Obama's Korean honeymoon sours

By Donald Kirk

NEW YORK - United States President Barack Obama could hardly be expected to endorse the pronouncement of his predecessor in the White House, George W Bush, that North Korea ranked in an "axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq.

That phrase, uttered by Bush in his first State of the Union address in January 2002, now counts as perhaps the most memorable of Bushisms - alongside the "Mission Accomplished" banner after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Although Obama did not resort to such rhetoric, he veered close enough in his maiden address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday in which he warned that Iran and North Korea, if they "choose to ignore international standards" and "put the pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead or regional security", must "be held accountable".

Exactly how to hold them accountable is another matter. Certainly, as Obama stated, the world must "demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise", but those words will seem empty if he imagines talk of reconciliation will curb the nuclear ambitions of these collaborators in the nuclear arms race.
The fact that Iran and North Korea have exchanged components and know-how, and that North Korea has exported missiles to Iran, inextricably links them - if not in an "axis of evil", then at least in a military and commercial alliance.

Obama's words contrast with the US view that North Korea may now be an eligible partner for dialogue. The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, has said the US and North Korea are in a "honeymoon" phase since former US president Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang on his "unofficial mission" in early August. Clinton met with the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il for three hours and 17 minutes and flew home with the two women from Al Gore's Current TV network who'd been detained on the North's Tumen River border with China.

How long this honeymoon spirit will endure is far from certain. Obama on Thursday, the day after his speech before the UN General Assembly, again talked tough - this time as he chaired a summit of global leaders of the member states of the UN Security Council.

The message was a call to fully implement Security Council resolutions on Iran and North Korea - notably the sanctions adopted by the council after North Korea conducted its second underground nuclear test on May 25. In a gesture to show the previous resolutions were serious, the Security Council marked the occasion by passing yet another resolution, this one "demanding full compliance with Security Council resolutions on Iran and North Korea and calling on the parties to find an early negotiated solution".

The message seemed to be that the United States was as hell-bent as ever on getting all UN member nations to cooperate on keeping North Korea from exporting arms of any kind. The sanctions have indeed put a severe crimp in North Korean arms exports - evidenced by the North Korean decision to reverse the course of a freighter apparently bound for Myanmar - and also have stopped the import of certain luxury products for the North Korean elite.

Publicity surrounding these events masks the reality that still more North Korean arms shipments may have gone undetected by sea - or by air over China or Russia. Chinese and Russian leaders have certainly paid lip service to the sanctions, but their commitment to curbing North Korean exports is unclear.

Nor is it at all clear that the resolution adopted by the Security Council on Thursday "will also strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty", as Obama declared. To the contrary, during the "honeymoon period" cited by Panetta the question of North Korea returning to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been largely ignored if not forgotten.

North Korea formally withdrew from the NPT in January 2003 and restarted the five-megawatt reactor at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon after expelling inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in December 2002.

The expulsion of the IAEA inspectors represented the final breakdown of the 1994 Geneva framework agreement under which North Korea had shut down the reactor in return for the promise of twin light-water nuclear reactors to help fulfill its energy needs. The framework fell apart after North Korea, in a meeting in October 2002 with a mission led by James Kelly, then US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, acknowledged an entirely separate program for developing nuclear warheads with highly enriched uranium.

North Korea for years loudly denied having acknowledged anything to do with highly enriched uranium but in September, a month after Clinton's visit, boasted of entering "the final stage" of developing uranium for nuclear warheads. The timing of the boast suggested the North's urgent interest in two-way dialogue with the US rather than the six-party talks to which it had vowed never to return.

Obama's performance at the UN would seem to conflict with a diplomatic offensive waged by the State Department to convince reluctant South Koreans and Japanese that there's really no harm in sending Stephen Bosworth, the US nuclear envoy, over to Pyongyang for those two-way talks. As the Americans tell it, Bosworth would spend his time talking the North Koreans into returning to six-party talks - and nothing else.

Obama's remarks suggest, however, that Bosworth would have much more to discuss. How about getting North Korea to agree to return to the NPT in return for the US agreeing to cut some slack on sanctions? And what about opening liaison offices in Washington and Pyongyang - the precursor to diplomatic relations and a peace treaty in place of the uneasy truce that ended the Korean War in July 1953?

United States diplomats persist in attempting to allay the qualms of the South Koreans, but they have nothing to say about President Lee Myung-bak's proposal for a "grand bargain" - a comprehensive multi-nation package of incentives - to persuade North Korea to abandon its nukes.

The bargain as proposed by Lee in New York would come with massive aid and security guarantees if only the North does away with "key elements of its nuclear program".

The offer of a "grand bargain" is essentially a rhetorical gesture, reminiscent of Lee's previous promises of vast aid, all quite quickly spurned by the North. The offer may, however, serve the purpose of letting the Americans know that South Korea has ideas of its own when it comes to dealing with the North Koreans.
If so, the American response was not exactly encouraging. Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, reported that Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, was "not aware" of Lee's "grand bargain" at all.

Instead, Campbell went on about "small but fundamental steps so that we can take at least some early actions going forth". South Koreans were left wondering just what steps and actions he have in mind.

A senior South Korean official, briefing South Korean reporters in Washington, scoffed at agreements reached with North Korea in six-party talks, citing loopholes that enabled the North to retain its nuclear arsenal. "We will first bring North Koreans back to the six-party talks," he said, "and press them hard for a package deal or a grand bargain, however it is named."

They need not have been too concerned. Campbell's remark may have been familiar diplomatic gibberish. No one seemed to know whether the Americans were getting tough, as Obama was at least pretending to do, or reverting to more talk against a background of the usual sound and fury.

Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.

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