A North Korean crossroad for Asian politics

A North Korean crossroad for Asian politics
Francesco Sisci
La Stampa, Italy

Pyongyang is the meeting point for the U.S. and China, as diplomacy may pay more that warfare
The six party talks have entered unchartered waters. The International Atomic Energy Agency said in mid-July that North Korea has shut five main nuclear facilities in its Yongbyon complex, completing the first stage of the deal.
The situation has returned to where it was before the election of President Bush, when it was sensitive but not as dangerous as it became in the following years when Pyongyang went on a bomb-toting rampage. Now the next goal is to disable the Pyongyang reactor and declare all its past atomic activities, something that is without precedent for North Korea.
All the steps have been agreed upon: Completing the dismantling and declaration of activities within the year would make it possible to meet the end-2008 targets for removing North Korea's nuclear weapons, including the plutonium stockpiles thanks to which it possessed the capacity to test an atomic device last October.
The North is to receive energy aid for these actions. If the North doesn’t comply there is the hidden threat that Washington might try to seize some of the money caches that Pyongyang has scattered around the world.
The seizure last year of some 25 million dollars of laundered North Korean money from the Banco Delta Asia, in Macao, triggered first an angry reaction from Pyongyang then capitulation to the combined pressures of the Americans, Chinese, South Koreans and Japanese.
However, the North Koreans at the moment are again dragging their feet and raising the issue of a receiving a light water reactor in return for the closure of Yongbyon.
U.S. Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, one of the architects of the talks, is guardedly optimistic. He thinks that the second phase of the North Korean program will start “soon,” late this year or early next year.
“It will be a major change for North Korea. They are talking of economic reforms and improving the living standards of people. It will move forward”, he said.
The second phase will provide economic assistance and political concessions, but “Pyongyang will have to disable Yongbyon and fully declare their nuclear programs, to include their uranium enrichment program”, said DeTrani.
It seems the normal North Korean way: After offering a major concession, become obstructive once more, hoping that “the enemies” could cave in to some concessions of their own. This is an old pattern for Pyongyang, but there may be more to come.
The concessions and the changes they would bring to North Korea will take the country into a new domestic and international situation; it may also be something completely new personally for the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il. He looked pale and frail in his last appearance on Chinese television during the visit of a Chinese delegation in Pyongyang.
Moreover, there are rumors that he was seriously ill in the past months and it is a known secret that he would be keen to announce that his last son, Kim Jong-chol, born in 1981, will be his heir to the leadership. The announcement has been so far de facto forbidden by Chinese intervention, but Kim may want a future for his family in 20 or 30 years, following his demise—something rather difficult to discuss with a few ambassadors of foreign countries.
Kim’s family future is also a tiny fragment in a much bigger picture of what the Americans call the future “regional security architecture.” The prospect of a reunified Korea brings a new dimension to North Asia. South Korea bears old wounds from Japan, guilty of decades of occupation, but it also means to settle scores with China.
Two years ago it changed the Chinese name of its capital, Seoul, which previously could be read as “Chinese city,” and it has strongly advanced the “Koreanness” of the ancient Kogyuro kingdom, formerly stretching between modern Korea and Manchuria. The nationalistic sentiments in South Korea could be enhanced further by reunification with the North, which could in turn ignite new nationalist sentiments among the 2.5 million ethnic Korean citizens of the PRC.
A new, reunited Korea would have to be “cased into” a new regional security framework lest it cause trouble with both Japan and China. Conversely, within a new security framework, a reunited Korea could be the political and physical bridge between China and Japan, stabilizing the whole region.
From this perspective, the real linchpin of the Korea peace process is not Pyongyang but Beijing. China has been a driving force in the talks, the one that has managed to bring North Korea to reason and will also be the keystone of the future East Asian regional architecture.
In fact, the biggest gain of the process was in building greater trust between the U.S. and China on an issue of mutual concern. After this positive bilateral cooperation the two countries could start cooperating on many other issues: Burma could be the next one. Beijing is growing dissatisfied with the junta’s erratic behavior and is pressing for some reforms. China has many domestic troubles because of Burma. For one thing, most of the drugs—particularly methamphetamine—sold in China are manufactured in Burma.
Moreover, as China’s territory stretches deep into the heart of Asia, enlisting its support in a process of stabilizing Central Asia and the Middle East could be a trump card for America. The U.S. is experiencing great difficulties in its fight against Islamic extremists in the region and China could provide both the manpower and the geographic proximity necessary to turn the tide.
On the other hand, there might also be lessons for America to learn in the six party talks on North Korea. Pyongyang had the military capability and the political will to launch a missile against Tokyo and trigger a world crisis. North Korea was in theory much more dangerous than Iraq, which did not have the missiles, the fissile fuel and probably even lacked the political will to launch a new attack on Saudi Arabia or any other of its neighbors.
For a number of reasons, the U.S. intervened with force in Iraq, while choosing diplomacy with North Korea. The results nowadays are clear: In Iraq the US squandered trillions of dollars and the situation is possibly worse than before the war. The North Korean peace process cost a few million in all and the outline of a great Asian peace looms closer.
Perhaps from this experience America might draw the necessary lessons to overhaul the foreign policy doctrine it has clung to for the past seven years.