<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> WorldTribune.com: Mobile — Bush, in Seoul, surprises with return to hard line on North Korea
Bush, in Seoul, surprises with return to hard line on North Korea

Thursday, August 7, 2008 Free Headline Alerts

By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON — United States President George W Bush has resurrected the issue of North Korea's record on human rights at a time when he had appeared to have completely reversed the hard line of his first term toward Pyongyang.

Bush, stopping off in Seoul en route to the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Summer Olympic Games on Friday, unexpectedly introduced the human rights factor into the equation of bargaining with North Korea after years of avoidance of the issue in six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

U.S. negotiators have always shied away from a hint of concern about the North's human rights record, knowing full well that North Korea not only denies abuses but might well walk out of talks if the issue arose.

North Korea's record on human rights may not be a deal-breaker when it comes to removing North Korea from the U.S. list of terrorist nations. It is easy to argue, as American diplomats have done, that such abuses are "an internal problem", not a reason to label North Korea as a nation that spreads terror elsewhere.

Nonetheless, Christopher Hill, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific and the lead U.S. negotiator on North Korea's nukes, signaled a change in the U.S. approach toward human rights in North Korea when he told a congressional hearing in Washington on July 31 that the U.S. was now going to raise human rights in talks with the North. With uncharacteristic bluntness, Hill told the U.S. Senate armed services committee that North Korea's human rights record had been "abysmal" and the daily suffering of the North Korean people was "an unacceptable continuation of oppression".

This kind of talk will surely upset the North Koreans. The topic is especially sensitive in the aftermath of the wanton shooting by North Korean guards of a South Korean female tourist who had wandered outside the area to which tourists are confined in the Mount Kumkang tourist zone above the line between the two Koreas. Bush made the link by expressing condolences over the woman's death and calling for renewed dialogue between the two Koreas.

North Korea is sure to view such remarks as interference in its internal affairs. The North has attacked South Korea for questioning its version of events and demanding a joint investigation. Well before the woman's death, the North had cut off inter-Korean dialogue. U.S. sympathy and support for South Korea in this case will deepen North-South divisions and outrage the North's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il.

Bush, in Beijing, is likely to press for China's cooperation in demanding full verification of whatever North Korea says it is doing to comply with agreements reached in six-party talks on its nuclear weapons. He may also not miss a chance to pursue the human rights issue. Human rights advocates have long demanded that China stop labeling North Korean defectors as "economic migrants", sending them back to North Korea whenever they catch them, and treat them instead as refugees from a harsh regime.

North Korea, however, has reason to hesitate before going into another round of recriminations. Hunger is worsening and disease is spreading again, according to the latest reports from the World Food Program and others attempting to alleviate North Korea's suffering.

North Korea, while Bush was in Seoul, announced the arrival of a U.S. vessel carrying 23,000 tons of corn - a small portion of the 500,000 tons of emergency food aid promised by the U.S..

It would doubtless be too optimistic to say that North Korea is so deeply in need of relief for its starving people as to want to give in to demands for verification as a guarantee of removal from the U.S. list of terrorist nations and lifting of U.S. trade sanctions.

Until that happens, however, North Korea remains a charter member of Bush's "axis of evil" - a reminder of a crisis that never seems to end. The allusion to the North's human rights record reinforced what appears to have been a conscious U.S. decision to raise the stakes in the great bargaining game over North Korea.

How else to explain Bush's remark that he still sees North Korea as a member of the "axis of evil" - the infamous phrase that he used in his state of the union speech in January 2002, linking North Korea with Iran and Iraq? But he left no doubt he is going to view North Korea that way until or unless the North caves in on rules for verifying that it is getting rid of its nuclear weapons.

True, Bush refrained from using the negative terms that he'd tossed out early in his presidency when he remarked how little he trusted North Korean leader Kim Jong-il - and characterized him as "evil". Nonetheless, standing beside South Korea's conservative President Lee, avoiding the use of the Dear Leader's name, Bush said "the North Korean leader is going to have to make certain decisions" if he hoped "to get off the list, the axis of evil list".

Considering that the U.S. and North Korea had overcome some of their differences, with Pyongyang making a show of having disabled the main components at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon, one can only view these remarks as a startling step backward.

The question is whether Bush was engaging in brinksmanship, if not rhetoric, in his remarks or whether he is prepared finally to have North Korea removed from the State Department's list of nations sponsoring terrorism. The message is that if North Korea fails to come through with a coherent and credible deal for verifying all that it has said it is doing to abandon its nukes, then North Korea stays on the list.

It's not just that U.S. officials are skeptical as to whether North Korea has done away with the facilities at Yongbyon while hiding its program for fabricating nuclear weapons with plutonium at their core.

Severe doubts arise as to whether North Korea has fully declared the amount of weapons-grade plutonium it has produced since the breakdown six years ago of the 1994 Geneva agreement, and North Korea still refuses to acknowledge an entirely separate program for developing nukes with enriched uranium.

Bush spoke about uranium and human rights almost in the same breath - something he has never done previously. He was "concerned about North Korea's human rights record" and "concerned about the uranium enrichment".

Ever so politely, Bush got around to what South Korea might do for the U.S. in the Middle East in exchange for U.S. support against the North. Might South Korea return some troops to Afghanistan, from which it withdrew a small medical contingent last year after the abduction of 23 members of a Korean church group, two of whom were killed?

He was asking, he said, for "as much non-combat help as possible".

The language suggested that Bush's show of bluntness may have had a secondary purpose, in addition to bringing the North to terms on the nuclear issue. Bush also hoped to mollify South Korean fears about the U.S. cozying up to the North in recent diplomatic talks, just as North-South confrontation deepens in a time of vitriolic exchanges and intimidation.

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