By Sunny Lee
BEIJING — Is North Korea willing to give up its nuclear weapons? This is an old debate among pundits. But on the eve of the G20 Seoul Summit, President Lee Myung-bak brought it up again.
Lee told reporters that the North’s genuine expression of a willingness to give up its nuclear weapons program was a key prerequisite to resume the six-party talks, which China has been promoting vigorously on behalf of North Korea.
“We will only resume the talks when North Korea shows its true willingness to give up nuclear weapons,” he said, adding he would have an “in-depth” discussion on North Korea’s nukes with leaders of five of the participants in the six-party talks, including Hu Jintao and Barak Obama.
To stress Lee’s remarks, a senior Cheong Wa Dae official followed it saying that if the North reacts positively to Lee’s call, South Korea would even drop its earlier demand for an apology from North Korea for sinking the Cheonan in order to resume the stalled six-nation talks.
The six-party talks were born in 2003 for the purpose of mapping out how to reward North Korea for renouncing its nukes and taking steps for denuclearization. Naturally, if Pyongyang doesn’t have any intention of scrapping its nuclear arsenal, the talks lose intrinsic rationale for existence.
In the ensuing years of discussion, however, the talks have often stumbled upon hurdles and the question raised over and over again was to ask the now almost Hamlet-like question: Is North Korea willing to give up its nukes or not?
“Yes, I think so,” said Kim Man-bok, former chief of the National Intelligence Service. “Should the conditions they request be met, North Koreans will ultimately give up its nukes,” he said.
That’s a bold prediction today when there is a growing pessimism on the matter among decision makers in Washington and Seoul.
Yet, in a rare interview, the former head of South Korea’s chief intelligence agency, who had worked there since 1974 and has had access to more information on North Korea than anyone else, including secret trips to Pyongyang, explained why he believes the reclusive regime is open to the idea of disowning its nuclear weapons.
According to Kim, “North Korea’s foremost condition for denuclearization” will result from its conclusion that it won’t need nuclear weapons and will need “assurance” that the regime won’t be subject to outside attempts that undermine its security.
“North Koreans argue that their regime security should be guaranteed by the United States, and that the guarantee should be proven by a series of actions on the part of the United States,” said Kim who retired in 2008.
In other words, as Seoul and Washington want to see the North’s “intention” of giving up its nuclear weapons, the North, according to Kim, also wants to see first a clear “intention” from the U.S. of dropping what it views as the latter’s “hostile policy” toward North Korea.
North Korea wants the removal of the hostile policy as demonstrated by the lifting of sanctions by the United States, followed by formally ending the Korean War by signing a peace treaty, which then will lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two, Kim said.
Skeptics argue that North Korea is unlikely, whatsoever, to give up its nuclear weapons as Kim Jong-il regards them as his major legacy. According to this opinion, Kim Jong-il has accomplished the task of establishing a “powerful” country from the stated national goal of creating a “powerful and prosperous” country by the year 2012. Now, what remains is to accomplish the other half of the goal of creating a “prosperous” country by focusing on the economic front. Here, a gesture to return to the six-party talks with the condition of having the sanctions lifted, as it is doing now, is a deceptive strategy by North Korea.
However, the former spy chief points out that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was among the dying injunctions by the late Kim Il-sung, “which have been set as the significant guidelines for the North Korean government,” arguing that if conditions are met North Korea will ultimately give up its nukes to honor the late leader’s wishes.
N. Korea fragile but unlikely to collapse
Since Kim Jong-un’s official debut as the heir-apparent last month, pundits have been eagerly reading tea leaves on the future of North Korea. It’s a vulnerable time for the regime. The North’s economy is in tatters. The aging dictator is said to be barreling down a steep waning slope of physical vitality. Sanctions have isolated the country like a cadaver seeping blood. With that, there have been increasing expectations that the regime may undergo contingency that is likely to lead to its collapse.
This prediction has gained widening popularity lately. In a telling indication, at the annual security meeting between South Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Tae-young and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Washington, D.C. last month, the two countries for the first time used the term “contingencies” in the joint communiqué.
President Lee Myung-bak also weighed in on this prospect by suddenly announcing the idea of a“unification tax,” a South Korean attempt to prepare for a sudden collapse of the North Korean government.
Some analysts believe Seoul’s reluctance to engage North Korea, including through the six-party talks, has been partly driven by this expectation. In other words, as Seoul doesn’t have much faith in the North giving up their nuclear weapons ambitions, it is leaning closer to the opportunity for regime change as the North is undergoing a volatile leadership change, compounded by economic hardship, some scholars said.
The veteran former intelligence officer disagreed with this prediction. “Although North Korea suffers from various problems including economic hardship, international alienation, as well as Kim Jong-il’s worsening health, I do not think North Korea will collapse that easily.
“The economic hardship is most serious. But if you review similar situations such as the French Revolution, we can conclude that even though starvation may foretell some protests in North Korea but it won’t be sufficiently strong enough to lead to a revolution,” he said.
Kim cites a lack of an alternative political force or a civil society that can replace the current leadership in North Korea as an important factor that disowns such wishful thinking.
All in all, Kim sees North Korea as fragile but it is not likely to fall apart any time soon, challenging the wisdom of the Lee administration’s “strategic patience” of waiting for contingencies in North Korea to transpire.
Critically, the collapse scenario also didn’t factor in China’s actions. Since mid-last year, China has de-linked the North Korean nuclear issue from any bilateral relationship. It has maintained its political and economic support for the North, while deciding to deal with the nuclear issue as an independent diplomatic agenda, which shouldn’t harm China’s friendly ties with North Korea.
“China’s overall policy attitude toward its socialist brother is to maintain stabilization of North Korea’s political situation and a sustainable bilateral relationship,” Kim said.
Although Washington and Seoul often cite Beijing as wielding the most influence on Pyongyang and often prod it to do more for the North’s denuclearization, Kim believes that ultimately the ball is in Washington’s court, not Beijing’s.
“I think the United States is the country that holds the key. Currently, North Korea faces a dual dilemma: it should catch two hares contradictorily. The two hares are regime stability and economic recovery. And it is the United States that holds the key to the double jeopardy.”