Special to WorldTribune.com

By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com

SEOUL — No doubt about it, United States negotiator Glyn Davies got suckered into one of the all-time negotiating tricks when he fell for the deal with North Korea’s veteran double-talker Kim Kye-Gwan on Feb. 29 in which Kim convinced him, really, this time North Korea would honor a “moratorium” on all missile and nuclear tests.

The trick, when you think about it, was basic. All Kim needed was for Davies to promise 240,000 tons in food aid — “nutritional” stuff for kids, not rice for soldiers — and the great North Korean disinformation machine could then advance to phase two of the trick.

First, the North Koreans could say, we were planning this missile shot for a long time, since way before the passing of our beloved leader Kim Jong-Il in December, and anyway the missile was going to put a weather satellite into orbit, nothing to do with eventually tipping it with a nuclear or biological or chemical weapon and firing it all the way to California.

Next, while the U.S. was raging over that one and suspending the food aid, the North Koreans could then say, look, you broke the deal, all bets are off, and now we’re going ahead with our third nuclear test. Simple. The North Koreans, thanks to the “agreement” that Davies thought he had hammered out with Kim Kye-Gwan in Beijing, are in the right, and who cares if the United Nations comes out with a “condemnation” and warnings of “tightened sanctions” for firing the missile?

Actually, however, the North Koreans do care — after a fashion. The UN Security Council’s “condemnation” on Tuesday brings them to the final stage of the game plan initiated in Beijing. With all the important global powers seemingly against them, they have added incentive to demonstrate their place as the world’s ninth nuclear power and press on with the test.

All the while, the North Koreans can be pretty sure China, although it signed on to the statement of condemnation along with the other security council members, is not going to do much by way of depriving the North of the fuel it needs for its dilapidated economy or the luxury products the elite count on to maintain their lifestyles.

The Chinese are primarily concerned about their own investments in North Korea, notably joint projects with relatives of the Kim dynasty and the top generals and party officials surrounding them, for extracting precious metals and minerals from remote mountain mines. The Chinese might not endorse the North’s wasting its money on nukes and missiles, but they’re not going to jeopardize those relationships. Even if they clamp down somewhat, enough filters across the porous Yalu and Tumen river frontiers.

The “Leap Year” deal in Beijing served yet another purpose — as a prelude to new Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un’s maiden address at Sunday’s massive outpouring for the 100th anniversary of the birth of his grandfather, “Great Leader” Kim Il-Sung. With the U.S. now proven to be the one that broke the deal, Kim Jong-Un could build on the “military first” policy of his grandfather and father, Kim Jong-Il, as he has been doing in visits to military units ever since taking over after his father’s death in December.

In the biggest such event in North Korea since the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army in 1992, the celebration on Pyongyang’s Kim Il-Sung Square left no doubt of the primacy of North Korea’s armed forces.

They, and they alone, are responsible for perpetuating the hard-line policies of the dynasty, in power since the Russians packed the young revolutionary Soviet army captain, Kim Il-Sung, onto a ship and sent him down the coast to the port of Wonsan. The understanding at the time was that he would take over the regime in the Soviet “half” of the Korean Peninsula, above the artificial line at the 38th parallel. Who knew about his dream to invade the South in June 1950 and reunite the country?

North Korea’s “powerful military,” Kim Jong-Un assured the throng — and millions more listening on the North’s state TV and radio networks — was “capable of waging modern warfare with offensive and defensive tactics.” In a clear allusion to North Korea’s nuclear program, he said the era in which foreign powers could intimidate the North “with atomic weapons is forever gone.”

That remark, if nothing else, fortified the widespread view that Kim Jong-Un, spurred on by the generals who dominate the power structure, will surely press ahead with a third nuclear test. The betting now is that he press the button the device before Oct. 10, the anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party.

Bolstered by his newly acquired titles of chairman of the national defense commission and first secretary of the party, Kim Jong-Un appeared solemnly confident as he stepped forward on a balcony high above the square, grasped the podium behind six or seven microphones and in a heavy monotone paid homage to the legacy of both his father and grandfather. Clad in a dark Mao Zedong-style suit, in contrast to the uniformed, bemedalled generals ranged on either side of him, he read from a prepared text as he spoke defiantly of the country’s need to defend itself against the menace of foreign aggressors.

The grand occasion, under clear skies in cool spring weather, was intended to solidify the authority of the new leader, believed to be 29 years old, as much as to honor his grandfather, who ruled for nearly half a century before dying in 1994. Kim Jong-Un now has “all the formal levers of power,” said Lee Jong-Min, dean of the graduate school of international studies at Yonsei University, “and this is the world’s most militarized state.”

Kim Jong-Un did not mention the failure of the long-range missile that broke up and plunged into the Yellow Sea 80 seconds after its launch, but he may have had that embarrassment in mind when he remarked, “Our beloved soldiers and commanders,” not “modern weapons,” counted the most.

Doubtless he felt a special need to demonstrate his military strength since he has no real military experience beyond the few years that North Korean propaganda claims he spent at the Kim Il-Sung Military Academy. “This young chap has to burnish his military credentials,” said Lee, though “I don’t think anyone in North Korea is going to tell him to his face” that he has little or no military experience.

In contrast, said Lee, Kim Il-Sung, after years as a revolutionary fighter in Manchuria and then his service as an officer in the Soviet army in World War II, “had the charisma of direct military experience” and could make the party the center of power. Kim Jong-Il, well before his father’s death, had to establish himself as leader of the national defense commission as it gained ascendancy over the party.

Pyongyang-watchers will doubtless debate which is more important, the party or the army, but the question in a sense is moot since Kim Jong-Un, like his father, is in charge of everything. “The party is not supposed to control the military as in the Kim Il-Sung era,” said Choi Jin-Wook, senior fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification. “After Kim Il-Sung died, Kim Jong-Il bypassed the party to control the military.”

The fact that Kim Jong-Un spoke at all was perhaps the most significant aspect of the festive occasion in which thousands of troops in dress uniform stood in close formation on Kim Il-Sung Square before thousands more civilians who alternated between listening intently and breaking into cheers during his 22-minute address. The kid’s father, Kim Jong-Il, was heard to speak only once, very briefly, in public during the 17 years in which he ruled North Korea after the death of his own father, Kim Il-Sung, in 1994.

In a parade immediately after Kim Jong-Un’s address, it was the sight of heavy-duty weaponry that caught the most attention. The most fearsome was a missile said to be about five meters longer than the one that failed so abysmally on Friday. The missile, painted olive drab and black, rested ponderously on a slow-moving 16-wheel vehicle. Although it was unclear if the missile was genuine or a dummy, South Korea’s 24-hour cable network, YTN, described it as “an advanced version” of the long-range missiles that North Korea fired successfully in 1998 and 2009 and unsuccessfully in 2006 and again on Friday, April 13.

There could have been no more visible evidence than that of this giant missile on parade to demonstrate that Kim Kye-Gwan had enticed Glyn Davies into a deal that North Korea had not the slightest notion of observing.

The idea all along, according to North Korean experts here, has been to miniaturize a nuclear weapon to the stage at which the long-range missile can deliver it to its target — and then reunite the Korean Peninsula on the terms of the Kim dynasty. Davies should have figured that out before bothering to go to Beijing in February.

  Glyn Davies, Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, Kim Jong-Un, Kim Kye-Gwan, North Korean disinformation machine, Sucker: Pyongyang hits U.S. with yet a one-two punch, UN Security Council, Workers’ Party