Kim Myong Chol
'Action for action' on defusing N Korea's nukes
By Kim Myong Chol
(Kim is often called an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.)
When the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) fund issue was virtually settled, Kim Jong-il, supreme leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), launched a highly choreographed high-profile campaign for two major purposes.
One is to put to rest the myth that the February 13 agreement at the six-party talks in Beijing is an "oil for reactor" package deal and to reinstate its true picture as a 100% political deal involving Washington ending its animosity toward Pyongyang. The other is to put out the word that Kim's administration remains committed to a relentless and faithful pursuit of the principle of word for word and action for action in moving to fulfill Phase 2 of the February 13 agreement, requiring the United States to take specific action in parallel.
The message from Kim Jong-il is unmistakably clear: moving beyond the temporary shutdown of the nuclear facilities is contingent on the administration of US President George W Bush making a strategic decision to take reciprocal steps it pledged under the February 13 agreement. Otherwise, the Americans will still stop short of seeing a full extent of North Korea's nuclear program and permanent disabling of the five nuclear facilities, which will be brought back to life from temporary closure at short notice.
The mandatory US steps include bilateral talks aimed at resolving bilateral issues, moving toward transformation of US relations with North Korea into friendly ones, removing the designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act to North Korea, and having Japan normalize relations with North Korea.
A prime example of US hostility toward North Korea is the US-initiated cancellation of the program to supply the country with two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors. Their operation requires access to civilian nuclear technology and nuclear fuel to be supplied under additional agreements with the US on nuclear energy, subject to the US ending its hostile stance in favor of a peaceful co-existence.
Fulfilling these obligations should be a joke and cost the Bush administration little political and economic capital as compared with astronomical costs of the Iraq war. The Bush administration, already a lame duck and miserably humbled by the poorly armed Iraqi insurgents lacking any air force and heavy arms, must make a vital choice between the two options before it is too late: one is only to settle for temporary closure of the North Korean nuclear sites and the other is to record a dramatic legacy achievement that will likely more than offset the Iraq mess. Bush might as well learn from the playbook of the late president Richard Nixon, who wrote history by having his landmark visit to Beijing steal the spotlight from the US defeat in Vietnam.
An opening salvo was simultaneously fired in Pyongyang and Kuala Lumpur early last month when An Song-nam, executive director of North Korea's Institute of Disarmament and Peace, a think-tank for the DPRK Foreign Ministry, addressed the annual Asia-Pacific Roundtable there. Citing the last instruction of the late president Kim Il-sung to transform the Korean Peninsula into a nuclear-weapons-free zone, An reiterated the commitment of the Kim Jong-il administration to forgo a nuclear arsenal once sufficient mutual trust and confidence are fostered between Pyongyang and Washington after normalized relations and a peace treaty between the two enemies. While stressing the governing principle of "action for action", he presented a list of US must-dos if the Korean Peninsula is to be denuclearized, including an end to the policy of hostility to Pyongyang, cessation of military games in and around Korea, lifting sanctions, and replacement of the precarious Korean War ceasefire accord with a peace treaty.
Follow-on salvos came one after another. The long-delayed resolution of the BDA issue over the unwarranted US freeze of US$25 million of North Korean funds prompted its Foreign Ministry spokesman to define it as in accordance with the principle of "action for action" and reiterate its commitment to the principle of moving to Phase 2 of the February 13 Agreement.
A third salvo was fired in Britain on July 2-3 when North Korea's former deputy ambassador to the United Nations in New York, Han Song-ryol, spoke before an audience of scholars, diplomats and journalists at Cambridge University. He stressed that if the Korean Peninsula is to be denuclearized, it is crucial for the US to end its hostility toward North Korea, remove it from the list of states that allegedly sponsor terrorism, withdraw its troops from South Korea, eliminate the nuclear threat from Korea and its neighboring area including Japan, and create a peaceful environment for cooperation and development.
The powerful Korean People's Army (KPA) joined the blitzkrieg public-relations campaign on July 13, two days before the International Atomic Energy Agency verified the shutdown of the operating graphite-moderated reactor in North Korea that churned out weapons-grade fuel like hotcakes. Its representative in Panmunjom proposed direct talks with the US-led UN forces, to be held at any time at a mutually acceptable venue in the presence of a UN representative. Offering to discuss matters - a peace treaty - related to peace and security on the peninsula, the KPA warned that with a precarious ceasefire accord representing a serious threat to peace and security, additional pressure on North Korea, massive arms buildup and major war games carry every risk of torpedoing the February agreement and the six-party talks and driving its legitimate effort to upgrade the relevant deterrence against preemptive strikes from the US.
The following day, July 14, another key demand came from Pyongyang that the US prove in a verifiable manner for all to understand that its forces do not keep any nuclear weapons in South Korea and have no intention to attack the North, as spelled out in the September 19, 2005, six-party statement. This move by the Korean National Peace Committee is indicative of a future North Korean demand to be met before denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, including South Korea, is complete.
On July 15, when the sole working nuclear reactor in North Korea was shut down, stopping the production of plutonium, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Pyongyang served a clear-cut reminder on the US, Japan and the other parties concerned that "the full implementation of the February 13 agreement depends on how the other five participating countries of the six-party talks honor their commitments on the principle of 'action for action' and on what practical measures the US and Japan, in particular, will take to roll back their hostile policies toward the DPRK".
The next day in New York, Kim Myong-gil, minister at North Korea's United Nations mission, joined the chorus. He told the Associated Press (AP) that the Bush administration must take actions in parallel before his government moves to disclose the full extent of its nuclear program and disable the reactor.
Responding to North Korea's coordinated campaign, the Chinese news agency this month distributed a commentary that reads in part:
All parties concerned have agreed to implement the September 2005 Joint Statement in a phased manner in line with the principle of "action for action", says the February 13 agreement.
They agreed to take actions simultaneously in the initial phase, including the eventual abandonment of the DPRK's Yongbyon nuclear facilities, provision of economic, energy and humanitarian assistance to the DPRK, and the establishment of a peace and stability mechanism on the Korean Peninsula.
As main negotiators, the DPRK and the United States should start bilateral talks aimed at resolving pending bilateral issues and moving toward full diplomatic relations.
The US will start removing the designation of the DPRK as a state sponsor of terrorism and terminating the Trading with the Enemy Act concerning DPRK, says the agreement.
The DPRK and Japan will start bilateral talks aiming to normalize their relations in line with the Pyongyang Declaration, based on settling "unfortunate past" and "issues of concern", the document says.
Before flying into Beijing from Pyongyang on July 17, the chief North Korean nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan, told AP: "There should be discussion on how to define the targets of the second phase, the obligations for each party, and also the sequence of the actions.''
On arriving in the Chinese capital, he proceeded directly to the US Embassy to meet with his American counterpart Christopher Hill in a renewed bid to remind the Americans in advance of the reciprocal actions they were obliged to adopt to correspond to those North Korea takes to declare all of its nuclear programs and disable all of its nuclear facilities within the shortest possible period.
The following day, the chief North Korean nuclear negotiator was quoted by The Financial Times as stating at the first-day gathering of chief nuclear negotiators: "We are ready to declare all our nuclear programs and disable the existing nuclear facilities at a proper time. But for us to do so, other countries should fulfill their obligations."
The same day, the New York Times quoted South Korean nuclear envoy Chun Yon-wu as saying, "It is not a matter of whether this is technologically possible ... but a matter of how serious other nations are in taking corresponding measures."
Alan Romberg, senior associate and director of the East Asia Program at the Henry L Stimson Center, is among the very few American experts who took notice of the obligations for the US to fulfill in the second stage of the February agreement. In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations on July 18, he observed with respect to North Korea's offer to declare all of its nuclear programs and disable its nuclear facilities:
In the February agreement, the United States pledged to begin to take steps to remove North Korea from the list of state-sponsored terrorism. The United States said it would advance the process of removing the restrictions on North Korea under the [World War I-era] Trading with the Enemy Act. My guess is that in return for permanent disablement of nuclear materials and weapons, the North [Koreans] will want North Korea removed from the terrorism list, [and] they will want the Trading with the Enemy Act restrictions taken away. They may well want something more forthcoming than they've gotten so far on a future light-water reactor, and they may want to get something on future access by North Korea to the international financial system.
However, the Americans failed to appreciate the obvious North Korean commitment to the principle of "action for action" and insisted on Pyongyang completing Phase 2 preferably by the end of the year in exchange for further oil. As the US negotiator gave an account of North Korea's position to the July 20 Washington Post, "the North Koreans insisted on tighter coordination for what they would get in return for such steps, including 950,000 tonnes more fuel oil and progress toward better diplomatic relations".
This set the stage for North Korea's flat refusal to move beyond the closure of the nuclear facilities. As the Russian news service Interfax reported last Friday, a positive aspect about the July 18-20 gathering of chief nuclear negotiators is reaffirmation of the principle of "action for action" and the inauguration of working committees of specialists such as those discussing a peace regime in Korea and normalized relations with Pyongyang. The chief US negotiator is left looking foolish, with his credibility lost again, as illustrated by his awkward handling of the BDA saga.
Before leaving Beijing last Saturday for Pyongyang, chief North Korean negotiator Kim Kye-gwan warmed up his country's demand for a light-water reactor if it is to dismantle its existing nuclear facilities.
"It is obvious what we're supposed to do. But the other nations seem to be not so well prepared. What is basically important in the solution of the nuclear issue is not whether we will receive the supply of heavy fuel oil, but whether the US will change its policy," he said. "We're not a parasite living on heavy oil. What is basically important in the solution of the nuclear issue is not whether we will receive the supply of heavy fuel oil, but whether the US will change its policy.
The dean of Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, Robert Gallucci, a former US negotiator who struck up the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework, offered a piece of advice: "In dealing with the North Koreans, we must study well in advance, otherwise we will end up playing into their hands."
Kim Myong Chol is author of a number of books and papers in Korean, Japanese and English on North Korea. He is executive director of the Center for Korean-American Peace. He has a PhD from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Academy of Social Sciences and is often called an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.
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