Pyongyang Waiting for the Spring

Volume 3 | Issue 2 | Article ID 2132 | Feb 15, 2005 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus

Gavan McCormack

Pyongyang Waiting for the Spring To many, it seemed that a new round of talks expected early in 2005 might actually achieve a by Gavan McCormack breakthrough; some even thought the long- awaited Pyongyang Spring might be imminent. Then, came the North Korean Foreign With the lunar New Year, in Northeast Asia the Ministry's February 10th announcement that darkness of winter recedes, a pale sun gains the country was indeed a nuclear-weapons strength, daylight hours lengthen and the earth state, that such weapons were necessary stirs. However, in one of the bleakest and because of the American government's "ever- coldest corners of the region, North Korea, the more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle" it, land is still hard-frozen, spring is far off, and and that there was no point in resuming the political frosts have not melted for more than talks so long as this hostility continued. Only half a century. Yet all extremes are eventually "powerful strength," it said, "can protect justice exhausted and yield, as yang to yin, and even and truth." for North Korea that time may not be far off. Heading into a Korean Winter Relations between the United States and North Korea, having edged right up to the brink of As George W. Bush began his second term, his administration reviewed its intelligence and reconciliation and normalization in the last policy on North Korea. On the face of it, the days of Bill Clinton's presidency, went into outcome seemed, at the very least, milder than crisis with the advent of the Bush the uncompromising hostility of his first year or administration and have remained in a kind of so in office. This is perhaps hardly surprising, eternal, roiling crisis ever since. After North given that the ongoing war in Iraq has strained Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non- American military power to something like its Proliferation Treaty in January 2003, there limits and, for at least the last two years, were four sessions of talks aimed at break the Middle Eastern policy has simply absorbed all impasse between the two countries: a three- available Bush administration attention, in sided meeting (the US, North Korea, and effect trumping the more muscular approach to China) in Beijing in April 2003, and three various problems in Asia that America’s subsequent "Six-Sided" meetings (that added neocons had long dreamed of. South Korea, Russia, and Japan) in August 2003, February 2004, and June 2004. All Nonetheless, the overall effect of the Korean parties agree that the nuclear and other policy review was not so much to resolve the problems can be, and must be, resolved dilemmas on the peninsula, but to put forward through discussion; while North Koreana stance of studied ambiguity, of what might be officials claim that their country has no wish to called hostility-plus -- that is, plus readiness for possess nuclear weapons and is ready to give some kind of deal. Late in 2004, U.S. them up as long as its legitimate security government sources released accounts of what concerns are met. it called a "bold approach" toward settlement,

1 3 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF which had apparently first been placed on the But he too stressed the ongoing US mission to table in Pyongyang in October 2002 and was extend "democracy" to the benighted regions of still open. If the North Koreans would suspend the world: regimes would have to embrace and dismantle all their nuclear programs "freedom" either by changing themselves or by (military and civil) under appropriatebeing changed. Against all this, at least since international inspection, address proliferation the Beijing talks began Pyongyang's message, concerns about missile, biological and chemical often ridiculed as a stance of preposterous weapons, as well as conventional arms levels blackmail, had in fact remained constant: it and the lack of human rights in the country, the simply sought concrete assurance of survival. U.S. would, in return, "kick off negotiations" to convert the existing cease-fire agreement still Late in 2004, under pressure from its Asian in effect from the Korean War of the early allies, the Bush administration had evidently 1950s into an actual peace treaty, push for decided to shift from talking about the need for North Korean membership in international "regime change" in North Korea to "regime financial institutions, and provide energy transformation" -- a subtle distinction indeed. assistance and humanitarian aid. [1] As Jeong Se Hyun, former Unification Minister in South Korea, commented, "I don't This "bold offer" was quickly overshadowed by understand why the United States is beginning other disputed matters and died stillborn in to say that. If you go from telling someone else 2002. But it had itself been a study in'I'm going to kill you,' to 'If you become a good ambiguity - a mix of generous-soundingguy I might not kill you,' what will the other promises all of which depended on North guy think…" [2] Korea's initial and comprehensive surrender to American demands. It was an offer made in Whatever the words from Washington, the view order to rebut any future charges that the Bush from Pyongyang must have been grim. On administration had lacked interest inOctober 19, the North Korea Human Rights Act negotiating, and made on terms that it could be was signed into law, having been adopted by a certain the other side would never accept. unanimous vote of both Houses. It widened the Now, as 2005 began, it was evidently back on administration's playing field for multifarious the table, but so, it turned out, was the potential interventions short of all-out war, hostility. both along the North's borders and via the airwaves. It also supported an "East European" In her confirmation hearings to becomemodel of undermining and destabilizing the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice struck an regime by non-military means. apparently upbeat note by declaring that the US had "no intention" of invading North Korea. Behind such actions lay the long-term lobbying At the same time, she explicitly included it of various American neoconservative among six "outposts of tyranny" that must be intellectuals with close ties to the dealt with and proclaimed that the US stood administration. And they now chimed in as with "the oppressed people" of all countries. well. The right-wing Hudson Institute's Michael For Pyongyang, "outpost of tyranny" must have Horowitz, one of the authors of the Human sounded no less menacing than "axis of evil." Rights Law, on December 23 stated his belief President Bush himself, in his 2005 State of the that North Korea would implode within the Union address, had little to say about North year. He also spoke of the possibility of finding Korea other than that the US was "working generals within the North Korean military closely with governments in Asia to convince prepared to work with the U.S. and using them North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions." to bring about a coup. "Defense Committee

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Chairman Kim Jong Il," he added, "won't be weapon fuel. This program, however, was not able to enjoy the next Christmas." [3] He also controversial, in the sense that Pyongyang has mocked the South Korean government, which is repeatedly offered to sacrifice it as part of a absolutely opposed to such an approach, as comprehensive deal. The Bush administration, "hypercritical and irresponsible." [4] in dismissing any possibility of such a deal, has concentrated on an alleged North Korean In a similar vein, Nicholas Eberstadt of the “second track” weapons program, based on American Enterprise Institute, anotheruranium. This matter is highly controversial. prominent neo-conservative intellectual, wrote a November 2004 article entitled "Tear down The basis for this “second-track” charge was this Tyranny." Like Horowitz, he directed his the claimed confession of a Pyongyang official venom at both Korean governments, referring to Deputy Secretary of State James Kelly on a to "the pro-appeasement crowd in the South rare Bush administration official visit to Korean government" who had turned that Pyongyang in October 2002 that it had a secret country into a place "increasingly governed in uranium enrichment program. That confession, accordance with graduate-school 'peacein turn, was supposed to have prompted the studies' desiderata." [5] If the North Koreans U.S. to suspend its Agreed Framework needed another signal from the Bushcommitments (in particular the pledge of administration, the appointment of Georgetown 500,000 tons annually of heavy oil). Soon after, University academic Victor Cha as a Director North Korea withdrew from the Agreed for Asian Affairs at the National Security Framework and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Council was undoubtedly it. He had earned plaudits from neoconservatives for a 2002 No confirmation, however, has ever been article in the Council on Foreign Relations forthcoming for the US claim. North Korea journal Foreign Affairs, later developed into a denies any such “confession,” and South Korea, book, in which he argued for pressure to be China and Russia have all expressed skepticism brought to bear on Pyongyang by forming a about such a nuclear program despite dogged “coalition for punishment." The priority he Bush administration efforts over the last two- placed on "punishing" Kim Jong Il’s regime and-a-half years to persuade them of its suggested a view of "transformation" for North existence. Not only has Washington been Korea that was blood brother to those being unable to persuade allies and negotiating proposed by Horowitz and Eberstadt. [6] partners, but it has failed to persuade its own intelligence and diplomatic community as well. There have been two strands to the Bush The January-February 2005 issue of the administration’s North Korean nuclear concern: establishment journal on foreign policy, plutonium and uranium-based weaponsForeign Affairs, carried a powerful dissenting programs. Under the Clinton administration’s article by Selig Harrison, former Washington “Agreed Framework” deal with Pyongyang, Post journalist who is now Senior Scholar at North Korea’s graphite reactor had been shut the Woodrow Wilson Center and also chair of down and its accumulated plutonium wastes the "Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy," an frozen under international inspection between influential group of ex-diplomats, officials, and 1994 and 2003. The breakdown in relations academics. Harrison argued that the U.S. had that occurred under Bush, however, meant that deliberately distorted North Korea's statement the reactor was restarted, new wastes began to in order to put a halt to the moves towards accumulate, and the pre-existing 8,000 fuel reconciliation between Pyongyang, Seoul, and rods were removed from the site and,Tokyo, that its negotiator had only said it was according to the North Koreans, processed into "entitled" to such a program or "an even more

3 3 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF powerful one" to deter a preemptive US attack. what Washington alleged: that the North had Washington had done this, he argued, to step an advanced program that would have enriched up pressure on Pyongyang and to stop U.S. uranium weapons ready for deployment by allies from any compromise with "evil"; from, "mid-decade." that is, appeasement. [7] In November 2004, Harrison’s "Task Force on The Magic Bullet of Intelligence U.S. Korea Policy" had already issued a paper, “Ending the North Korean Crisis,” critical of Whether or not it was designed to do so, Kelly's the administration. [8] If this paper, with its October mission to Pyongyang certainly nipped detailed policy proposals, was the first public in the bud promising signs of an East Asian broadside against the administration from spring. An all-Korean summit of June 2000, the middle-of-the-road members of the intelligence, fruit of a new South Korean “sunshine policy” academic, and bureaucratic communities, toward the North, had been followed by a spate Harrison's Foreign Affairs article was the of economic cooperation and trust-building second, attacking the very fundaments of Bush deals on the peninsula. In September 2002, policy-making. Japan had joined the process and, for the first time, a vision of a new, regional East Asian In response, official Washington ratcheted up “order” in which the United States, for the first its efforts both at home and abroad. A riposte time since the Korean war would have no by Robert Gallucci, the official who helped defined role, had been officially declared in the negotiate the 1994 Agreed Framework with most unlikely of settings -- a meeting between Pyongyang, and Mitchell Reiss, head of policy North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Japanese planning at the State Department during the Prime Minister Koizumi. This dramatic and first George W Bush administration, appeared startling picture of a future Asia would soon be in the very next issue of Foreign Affairs. [9] buried in an ever more sensational, headline- They insisted that enrichment was enrichment, grabbing dispute about Japanese citizens who and the danger of uranium, enriched to had been kidnapped – in some cases decades whatever degree, being either weaponized or previously -- by the North Korean regime. exported was real. At the same time, Michael Despite the rancor that ongoing dispute Green, the National Security Council's newly- engendered, both sides remain officiallyappointed Senior Director for Asia, was committed to such a new order. dispatched on a tour of Asian capitals to try to bring various allies into line. He evidently In Harrison’s view, Kelly's charges, which were reaffirmed the Kelly line on enrichment, headline grabbing in the United States,perhaps by offering additional intelligence, and depended on an exaggeration of dangerously claimed as well that North Korea had been minimalist intelligence, or, as he put it, the guilty of the grave offence of proliferation "treating of a worst-case scenario as revealed through supplying uranium hexafluoride (a truth." North Korea, he agreed, might possibly component for nuclear weapons manufacture) have a secret program to produce low-enriched to Libya. The evidence for this latter claim is uranium (LEU), the fuel used to power light- not known in full, but the preliminary response water plutonium reactors, which would indeed of the International Atomic Energy Agency put it in technical violation of the Framework. (IAEA) was that the case was at best It was unlikely, however, that its scientists had inconclusive; at worst, as one member of the solved the far more technically difficult task of IAEA put it, it was "hard to believe." [10] turning it into high-enriched uranium (HEU) for Harrison continued to insist, in a New York weapons purposes. He simply did not accept speech on February 16, that it was “reckless to

4 3 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF base policy on worst case scenario intelligence underway, even under the Kim Jong Il regime, driven by ideology.” [11] and largely unnoticed by the Bush administration. While U.S. (and Japanese) So bureaucratic war raged in Washington on conservatives dream of overthrowing Kim, the Korean issue – and this took place against a there is a possibility that North Korea's present backdrop of the previous year’s devastating leader may be the most likely candidate to push revelations of the ways in which thethrough reform and an opening to the world in administration had used wholesale political an otherwise highly conservative, repressive, intelligence distortion and manipulation to and closed society. Jeong Se Hyun, South justify its much-desired war in Iraq. Beyond Korea's former Unification Minister, believes Washington, at least, the thought that Harrison that social change generally proceeds through might be right and that the Iraq intelligence three stages -- symbolic, significant and process was now only being repeated in fundamental -- and that North Korea is now at relation to Korea occurred to many. The the second of these stages. He insists that "[n]o credibility of Washington’s search for a "magic nation has ever gone back on reform and bullet" of intelligence to crush alternative opening up," and is critical of American policy lines in Asia had been badly eroded by officials for their lack of sensitivity to North the intellectual, political, and moral capital Korean pride and their lack of awareness of the squandered in Iraq. need to consider "face" as a crucial element in any negotiation. [12] Quite apart from the Can There Be a North Korean “Soft devastation that the sudden overthrow and Landing”? collapse of the present regime would likely visit on the region -- a fearful prospect for both the As for North Korea itself, Kim Jong Il's regime South Korean and Chinese governments -- the in Pyongyang appears to have passed through possibility that forces more opposed to the worst of its long and disastrous economic economic liberalization, more-anti-U.S., anti- crisis that stretched back into the 1990s and to China, anti-Japan, and anti-South Korea might be embarked on a process of gradual but far- replace Kim Jong Il in the chaos is too rarely reaching change. A generational shift seems to considered by those who see him simply as be proceeding within the bureaucracy where it another worst-case dictator to be toppled. is clear that the "Chinese model" is being studied and adapted to Korean circumstances. In its 2005 New Year message to the world, Markets proliferate; Pyongyang now isNorth Korea referred to the "growing danger" reported to have 350 restaurants and 150 of nuclear war, but made no reference to its karaoke bars; student cafeterias have begun to own nuclear plans and issued no threats. Since serve hamburgers; and 24-hour stores are then, senior North Korean officials informed appearing. As South Korean culture and Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa), Vice- fashion comes to be known and appreciated, Chairman of the House Armed Services through pirated videos and via an increasing Committee, that their country was indeed a reliance on Chinese cell telephones, thenuclear state. (This has, in fact, been a constant government has begun to campaign against refrain of the North Koreans since 2003, young men growing their hair long, suggesting whether true or not.) They assured him, that, as in Japan and much of Asia, North Korea however, that they had no interest in too may be experiencing a wave of Seoul youth maintaining a nuclear status once the regime’s and fashion culture. security concerns were met, and that their government would then respect the United In other words, change on many fronts is States and "treat it as a friend" provided that

5 3 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF the Bush administration did not [“]slander[“] it and overthrow the Pyongyang regime fill it with or [“]intervene in its internal affairs.[“] alarm.

Although Weldon, a prominent Republican To the extent that South Korea's stance is conservative, described his talks as "anbroadly supported by the Chinese and Russian overwhelming success," slander andgovernments, it amounts to a near "majority" intervention are precisely the kinds of activities position in the Group of Six. Even Japanese likely to be authorized under the Human Rights Prime Minister Koizumi tends to incline Act. After all, Eberstadt and Horowitz are towards or defer to South Korea on crucial calling for outright hostility and Cha for peninsular issues -- not only in an insistence punishment. So whatever ambiguity may that any resort to war is out of the question but remain in the messages of the President and in his readiness to offer aid to Pyongyang as the Secretary of State are unlikely to quell well as his encouragement of the idea of a North Korean doubts and suspicions. What the future regional community that would include Kim Jong Il regime seeks now, as it has through North Korea. the past decade, is an end to the siege under which it exists and removal of the American In the case of Koizumi, however, there is an nuclear or military threat as well as further important qualification. In Japan, all other normalization of political and economicissues have become subordinate to resolving relations with neighboring counties and with various vexing questions about the abduction of the world. On his previous visit to Pyongyang in Japanese citizens a quarter century ago that mid-2003, Weldon actually made a series of still remain on the table. Subject to that detailed proposals to this end to which his uniquely Japanese consideration, Koizumi's hosts had responded positively. His hopes that Japan is inclined, like the government of South a breakthrough might come and a deal be done Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun of South were, however, dashed with the Foreign Korea, to want to find a path that will lead Ministry’s official nuclear announcement on North Korea to a "soft landing." February 10. In a major speech in Los Angeles in November The persistent, intense efforts of the Bush 2004, South Korea’s president shocked administration to turn the "Beijing Six" group Washington by declaring that there was "some into a "coalition of the willing," capable of justification" for North Korean claims to a right exerting systematic and sustained pressure on to develop nuclear weapons and missiles in Pyongyang, continue to falter in the face of order to protect itself against the American chronic dissent and policy disunity. Thethreat (though, of course, he did not actually sharpest differences have arisen between name the threat). [13] One US government Washington and Seoul. South Korea, which official described this statement as tantamount naturally has the greatest at stake in the fate of to "suicide terrorism." [14] Kim Jong Il and his regime, increasingly defines the issues as peninsular rather than global and In January 2005, South Korean Unification demands a voice in the outcome at least as Minister Chung Dong Young, in a major speech great as Washington's. It accepts the legitimacy in Berlin, styled Korea as the "greatest victim of North Korea's plea for “security” and of the Cold War." He promised that war on the "normalization," believing that the flow of peninsula henceforth was "impermissible" and refugees from the North will best be stemmed instead that both halves of Korea would move by allowing reforms to take root there and then forward on the principles of [“]no war, peaceful nurturing them. American plans to destabilize coexistence, and common prosperity,[“] with

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South Korea offering "comprehensive and that "hostility” could be “turned to friendship, concrete aid," including food, fertilizers and confrontation to cooperation." [17] It was an agricultural machinery for the agriculture agenda poles apart from Washington's. sector, from the moment North Korea began Koizumi, it seems, is on a mission to close the the process of giving up its nuclear program. books on Japan's twentieth century colonial [15] A few days later at the World Economic empire and thereby secure for his country a Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he added the central role in the emerging community of express hope that Kim Jong Il would accept an twenty-first century Northeast Asia. invitation to attend the November Asia-Pacific Later, asked his impression of his North Korean Economic Cooperation meeting in Pusan. Even opposite number, Koizumi reported to the the conservative South Korean opposition Japanese Diet: Grand National Party's think-tank now calls for "accommodative engagement" with the North "I guess for many his image is that of a and a "Marshall Plan" of incentives to aid dictator, fearful and weird, but when you Pyongyang. Park Jin, one of its senior figures actually meet and talk with him he is mild- and a likely presidential candidate in 2007, now mannered and cheerful, quick to make jokes ... describes the relationship between South and quick-witted." [18] North as one between a [“]husband and wife[“], with South Korea "trying to help a spouse come In other words, he confirmed that Kim Jong Il back who left home after a huge fight." [16] was a man to do business with. Though Park Jin’s party should be the prefect ally for the Washington neoconservatives, they Most foreigners who meet him have reacted see this kind of thinking as puerile, "peace- similarly, including among others former South studies" appeasement, no matter who espouses Korean President Kim Dae Jung and former it. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. So keen did Kim profess himself to be when it came to Singing with the President talking with George W. Bush that he asked Koizumi to provide music that they could sing In Japan, Koizumi, though faithful to to together -- till, as he put it, their throats Washington on almost all issues, shows signs of independence on North Korea. It was, after all, dried out and became sore. [19] By contrast, his visit to Pyongyang in September 2002 -- the American president says with great feeling about which he informed Washington but that he "loathes" Kim Jong Il and could never without consultation of any sort --- that set off possibly deal directly with him. the present crisis. The Pyongyang Declaration, After the second trip, Koizumi pledged to issued after his first meeting with Kim and normalize the Japan-North Korea relationship never repudiated by either side, remains a in his remaining two years in office -- if possible clarion call to reconciliation and to thewithin a single year. [20] In the months that formation of a Northeast Asian community, followed, Kim Jong Il's request to sing with something in which the US role remains President Bush seems to have weighed on undefined, an unspoken challenge toKoizumi's mind, so that when he met with Washington. George Bush later in the year he urged him to consider such a meeting. The President's In May 2004, Koizumi made a second visit to response, we are told, was a stony silence; [21] North Korea. On his departure for Pyongyang and while an American president's wish may be he spoke about normalizing the abnormal tantamount to a command to a Japanese Prime relationship between Japan and North Korea so Minister, the reverse can never be true.

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The Korean abduction of Japanese citizens process of normalization -- as was the case of during the late 1970s and early 1980s remains the fate of orphaned Japanese children left a enormous thorn sunk deep in any attempt to behind in China at the end of World War II. achieve the sort of normalization Koizumi Only after normalization and the opening of seeks. The North Korean leader did apologize diplomatic relations with China in the 1970s, in 2002 for the abduction of thirteen Japanese did information on these children become citizens, and by 2004 had returned to Japan available. While Koizumi persists in his five survivors and their families, but it was the demands for North Korean explanation of the explanations offered for the deaths of the other Yokota remains and clarification of the eight around which controversy swirled. When circumstances surrounding the fates of other Japanese DNA analysis indicated that what abductees, he remains committed to North Korean officials proffered in 2004 as the reconciliation and normalization. Around him, remains of Yokota Megumi, a young woman however, the mood in his party and in the abductee, were actually those of two unrelated country at large has been hardening. people, the shock and outrage in Japan was deep and lasting. Since then, the demand for Toward a Pyongyang Thaw? the imposition of sanctions on the North has grown and moves have begun in the Japanese North Korea's statement that it has nuclear Diet to pass a Japanese version of the U.S. weapons and is uninterested, at least for the North Korean Human Rights Law. time being, in the resumption of the six-sided talks represents a step back from a Pyongyang Early in February 2005, a statement signed by spring towards mid-winter. Washington is now five million people demanding the imposition of said to be considering a possible referral of the sanctions was presented to the government. matter to the United Nations Security Council Most Japanese favor such a course of action for international sanctions or even trying to because they believe that Kim Jong Il as a convene the six-sided talks without North dictator is responsible for everything that Korea – that is, in one way or another simply happens in his country and so they are stepping up the pressure. China is said to be convinced that he has been deliberatelyangry that its efforts at conciliation have been tricking and deceiving Japan about thedashed. South Korea frantically counsels abductees. reason and moderation on all sides and its "sunshine" policies are tested as never before. Koizumi, who alone has met and formed his All the while, North Korea moves ever closer to own assessment of Kim Jong Il, remains cool to being a de facto nuclear power with inevitable the idea. Although he shares in the popular destabilizing consequences on the region, anger at the thoroughly unsatisfactory nature especially on Japan's future military posture. of the abductee explanations that have so far been offered, he may well find credible what If North Korea seems more isolated than ever, Kim told him in 2002: that "some elements of a however, the disarray among the other five special agency of state," long since abolished, partner countries is also plain, as are the deep, had been responsible for the abductions, and unresolved contradictions between Bush’s that such things would never recur. Washington, already frustrated and limited in its policy options by its endless occupation and If indeed Kim’s power does not fully extend to war in Iraq, and the Asian allies it would like to those "special agencies of state," the remaining support its projected global order. The mysteries concerning the abductees may only Japanese prime minister, the Bush gradually be cleared up as part of a future administration’s closest partner in Asia, has

8 3 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF publicly pledged to normalize relations with This article was written for Tomdispatch.com, a Kim Jong Il's North Korea and has begged the weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a President to meet one-on-one with Kim; China steady flow of alternate sources, news and stated after the last round of talks in Beijing opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor that American policy towards the North was in publishing and author of The End of Victory the "main problem we are facing"; and South Culture and a new novel, The Last Days of Korea’s president believes North Korea is "not Publishing. without cause" in its nuclear weapon program, http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/ It encourages multifaceted cooperation across appeared on February 24, 2005. the DMZ, and has invited President Bush to join him on a visit to the new joint South-North [1] Nobuyoshi Sakajiri, “U.S. offer to North industrial development zone just north of the Korea still alive,” Asahi shimbun, 27 November 2004. old Korean war dividing line that was once so {2} Jeong Se Hyun, “NK’s Pandora’s Box of impermeable. Reform is Open,” Ohmynews, 20 December 2004. What for Washington is a matter of how to stop [3] Seung-Ryun Kim, “ Horowitz: ‘North Korea a nuclear-weapons program and/or overthrow a Will Explode Within One Year’,” DongA Ilbo, 24 strange and distant dictator, for other countries December 2004. in the region is a much more essential problem [4] “Hokai zenya ‘Kin Jong Il seiken’ no todome which lies so much closer to home: how to o sasu,” Sapio, 23 February 2005, pp. 95-97. bring North Korea first into the community of [5] “Tear down this Tyranny,” The Weekly Northeast Asia and then into the larger global Standard, 29 November 2004. community. In Washington’s view, North Korea [6] “Korea’s place in the Axis,” Foreign Affairs, is simply troublesome, lunatic, or evil, and 81, 3, May-June 2002, pp. 79-92. Quote here is there can be no truck with it; as its Asian from the book, Victor D. Cha and David C. neighbors see it, North Korea's demand for Kang, Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on security, however shrill, contains within it Engagement Strategies, New York, Columbia something that, from their own histories, they University Press, 2003, p. 153. recognize as essentially just. The six-sided [7] Selig Harrison, “Did North Korea Cheat?” forum, despite the present impasse, is probably Foreign Affairs, January-February 2005, pp. still the best, perhaps even the only way [8] The Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy, forward, providing as it does a forum for Ending the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, Co- regional powers to exert pressure not just on sponsored by The Center for International North Korea but on the United States as well. It Policy and the Center for East Asian Studies, offers just about the only hope for overseeing University of Chicago, 2004. the inevitably protracted process of detente [9] Mitchell B. Reiss and Robert L. Gallucci, leading to resolution. “Dead to Rights,” Foreign Affairs, March-April 2005, pp. 142-145. Gavan McCormack is a professor of the [10] Joongang Daily, 7 February 2005. US Australian National University and visiting sources pointed out the evidence could as well professor at International Christian University point to Pakistan as to North Korea. in Tokyo. He is the author of many works on Washington Post, 3 February 2005. Also Jon modern and contemporary East Asia, including Wolfstahl, “Not so fast,” Nautilus Institute and Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Nation 10 February 2005. Books, 2004. Email: [email protected] [11] Selig Harrison, Speech to Korea Society

9 3 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF and Asia Society, New York, 16 February 2005 http://www.csis.org/pacfor/cc/0404Qnk_sk.html (text courtesy Selig Harrison). . [12] cit, as in note 3 above. [17] NHK TV, 22 May 2004. [13] Joongang ilbo, 14 November 2004. [18] “Kin soshoki wa atama no tenkai hayai hito,” Asahi shimbun, 28 May 2004. [14] Asahi shimbun, 20 November 2004. [19] “Rokusha kyogi – Beikoku mo ugoku toki [15] Kim Tae Kyung, “War is impermissible on da,” Asahi shimbun, editorial, 22 June 2004. the Korean peninsula,” Ohmynews, 29 January [20] “Nicho no kokko seijoka, shusho ‘ichinen 2005. inai ni’,” Asahi shimbun, 3 July 2004. [16] Quoted in Aidan Foster-Carter, “Boycott or [21] Hiroshi Hoshi, “Political Insight: business?” Comparative Connections, Pacific Diplomacy with North Korea,” Asahi shimbun, 9 Forum CSIS, Honolulu, 2004.February 2005.

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