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Wednesday, April 15, 2009      

Seoul and Tokyo are increasingly unwilling to tolerate N. Korean proliferation

By Donald Kirk

SEOUL Ñ To proliferate or not to proliferate? That is an easy question for North Korea to answer whatever the United States and its allies might think. The technology and components needed to develop weapons of mass destruction are just about all that North Korea has to export and the only source of leverage against an encroaching outside world.   

The conservative governments in Seoul and in Tokyo, however, are seeing proliferation in a much less theoretical light than the new liberal government in Washington which has so far failed to signal a tough response to the North's missile launch on April 5.

Therefore, the sense of confrontation on the Korean Peninsula is deepening precipitously with North Korea expelling inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, vowing to resume fabricating nuclear weapons and withdrawing from six-party talks on its nuclear program.

Seeing the approaching missile launch, South Korea decided to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a key element of the George W Bush administration's drive to keep America's enemies from dealing in weapons of mass destruction.

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The fear is South Korea's membership in what North Korea will see as another milestone on the road to war will drive China and Russia, the North's Korean War allies, closer to the North. China and Russia both opposed demands for a strong United Nations (UN) resolution as punishment for the North's test of a long-range missile on April 5.

A Foreign Ministry source said South Korea would join the PSI despite qualms about the fallout. Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, quoted a diplomatic source as saying the timing depended on "rapidly escalating regional tensions". The government, said the source, is "seeking cooperation from China and Russia in order to minimize the impact".

There is no doubt that the PSI ranks as one of the pet projects of which Bush was most proud when he revealed it nearly six years ago. The project gives the PSI's 15 "core" participants Ñ supported by about 90 countries with uncertain "associate" and "observer" roles Ñ the right to go far beyond conventional diplomacy to combat proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including components, the missiles that fire them, and the means for producing them.

"While noting that traditional non-proliferation measures such as diplomacy ... the strategy placed increasing emphasis on countering proliferation once it has occurred," said a 2006 report by the Congressional Research Service. The purpose was to "enhance the capabilities of our military, intelligence, technical and law-enforcement communities in fighting the movement of weapons of mass destruction ... to hostile states and terrorist organizations."

The PSI as a tool for use against North Korea could come in handy as North Korea turns back the clock on negotiations begun in 2007 to give up its nuclear program. North Korea earlier this year declared "null and void" agreements reached in February and October 2007 for shutting down its five-megawatt reactor at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon and blew up a cooling tower.

The real impact of the PSI, however, remains unclear. "It took five years for the Republic of Korea to join PSI," said Richard Lawless, a former US deputy under secretary of defense who played a major role in negotiating US defense agreements here in recent years. "It is high time that it did so."

Lawless, who had a long background as a US Central Intelligence Agency operative before joining the Department of Defense, downplayed the significance of the PSI as a plot against North Korea. "PSI is a global initiative," he said "It's not targeted against North Korea. It's targeted against several proliferators."

Lawless left no doubt, however, of the implications and possible impact of the PSI on the export of North Korean missiles and fissile materiel, notably to clients in the Middle East such as Iran. "If North Korea were a member of the greater family of nations, it should ask to join PSI, not throw rocks at it," said Lawless, who is currently visiting Seoul. However, he added, since North Korea would "sell anything" possibly "anywhere in the world", it ranks "as a candidate for strong attention" as a proliferator.

Some analysts warn, however, that interdiction of North Korean vessels would inevitably provoke a flare-up with unforeseeable consequences. "PSI will backfire," said Kim Sung-hak, political scientist at Hanyang University. "It will have the direct opposite result. It will give Pyongyang the reason to be more militant and if possible to use arms against South Korea."

The North Korean response to the UN Security Council's condemnation of the North's test on April 5 of a long-range Taepodong-2 capable of carrying a warhead as far as Alaska or Hawaii has gone well beyond the typical rhetoric from Pyongyang.

Although the statement was far weaker than the resolution opposed by China and Russia, North Korea clearly saw powers great and small as ganging up against it. Declaring the need for North Korea "to bolster its nuclear deterrent", the North's Foreign Ministry ruled out any chance of resuming six-party talks, last held in December.

Reliance on the PSI appears in turn one response to the failure of UN sanctions adopted after North Korea tested an earlier version of the Taepodong-2 on July 5, 2006, and detonated a nuclear device underground three months later, on October 9. China and Russia have both increased exports to North Korea while other nations observed the sanctions.

South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative who took office in February, has repeatedly called for dialogue but has long since halted all aid to North Korea in an attempt to get the North to agree to "verification" of whatever it claimed to have done to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

South Korea's advance from observer to member status of the PSI seems sure to complete a reversal of the "Sunshine" policy of reconciliation initiated by Kim Dae-jung after he was inaugurated president in February 1998 and carried on by his successor, Roh Moo-hyun, who served from February 2003 to February 2008.

While "Sunshine" has faded, North Korea has plunged into its own leadership crisis. One theory here is that North Korea's precipitous action this week is evidence of Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il's worries about his failing health Ñ and succession to power after he passes from the scene. "Internally they have a big problem now," said a former UN official in Seoul.

Kim's failing health was on public display last week when he appeared on North Korean state TV at a meeting of the Supreme People's Assembly. He had clearly lost considerable weight since reportedly suffering a stroke in August of last year, and he looked haggard, walked with a slight limp, and had difficulty raising his left hand.

Worsening North-South relations, however, far predate the latest test of a Taepodong-2.

North Korea has raised questions about the future of the Kaesong Industrial complex, which is located beside the ancient capital of Kaesong, just above the line with North Korea near the truce village of Panmunjom.

North Korea earlier this year sharply reduced access by South Korean managers and technicians to the zone where about 40,000 North Korean workers work in 100 Korean factories turning out light industrial products. The South's Unification Ministry says work at the zone has returned to normal, but now South Korea is angered by the arrest on March 30 of a South Korean worker for Hyundai Asan, the South Korean firm with overall responsibility for the zone.

South Korea is demanding the right to see the worker, accused by the North of attempting to subvert a North Korean and spread anti-North Korean propaganda. The worker in question is believed to be a North Korean waitress at a snack bar in the zone frequented after hours by South Korean managers and technicians.

"There may be some problem if North Korea makes our workers there hostage," says Cho Gab-Je, a noted conservative editor and writer here.

Cho doubts if South Korean companies "will pull out voluntarily, but maybe they want to be forced out by North Korea so they can get compensation", promised by the South Korean government. "The best thing that can happen," he said, "is they shut down the Kaesong complex".

Controversy also surrounds tours to Mount Kumkang, the complex of granitic peaks above the eastern end of the line between the two Koreas. South Korea suspended them after an elderly South Korean woman was shot and killed by a North Korean soldier last year as she strayed outside the tourist area. No one is talking about resuming them any time soon.

One real concern here is that North Korea will initiate armed conflict, possibly in the West or Yellow Sea, the scene of bloody shootouts in June 1999 and June 2002. "North Korea can [also] make ... trouble along the NLL," said Cho, referring to the Northern Limit Line established by the UN Command in the West Sea after the Korean War below which North Korean ships are banned.

At the same time, as Cho notes, South Korea may lift the permission it has given North Korean vessels to sail between the southern tip of mainland South Korea and the island of Jeju. "We can make another confrontation to stop North Korean vessels," he said. "We opened the sea lane to them, but we can stop them because they did not cooperate with our maritime police."



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