State Dept. Won’t Remove N. Korea from Terror List … Yet

The chief U.S. envoy at North Korean nuclear talks said Wednesday the United States will make sure close ally Japan is satisfied before lifting North Korea from a U.S. list of countries accused of sponsoring terrorists.

Christopher Hill acknowledged the North has raised the terror-list removal repeatedly as a crucial part of a February nuclear disarmament accord. But, he said, the United States is “not going to cup our eyes and pretend a country is not a state sponsor of terrorism if they are a state sponsor.”  [AP, Foster Klug]

This was no doubt a matter of intense debate within the  State Department.  When State  hinted  at  airbrushing the list of  state sponsors of terrorism  earlier this year, congressional conservatives threatened to rebel and ordered a fresh GAO report on North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorist acts.  I republished a portion of the GAO’s list of North Korean-sponsored terror incidents, and I’d hoped to update that with some other things I think the report missed, but I’ve simply not had time.

In the end, Japanese pressure over its abductees was decisive, and that  could put real pressure on North Korea to resolve this issue (although with North Korea, disclosure is never full).  Japan now holds the key:

“We care very much what our Japanese friends and allies have to say about an issue,” Hill told reporters. The United States, he said, wants to handle the issue “in a way that strengthens our relationship with Japan.” 

South Korea’s next president  could learn a lesson from this  and maybe even  bring some of his country’s hostages home, too.  Nor did  North Korea do itself any favors here.  Now that it’s  publicly renouncing its full disclosure obligations under the new disarmament agreement (what did I just say about that?) there’s less of an argument to compromise how we define terrorism to save an agreement North Korea says it won’t keep. 

By the way, note how little media coverage that public renunciation drew.  I know that some journalists who actually know and follow Korea are interested and  will ask  for clarification, but  a public renunciation of North Korea’s obligations merits more coverage than it’s received.

Still, the abductions issue is  one where North Korea can afford to be flexible without giving up anything of value to the regime’s security.  The hostages themselves have no strategic value to Kim Jong Il except as bargaining chips.  For months, there have been rumors within foreign policy circles here  that  Kim Jong Il  would release some abductees.  From his perspective, why shouldn’t he?  The only explanation is his obstinate cruelty to people whose only  offense was to go walking in their home towns at night.  And yet we would entrust the safety of our nation to the word of this man.

See also:  

*    Last weekend, I updated my post on Camp 22, the cruelest of North Korea’s concentration camps, interlacing it with  YouTube clips of witnesses accounts.  They’re  a powerful reinforcement  to the words I’ve written and the Google Earth photos I’ve published.   A big, big  thank-you to USinKorea  for finding those clips.  That post already  gets a significant amount of traffic, often  from people who often seem to have known little of North Korea beforehand.  Frequently, my visitors’ log shows that they’re clicking their way through all of the links to the photographs.  This is one place where I can claim that I’ve likely changed a few thousand minds.  If you haven’t done so already, I’d be deeply appreciative if you’d “Digg” that post.   Another, earlier  post  made it to Page One of Digg and  attracted 60,000 hits in  two days — traffic still streams in from chat rooms months later  — so consider the possibilities for getting this message out.

*   The newest addition to my blogroll is the superb  DPRK Forum, a newcomer which is already one of the top five Korea blogs in my book.  This must-read post talks about scenarios for regime collapse.  This is an area where I’m fascinated by predictive speculation.  My “most likely scenario” is that it will start with a food riot in a northern or east coast city  that gets out of hand,  causing an overreaction by security forces, and then  a backlash by other security forces that breaks into open factional urban combat.  The first such popular uprising is likely to be crushed when army units are called in, but now that the word of such things can actually make its way through North Korean society, the ripples of dissent and disgruntlement could lead to further outbreaks of unrest in other cities, or even within the security forces.  Or, as when Burma crushed a  pro-democracy uprising in 1988, a surviving group of armed resisters could hold out for some time in a remote frontier area.

*   An Iraq  blog that I plan to blogroll:  Talisman Gate.  Here’s a  post  to whet your interest.

*   The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions plans to build  its own  corn  noodle factory in North Korea.  No doubt, this commerce  will also speed up the transmission of marching orders to southern cadres.  This bizarre labor-management role-reversal is fraught with delectable ironies.  I wonder if the factory workers will ever go on strike, or  if the  new KCTU bosses  will  strut around the factory floor  wearing top hats and gold stopwatches.   Anyway, if the thing ever gets built, there are sure to be smiles in army mess halls all over the DPRK.