJump-StartDiplomacy143 JimmyCarterRefusestoTake“No”foranAnswer150 TheCarter-KimDeal155 TheBushmenGoontheWarpath162 7 GettingtoYes168 KimIlSung’sLegacy172 PuttingSomeChipsontheTable176 TheOctoberAgreedFramework184 DecryingandDefendingtheDeal192 TheIssueatKualaLumpur:What’sinaName?199 PARTIII:CONCLUSIONS205 8 NuclearDiplomacyintheNews—AnUntoldStory207 UnfamiliarityBreedsContempt208 ExplainingNewsonNuclearDiplomacy219 Op-edsandEditorials223 PossibleConsequencesofNewsCoverage225 9 ThePoliticsofDiscouragement229 NoInterestinaDeal229 TheForeignPolicyEstablishment236 10 WhyWon’tAmericaCooperate?244 Realism246 TheLiberalChallengetoRealism250 CooperatingwithStrangers251 Appendixes255 Appendix I NorthKorea’sTit-for-TatNegotiatingBehavior257 CONTENTS vii Appendix II KeyDocuments260 NOTES265 INDEX307 PREFACE FIRST became interested in Korea when I joined the Editorial Board of the New York Times in June 1989. It was obvious that the Iend of the Cold War would greatly affect that divided land. I also knew from my experience in the United States government that the combustible combination of forward deployed forces on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone and our nuclear presence on the peninsula posed especially grave risks. One was that North Korea and South Korea would seek nuclear arms of their own. Another was that any crisis could get out of hand. With that knowledge, and little else in mind, I wrote an editorial that appeared on June 25, 1990, urging the United States to “help the Ko- reas in from the cold” by coaxing them into military disengagement and diplomatic reengagement. “North Korea may accept international nuclear safeguards and is proposing new arms cuts,” the editorial read. “These steps could ease the military confrontation on the peninsula and allow the U.S. to reduce its force of 45,000 troops in the South. And there would be no reason to keep U.S. nuclear weapons there.” In a December 13, 1990, editorial I went further, urging diplomatic and economic ties with the North. My original draft recommended unilat- eral withdrawal of U.S. nuclear arms from the peninsula, but it was cut in last-minute editing. I returned to the theme on February 4, 1991. “Washington could meet Pyongyang’s concerns,” I wrote, “by beginning to withdraw its nuclear weapons. It could also reduce the scale and frequency of military exercises in the area.” Editorial page editor Jack Rosenthal let me have my say, as he would until he left the Editorial Board to run the magazine at the end of 1993. After the December editorial, South Koreans, officials and former officials, began calling with invitations to lunch. A few Korea experts got in touch. The Asia Society invited me to a luncheon speech by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Solomon at the Waldorf Astoria. There I met Tony Namkung and we arranged to talk further. The South Korean ambassador to Washington invited me to lunch that April and a month later I met Ho Jong, a North Korean ambassador at the United Nations. I was soon in regular contact with American, South Korean, and North Korean officials, as well as a dozen experts on proliferation, in and out of government, and anyone knowledgeable about North Korea I could find, American, Japanese, and South Korean. x PREFACE For the next six years I wrote some sixty editorials on nuclear diplomacy with North Korea—all but two that the Times ran on the subject. I was free to write what I wanted on all but two occasions, in June 1994 and in April 1995, when my editorials were rewritten or scrapped. In the course of those six years I became intimately familiar with many of the nongovernmental contacts with North Korea, or Track II diplomacy. I thought the story was an important one that many people had misunderstood. When I left the Times I believed I was familiar enough with the details of U.S.–North Korean contacts to tell it right. Little did I know. Only after long and repeated interviews with nearly all the American participants and quite a few South and North Koreans did I begin to realize how much of the history I thought I knew was wrong. In trying to reconstruct the events of 1988 to 1995, I have benefited from the prior work of Mitchell Reiss, Michael Mazarr, and others. I also want to thank the many people in Washington, Seoul, and else- where whom I spoke to about the North Korean nuclear issue at one point or another from 1990 on: Gary Ackerman, Ahn Byung-joon, David Albright, Steven Aoki, Arima Tatsuo, Les Aspin, Bae Ho Hahn, Harry Barnes, Sandy Berger, Hans Blix, Stephen Bosworth, Robert Car- lin, Ashton Carter, Dick Christenson, Gennady Chufrin, James Clapper, Marion Creekmore, Lynn Davis, James Delaney, Robert Einhorn, Ste- ven Fetter, Thomas Finger, Stephen Flanigan, Steven Fleishman, Gary Foster, Leon Fuerth, Robert Gallucci, Robert Gates, Gong Ro-Myung, Donald Gregg, Vernon Guidry, Han Song Ryol, Han Sung Joo, Selig Harrison, Peter Hayes, Ho Jong, John Holum, Hyun Hong-Choo, Ar- nold Kanter, Charles Kartman, Spurgeon Keeny, Kim Dae Jung, Kim Kyung-Won, David Kyd, Anthony Lake, James Laney, Paul Leventhal, John Lewis, Stephen Linton, Thomas Longstreth, Winston Lord, Gary Luck, John McCain, Thomas McNamara, Gary Milhollin, Tony Namkung, Joseph Nye, Park Shun-Il, Park Soo-Gil, John Pike, Daniel Poneman, Nick Rasmussen, Roe Chang-hee, Roh Tae Woo, Jamie Rubin, Randy Rydell, Gary Samore, Brent Scowcroft, Larry Smith, Henry Sokolski, Stephen Solarz, Richard Solomon, Leonard Spector, Gordon Sullivan, Lynn Turk, Leonard Weiss, Frank Wisner, and Joel Wit, as well as two C.I.A. officials, two military officers, three Chinese officials, and two Japanese officials who must remain nameless. I inter- viewed many of them for this book. I have tried as much as possible to get my sources to speak on the record, but when they did not, I have tried to identify them as fully as I could in the text. I am grateful to the dedicated public servants who took the time to confide in me, especially to those who do not share my conclusions. PREFACE xi I want to thank the Rockefeller Foundation, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council for their generous support, and especially

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