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In-depth Business Intelligence
Books on North Korea
REPUBLICAN REFERENCE
Area (sq.km)
120,540
Population
22,224,195 (July 2002 est.)
Capital
Pyongyang
Currency
North Korean won (KPW)
Leader
Kim Jong-il
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Update No: 025 - (31/05/05)
Allies at odds
As ever, mixed signals make it hard to assess progress in North Korea's
fraught relations with the wider world. While a resumption of inter-Korean
meetings looks hopeful, it is unclear whether this will prove substantive or
merely symbolic. Yet meanwhile the US is tightening the screws on Pyongyang -
and so further straining its relations with Seoul.
Pyongyang deigns to talk to Seoul
For almost a year, and no good reason, the DPRK had boycotted most of the
inter-Korean channels set up after the first ever North-South summit, held in
Pyongyang in June 2000 between the Northern leader Kim Jong-il and the South's
then president Kim Dae-jung. With the North having said for months that it plans
to commemorate the fifth anniversary of that breakthrough, one reason to reopen
dialogue now is that otherwise there would be precious little to celebrate. A
second, separate reason is seasonal. Its boycott did not stop Pyongyang coolly
demanding half a million tons of fertilizer, more than double the usual amount.
For once Seoul, which normally (and bafflingly) eschews leverage and gives aid
unconditionally, took a stand: not refusing, but insisting that the North must
first return to the table. Time was of the essence, with the planting season
already getting under way.
Vice-ministerial talks were accordingly held during May 16-19 in the DPRK border
city of Kaesong; whose industrial zone for ROK firms (on which more below) is
one project which the North had not frozen, doubtless due to the revenues it
brings in. The South's delegation commuted daily from Seoul across the once
impassable Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), like the dozens of Southern managers or
technicians who now work at Kaesong.
First port calls for 21 years
On fertilizer, they settled for the usual 200,000 tons. Delivery began right
away: 50 ROK trucks shipped the first batch on May 20, and two days later the
first of three DPRK ships docked in Ulsan to start loading the rest. These were
the first North Korean vessels seen in Southern harbours since 1984, when
(unlikely as it sounds, now) it was the North that offered aid to South Korea
after floods there. Seoul accepted, ushering in a year of talks before Pyongyang
pulled the plug. This now almost forgotten episode is a reminder that 'sunshine'
did not begin with Kim Dae-jung; there were several earlier false starts.
The Kaesong talks were not confined to fertilizer, but also agreed to revive at
least some of the stalled channels of inter-Korean dialogue. A 15th round (since
2000) of ministerial talks, the first since May last year (they are meant to be
quarterly), will be held in Seoul during June 21-24. South Korea also pressed to
resume economic meetings and family reunions, both also on ice for the past
year. But as of May 29 nothing had yet been fixed, and may not be now until the
next ministerial talks. That is bad news for the elderly who hope to meet
relatives lost for half a century before they die; for them, every day counts.
A big bash in Pyongyang
But first, the South will send a high-level delegation, led by a minister,
for the summit anniversary in Pyongyang. It had already agreed to let NGOs go:
the level at which such events are generally handled. But on May 28 the two
sides agreed to make it official this time, with each Korea fielding a 20-strong
government team plus 50 support staff. Add in 615 civilians, including 200
overseas Koreans, and this will be the largest joint event ever held in
Pyongyang. Unification minister Chung Dong-young is expected to lead the ROK
delegation, on his first visit to the Northern capital. His likely DPRK
counterpart is Kwon Ho-ung, described rather opaquely as a senior Cabinet
councillor. In his 40s, youthful by North Korea's gerontocratic standards, Kwon
is thought to be a pragmatist. What clout he wields is another matter. Also
unclear is what time there will be for serious talking at this brief and mainly
ceremonial occasion; that may have to wait until a week later in Seoul.
Symbol or substance?
A related question is what if any substance underlies such symbolic
meetings. Five years after the 2000 summit, what exactly is there to celebrate?
Inter-Korean dialogue has been institutionalized, but only when Pyongyang feels
like it. Its recent year-long boycott was not the first; it took its bat home
for much of 2001 and 2002 too. Little has been achieved, especially on the
security front. But Seoul, looking as ever on the bright side - this seems to be
what the 'sunshine' policy means nowadays - takes heart from other developments.
North Korea has agreed to a joint concert at its Mt. Kumgang resort on June 8 to
mark the one-millionth Southern tourist brought in by Hyundai. It will also
allow foreign buyers to visit Kaesong, aiding the zone's export prospects. And
on May 28 Kaesong saw a fashion show, complete with catwalk, plunging necklines
and rock music; when Shinwon, one of four ROK firms operating in the zone so
far, marked its official opening (several months after the fact) by showcasing
its spring collection, some made locally. While 500 South Koreans crossed the
DMZ to see the show, none of Shinwon's 280 Northern workers watched it.
Affecting a lack of interest, and saying the outfits were too revealing, they
countered the thumping beat from upstairs with music extolling the virtues of
socialism.
Washington looks askance
But if South Korea is in party mood, its nominal US ally looks to be moving
in a different direction. In Washington there is increasing exasperation not
only at Pyongyang's refusal to return to the six-party nuclear talks, now
stalled for almost a year; but also at what the Bush administration regards as
Beijing's and Seoul's refusal to put any serious pressure on North Korea to come
back to the table. There is little doubt that the US looks askance at Seoul's
holding a joint junket in Pyongyang with a regime still in full nuclear
defiance; unless the South can use this to persuade the North to resume talks,
which seems unlikely since the latter has consistently refused even to discuss
the nuclear issue with Seoul.
While the veneer of US-ROK unity has not yet cracked, a proxy straw in the wind
was a fierce row with an easier target, Japan. On May 25 a South Korean
opposition lawmaker, Park Jin, said that Japan's vice foreign minister, Shotaro
Yachi, had told him and other visiting ROK MPs a fortnight earlier that Japan is
cautious in sharing intelligence on North Korea which it gets from the US, since
Washington does not fully trust Seoul. He added that said the six-party talks
were failing because Seoul seemed to be siding more with Pyongyang. A furious
South Korea demanded a reprimand; it got an expression of regret, but rejected
this as inadequate. Kim Jong-il will have enjoyed watching all this.
Hints from Hill
The US' own mask almost slipped when Christopher Hill - whose promotion from
newly arrived ambassador in the ROK to replace James Kelly as assistant
secretary of state for East Asia was so swift that his children are still in
school in Seoul - was reported by the New York Times as looking annoyed at
mention of President Roh Moo-hyun's implicitly neutralist idea that South Korea
can act as a "balancer" in the region. Without directly criticizing
this, Hill said that in an historically violent region, "If I were a South
Korean looking into the future, I would … want a special relationship with a
distant power." This has all the more weight since Hill, a career diplomat,
is by no means regarded as a hawk.
On May 28, at his first hearing in his new post before the House International
Relations subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, Hill warned that North Korea
shows no interest in learning from China's successful reforms, Pyongyang's
self-imposed isolation, he added, was "a real problem .. that will
ultimately be their undoing." This led to such headlines as "Top US
official warns of possible system collapse in North Korea" - which will not
go down well in a Pyongyang which, as a puzzled Hill also noted, prefers to
seize on "small issues" like the odd pejorative comment from
Washington (usually repaid in kind tenfold) rather than seriously address such
"monumental" matters as nuclear disarmament.
The US tightens the screws
While these are the musings of a moderate at State, the Pentagon's hawks
prefer deeds to words. At the same hearing Richard Lawless, the deputy
under-secretary of defence, said that plans were being made in case North Korea
does not return to six-party talks. That too led to lurid headlines, inaptly: it
would be imprudent not to plan for any contingency.
More worrying are a series of US actions as May ended, which at least as seen in
Seoul, look like a bid to tighten the screws on Kim Jong-il. On the rhetoric
front President Bush, (whose earlier return to personalized attacks on the dear
leader as a tyrant, undercut careful soothing phrases from his Secretary of
State, Condoleezza Rice that the US recognized the DPRK's sovereignty), on May
27 told a Naval Academy commencement ceremony that "in this era of warfare,
we can target a regime, not a nation" (as in Iraq, presumably).
Stealth deployment; searches suspended
A day earlier, the US Air Force deployed 15 F-117 stealth fighters to South
Korea for at least four months. While this was explained as a planned rotation
of forces in the Pacific, there is little doubt how it will be read in Pyongyang
- not least because the Pentagon has also just brusquely ended its sole direct
link to the Korean People's Army (KPA), namely their joint searches for remains
of the 8,000 US soldiers missing in action (MIA) from the Korean War. Ongoing
since 1996, this little-known programme has retrieved some 220 remains, although
only 25 have been identified. It was summarily suspended by order of Secretary
of Defence Donald Rumsfeld on May 25, just a day after the latest US team
returned from the first of several searches planned for this year. The reason
given, namely communications problems, looks like an excuse. Rumsfeld no doubt
resents paying cash to Pyongyang, and this is one of the few direct levers that
the US has. Coincidentally or not, on May 26 North Korean TV for the first time
categorically denied US press reports of recent weeks that it is preparing
either a nuclear or a missile test as "fabrications."
Two days earlier, the US refused to renew the contract of Charles Kartman as
executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO)
consortium, which he had headed since 2001. Since the second North Korean
nuclear crisis broke in late 2002, both KEDO's fuel oil supplies and work on
building its light water reactors in North Korea have been suspended. While the
consortium may be moribund, terminating Kartman - a US career diplomat and
holdover from the Clinton administration, strongly in favour of engaging
Pyongyang: it will be interesting if he now feels free to speak out - at this
point reinforces the impression that the US is trying to ratchet up the
pressure.
Still hungry
What Washington had not yet decided at the time of writing was whether to
end food aid: always claimed to be a humanitarian issue with no political
overtones, though the timing of donations suggests otherwise. While under Bush
North Korea is no longer, as it once was (ironically), the main recipient of US
food aid in Asia, some flows had continued: the US gave 50,000 tonnes of grain
last year. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on May 27 that a slump in
donations means it will have to halt distribution to all but a handful of its
3.8 million recipients in North Korea in August, unless fresh pledges are
received soon. WFP had appealed for $202 million to buy 504,000 tonnes this
year, but has so far secured only 230,000 tonnes, nearly all now consumed. While
diplomats mull the merits of stick versus carrot, it is North Korea's powerless
people who continue to suffer, whilst party members and the military will
certainly get priority for whatever food is available.
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