The Next Deadlock

The irony of North Korea calling another nation “fascist” can’t be appreciated by those who are missing that gene, confined  within North Korea, or both.  Maybe this is an f-bomb that could only be built  in a place where abductees are no more hostages than their captors.  It’s probable that the author’s irony  was completely unintentional —  that he was  oblivious to  what Earthlings would think when they read his words:

The search [of Chongryon headquarters] was part of an investigation into the abduction of two children more than three decades ago, Shinyo said.

Pyongyang described the raid as a fascistic in excerpts of North Korea’s complaint provided by the Japanese embassy. North Korea also complained about the forced sale of property belonging to the organization.

“The Abe group’s anti-Chongryon campaign has reached such a reckless and hideous phase that it can never be tolerated,” the North Korean Embassy said in a statement earlier this month.  [Reuters, Claudia Parsons]

When I say that North Korea will inevitably invent some reason to stall or renege on any inconvenient obligation, the dismantling of the crime syndicate known as Chongryon is a  perfect example of just  such a  contrived provocation.   To Pyongyang, the state’s right  to kidnap the  citizens of other nations off the streets of their home towns  is unalienable.  Ditto the right  to counterfeit  our currency and have us launder the proceeds.  But of course,  handing over  kidnapped Japanese, Thais, Lebanese, Dutch, Chinese,  Italians,  Romanians,  French, or South Koreans wouldn’t really cost North Korea anything.   For Japan, however,  getting its people  back looks like it  will cost plenty:

Japan will court “disaster” if it continues to demand an accounting of its abducted citizens, North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator said today.

“Japan is creating a crisis that infringes on the rights of our people,” North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan told reporters at the Beijing Capital International Airport before departing for Pyongyang. “We warned Japan that if it takes one step further, disaster may occur.”

A rational mind is tempted to think that those people — the ones who are still alive and the  ones who aren’t — are expendable to Kim Jong Il, and that he’d probably  let them go for  the right price.  That’s something you can’t say  about the nuclear weapons for which he exchanged the lives of two million North Koreans.

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No wonder  the last round of six-party talks is being characterized as “a deadlock” by one British newspaper.  My money is on that word getting a lot more traffic soon, since despite  Chris Hill’s  best efforts, North Korea looks to have run out of things it’s willing to give up.   In Japan, they’re  even  saying that Hill  is “helping North Korea drag its feet.”  Hill can’t be ingorant of the fact that North Korea  has a timeline of its own,  one that’s focused on  the early  days of  2009.  Having failed to extract any  earlier  dates  — benchmarks, if you prefer —  Hill walked away and said this: 

“My opinion remains the same — that all of this is quite doable by the end of the year,” he said, referring to the second stage of the deal. “Further fuel oil is contingent on further denuclearisation.”  [Reuters]

The best you could say of this is that it could be more discouraging.  If Hill means that any further concessions on  our part  are contingent on North Korea being truthful with us for once, it would certainly be less bad than the sort of thing I think Hill is actually willing to do.  To give due credit, the Administration is also making a point of using the word “uranium.”  The best  analysis  of what’s likely to happen next comes from the L.A. Times:

Analysts say they’re not surprised that the talks have bogged down, given the number of problems on the horizon. “I refer to these as the ‘five doubts,’ ” said Scott Snyder, senior associate with the Asia Foundation in Washington.

One is whether the Bush administration is willing to move far enough along on normalizing relations to satisfy North Korea. The communist country is pushing to be taken off the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism as soon as possible. That could take time, however, because such a move would face significant opposition from critics in Washington and beyond.  [L.A. Times, Mark Magnier]  

Safe to say, barring some meaningful shift toward making North Korea a minimally  transparent society, I’ll join in that.

Ditto on the trade and economic front, analysts say, as the U.S. grapples with whether and how quickly to ease restrictions against the North outlined under the Trading With the Enemy Act.

Another big concern is whether North Korea will come clean in any declaration — particularly about its enriched-uranium program, which is not easily subject to satellite detection and therefore relatively easy to hide.

Analysts say they also expect differences between Pyongyang and the five other parties over how and what constitutes a “dismantling” of the Yongbyon facility. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said this week that North Korea had closed five main nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, completing the first stage of the February deal. Making them inoperable, however, is far more difficult.

Finally, analysts say they will be watching closely to see whether North Korea demands a civilian light-water reactor before it completes its end of the bargain or finds other ways to raise the ante.

Give that man a cookie!   And from the looks of things, that ought to tie things up for good, long while.

[Update:   The Joongang Ilbo reports that North Korea’s interpretation of the deal (the next link after this update has the full text)  may be  that its nuclear bombs aren’t “nuclear programs” that have to be  declared.  Regarding the light-water reactors, here’s an exact quote  from North Korea’s negotiator, Kim Gye-Gwan:

“What we are now discussing is the issue of current nuclear plans,” Kim said. “In detail, that means the shutdown and disablement of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor. In order for the ultimate dismantlement to come, a light-water reactor has to be provided to the North.  

In other words,  the North Korea will keep Yongbyon  “sealed” yet fully capable of being restarted at any moment until we finish building them two light-water reactors.  That’s a term that simply isn’t in this  agreement.  It’s also the exact same  way the North Koreans  reneged on the  September 19, 2005 deal … on  September 20, 2005. 

No wonder Chris Hill wants to bury this difference in “working groups.”  That strategy could work for an arguably peripheral issue like  the abductions of Japanese citizens, but it won’t work here.  This could be it for Agreed Framework 2.0.  End update.]  

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So really, our problem is that despite signing an agreement,  not much has been agreed.  That’s  about what I said  back in February when I pronounced this the  Not-Quite-Agreed  Framework.  And the reason why we can’t agree on details is that Kim Jong Il still  holds onto secrecy, hostility,  and extortion as though they were  the keys to his personal survival.  Those are all things our policy toward the North has incentivized:

At the heart of the negotiations is whether Pyongyang wants to end its isolation and join the rest of the world or is playing more diplomatic games. The Bush administration has displayed more flexibility in recent months by sending Hill to Pyongyang in June and helping release more than $20 million in blocked North Korean funds from a Macao bank.

“North Korea is often its own worst enemy,” said Peter Beck, analyst in Seoul with the International Crisis Group, a think tank. “They’re the master of playing a bad hand well. But they’re also the master of overplaying their hand.” 

I don’t find  those perspectives agreeable in all aspects, but I  have to admit that they sound about right.

See also, YouTube Edition:

*   Speaking of f-bombs.   Very off-color, and very funny:  You’ve been warned.

*   I hope nothing this bad has happened to you this week.  I can say that much, but just barely.