The agreement to visit Kumchangri, the site of an alleged underground nuclear weapons facility under construction, will not solve, nor even ameliorate, the nuclear threat in North Korea. The US is buying access to a site, and it will discover nothing. Incriminating equipment has long been removed and is now at another secret site, or sites. The North Korean regime’s foremost objective is to survive with its present leadership and system in tact, nuclear weapons and delivery systems are essential to this primary goal. In North Korea’s view to give up its nuclear weapons program is to commit suicide. The US has abetted this by consistently compromising on inspections, by first, delaying them in the Agreed Framework, and now confining them to one suspect site in this latest agreement. The holes in our position on this latest agreement are as large as the one in the original Agreed Framework of October 1994.

But first, it is important to deal with a few fallacies which are the base of the Administration’s position:

• Fallacy one: The US avoided war in 1993-94 by negotiating an Agreed Framework which put a cap on their nuclear weapons program. The North Koreans threatened war in 1993-94 as they have innumerable times since we started negotiations with them almost 50 years ago. Brinkmanship, bellicose language, moving ground and air forces, have been standard fare. The problem was our negotiators were unfamiliar both with North Korea’s negotiating record, and therefore with their tactics.

In March 1993, I received a phone call out of the blue from Ho Chung--the North Korean representative at the United Nations. He let loose a 15 minute non-stop blast--Kim Jong Il, the dear leader had ordered a general mobilization for war, the US was led by war maniacs, and death and destruction were surely coming. I asked him if he was finished and then told him I was speaking for myself, but I was sure that the North Korean government was not crazy or irresponsible enough to start a war because that would end in North Korea’s obliteration. End of conversation. 18 months later I was invited to North Korea and given royal treatment. In meeting with North Korea’s foreign minister--Kim Yong-Nam I put a piece of paper on the table outlining North Korea’s troop dispositions, forward deployed and considerably larger than opposing forces in South Korea. Kim dismissed the paper with some choice Korean phraseology. I then asked what his version of the disposition was. He did not answer. During that same visit, I presented the North Koreans with a detailed version in Korean of Kim Dae Jung’s 3 point proposal for a peaceful unification with the North (Kim is now president of South Korea.) The North Koreans took these without comment.

My point is this: the Administration did not prevent war in 1993-94 with its multi-billion dollar pay off, nor did it cap the nuclear weapons program. As Yongbyon is now monitored, North Korea has predictably turned now to underground sites, uranium enrichment and probably outright procurement of nuclear weapons from states such as Pakistan and Russia. North Korea in fact has already been caught trying to smuggle advanced missile technology out of Russia. We have merely stretched the time out indefinitely by allowing this dangerous fanatic dictatorship continue to exist, to put its money into its military, and to blackmail us for more money and aid. We are now trapped into subsidizing a designated terrorist state with the largest US aid program in East Asia. We are paying our money to a state which as national policy counterfeits our money to support its embassies overseas (see Annex one). Should not a struggling Indonesia be getting this money and food? Where are our priorities?

• Fallacy two: Humanitarian aid must be unconditional and responsive only to need. The North Koreans see unconditional food aid as an almost unbelievable concession on out part. North Korea’s whole mentality is to exploit their adversary’s weaknesses to build their own strengths. In their minds they are asking, how could a primary adversary feed them while they threatened him with death? How could your enemy allow you to arm yourself against him while claiming that he had disarmed you? It was an incredible gift from us couched in conciliatory and evasive language.

Two historic analogies: In 1959 China in the midst of an earlier lunatic communist stage started the Great Leap Forward. Millions died of starvation under a system which forced collectivization into giant communes, used rural labor to build senseless backyard furnaces, and experimented with close planting which ended up destroying crops. The Chinese got no aid but 20 years later, at their own initiative, the Chinese launched a massive reform of their agricultural system which under went decollectivization, brought foreign fertilizer plants, and appealed to individual peasant initiatives. This led to bumper harvests, and rapid GNP growth. The Chinese people were lifted out of poverty and a more liberal economic system was created.

Case two: The Ukraine had massive starvation in the 1920s. The Hoover Commission was sent from the US with a well controlled food aid program (much more closely monitored than the North Korean food aid program today.) 5 million lives may have been saved but Russia ended up with Stalin, the liquidation of kulaks and perhaps 20 million dead Russians.

North Korea must therefore reform its agricultural system now to save millions of lives. Our present course is leading us to a Stalinist alternative.

The Administration denies direct linkage between our promise of approximately 500,000 tons of food and access to Kumchangri. The North Koreans bargained hard for this food aid and linked it to our access. There is little question in their minds of this linkage. Why do we deny it? Credibility goes out the window and that commodity is in short supply right now.

• Fallacy three: KEDO (Korea Energy Development Organization) must be preserved at all costs. It was the opening wedge into North Korea. If dropped, the argument goes the North Koreans would return to building nuclear weapons. The fact that the Administration fought so hard and openly for KEDO provided the North Koreans with leverage over us. The North Koreans could threaten to abandon KEDO (many of their American supporters blamed the US Congress for causing this by not adequately funding KEDO.) The North Koreans and their friends have ganged up on Congress. The argument was often simple--it’s KEDO and a few million dollars, or war and the loss of thousands of lives.

I understand our commitment to KEDO was used in the latest negotiations to whittle down some of the North Korean obscene demands for access. We apparently finally realized how important KEDO was to the North Koreans. We have also belatedly realized that the Agreed Framework and KEDO belittled South Korea, our allies, and made direct North-South negotiations, the real key to a long term solution on the peninsula, more remote. The economics of these two LWRs (light water reactors) we are providing are outrageous. They are simply a prestige item for the North. The LWRs are well beyond North Korea’s capability to use them efficiently for power unless there are huge additional financial outlays by us for an effective power grid. The money could be much better spent elsewhere. For instance, for small coal-fired or hydro-electric plants, and for dams, irrigation reforestation, and fertilizer. The Perry plan allegedly makes KEDO an essential part of a large framework for dealing with North Korea. Continued funding for KEDO will thus be subsumed in this larger framework and thus KEDO funding will be declared essential if there is to be any chance for success for the larger framework. This new plan therefore needs to be studied carefully and questioned about its real objectives. For instance, is it simply to support KEDO, or is it a realistic plan to deal with the North?

• Fallacy four: China has been an important "strategic partner" in achieving our aims. China had a constructive approach for which we should be grateful. It is true the Chinese are important to a solution but they act in their own interests, not to please us. They were helpful in getting both Koreans into the UN in 1991 (our goal) because they wanted better relations with South Korea--ROK was becoming increasingly important to the modernization of their economy, China’s prime objective at the time. China has not wanted another North Korea long range missile shot because it would enhance the chances of TMD for Japan, an anathema to them. China has not coordinated with us their considerable food aid to North Korea, they have not joined KEDO as we have sought, and they have not been helpful on our getting access to Kumchangri. They considered this demand a violation of North Korea’s "sacred sovereignty."

There are other fallacies which I can discuss orally.

In a positive vein, what has emerged recently is the tentative linking of food aid to our gaining eventual access to Kumchangri. Now having broken the ice, we should make our whole program of food aid contingent on North Korean agricultural reform. The potato deal could be a first small move in this direction. The other important developments are South Korean moves into North Korea both economically and in tourism (people to people). In the period 1991-92, the South Koreans took the lead and achieved remarkable progress in two agreements with North Korea on Reconciliation and Denuclearization--agreements signed at the Prime Minister level. President Kim Dae-Jung knows his brothers and adversaries in North Korea well and how to reach them. Kim also knows that his sunshine policy must be linked with a powerful and credible deterrence to North Korean threats to use military force.

North Korea has had to make concessions recently to survive. It knows it needs more than weapons of mass destruction--it needs food, foreign exchange, and a beginning towards some kind of economic reform. It must now balance its economic needs for survival with its dependency on military force and threat of force. A skilled US negotiating team can exploit these contradictions.

There is a division of labor emerging between the US and South Korea. South Korea should take over economic and political dealings with the North as we have botched up the economic side by throwing money, oil and food at the regime without reciprocal movement by them. Our primarily role should be to prevent proliferation of WMD, and to deter war.

Our previous policies in Korea have been an outstanding success story. In South Korea we have in the past 45 years prevented war, we have supported successful economic growth, and we have witnessed the coming of genuine democracy. North Korea is a threat to all three. Its evil core has spawned narcotics and arms smuggling, counterfeiting our money, murder, sabotage and assassination as matters of national policy. This threat must be contained so that the tragic Korean peninsula be peacefully reunified under a democratic, free market and stable system. The Korean people deserve no less, and must take the lead in bringing it about.

Note

Ambassador Kartman has done a competent professional job in negotiating with the North Koreans, a most frustrating and bloody minded adversary. He has inherited a policy disaster bent on placating the North by buying it off.

Annex One:

North Korea’s Criminal Activities

Drug Smuggling

• January 1998, two North Korean diplomats based in Mexico were arrested in Moscow for attempting to smuggle 35kg of cocaine into Russia.
  
• July 1998, two North Korean diplomats passing through Egypt were discovered carrying 506,000 tablets of Rhypnol - a sedative used as a "date rape drug." This has been the largest seizure of Rhypnol so far.

Counterfeiting

• North Korea has been circulating counterfeit dollars through diplomats and trading companies. Since 1994, more than 10 cases worth over $4.5 million have been uncovered around Southeast Asia.
  
• From December 1995 to January 1996, Ethiopian and Nigerian diplomats in North Korea found that $2200 of the $3000 they had withdrawn from their accounts in North Korea was counterfeit money.
  
• April 1998, Vladivostok, Kil Chae-Gong the Deputy Director for International Affairs of the Workers Party and the secretary managing secret funds for Kim Jong Il, was caught exchanging $30,000 of counterfeit money.

Weapons Smuggling

• September 7, 1996, Hong Kong security authorities revealed that Maebong Company - a company under the control of North Korean Ministry of Armed Forces, purchased large numbers of shot guns, machine guns and mortars from the Chinese PLA. These weapons were then resold to rebel groups in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong-based criminal organizations.
  
• In September 12, 1996, Hong Kong customs authorities confiscated weapons such as long-range field guns, missile launching remote control devices, and missile parts on a North Korean ship bound for Syria.

James R. Lilley is a senior fellow at AEI.