Northern Smoke Signals

Just over a year and a half ago, the “North Korea problem” was on the brink of resolution. The Beijing parties had agreed that in return for North Korea disabling its facilities, readmitting international inspectors, and declaring its nuclear facilities (for eventual demolition), partner countries would supply energy aid, relax sanctions, and move towards full “normalization.” Shortly afterwards, the New York Philharmonic performed to delighted audiences in Pyongyang. North Korea did what was required of it, disabling its main nuclear facilities and presenting its list of those to be dismantled (with 18,000 pages of documentation), while for its part the US removed North Korea from the list of terror-supporting states and some energy aid was provided. What went wrong?

The short answer is that opposition forces in Tokyo, Washington and Seoul joined to block the agreement. Japan insisted that North Korea satisfy it on the unrelated matter of abductions before it would honor its Beijing obligations, and North Korea had almost certainly come to regret Kim Jong Il‘s abject apology to Japan in 2002 which not only solved nothing but actually made things worse. The US reneged on its commitments under the agreements of 2005 and 2007 and instead made the fresh and unacceptable demand for a written protocol covering verification procedures to be added to the agreement meticulously negotiated in October 2007 by Christopher Hill. South Korea under Lee Myung Bak from 2008 turned away from the South-North agreements of 2000 and 2007 negotiated by his predecessors. Required to yield more than it had bargained for, and offered less than it had been promised, North Korea slowed, stopped, and eventually reversed its compliance.

Having promised its people a “strong and prosperous country” by 2012, North Korea finds its key agendas, domestic and international, stalled, its efforts to normalize rebuffed on three fronts, and its leader ailing. It must be especially disappointed with the new US president, who came to office promising a fresh approach to global problems and a readiness to talk with adversaries, but then ignored North Korea. Neglected, Pyongyang was reduced to sending “smoke signals” to Washington: the satellite launch in April and the nuclear test in May. Under Obama, the crisis that had simmered under George W Bush rose close to boiling point.

Both the April launch and the May test were unwise. One probably, and the other certainly, breached a Security Council ban, but neither was actually “illegal” or signified aggressive intent. Security in Northeast Asia has rested for six decades on nuclear intimidation, with both Japan and South Korea clinging to what they see as their nuclear “umbrella,” but which North Koreans see as a spiked weapon brandished against them. Having lived under nuclear threat for almost the entire nuclear age, after making intense efforts to free itself from that pressure by building its own deterrent, North Korea finds itself condemned as a major nuclear treat.

No nuclear weapon or test is justifiable, but there is a case, recognized by the International Court of Justice in an advisory opinion in 1996, for a country to develop nuclear weapons “in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a state would be at stake.” If any country could claim entitlement under that principle, it would have to be North Korea.

Furthermore, the global “great powers” see no path to ensure their own security without nuclear weapons, and they disregard with impunity their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to “pursue in good faith negotiations on effective measures relating to nuclear disarmament.” Why should “lesser” countries be different? The “great powers” also extend de facto nuclear privilege to favored states that defy the rules - Israel, India, Pakistan - and launch aggressive war against countries such as Iraq that actually abide by them and have no deterrent. So countries such as North Korea that are out of favor with the great powers naturally come to feel that they can have no security without a deterrent, irrespective of “law.”

Virtually everyone condemns North Korea. Western and Japanese politicians and opinion leaders commonly describe it as an inexplicable, absurd, threatening, tin pot state that must be brought to heel. In and around the Security Council now the consensus is that “pressure” is the only way to get things done. Experience, however, suggests the reverse. A poor, proud guerrilla state such as North Korea that has faced down the superior force of its enemies for over a half century is unlikely to yield now. To the contrary, East Asian wisdom is that “the cornered rat bites the cat”　（窮鼠猫をかむ）.
The pressure that supposedly is designed to compel the North Korean leadership actually provides an instrument for it to rally the country to resist renewed foreign threat, heightening the oppression and desperation of the people. The quickest way to lighten the people’s suffering and to improve their human rights is to normalize relations with it, since nothing so helps sustain the dictatorship as the tension of confrontation and threat.
In diplomatic terms only one weapon has proved effective: respect. When shown respect, treated equally and with due concern for face, North Korea has proved a tough but straightforward negotiator, honouring its obligations under the 1994 Geneva Agreement for so long as the US seemed committed to it, and responding likewise positively in the Beijing talks once the US began to treat it with respect. Obama‘s pre-inauguration advisor on Korea, Frank Januzzi, promised that “to be respectful” would be the key, and that the Obama team would proceed “step by step - normalize relations, lift sanctions, provide security guarantee, energy and economic development assistance to North Korea so they could feel that it is in their best interest.” Plainly this did not happen. Instead, Obama has offered a combination of Bush-type denunciation, saber rattling (peninsula war-rehearsal exercises in March), and neglect.
Perhaps nothing is more offensive now for North Korea than that the initiative in pursuing the hostile agenda against it has been seized by its oldest foe, its former colonial master, Japan. No country has been more intransigent, less cooperative in the Beijing process, more resistant to North Korea’s de-listing as a terror-supporting state (and more vociferous today in calling for the de-listing to be reversed), and more influential in the drafting and promoting of hard-line resolutions for the Security Council. To Japan‘s great satisfaction Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February declared that the abduction issue was a proper matter for the Beijing talks, thus going further to placate it than ever George W. Bush had. As an added bonus for Tokyo, the deeper the crisis the brighter Prime Minister Aso’s electoral prospects. Aided by Lee Myung Bak, Obama has helped restore Japan‘s confidence, cheer its reactionaries, and consolidate an uncompromising, three-sided pressure front against North Korea.
The North Korea problem is not that of a violent or aggressive state but the unresolved legacy of a century of Japanese imperialism, national division and civil and international war, marked by persistent international intervention. What is needed now is not more sanctions but some sense of history, some wisdom and humanity, and the political will to launch negotiations for a peace treaty and comprehensive normalization. Ultimately the problems are not for the UN, or US, or Japan, to solve, but only for Koreans. As the situation around the peninsula darkens, much depends on Koreans turning their grief over the death of the late President Roh Moo Hyun into renewed commitment to his causes, above all that of a Korean, “Urinara” approach to South-North reconciliation and cooperation.