Volume 6 | Issue 5 | Article ID 2745 | May 03, 2008 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus On the Brink. Prospects for US-DPRK Settlement Dim Again Tim Beal On the Brink. Prospects for US-DPRK and ability to attract foreign investment. The Settlement Dim Again US was also to provide its share of ‘economic, energy and humanitarian assistance up to the Tim Beal equivalent of’ one million tons of heavy fuel oil. For its part the DPRK was to ‘dismantle’ its Every time it looks as if US-DPRK negotiations Yongbyon reactor and associated facilities — are on the verge of a breakthrough someone in the source for the plutonium for its nuclear Washington throws a spanner in the works. weapons — and ‘provide a complete and This is what happened in 2005 as the Chinese correct declaration of all its nuclear programs.’ were forcing through the Joint Statement of 19 It also ‘reaffirmed its commitment not to September which seemed to put thetransfer nuclear materials, technology, or negotiations, under the aegis of the Six Party know-how.’ [4] Talks, on a course for a successful resolution. The US Treasury designated the Macau bank According to American reports, the DPRK used by North Korean entities (and British moved with such alacrity to disable the companies and joint ventures in DPRK), Banco Yongbyon reactor that there were concerns for Delta Asia, as a “Primary Money Laundering safety and the Koreans were asked to slow Concern under USA PATRIOT Act”. [1] down. [5] American officials also expressed Although the allegations were subsequently satisfaction with the high level of cooperation discredited, partly through the investigative they were receiving from the Koreans. reporting of the US chain McClatchy Newspapers, the action put the Six Party Talks in limbo for over a year, as well as having a serious impact on DPRK foreign trade, and hence on the economy itself, which reportedly shrank 1.1% in 2006. [2] Negotiations between US Under Secretary of State Christopher Hill and DPRK Vice Minister Kim Kye-gwan resulted in a couple of agreements in 2007, one in February the other in October, which seemed to offer a way forward.[3]These hopes have been dashed and prospects at the moment look dim. Under the agreements, by the end of 2007 the United States was to remove the DPRK from its Terrorism List and the Trading with the Enemy Act, both of which erect considerable barriers against North Korea’s exports, participation in international bodies such as the World Bank, 1 6 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF The Yongbyon reactor nothing to do with the uranium enrichment. Deadline of 31 December 2007 As far as the fiction about nuclear However, 31 December came and went. The cooperation with Syria is deliveries of heavy fuel oil were way behind concerned, the DPRK stipulated in schedule. As late as 6 February 2008, Hill the October 3 agreement that "it admitted that only one fifth of the oil had been does not transfer nuclear weapons, delivered. [6] More ominously, the US made no technology and knowledge". This is moves to honour its commitment on the our answer to this question. sanctions legislation. [7] In response the DPRK slowed down the disablement of Yongbyon. This was also done in line with the Washington put it about that Pyongyang had prior discussion with the U.S. side. not provided the promised declaration, a line [9] which is frequently echoed in the media to this day. [8] On 4 January 2008, the DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement ‘on Issue of Little attention was paid in the media to the Implementation of October 3 Agreement’’ in claim that the declaration, drafted ‘in which it said, inter alia: discussion with the US side (i.e. Hill) had been submitted in November, long before the deadline. Hill himself, in testimony to the As far as the nuclear declaration Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 6 on which wrong opinion is being February, surely went beyond being built up by some quarters is economical with the truth when he said, “While concerned, the DPRK has done we have had discussions of a declaration with what it should do. the DPRK, the DPRK did not meet the December 31, 2007 deadline for this The DPRK worked out a report on commitment, and we have still not received the nuclear declaration in such a declaration.” [10] November last year and notified the U.S. side of its contents. The DPRK position was clarified and confirmed by the visit of a high-level, non-official US It had a sufficient consultation with group to the DPRK 12-16 February 2008. The the U.S. side after receiving a group was composed of Siegfried S. Hecker, a request from it to have further nuclear scientist who is a former director of discussion on the contents of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and currently report. co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford When the U.S. side raised University, Joel Witt, a former State "suspicion" about uranium Department official who had been part of the enrichment, the DPRK allowed it to team negotiating the Agreed Framework back visit some military facilities in in 1994, and W. Keith Luse, an assistant to which imported aluminum tubes Senator. Richard L. Lugar, the ranking were used as an exception and Republican on the Senate Foreign Affairs offered its samples as requested by Committee. [11] Not Bush’s men, but it, clarifying with sincerity that the representative of the mainstream, midstream, controversial aluminum tubes had elite. They reported that disablement had been 2 6 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF slowed down because of the delay in providing had exported nuclear material to Libya. [15] oil, and the failure to remove DPRK from the Terrorism List, and Trading with the Enemy The aluminium tubes story has an added twist Act. [12] They also reported that the Koreans to it. Christopher Hill said that the samples had were embittered that they had given American been brought out from Pyongyang in the officials special access to a missile factory and suitcases of American diplomats. [16] Would allowed them to take away aluminium tubes they really have been so cavalier if they that the US claimed were for uraniumstrongly suspected enriched uranium? enrichment, but that the Americans had not accepted this as definitive evidence that they The Hecker visit confirmed that, despite media had no such programme. Indeed, US scientists reports, Pyongyang had submitted its were to claim that they had found ‘traces of declaration, but there remained three issues of enriched uranium on the samples’. [13] contention between the two sides – the amount of plutonium the Koreans had extracted from This was rather curious. Why had the Koreans the Yongbyon reactor, the question of nuclear given those samples to the Americans if they cooperation with Syria, and enriched uranium. had been used for uranium enrichment? One The declaration has not been made public and obvious explanation is that they had so used Hecker’s report is the best thing we have in the them but thought they had removed the public domain on the issues, although he is, of evidence. It is likely that the Americans have course, coming at it from an American much more sensitive equipment than the perspective. [17] He has no doubts that the US Koreans and may have picked up things which has a god-given right to nuclear weapons but escaped the Koreans. However, doubts remain. that this indulgence does not extend to North There seems to have been no independent Koreans. testing and the samples were not handed over to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for verification. Significantly as we shall see, the IAEA was prevented from investigating the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor until the public release of the CIA video seven months after the Israeli bombing made it impossible to keep them out any longer. Scientific tests carried out under conditions of political pressure, and the reporting of them, are always dubious. One instance is particularly relevant. In 2004 the Japanese government claimed that DNA tests on a corpse claimed by North Korea to be that of the abducted Yokota Megumi proved that they were not her remains. The British scientific journal Nature subsequently revealed that the tests were inconclusive. [14] In addition the US has a poor track record in these matters; it has repeatedly lied not merely Hecker briefing the press following the visit about Iraq but also about North Korea.. In 2005, for instance, the Washington Post Hecker is not alone in this, of course, and it is disclosed that Washington had misled Japan useful to set this assumption of American and South Korea with claims that Pyongyang exceptionalism in context. Despite the rhetoric 3 6 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF about ‘making the world a safer place’,to self-defense), and in some cases (India, ‘upholding international law’, and, in the words Israel) the NPT. However, it is unusual to admit of Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise such realpolitik openly. Fortunately for the US Institute, removing the ‘danger it [North Korea] government, its rhetoric is seldom challenged. poses not only to its population but to the Seldom, but sometimes. There was an entire civilized world,’ US policy is based on interesting, if inconclusive, exchange between old-fashioned realpolitik. [18] As the People’s Christopher Hill and an unnamed Associated Daily has recently pointed out, ‘the U.S. is still Press reporter at an interview in Jakarta in the owner of the world's largest nuclear April: weapons arsenal, nor do they change "the capability to incinerate all of our enemies on 15 minutes' notice".