Commentary

Few were surprised that the second round of Six Part Talks, held in Beijing 25-28 February yielded no tangible results. Although the talks will continue, the sticking points remain and there does not seem to have been any shift in the position of the either the US or North Korea during this round, except perhaps for the confusion about whether the US was now including civilian nuclear programs within its demands. That the US did not budge comes as no surprise because it was well known in political circles in Washington that James Kelly, as in the Pyongyang meeting in October 2002 which precipitated the present crisis, had no authority to negotiate but was there to express the US position and also, ‘to listen’ to what the North Koreans said. Indeed, the Washington Post revealed on 4 March that it was a ‘curt directive’ straight from the White House at the end of the talks that scuttled the joint statement that the Chinese had put together. The veteran DPRK representative, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, perhaps had some flexibility but that would have been contingent to US responses to concessions proposed before the talks, particularly the nuclear freeze.

Russian representative, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov (a former ambassador to Wellington) was reported by the People’s Daily as having said that the DPRK proposal was a “good suggestion" and a "constructive step" and that the US “should have displayed more flexibility”. The (North) Korean Foreign Ministry commented after the talks that Kelly ‘only read the prepared script without stammering and showed no sincerity, giving no answer even to the questions asked’.

North Korea argued that its delegation showed ‘its transparent will to scrap its nuclear program according to a proposal for a simultaneous package solution aimed to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and advancing fair and flexible proposals for implementing measures for the first-phase actions.’ The United States, on the other hand, ‘insisted on its old assertion about the DPRK's abandoning its nuclear program first, saying that it can discuss the DPRK's concerns only when it completely scraps its nuclear program in a verifiable and irreversible manner.’ Apart from this key issue of sequencing, the North Koreans also complained that the US ‘asserted that it can not normalize relations with the DPRK unless missile, conventional weapons, biological and chemical weapons, human rights and other issues are settled even after its abandonment of all its nuclear programs.’

Another major point of disagreement was the question of an enriched uranium program. The DPRK reiterated its claim that it has no such program and that the US assertion is nothing but a ‘whopping lie’. Prior to the talks it had said that the HEU allegation ‘..is aimed to scour the interior of the DPRK on the basis of a legitimate mandate and attack it just as what it did in Iraq in the end and invent a pretext to escape isolation and scuttle the projected six-way talks for the present.’ ‘Scour the interior’ would seem to mean that since a HEU program, unlike the plutonium reactor at Yongbyon, could be dispersed through the country, verification would entail a much more intrusive presence than the IAEA monitoring of Yongbyon and would not be unlike the US occupation of Iraq. Since, as Rumsfeld mentioned in respect of Pakistan government involvement in exports of nuclear technology, ‘you cannot prove a negative’, there could quite possibly be no end to it; the US could always claim that it needed more time and more inspections. The US, for its part, insisted that an HEU program existed and was an integral part of its demands. In a major speech in Washington before he left Kelly stressed ‘We insist on the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all of North Korea's nuclear programs…We will not be satisfied with a resolution that is not complete. North Korea must dismantle not only its plutonium program but also its uranium enrichment program and its existing nuclear weapons’.

There was some confusion as to whether the US included the abandonment of the DPRK civilian energy program as well. A report carried by the Washington Post, amongst others, claimed that ‘Pyongyang backed away from an earlier offer of a freeze and declared instead it intends to maintain a civilian nuclear energy industry.’ Since the freeze had clearly only referred to the weapons program this suggested that the US side had moved the goalposts during the talks (whilst blaming the Koreans for shifting). The Republican right had long been unhappy about any nuclear program in North Korea but it had never been official policy. The Agreed Framework was, after all, based on a civilian nuclear energy programme using light-water reactors less susceptible to producing weapons grade material, and the construction of these reactors was suspended in November, not abandoned; KEDO is still officially in existence. State Department spokesman Boucher in his commentary after the talks made no mention of any change in US position on this and reiterated, ‘"We have made clear the US position is that this needs to be done in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner. It needs to include all aspects of nuclear weapons programs in North Korea."

It is clear that Pyongyang is desperate to resolve the crisis, to lift the US military threat and sanctions, to get normalised relations and access to foreign markets and finance, and to tackle the energy shortage. However, to accept Washington’s demands would be tantamount to surrender without any guarantee that any of its wishes would be fulfilled, and this is highly improbable. It seems likely that the US is putting forward impossibly demand precisely because it does not want a resolution of the crisis and, as Jack Pritchard has revealed, does not believe the North Koreans are capable of weaponising. There are many reasons for this strategy, including infighting between State and Defense, a rationale for Missile Defense (which needs all the help it can get) and the need to keep Japan and ROK in line with the North Korea ’threat’. However, it is the electoral one that must be gaining in importance. A continuing crisis in Northeast Asia can keep the electors anxious and more liable to vote for ‘a wartime President’, all without a single US causality. That’s sweeter than Iraq.

Tim Beal

A Nuclear 9/11

Nicholas D. Kristof

10-kiloton nuclear bomb (a pipsqueak in weapons terms) is smuggled into Manhattan and explodes at Grand Central. Some 500,000 people are killed, and the U.S. suffers $1 trillion in direct economic damage…//..could be a glimpse of our future. ..//.. a terrorist group that gets its hands on a Russian nuclear weapon or a Pakistani nuclear weapon.

One of our biggest setbacks is in North Korea. Thanks to the ineptitude of hard-liners in Mr. Bush's administration, and their refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations, North Korea is going all-out to make warheads. It may have just made six new nuclear weapons.

Source: New York Times 10 March 2004

China Irks U.S. in Stand on North Korean Weapons

WASHINGTON (AP) -- China and the United States disagree over a key part of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, a U.S. official said Friday, a dispute that could give the North Koreans a diplomatic boost in sensitive talks later this month.

China has refused to accept the U.S. contention that North Korea is developing nuclear weapons based on highly enriched uranium, the official said. North Korea has acknowledged it has a plutonium-based program but denies it is developing a uranium-based one.

The administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. diplomats have told Beijing its position is not helpful…//..

China and the United States have other differences involving North Korea, but they do not appear to be as serious. China, for example, has suggested the United States make concessions in its approach to the North.

It also has been more enthusiastic than the United States over North Korea's willingness to freeze its plutonium-based program…//..

Source: New York Times 6 February 2004

Ex-Unification Minister Slams US Policy Toward North Korea

The policy of blockading North Korea favored by neoconservative forces within the current United States administration could lead to disastrous results, former unification minister Lim Dong-won warned on Wednesday.

Lim, known as the architect of the ``sunshine policy'' for having devised and carried out much of former President Kim Dae-jung's active engagement with North Korea, was outspoken in criticizing the U.S. neocons' approach towards Pyongyang.

Source: Korea Times 28 January 2004

Sunshine Policy Still Valid: Kim Dae-jung

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said Friday that his "sunshine" policy of engaging North Korea is still valid and will help resolve tension over the North's nuclear arms program. In an interview with Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, Kim said that there is no alternative to the engagement policy, because South Korea has no financial capacity to cover the huge unification cost in case the communist North suddenly collapses.

"There is no tool to peacefully solve the geopolitical standoff other than the sunshine policy," said Kim

Source: Nihon Keizai Shimbun 26 March 2004

N. Korea drug-trade charges in question

Evidence shaky in case cited by U.S.

Cam Simpson

WASHINGTON -- Days after the Bush administration asserted that the North Korean government most likely is dealing drugs as a matter of state policy, questions about the evidence underlying a key piece of that case are emerging from official Australian sources.

In its annual report on worldwide narcotics trafficking, released March 2, the State Department concluded for the first time that it is "highly likely, but not certain, that Pyongyang is trading narcotic drugs as state policy." It is the first time the U.S. has leveled that accusation.

The report cited decades of involvement by individual North Korean officials in drug smuggling around the world. And it pointed to uncorroborated public statements last year from a North Korean defector, as well as other unverified reports, alleging large-scale opium production inside the closed borders of the renegade nation.

But the primary basis for the charge was last April's seizure by Australian authorities of 275 pounds of heroin connected to a North Korean freighter. The ship, called the Pong Su, was captured off the southeastern coast of Australia after commandos, involved in a four-day chase in 30-foot swells, boarded the 4,000-ton freighter by rappelling from a helicopter.

Australian officials say the heroin had been ferried ashore on a rubber boat before the commandos boarded.

The State Department report said the Pong Su incident was "the first indication that North Korean enterprises and assets are actively transporting significant quantities of illicit narcotics" outside the country's borders.

But a federal magistrate in the Australian state of Victoria on Friday dismissed drug charges against 27 of the ship's 30 North Korean crew members, including a "political secretary" whose presence aboard the ship was highlighted by the State Department in its case against the Pyongyang regime…//..

Source: Chicago Tribune, 10 March 2004

Gangster behind heroin ship, court told

A Macau-based organised crime figure was behind a $165 million heroin shipment seized on the Victorian coast, federal police told a Melbourne court.

But federal agent Damien Appleby would not reveal the identity of the mystery drug lord when questioned at a committal hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court.

The captain and 29 crew of the North Korean freighter Pong Su, along with a four-man shore party, are accused of assisting the importation of the record heroin haul in April this year.

Federal agent Appleby was questioned by Peter Faris, QC, who represents the captain and crew, about whether the load was "a true example of private enterprise" in North Korea.

"I have a view it's organised crime. I have no evidence the government's involved," he replied.

Source AAP on NineSMN.Com

KCNA Blasts U.S. Political Plot

Pyongyang, March 16 (KCNA) -- The U.S. Department of State in a recent "annual report on drug control" groundlessly charged that the DPRK considers drug smuggling as a "state policy." This is a base and despicable political plot of the U.S. to tarnish the international image of the DPRK at any cost and internationalize and legalize "sanctions" and "blockade" against it.

Some time ago the Australian Court, handling the case of the DPRK trading cargo ship "Pongsu," admitted that "the state was not involved in it" and instructed the release of its crewmen for the lack of evidence.

This suffices to clearly prove that the U.S. assertion that the DPRK conducts "drug smuggling" as a state policy is a whopping lie.

Explicitly speaking, in the DPRK where the people are valued more than anything else the use of and deal in drug and its production are strictly banned by law as it renders people mentally deformed.

The import of mental stimulant for scientific research is subject to a strict state control and legal order. The DPRK has long maintained successful contact and cooperation with the International Narcotic Control Board in this field.

When discussing drug trafficking worldwide, the U.S. should be tried before any other country.

As already known, the U.S. is beset with serious drug-related problems such as drug production, trafficking and use. ..//..

Its ulterior aim is to float all sorts of misinformation about the DPRK in addition to the fiction of "suspicion of nuclear development" in a bid to invent pretexts to isolate and stifle it internationally and thus force Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear program first at any cost.

Source: KCNA 16 March 2004

NZ-DPRK relations develop

Two prominent New Zealand artists, Richard Nunns and Kingi Eruera Taurua are to perform in the annual Spring Friendships Arts Festival to be held in Pyongyang 9-19 April.

Richard Nunns is one of New Zealand’s most respected performers and researchers of Maori music and instruments.

Amorangi (Spiritual leader) Kingi Eruera Taurua is a spokesperson for the council of elders for Ngapuhi tribe and is well known as a political activist in Maori land issues. He has enjoyed a high profile career as a cultural advisor to the New Zealand government on many issues including advisor and supervisor for the making of Maori welfare policy.

The participation in this year’s festival of Richard Nunns and Kingi Taurua has been organised by International New Zealand Artists and has received financial support from the Asia 2000 Foundation and the Willi Fels Trust.

Rev Don Borrie, Chairman of the NZ-DPRK Society which facilitated the visit said, “Apart from introducing NZ music, with a distinctly Maori flavour, to Korean audiences, we see this as an excellent way of contributing to people-to-people linkages, breaking down barriers of misunderstanding, and helping build a more peaceful, and prosperous, world”.

David Taylor, New Zealand's Ambassador to both North and South Korea added, "This is a great opportunity for North Korean audiences to learn something of New Zealand Maori culture. I wish our performers every success in building new human bridges between the DPRK and New Zealand".

Rev Borrie and Dr Tim Beal will be accompanying the musicians to Pyongyang. Rev Borrie will be developing the relationship between the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa NZ and the Korean Christian Federation. Tim Beal will be visiting the Institute of Peace and Disarmament and researching economic reform and marketisation. Both will be meeting representatives of the UN aid agencies and evaluating the food and aid situation, as well as going to Wonsan to deliver greetings from the Mayor of Porirua, Jenny Brash. Financial assistance has been received from PCANZ and the Council for International Development

DPRK-New Zealand Friendship Farm Designated

Pyongyang, March 27 (KCNA) -- The Haksan Co-operative Farm in Hyongjesan District, Pyongyang, was designated as the DPRK-New Zealand Friendship Farm with due ceremony yesterday on the occasion of the third anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Jon Yong Jin, vice-chairman of the Korean Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries who is chairman of the DPRK-New Zealand Friendship Association, and other officials concerned were present at the ceremony.

The chairman of the Management Board of the Farm declared the farm was named the DPRK-New Zealand Friendship Farm.

After hearing a congratulatory speech made by the chairman of the friendship association, the participants looked round photos and books introducing New Zealand.

Source: KCNA 27 March 2004

DPRK Tourism Task Force

The DPRK National Tourism Administration (NTA) last year invited the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) to send a task force to advise on aspects of tourism development. Task forces of experienced members are a well-tested PATA arrangement for assisting national and regional destinations with their planning for growth and sustainability.

The PATA Task Force of five persons covering marketing, aviation, ground arrangements, government policy and related fields visited DPRK in late September 2003, and has now completed its report which is due for publication shortly.

The chairman of the task force, Mr Neil Plimmer of New Zealand, said it was quite clear that North Korea is keen to receive more visitors than it does currently, and that it has the capacity to provide increased tourist arrivals with a fascinating holiday experience.

“A key issue is simply that most of the travelling public are quite unaware of this basic situation: that they are welcome to visit, and that they can have a safe and interesting time while they are there. So stepped up marketing focussing on destination awareness is a priority need.

“There is plenty of product, based on the city attractions of Pyongyang, mountain scenery and resorts, and historic Korean buildings – particularly 1000 year old Buddhist temples - and culture. Ground transport and tour guiding was of a high standard.”

The report is expected to be available from PATA (www.pata.org) shortly.