NK to hold onto nukes after Gadhafi fall

By Kim Young-jin

As the world reacted to the death of ousted Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, the North Korean people on Friday were predictably deprived of the news, with state media making no mention of the grisly demise of one of leader Kim Jong-il’s shrinking list of fellow dictators.

But experts said that for the Pyongyang leadership, the bloody images of the fallen colonel no doubt gave fresh reason to hold on even tighter to its nuclear weapons and drag out diplomatic disarmament proceedings to stave off a similar event on its own soil.

The regime had already said publically that Gadhafi’s decision to denuclearize had opened the door for the NATO airstrikes that emboldened the now-celebrating Libyan rebels.

“The North Korean leadership will be saying Gadhafi lost his country and life because he gave up his nuclear program,” Michael Breen, a longtime North Korea watcher and chairman at Insight Communications said. “This reaffirms their negotiating position of keeping on-and-off talks going but yielding nothing.”

Pyongyang maintained close ties with Gadhafi's regime, selling it ballistic missiles; previously helping it develop nuclear weapons; and sharing common political enmity toward Washington. The two leaders each maintained power through harsh control mechanisms and were viewed similarly by the outside: mercurial, wily and unpredictable.

But they took different paths in regards to their nuclear programs and controlling their populations, which Pyongyang now looks at as the reason for Tripoli’s demise.

In 2003, Gadhafi relinquished his nuclear program in exchange for better ties with the West. For a time, he enjoyed improved diplomatic conditions ― meeting with the likes of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair ― before the Arab Spring led to his own ouster.

On the other hand, Pyongyang has dangled its program before regional players for decades, repeatedly agreeing to dismantle, only to walk away from talks after bartering for aid. The strategy has many analysts skeptical over whether the latest bid to bring the North back to six-party talks can bear fruit. It has also continued to keep the international community on edge through its deadly attacks on the South.

Washington and Seoul have been in separate talks with Pyongyang to convince it to take verifiable denuclearization steps since July. The sides are jostling over what steps the North should take before six-party talks resume.

Since the outset of the Arab Spring, most analysts expressed skepticism of it spreading to the North. Despite some similarities between the two regimes, experts said it was the North’s near-ubiquitous clampdown on outside information, which Libya did not share, that allows it to survive.

The North did not report on the democratic uprisings across the Middle East and Northern Africa in an apparent bid from avoiding its own crisis. Some reports said it clamped down on information sharing and beefed up security in the wake of the revolts.

Choi Jin-wook, a senior fellow at the Korea Institute of National Unification, said the closed borders allowed for a far more homogenous society than Libya’s, and that helps maintain stability.

“Among the North Korean leadership, their fathers and grandfathers all come from a similar background ­ they all fought against Japanese imperialism and in the Korean War (1950-53). So even when Kim Jong-il dies they will all be in the same boat. But in Libya, when the crisis came, there was collapse,” he said.

Meanwhile, the South’s foreign ministry said it welcomed “the Libyan people's historical transition from a gloomy era" following Thursday's killing of the former leader in his hometown of Sirte.