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Overshadowed by events in Afghanistan, North Korea in mid-November withdrew from talks with the South. Even a proposal for admitting 100 elderly South Koreans to meet relatives separated by the Korean War failed. Pyongyang’s walkout could sound the death knell for South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s “sunshine policy” — an effort to begin what many had hoped would be a staggered eventual reunification and solution to one of the world’s most dangerous unresolved conflicts. Pyongyang said the meetings broke off with no proviso to reassemble because North Korea questions Seoul’s increased security precautions, part of the worldwide alert after the 9/11 atrocities.
While U.S. congressmen made cooing noises in Damascus, one of the centers of state terrorism, while Libyan Dictator Muammar Qadaffi’s son was denying proved terrorism against U.S. servicemen in Berlin, while the Tehran mullahs appear cooperative in efforts to create a new Afghanistan regime as their students held anti-government demonstrations, while ties to Osama Bin Laden are publicly exposed and reexamined among moderate Arabs, North Korea appears retreating into new isolation.
It might be a move Washington could overlook in its pursuit of “terrorism with worldwide reach” were it not for North Korea’s long history of state sponsored terrorist acts, its attempt to develop weapons of mass destruction, and its role in missile and nuclear weapons proliferation. Pyongyang’s almost indiscriminate aid and comfort to terrorists — from Mexico to Japan to Sri Lanka — means Washington must eventually deal with the problem.
If — as 9/11 conclusively proved — intelligence on rogue government operations must be a continuing concern of high priority for Washington, nowhere are the problems greater than in North Korea. Even Seoul has very limited knowledge of Pyongyang’s internal political dynamics and its decision-making. But the long history of Pyongyang’s clandestine operations from kidnappings to assassination makes it a concern in any attempt to snuff out terrorism.
When the new Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, held an unprecedented meeting with the South Korean president last year, the world hoped it was looking at the beginning of a reform process. Seoul’s leader, lifelong critic of South Korean military regimes and U.S. policy, seemed logically the non-Communist interlocutor with whom Pyongyang might deal. The South Korean president showed every intention of going the extra mile — even incurring disfavor with his own countrymen and Washington — to make concessions.
Then came Kim Jr.’s “field trips” out of his crumbling Stalinist enclave, first a sudden visit to Beijing to see his only collaborators, and then a strange, “royal”, procession to Moscow to talk to the heirs of his father’s old sponsor, and, finally, a “day trip” to Shanghai fleshpots, touted widely as his own personal investigation of “market socialism”. The impetus for these — by Pyongyang’s standards — dramatic gestures was obvious: the economy of North Korea has failed. Between two and three million people died of starvation in the late 1990s. Despite brutal interdiction, hundreds of thousands of fled to northwest China. The population now survives on foreign food assistance, much of it redirected toward the military that absorb more than 25% of the steadily falling GNP to produce military hardware, the regime’s only export.
Under a so-called “Agreed Framework” with the Clinton Administration, the
South Koreans and Japan, North Korea was to be given nuclear power reactors to solve its energy shortage, food and raw materials, and investment and technological transfer from South Korea to transform its economy. In return, Pyongyang was to halt its research and development on nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems.
What Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo, hoped to see was a transformation similar to the other former European Communist states — or, perhaps, more realistically, Beijing’s compromise between economic development and [hoped for] political liberalization.
The Bush Administration initially questioned much of the earlier assumptions — particularly as it became clearer Pyongyang might be fudging weapons development. Washington and Kim Dae Jung’s Seoul — despite repeated public denials — were not moving in tandem. And Tokyo’s policy remained equivocal — until recently when Prime Minister Koizumi moved quietly to close out extortion and violence in Japan’s large Korean minority where Pyongyang historically exploited prejudice and discrimination to earn foreign exchange and harass Seoul.
It may be too early to know. But there are signs that the North Korean military, whose well-being is the overwhelming priority of the regime, has called the halt. They may only be acknowledging the South Korean president’s lame duck status. But whatever their motivation, Washington’s antiterrorist war has difficult and critical work ahead outside the Arab/Moslem world. It cannot ignore what is still the world’s most unpredictable state, the No. 1 pariah, possibly armed with nuclear weapons and a growing missiles delivery capacity that it appears prepared to sell to terrorists everywhere.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@abac.com), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.