Great Bargain With N. Korea

By Anthony DiFilippo

If policymakers in Washington and Pyongyang are looking for a great bargain, an especially good one is staring them in their faces: a conditional peace accord, which can soon become a permanent treaty to replace the armistice agreement and officially end the Korean War, in exchange for North Korea's denuclearization within a reasonable time frame.

However, the big challenge confronting them is not that they do not sense or recognize the existence of this great bargain, but rather that they will let their disparate political interests and objectives create enough obfuscation to pass up the opportunity to bring it to fruition.

To be sure, this great bargain is the polar opposite of President Lee Myung-bak's Grand Bargain, which requires that North Korea unilaterally submit to denuclearization before it receives assistance.

Calling the Grand Bargain ``ridiculous'' and underscoring its perception of a sustained hostile U.S. policy toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Pyongyang sees Lee's proposal as a major threat to the country's cherished sovereignty.

Implemented without delay, a peace treaty would instantly remove the DPRK's perception of a hostile U.S. policy, especially if it was accompanied or quickly followed by serious work to normalize bilateral relations between Washington and Pyongyang.

During Ambassador Stephen Bosworth's trip to North Korea in early December 2009, Washington's and Pyongyang's primary interests once again became clear.

As it has for some time, Washington wants the DPRK to denuclearize and insists that the six-party (the United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia) framework is the way to accomplish this.

Although Pyongyang, which has always prioritized bilateral discussions with Washington, continues to have reservations about the six-party talks, recently its focus has been on securing a permanent peace treaty.

Having recently returned from Oslo with his Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama has virtually nothing to show that justifies his winning this award.

Given this award supposedly for what he will accomplish, Obama can easily score some much-needed points with the international community by steering his administration onto the path that will quickly implement a peace treaty to end the Korean War.

Because this is precisely what Kim Jong-il and many of those close to him want, Pyongyang will need to refrain from activities that could be in anyway interpreted as a demonstration of the DPRK's ``songun,'' or military-first, policy.

Indeed, conservative forces in the United States, South Korea and Japan all maintain that the DPRK neither intends to give up its nuclear weapons nor its ability to produce them.

In the immediate future, anything that can be considered an aggressive demonstration of songun by Pyongyang ― such as satellite or missile launches and, for sure, another nuclear test ― will create for these forces a ``we told you so'' validation of the DPRK's insincerity about denuclearization.

Even in the absence of a demonstration of songun, these conservative forces will continue to assert unabashedly and with a veneer of confidence that the DPRK will never embrace denuclearization with the commitment needed for its realization.

However, what they have repeatedly failed to explain is why a so-called ``rogue state'' ― or what Japan's nationalists prefer to call a terrorist state because of the unresolved issue of Japanese citizens abducted by DPRK agents during the Cold War ― would want a peace treaty.

Pyongyang wants the DPRK to be fully accepted by the international community. It understands that the route to this goal can only be thoroughly accomplished by getting Washington's imprimatur and normalizing relations with the United States.

Pyongyang, therefore, is very much aware that by not embracing denuclearization, the likelihood of it reaching its goal is quite remote.

Herein lies the value of the great bargain, which effectively is a quid pro quo: a conditional peace treaty that takes effect immediately but that requires before it becomes permanent that the DPRK complete the denuclearization process, barring any unforeseen circumstances, in a specified time, perhaps one year after the signing of the accord.

Although historically Pyongyang has been reluctant to accept South Korea in a peace accord, today a conditional treaty that has the concomitant objective of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula must include Seoul as a signatory and, in all likelihood, Beijing as well.

Ambassador Bosworth has indicated that during his December discussions in Pyongyang, officials there assured him of the DPRK's commitment to the Joint Statement that came out of the six-party talks held in September 2005.

This Joint Statement univocally calls for the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. In the very unlikely event that the conservative forces are correct and Pyongyang does not intend to denuclearize, the peace treaty becomes void, something that would hardly be in either the short- or long-term interests of the DPRK.

Assuming it becomes permanent, a peace treaty would therefore be a win-win situation for all parties. Washington, Seoul and Beijing get what they say they have wanted since August 2003 when the six-party talks began ― a denuclearized North Korea.

No longer facing what it has long perceived as a hostile U.S. policy aimed at the demise of the DPRK, Pyongyang can utilize the resources freed up by denuclearization to help grow its economy, while also focusing more of the DPRK's national efforts on the economic unification of the Korean Peninsula, a precursor to political unification.

Japan and Russia also stand to gain from the immediate implementation of a peace treaty, since the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula would bring much-needed stability to Northeast Asia, which still maintains the political aura of the Cold War.

Already the surmise of an improved dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang has created some optimism that Japan and the DPRK can possibly begin discussions to address their differences, principally those associated with the adduction issue and the history problem that stems from the Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

A peace treaty can only add momentum to this type of sanguine thinking.

Anthony DiFilippo is professor of sociology at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the U.S. He is currently completing the book ``Irrepressible Interests: Japan-North Korean Security Concerns and U.S. Objectives.'' He can be reached at difilippo@lincoln.edu.