Special to WorldTribune.com

By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com

SEOUL — North Korea’s plan to fire off a long-range rocket next month gives global leaders something urgent to talk about when they sit down Monday for two days of palaver on how to keep nuclear devices from falling into the hands of terrorists.

Only they won’t be chatting in formal sessions or breathing a word about North Korea, Iran, or anything else that really counts and might openly offend someone. In that spirit, the formal “Seoul communique” that emerges on Tuesday is destined to carefully avoid what’s uppermost on everyone’s minds.

That’s why South Korea’s foreign minister, Kim Sung-Hwan, branded the North Korean plan to launch a rocket “a grave provocation” intended to test “a vehicle with nuclear weapons” but bristled when asked about a threat by North Korea to view any mention of the North at the talkfest as “a declaration of war”.
“Individual issues will not be discussed at the nuclear summit,” he said. “I do not know why they keep saying that.” Rather, he said, “This is a peace summit,” dedicated to coming out with rules to keep terrorists from acquiring and using nuclear weapons.

The silence in the formal setting, however, doesn’t mean the 50 or more potentates and near potentates at what’s called the “nuclear security summit” will ignore all the burning issues. In symposiums and seminars staged here all week, analysts have focused on the shock of the North Korean rocket launch rather than on nuclear terrorism, and the assorted heads of state and international agencies and platoons of aides and assistants are sure to do the same.

As long as the specter of the North Korean rocket shot hangs heavy over the summit, the assembled leaders will be yakking “on the sidelines,” over meals, in quiet sessions in hotel rooms and in mini-summits with South Korea’s President Lee Myung-Bak about the nuclear ambitions of both North Korea and Iran. Lee can actually thank the North Koreans for providing just the opportunity he needs to impress upon United States President Barack Obama the South’s desire to update a 32-year-old agreement with the U.S. that limits South Korean missiles to a range of 300 kilometers.

“We need an appropriate range,” Lee has been saying. “Realities and circumstances have changed.” He’ll make his plea for revision of the missile deal when he sees Obama on Sunday after the U.S. president gets back from a quick visit to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone that has divided the Korean peninsula since the Korean War.

The South Koreans say they need a longer-range missile since North Korea’s real aim is to test an advanced version of the same long-range Taepodong missile that it has test-fired on two previous occasions, in August 1998 and again in April 2009.

In each of those cases, North Korea said it had put a satellite into orbit, but scientists say they never saw any sign of a satellite launch. The bottom line among analysts is that North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear program.

North Korea’s plan comes as a bitter disappointment considering that U.S. nuclear envoy Glyn Davies and North Korea’s envoy Kim Kye-Gwan came up with a deal on Feb. 29 that was widely described as “a breakthrough”. Kim said North Korea would observe a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests while Davies said the U.S. would provide 240,000 tons of food aid.

“Until we accept that North Korea is not going to denuclearize, all we can do is contain North Korea.” said Peter Beck, director of the Asia Foundation here. “The best we can do is to get them to freeze the program.”

Siegfried Hecker, the distinguished physicist who saw first-hand how far North Korea had gone in its highly enriched uranium program when he visited the North’s nuclear complex in 2010, said he was “pessimistic in the short run but optimistic in the long run”.

“We should give them a sense of security,” said Hecker, director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “In the longer term, I view North Korea as an island of instability in an area of stability” dominated by China and Japan as well as South Korea.

Although North Korea possesses enough material for six to eight nuclear warheads, he said, the North is frustrated by its inability actually to deliver a warhead to a target. “They have the bomb but not much of a delivery system.,” he said. “That’s why these tests are so important.”

Hecker called on China to exercise pressure on North Korea to cease and desist. “China will say, ‘We want peace and stability,” he said, “but will they understand these provocations are threatening peace and stability?”

One theory is that the missile launch, timed for the centennial celebrations of the birth of North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il-Sung on April 15, is a show to buttress the power of his grandson, Kim Jong-Un, who took over after the death of Kim Jong-Il in December.

In an effort by Kim Jong-Un to assert himself on the home front, according to reports here, North Korea has mounted a purge of senior officials for showing signs of disloyalty during the mourning period after the funeral for his father.

The purge paralleled increasingly vitriolic rhetorical blasts leveled against South Korea while Kim Jong-Un visits military units closest to South Korean forces. He has been ordering soldiers to fire back “without hesitation” in order to “wipe out” President Lee, routinely described as a “traitor.”
An official with South Korea’s unification ministry said news of the killing of officials seen as not properly respectful are “plausible.” North Korea, said the official, “made it very clear that those who violated the mourning would be punished.”

South Korea’s biggest-selling newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, reported “a bloody purge” that saw “barbaric methods including mortar rounds used to execute high-ranking military officials”. The new leader, still in his late 20s, was credited with having ordered officials to “get rid of” dozens of officers and civilian officials. Those guilty of infractions ranging from intoxication to sexual harassment were also executed, said the report.

An assistant chief of the armed forces ministry was reported executed not by a firing squad but by a mortar round that tore his body to bits. Kim Jong-Un, according to the report, ordered execution by mortar round to leave “no trace of him behind, down to his hair.”

Experts questioned, however, whether Kim Jong-Un would have personally issued the orders, or whether he rubber-stamped suggestions from lower ranking officials.

“I doubt whether Kim Jong-Un directed everything completely,” said Kim Tae-woo president of the Korea Institute of National Unification and a noted military expert here. “Kim Jong-Un must be very careful” as he goes about establishing his control over military officers who are far older and more experienced.

“He wants to purge those generals standing in his way,” said Kim Tae-woo, but he would have to do so through the small clique of generals who see complete loyalty to him as the unquestioned leader as essential to their own survival and that of the regime.

Reports of a purge come as no surprise considering that Kim Jong-Il purged the ranks in his first two or three years after taking over from his father in 1994. Kim Jong-Un, however, is not believed to have nearly as strong a grip as his father — one reason he may believe that he has to get tough very quickly to wipe out the slightest sign of dissent.

In that spirit, Kim Jong-Un is believed to have placed his imprimatur on North Korea’s plan to launch the satellite, which the U.S. and South Korea are confident is a pretext for testing a missile with a range as far as the west coast of the United States.

“So what is Pyongyang up to,” asked Ralph Cossa, who runs the Pacific forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu. “The North Koreans pulled the rug out from everyone” at a time when it appeared “safe to go back to six-party talks” on getting the North to abandon its nuclear program.

The talks, hosted by China, including the U.S., Japan, Russia and the two Koreas, were last held in Beijing December 2008. Now, to rev up the whole process, said Cossa, “It’s time for Beijing to stop empowering North Korea’s bad behavior.”

  Barack Obama, Formula for success at critical N. Korean talkfest: Not saying anything significant, Glyn Davies, Kim Jong-Un, Kim Kye-Gwan, Kim Sung-Hwan, Lee Myung-Bak, North Korea rocket launch, Siegfried Hecker, Taepodong missile