Serious Talk

North Korea’s October nuclear test has finally focused some minds, and now, the United States delegate to the talks, Amb. Chris Hill, has presented the North Koreans some tangible conditions for progress at the next round. The new demands were presented in a three-way meeting in Beijing to arrange the next negotiating session, whose viability remains a matter of some question. Listen to this … you’ll hardly believe it:

North Korea was urged to completely close the underground facility used for its nuclear explosion test in October in Punggyeri in North Hamgyong Province, by burying it or via other means.

Which is to say, before they get it right ….

Pyongyang must declare all its nuclear facilities and programs.

That means the uranium program that it admitted to having (as confirmed by both James Kelley and Jack Pritchard, a Clinton holdover and opponent of Bush’s NK policies). The North Koreans subsequently denied having such a program, and have avoided re-admitting to it even in the much-heralded September 19, 2005 agreement.

All nuclear-related facilities must be opened for inspections at an early stage by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Essentially, this is a return to IAEA safeguards. In a word, transparency.

Work must cease at an experimental nuclear reactor in Yongbyon that produces plutonium.

Horse, barn, door, you say, but I’m sure we’ll want to at least identify where their processed plutonium is.

And on top of all of this, we’ll demand the complete abandonment of their nuclear programs by the end of 2008. And now, the bad news:

In return, the countries promise to assure North Korea’s safety and improve its economy, while letting it normalize relations with the United States, the news agency said.

I understand that you have to give something to get something, but … assure their safety? Assure the safety of a country that has 250,000 people in concentration camps and starves half of its people to buy weapons? What, are they expecting to be added to the USFK gravy train? Does this mean we’re not allowed to criticize their human rights practices? Or that Freedom House or Radio Free Asia couldn’t provide nonviolent support for dissidents? Or that refugees wouldn’t be welcome here? Or that we deploy 2ID to protect Pyongyang from angry peasants? What about security guarantees for South Korea, in the form of some conventional weapons reductions at some point, maybe before we build an embassy in Pyongyang? Really, I have no idea what that even means, but it certainly sounds unworkable. And unlikely. So we can all relax.

The obvious question this all begs of Kim Jong Il: or else, what? For one thing, we keep or tighten our existing measures against their banking transactions (which we once insisted were a completely separate matter). Another reported suggestion is that the United States will reimpose trade sanctions it lifted in the 90’s, but U.S.-North Korean trade is infinitessimal, so that will have a minimal effect. Personally, I could list a wide range of other options, up to and including showing the countryside with Tokarevs and SKS’s, but there’s no hint of that sort of creative thinking in our government at this time. I hope we have other ideas in mind. We’ve already begun the process of electing our next president.
I suppose the admininistration can’t actually think the North Koreans will take this deal. It really has the sound of “final offer” on it, and there’s probably some desire to show realistic Democrats that the North Koreans really have no desire to disarm. My hope is that once we’ve done that — yet again — more people will finally get the idea here. But past experience is to the contrary.

2 Responses

  1. It will work the same as always – both at the negociating table and in the world of the pundits.

    Some will say that the US should offer this pie in the sky ideas – because if we convinced North Korea they do not need to fear us – then they would not spend their money on weapons and tunnelling under mountains and brain washing their people that we are out to kill them. In short, if the US will just take the first step(ssssssssss) to hold out its hand to sing Kumbaiya (sp?), Pyongyang will eventually grasp it and sing along and the world will have peace in our time….

    Then, of course, when any deal is struck that has the basics of the real, ambigious clauses – like you pointed out – like assuring North Korea’s security and blah blah blah

    and the agreement falls through a year or two or three later –

    these same people will point out that “the US didn’t do enough” to convince Kim Jong Il to sing kumbaiya with us – so the North’s latest negative actions are actually our (the US’) fault.

    This is a variation of the too common – “they must hate us for a reason” – type thinking.

    It strives to correct our own problems by ignoring the worse ones of the Others.

    There will be enough people who will refuse to consider how the Kim Jong Il regime needs to keep a hold on the people — that there are internal dynamics in North Korean society —

    —-that PROHIBIT NK from following through with the kind of deal that will make peace in the region and open economic doors.

    They will not face the fact that North Korea brutalizes its own people for its own ends —- whether we have righteousness on our side or not.