Beyond outrage: The continuing grants of aid to North Korea's tyrannical regime
Friday, April 10, 2009 E-Mail this story Free Headline Alerts
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL Ñ North KoreaÕs latest missile test raises a critical question. Why should anyone consider giving aid to this regime that has already squandered billions in ill-gotten cash on firing off missiles and producing nuclear warheads while its terrorized citizens go hungry?
HereÕs an impoverished country, the single biggest recipient of aid from the World Food Program, where half the people are underfed, if not starving and diseased, hundreds of thousands consigned under unspeakable conditions to a vast prison system, and world leaders wonder whether to ply them with billions more.
It is not just that such thinking is ridiculous. ItÕs that it has no chance of working. WeÕve been disillusioned again and again. Remember the North-South Red Cross talks of 1972, the harbinger of exchanges of mail, of visits by long-lost relatives?
And what about the North-South agreement for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, signed in 1991? No sooner was the world getting comfortable with that deal than North Korea withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Then there was the Geneva framework of 1994 in which American diplomats masterminded an elaborate arrangement for bequeathing North Korea twin light-water nuclear reactors in return for the shutdown of its nuclear facilities.
All the while, North Korea was wheeling and dealing with A.Q. Khan, father of PakistanÕs nuclear bomb, for an entirely separate program to fabricate nukes from enriched uranium.
ItÕs mind-boggling to imagine that any one could have fallen for North KoreaÕs promises again, but Christopher Hill, as President George W. BushÕs nuclear envoy, fell for two more agreements in a year of talks after the North conducted an underground nuclear test on October 9, 2006.
No way, of course, would North Korea reveal all the details of its nuclear inventory, much less get rid of the six to 12 warheads it possesses. The latest evidence was SundayÕs launch of a Taepodong-2 missile with a range of at least 2,000 miles.
The North Koreans went through an elaborate exercise of claiming the missile was a two-stage booster assembly from which a satellite would be lofted into orbit. They made the same claim in 1998 when they fired Taepodong-1 in much the same trajectory over northern Japan.
Then as now, North Korea announced the missile had lofted a satellite into space from which wafted paeans to 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-Il and his late father, Kim Il-Sung, 'eternal president.'
ItÕs dubious if the attachment picked up by satellite imagery at the tip of the missile was a satellite. Far more likely, North Koreans were bamboozling the world in a shell game that would be funny if the implications were not so deadly.
ThereÕs plenty of evidence that North Koreans by now are good at manufacturing missiles. They export short-range Scuds and mid-range Rodongs, the products of Russian engineering.
They also are well known to have made nuclear warheads. No one has ever heard or seen any signs they are building satellites.
So weÕre left with one reason for SundayÕs test: The satellite story was indeed a cover for the testing the Taepodong-2, which had fizzled in a previous attempt at launching it in July 2006.
Now what? President Barack Obama and South KoreaÕs President Lee Myung-Bak talk about ÒsternÓ countermeasures. Nobody imagines a military response. Most analysts expect resumption of talks.
When they do get to the table, our side should make one point clear: No more aid that you will only spend on missiles and nukes.