More Nork Missile Stuff

A DUMMY SATELLITE? That’s what some South Korean scientists speculate about the payload of last weekend’s missile. Not being a rocket scientist myself, I wasn’t personally overwhelmed by the scientists’ basis for that conclusion, but I’d think that if the whole thing went down in the Pacific, it should be possible for us to recover the thing and resolve the issue conclusively. I wonder what the psychological impact would be if photographs of the recovered payload make their way into North Korea.

INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE KLINGNER: PBS Wide Angle also forwards this audio of an interview with the Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner, talking about missile tests and prospects for reunification. Hint: not this week. The audio is crappy, but as you’d expect with Bruce’s analysis, the content is worth hearing.

THE SILLIEST TITLE OF ANY POST-TEST OP-ED must be “Pyongyang Goes Pyongbang” by Victor Cha, in Foreign Affairs. (Despite that publication’s academic reputation, I’ve seen some real garbage published in FA. It seems you can say anything there as long has you’ve been quoted at least twice by the Washington Post.) Cha, who spent his tenure in the Bush Administration seeking the dull, unimaginative middle ground between various polarizing factions, belatedly offers at least one interesting suggestion:

Fourth, the United States and other countries should offer to educate and feed every North Korean child and dramatically increase humanitarian assistance to the North Korean people in general, including food, medicine, education, and energy. (Some of this could even be tied to stimulus package efforts to employ U.S. workers from Michigan and elsewhere on winterization and house-building projects in North Korea.)

The parenthetical has an especially silly ring to it — Cha will probably take some abuse for suggesting it — but I’m theoretically all for people-to-people contacts that break down North Korea’s isolation. Surely Cha knows Kim Jong Il would never allow it, but if President Obama were to issue a statement like this as a public challenge to Kim Jong Il, it could have a significant propaganda impact inside both Koreas. Of course, this would violate some unwritten rule that only North Korea is permitted to take the initiative or wrong-foot other countries — never the opposite. Somewhat typically for Cha, he says this after saying that sanctions against the regime should be tightened, and he doesn’t really explain away the apparent cognitive dissonance (though I think it can be harmonized). There’s more dissonance where that came from:

Sustaining the six-party talks is critical for continuing the disablement and degradation of Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities. But U.S. strategy needs to acknowledge that there will never be a true end to the North’s nuclear ambitions so long as Kim and his immediate circle remain in power. While negotiating today, therefore, the United States needs to prepare for the real opportunities for engagement that may lie down the road.

You’re on your own making sense of that.

DUMBEST ARGUMENT OF THE ENTIRE WEEK: “It’s a hard truth to stomach, but we will have to talk to Kim Jong Il.” The author thus raises several thought-provoking questions, such as: You mean like pretty much every occasion since 1989 when the North Koreans were willing to show up? What have you been watching for the last two decades, the golf channel? How many ten-year-old cliches about North Korea can be sewn together into one column and passed off as “expert” analysis? And, who gave this imbecile column space? Alas, only the latter question is answered: “Richard Lloyd Parry is Asia editor of The Times.”