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By Lee Byong-chul
As speculation mounts as to whether North Korea has already obtained several nuclear weapons, so too do the number of articles warning of how the cunning communist regime is playing for time and running rings around the clueless South Korea.
A number of those skeptical over the verification of North Korean nuclear facilities suspect that the United States will not achieve its goal of complete and irrevocable denuclearization of the reclusive country.
The tales of a nuclear-armed North Korea, which mainly sneak out of U.S. sources familiar with high-level intelligence, certainly undercut the South Korean government's mission to achieve denuclearization on the Korean peninsula.
In this regard, doubts are growing despite both Washington and Seoul flatly denying the appearance of a nuclear-armed state on the northern part of the peninsula.
South and North Korea agreed on Feb. 19, 1992, that both parties shall not ``test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.'' The 1992 Joint Declaration also stipulates that ``South and North Korea shall not possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities.''
Unlike the previous liberal governments that closed their eyes to the possible development of a nuclear weapons program, the conservative Lee Myung-bak government does not hide its distaste for the inter-Korean relationship under the current situation in which the North's denuclearization has completely frozen.
President Lee said in a prepared text for a radio address, ``Rather than trying to be nice to North Korea at the start and ending up with poor results, I believe it's better to end up with goods results even if the start is difficult.''
That said, he appears to be sticking to his groundless wishful thinking that time is on his side over the long run, hopeful that the Obama administration will play ``tough diplomacy'' with the Kim Jong-il regime in Pyongyang.
It may well be that the reasons for the North Korean regime's anger go beyond the concern that President Lee was publicly ``challenging'' North Korea.
Though few in the Lee government will admit it, Seoul's wait-and-see attitude is certain to confront the communist leadership into trying to get the country ``technically-guaranteed'' nuclear weapons. In this regard, critics of the Lee government argue that its first step toward North Korea was a misstep.
Whether by chance or design, none of the unification ministers that Lee has handpicked have been welcomed by the North.
Nevertheless, what's clear is that there's a significant policy shift for the right-wing Lee government to differentiate itself from the previous left-leaning governments that, in Lee's eyes, had acted as the North Korean leader's lawyers with the Bush administration.
One test of President Lee's tough attitude will be whether his ``policy of mutual benefits and common prosperity'' is welcomed by the Obama administration.
Opponents leave the impression that President Lee's landmark North Korea policy is designed by someone unaware of North Korea's true colors. Lee takes a different view.
He believes that his ``Vision 3000,'' aimed at helping North Korea raise its annual per capita income to $3,000, will be accepted. To his mind, North Korea needs to learn how to catch fish, instead of being given it from South Korea and other international organizations.
Therefore, South Korea is much concerned about whether the new U.S. administration will take a diametrically opposite approach.
If the Obama administration reacts to the Kim regime the same way the Bush administration did, then there is little hope for the Washington-Pyongyang relationship, let alone Seoul-Pyongyang ties.
Yet the mood in the United States looks different. A series of responsible officials' remarks show that a nuclear North Korea has started to dominate the meetings of principals at decision-making tables related to the Korean Peninsula and beyond.
On cue, Leon Panetta, the first director of the Central Intelligence Agency under the Obama administration, was enough to confuse South Koreans by addressing at a confirmation hearing that ``We know North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon,'' but, ``we don't know whether Kim Jong-il is prepared to give up that nuclear capability once and for all.''
And General Walter Sharp, the highest ranking commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, claimed on Feb. 9 that North Korea had ``successfully'' conducted a nuclear test.
Before that, President Barrack Obama and Defense Secretary Roberts Gates had reinforced the argument that North Korea had already become a nuclear state. The question remains: What in reality is this assertion of a nuclear North Korea and what purpose does it serve?
Needless to say, what the United States fears most is the possibility of nuclear domino effects in Northeast Asia and thus, it may take a lot of time to officially declare in terms of political, military and diplomatic strategies that North Korea must be a nuclear and provocative choice to South Korea, Japan and the United States.
It is doubtful that the United States would explain the military realities in North Korea in such a clear-cut way. In short, the U.S. military and intelligence analysis on North Korean nuclear capabilities is not an analysis.
The obscure analysis reflects a reality that has reshaped and strengthened America's grand strategy in Northeast Asia.
President Obama is not Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's leading politician, who uttered that ``everything that is necessary'' would be utilized to prevent Iran from going nuclear.
During the presidential campaign, Obama said that he would ``pursue a tough, smart and principled national security strategy,'' while ``securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states.''
President Obama's breaking with the Bush years by deleting an axis of evil tagged to North Korea will likely mark a starting point of establishing a good relationship between Washington and Pyongyang.
I think frequent contacts, directly or indirectly, are a good idea. Tougher sanctions are a less effective strategy than direct diplomacy, since North Koreans are not foreign to international sanctions.
A nuclear North Korea turns out an AWOL on Korean denuclearization. Unlike India, which the Bush administration strategically endorsed as possessing nuclear weapons, the grim danger posed by an opaque North Korea's loosely secured stocks of nuclear weapons and fissile material is a critical global security concern for nonproliferation.
As an exporter of ballistic missiles, North Korea has long been a headache for Graham Allison, a Harvard professor and a leading nuclear expert. He said that ``the nuclear security of the arsenal is now a lot better than it was.''
The Obama administration's policy toward North Korea is still in the making. But people expect that it is being designed to achieve denuclearization on the peninsula, not the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Obama needs to tell Kim Jong-il, 67, to forget India and focus on the threat from within over power succession.
Lee Byong-chul is senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation, a nonpartisan policy advisory body based in Seoul. He can be reached at bcleebc@gmail.com. The views expressed in the above article are those of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.
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