Continuing saga of N. Korea
By Tong Kim
North Korea last week again dominated news headlines with former President Jimmy Carter’s second visit to Pyongyang and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s sixth visit to China. Beijing says it has a fresh proposal to restart nuclear talks. Washington announced new sanctions specifically targeting the North Korean leadership.
Carter did not meet with Kim, who left for China on more important business shortly after Carter’s arrival. Carter’s disappointment ended the effectiveness of former presidents’ efforts to contribute to denuclearization. It also reflects a diminishing return of the efficacy of the track II diplomacy by other prominent Americans. Before Carter went to the North, he had publically called for Washington and Seoul to take the initiative to resume talks with Pyongyang.
In June 1994, Carter was able to help divert the first nuclear crisis to direct negotiations between North Korea and the United States that led to a successful conclusion of the Agreed Framework, which had frozen the North Korean nuclear program for eight years. In 1994, Carter was the most important foreign dignitary yet to visit Pyongyang. This time the situation was different, and Pyongyang must have determined that Carter’s influence would be limited to change the Obama administration’s hard-line policy of sanctions and deterrence.
A year ago, former President Bill Clinton went to Pyongyang to free two American journalists from jail, and Kim Jong-il met with him for three hours, obviously discussing a way out of the logjam in order to have dialogue with the United States again. While Clinton was not a U.S. envoy, he suggested that Kim invite Washington’s North Korea policy coordinator Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang. In December, Bosworth went to the North. Pyongyang learned the meeting with Clinton did not produce the results it had hoped for.
The Obama administration seems to believe reengagement with the North Koreans is unlikely to achieve the denuclearization of the North. Many in Washington remember that the North, while negotiating in the six-party talks, was at the same time involved in assisting Syria with the construction of a nuclear plant. Washington is committed not to recognize North Korea as a nuclear state through reengagement. What’s more, Washington doubts North Korea will ever give up its nuclear weapons.
It is in this context that Washington imposed additional financial sanctions to punish any North Korean entity that facilitates arms trafficking, imports luxury goods or carries out other illicit activities. The newly designated entities include the General Bureau of Reconnaissance and its commander Lt. General Kim Yong-chol, Green Pine Associated Corp., and Office 39 of the Korean Workers Party. In theory, their assets in the United States would be on freeze, but there is nothing of the sort to freeze.
The implementation of these sanctions will depend on the cooperation of the foreign financial institutions that may be doing business with the designated North Korean entities. The U.S. Treasury Department believes Pyongyang receives millions of dollars every year from arms sales and illicit activities, such as drug trafficking, counterfeiting U.S. currency and selling counterfeit cigarettes. The revenue is allegedly used to placate the elites of the North who collaborate to maintain the regime.
Washington still insists that sanctions would be lifted, energy and assistance would be provided, normalization and a peace regime would be granted, if North Korea ceases its provocative behavior, complies with international norms and takes irreversible steps to fulfill its commitments. The North Koreans are not expected to respond positively to the same proposition that they have heard many times before. Pyongyang is going its own way with China’s backing.
Sanctions push Kim Jong-il to depend more on China, without whose cooperation the U.S. sanctions would not be biting enough. It has been reported that since Pyongyang’s bitter experience with the Banco Delta Asia, the North Korean traders, illicit or legitimate, have transferred their accounts to Chinese banks. Sanctions did not work before, and it is not certain that they would work this time. In the case of North Korea, sanctions are another form of a political statement, disapproving Pyongyang’s bad behavior.
From his latest trip to the northeastern region of China, where Chinese President Hu Jintao came from Beijing for their meeting, Kim has secured China’s unswerving support for North Korea. Kim also alluded to his plan for a third generational succession to his son, Jong-un, by saying at a banquet, ``…It is our historical mission to hand over to the rising generation the baton of the traditional friendship (between North Korea and China.)” Hu wished Kim ``a signal success” of the Korean Workers Party convention scheduled for September 6, where Jong-un might be designated as the ``heir apparent.”
During Kim’s China visit, China’s Xinhua news agency quoted the elder Kim as saying that his stance on a denuclearized Korean Peninsula remains unchanged and that he would stay in close consultation with China for an early resumption of the six-party talks. But, the KCNA did not make the same comment in its full coverage of Kim’s five-day visit. It appears that Kim would go along with China if China could work out the right conditions for the North’s return to talks.
China is renewing its effort to push for the resumption of the nuclear talks, with its envoy traveling to Pyongyang, to Seoul, to Tokyo and to Washington. On the other hand, Seoul and Washington suspect that Pyongyang is trying to get off the charges that it was responsible for the sinking of the ship Cheonan. In other words, no breakthrough is in sight, and the saga of North Korea continues. What’s your take?
Tong Kim is a research professor with the Ilmin Institute of International Relations at Korea University and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He can be reached at tong.kim8@yahoo.com.