Biden, Lee: Won’t Get Fooled Again

He’s best known for saying things that make us cringe, but even Joe Biden is on message on North Korea:

“It is important that we make sure those sanctions stick and those sanctions prohibit them from exporting or importing weapons,” Biden said. “This is a matter of us now keeping the pressure on.”  [AP]

And since everyone else is, Joe, why not psychoanalyze the North Koreans’ motives?  Nope, he wouldn’t touch that one:

“God only knows what he wants,” Biden said of Kim. “There’s all kinds of discussions. Whether this is about succession, wanting his son to succeed him. Whether or not he’s looking for respect. Whether or not he really wants a nuclear capability to threaten the region. … We can’t guess his motives.

“We just have to deal with the reality that a North Korea that is either proliferating weapons and or missiles, or a North Korea that is using those weapons … is a serious danger and threat to the world, and particularly East Asia,” the vice president said.  [AP]

I don’t know what’s running through that misshorn, top-heavy, clot-sodden cranium, either (Kim’s, not Biden’s).  I could offer up theories having to do with succession, the establishment of the “brilliant comrade’s” legitimacy, propaganda value, or simple extortion, but the one that strikes me as the most insightful holds that Kim Jong Il is an asshole.

Here in Washington, the question on everyone’s lips is whether Biden can get through the summit with South Korean President Lee Myung Bak without making any dog meat jokes.

Lee, by the way, sat down for an interview with the Wall Street Journal and said some interesting things:

“The North Koreans have gained, or bought, a lot of time through the six-party-talks framework to pursue their own agenda. I think it’s important now, at this critical point in time, for us not to repeat any past mistakes,” he says. Now, it’s “very important for the remaining five countries — which excludes North Korea — to come to an agreement on the way forward.”

Sounds like he’s also tired of buying the same horse.

What about stricter financial sanctions, like the kind the U.S. Treasury successfully leveled against Banco Delta Asia (a North Korea enabler) in Macau in 2005? That is “one type of sanction that we can level.” Should the U.S. add the North to the list of terror-sponsoring nations? “That in itself may have some symbolic meaning. But in actuality, having North Korea on the list or not will not make really much of a difference,” he says.

The bottom line: “Our ultimate objective is to try to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, but we must also ask ourselves: What do the North Koreans want in return for giving up their nuclear weapons program? I think this is the type of discussion that the five countries should be engaging in now, robustly.” Yet another reference to excluding North Korea from the talks until the five countries can get their message straight.  [President Lee Interviewed in the Wall Street Journal]

And will South Korea go nuclear itself?  The answer subtly shifts to something like (my paraphrase) “absolutely not … yet.”

Lee may have earned his reputation as “The Bulldozer” for the way he wages politics at home, but when it comes to international relations, he’s shown himself to be surprisingly suave and nuanced.  Lee hasn’t dueled with the Americans, Chinese or (most remarkably) the Japanese in the media like his predecessors so often did, and has managed to move the Americans in his direction though the subtle recasting — as opposed to the unexpected and public abandonment — of shared long-term policy positions.  Support, at least in principle, for the six-party talks seems to be one of the positions that survives changes of administration in both countries, and I can see some cosmetic value in having that offer remain open.  Lee is simply trying to make sure that if and when those talks reconvene, they do no more harm.

I do want to question one thing that Lee the interviewer said:

One of the president’s biggest achievements has been to reverse Seoul’s disgraceful silence on the North’s human-rights violations. Former governments thought speaking out “would somehow harm improvement of the inter-Korean relationship. But I don’t think that is true,” he says. Last year, the South co-sponsored a United Nations resolution condemning North Korea’s human-rights violations. (Meanwhile, China has beefed up its border defense so much that the refugee flow has slowed dramatically.) Has Mr. Lee himself met with any refugees? A blunt answer: “Of course I did.”

But ask those closer to the issue and they aren’t giving Lee wholly favorable reviews on his refugee policy.  Apparently, it’s still business as usual in South Korean consular facilities in China.