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North Korea’s ‘Charm Offensive” a will-o-the-wisp?

Rajaram Panda, Ph.D. - 8/31/2009

After months of military provocations, North Korea has made some remarkable conciliatory moves to ease tensions in the Korean peninsula. It seems to be too early, however, to determine how sincere those moves are. Assuming that North Korea is indeed sincere in its efforts to resolve the nuclear issue, are the responses from the US and other countries involved in the Six-Party talks (SPT) going to be positive? As of now, there are conflicting opinions.

One section of opinion in the US suggests that the US should now relent on sanctions if it wants to draw Pyongyang to the talking table at ending the nuclear programs. This argument says that Pyongyang showed the first gesture to lower tension by freeing the detained two American journalists after Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang. The North also freed the detained South Korean businessman and offered to reopen frozen North-South business and tourism ventures. This was followed by the visit of a high ranking North Korean delegation to attend the funeral of the former South Korean President. The highlight of the delegation’s visit was that it delivered a message from the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak, the first formal communication since Lee took office about 18 months ago.

Pyongyang went further and invited the US official charged with managing relations with North Korea, Steven Bosworth, to visit the North in September for talks on its nuclear program.

Security analysts take a different perspective on North Korea’s such conciliatory moves. They attribute the tactical shift in Kim’s stance to the international sanctions imposed on the North after it conducted the nuclear tests in May had begun to bite on its finances. This group of analysts argues that the North has not even broached the nuclear proliferation dispute, which in fact isolated it from the international community. On the other hand, Pyongyang is only focusing on atmospherics by toning down the rhetoric in its efforts of diplomatic outreach. The truism is that the North has not shown any willingness to return to multilateral talks on denuclearization.

The US dilemma gets heightened when renowned outspoken US scholar, Selig Harrison, takes a contrarian view and says that he is the one who has the answer to the question what the US should do to stop North Korea from pursuing its nuclear weapons development programs. Harrison has visited North Korea 11 times since 1972 and regularly interviews powerful North Koreans. According to him North Korea is a struggling country that should be pitied, not feared. He further says that North Korea wants Washington to accept it as a nuclear power; eliminating the weapons would have to follow an improvement in relations. Though law makers take his views seriously, and supporters praise him as an invaluable link between two wary countries. his critic considers him as an apologist for a government that brutalizes its citizens and a mouthpiece for North Korea’s anti-American views.

Harrison runs the Asia program at the Center for International Policy, Washington, and sees himself as a “journalist in think-tank guise”. The Obama administration might find it of use if informal channels are used in the absence of high-level contact between Pyongyang and Washington, though conservatives in the US may get infuriated with this suggestion. The truism, however, is that the use of informal channel has proved effective, as was demonstrated by the release of the two journalists following Clinton’s private visit to the North and by the visit of Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, to the North on the invitation by North Korean diplomats.

Critics, however, see Harrison as credulous and that North Korea is using him to try to renegotiate the terms of already settled nuclear agreements with the US. After his latest visit to the North last January, Harrison offered a suggestion that was contrary to the long-standing US policy: with the North demanding recognition as a nuclear weapon state, Washington should refocus its strategy on trying to cap the number of weapons in North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. The Obama administration remains inflexible and has refused to accept “halfway measures”.

Obama might as well give some serious consideration in defining his North Korea policy. It may be remembered that following the 1994 accord, which froze North’s nuclear facilities, Harrison’s three-hour conversation in the same year with Kim Il Sung had laid the foundation for President Jimmy Carter’s visit to North Korea. According to Bruce Cumings, a North Korea specialist and University of Chicago history professor, it was Harrison who helped avoid another war by bringing Washington and Pyongyang together. It was a different matter that after the Bush administration claimed North Korea had embarked on a secret uranium program, the 1994 accord fell apart in 2002.

Obama is aware that the situation and circumstances in 2009 are totally different from what was in 1994. Now North Korea faces UN sanctions aimed at curtailing its lucrative missile trade following its long-range rocket launch in April and nuclear test in May. The US wants the North to rejoin the US in disarmament-for-aid talks that also include South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. Pyongyang considers these dead and wants only direct talks with the US, which the latter refuses to conduct outside the SPT framework. North Korea also wants to be recognised as a nuclear power. The members of the SPT reject this.

After failing to obtain the required backing from its chief benefactor, China, North Korea’s made peace overtures by demonstrating emotional outpouring at Kim Dae-Jung’s funeral probably to lessen the tough sanctions. It may be remembered that after Lee Myung-bak came into power in 2008, he put the brakes on policies of open-ended aid that funneled billions to North Korea in a policy that Kim Dae-jung had begun a decade ago. Lee demanded reciprocity form its largess. In response, Pyongyang shut down inter-Korean business and tourism projects. Now that the sanctions have begun to bite the economy and the country needs money, Kim has become conciliatory.

The obvious reason why Pyongyang is opening up to the South is MONEY. North Korea’s economy is in tatters. It suffers from years of mismanagement and has not been able to withstand global sanctions. The crucial farm sector has been hit by heavy rains. It has lost aid from the South, roughly equal to about 5 per cent of its estimated $17 billion a year GDP. Its crucial source of hard currency is being dried up following imposition of sanctions for the nuclear test aimed at cutting off its arms trade. North Korea needs foreign currency to buy items abroad needed for its military and nuclear programs as well as to purchase perks for its ruling elite and the military. The ‘Dear Leader’ is suspected to be suffering from cancer and has already chosen his youngest son to succeed him and therefore wants a peaceful transition to power. It is therefore necessary for him to keep the military happy.

North Korea may be having the intention to rebuild its main nuclear plant that had been disabled under the SPT. Resumption of the SPT does not seem likely in view of Pyongyang’s preference for direct talks with the US. Needs for money probably has led Kim Jong Il to recast his policy towards its southern neighbour. Kim met the chairperson of the powerful Hyundai Group, a major investor in the North for about a decade. Both agreed to resume stalled business ties. Kim is likely to project this meeting in such a way that it wills one of South Korea’s leading conglomerates has great respect for Kim.

If tourism is resumed at Mount Kumgang, located in North Korea and run by a Hyundai affiliate, North Korea can expect to earn millions of dollars a year. Pyongyang is also seeking to increase wages and rents paid at a joint factory park in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, run by the same Hyundai affiliate. Pyongyang again expects to earn few million dollars from this, if the deal is through. It is possible Kim Jong Il is expecting that by improving ties with South Korea, the latter would resume supplying food and fertilizer aid. South Korea used to send about 400,000 to 500,000 tons of rice and about 300,000 tons of fertilizer to North Korea every year. That stopped after Lee took office in February 2008.

It is too early to say who is going to be the winner OR if Kim Jong Il will succeed in getting what he wants. South Korea is not alone this time and obtaining compliance of all the concerned parties on a common stand on North Korea is not easy. While diplomacy will remain at play that North Korea will lose in the process seems to be the more probable scenario.