Open Sources
So when I read last week that according to an anonymous “senior South Korean official,” a North Korean admission that it sank the Cheonan and an apology for shelling of Yeonpyeong Island would not be “a precondition to the resumption of the six-party nuclear disarmament talks,” I decided to wait for the clarification before concluding that the Lee Administration had been neutered. Those clarifications haven’t really cleared much up. One one hand, there’s the newly hard-line Unification Minstry:
Unification Minister Hyun In-taek on Thursday told KTV, “Substantive six-party talks will resume only if the North takes responsible steps” over the provocations and shows it is sincere about denuclearization. Chun Young-woo, the senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs and national security, said an apology from the North cannot solve all inter-Korean problems. “The relationship can improve only if the North both dismantles its nuclear program and changes its attitude” over the attacks.
On the other hand, our anonymous source is still sticking to his or her version:
“The government has not changed its stance that it could [engage] in talks, including six-party talks, with the North even if the North does not apologize for the sinking of the Cheonan,” said the source yesterday. “Although the Cheonan sinking and the Yeonpyeong Island shelling are both issues close to our hearts, denuclearization is a much more important issue at hand here,” the source said.
But this defies logic. How can talks about hidden nuclear programs possibly lead in a productive direction if North Korea isn’t ready to make a clean break with its mendacity and its belligerence about even the things that are open and obvious? And even if you’re one of the few who still believes that the six-party talks have some non-cosmetic function, you have to concede that North Korea sees them as a vehicle for extorting aid. Hence, a willingness to return to talks without extracting an admission of North Korea’s guilt or attaching serious consequences for its aggression only invites more aggression.
Not that I really expect this to happen — especially now — but how dumb will all those conspiracy theorists and a certain has-been diplomat feel if North Korea actually admits to sinking the Cheonan?
There’s a battle brewing at the U.N. over North Korea’s uranium enrichment program — the one that Selig Harrison hasn’t commented on recently. The L.A. Times reports that the United States will ask the Security Council to condemn North Korea’s program, and Don Kirk reports that the U.S. has already pushed China into breathing the word “uranium,” which some may consider progress.
Admittedly, it’s not a surprising source, but the Chosun Ilbo rounds up fresh reasons to believe that time isn’t on North Korea’s side anymore.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies has a new paper on holding members of the North Korean regime accountable for their atrocities.
I’ve hardly been President Obama’s harshest critic on foreign policy, but it completely escapes me how the White House could have been so incompetent as to allow an anti-American propaganda song to slip into the playlist for the state dinner that Hu Jintao should never have been given in the first place. The malicious delight of the low characters of Chinese cyberspace should leave little doubt that the ChiCom propagandists knew exactly what they were doing. Now that the thing is done, I suppose the White House can’t really admit that it was pwned without exacerbating the catastrophe, but let’s not kid ourselves. China sees itself as our enemy; therefore, China — or rather, the dictatorship that temporarily rules it — is our enemy, and we need to craft our foreign and defense policies accordingly.
A leading international expert at one of China’s top universities predicts that North Korea will not improve relations with South Korea while Lee Myung-bak is still president of the south. Yan Xuetong says that’s because of Lee’s abandonment of the “Sunshine policy” of economic engagement with the isolationist Communist state and his tough approach to Pyongyang.
Yan, who is dean of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University, said this means North Korean officials will be “very patient” and will wait to engage with South Korea’s next president in two years when Lee’s term ends. [AP]
That’s funny, because I was just thinking that U.S.-China relations won’t improve much as long as China is ruled by an unaccountable, thuggish Mandarin class whose premier scholars are impervious to obvious facts and simple logic, and that the United States should wait patiently for the overthrow of its dictatorship before any great improvement in relations can be possible.
Yep, I smell pressure from the US on South Korea to move in a completely Kim Jong-illogical direction, to the detriment of the whole negotiating landscape, and fear an impending whoop-whoop victory for Pyongyang.
I’m tired, really tired…
Josh, I know that you have at times seemed conflicted about food aid (as I have as well; who wouldn’t given the state of the NK people?), but as per the article below, I guess domestic conditions have forced the issue on State which even during the Bush Administration did not suspend food aid. (In short, food prices are high….) As painful as this is (one has to wonder if its better to feed a few spoonfuls to the starving or give just barely enough), I think this is where it is now warranted. I think the Obama administration’s idea is a good idea. Any thoughts?
U.S. has no plans for food aid to N. Korea: State Dept.
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (Yonhap) — The United States said Monday it does not have immediate plans for food aid to North Korea despite reports of the impoverished communist state suffering from severe food shortages due to poor harvests and management failure.
U.S. food aid to the North was suspended in early 2009 amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests and controversy over the transparency of food distribution.
“We have no plans for a contribution at this time,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.
Crowley was responding to the report that North Korea recently asked for food aid through the North Korean mission in the United Nations in New York.
The spokesman did not elaborate on whether Pyongyang actually asked for the food provision, just saying, “We talk to North Korea on a regular basis.”
Crowley took issue with the transparency in the food distribution in the North.
“One of the sticking points in the past discussions we have with North Korea have always been confidence in the ability to ensure that humanitarian assistance provided get to those in need,” he said. “Our policy regarding the provision of humanitarian assistance is based on the level of the need of given countries, and competing needs of other countries and our ability to ensure that the aid is reliably reaching the people in need. These are standards that we have traditionally applied to North Korea.”
Food aid was suspended in early 2009 when North Korea refused to issue visas to Korean-speaking monitors, whose mission was to assure that the food was not funneled to the military and government elite.
The U.S. provided more than 2 million tons of food aid to the North over the past decade.
In the most recent aid, Washington pledged to provide 500,000 tons of food to the North in 2008 but delivered just 169,000 tons from May 2008 to March 2009.
International relief organizations suspended humanitarian food aid to North Korea in early 2009 as the North Korean government expelled international monitors amid escalating tensions over its rocket test launch and an ensuing nuclear test, the second after one in 2006.
The conservative South Korean government of Lee Myung-bak has also stopped shipping food to the North, demanding as a quid pro quo that the North make progress in the six-nation nuclear talks. Lee’s liberal predecessors had each year shipped about 400,000 tons of food and as much fertilizer to North Korea without conditions.
Relief organizations have said that North Korea will need about 1 million tons of food from abroad to feed its 24 million people every year amid reports that thousands have starved to death this winter.
North Korea’s reported food aid request comes amid a series of peace overtures in recent weeks after the North’s torpedoing of a South Korean warship and the artillery attack on a South Korean border island last year, which both killed a combined 50 people, including two civilians.
Pyongyang early this month called for working-level military talks to prepare for higher-level military dialogue to discuss the Cheonan’s sinking and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, and Seoul responded by proposing talks on Feb. 11.
South Korea also proposed a separate meeting to gauge North Korea’s sincerity in its commitment for nuclear dismantlement before the resumption of the six-party nuclear talks, which have been stalled for more than two years over the North’s missile and nuclear tests and other provocations.
Amid a flurry of diplomacy, including Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington last week, South Korean officials have said a North Korean apology for the Cheonan’s sinking and the artillery attack on Yeonpyeong is not a precondition for the resumption of the six-party talks.
South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, however, last week called on the U.N. Security Council to discuss the uranium enrichment program that Pyongyang revealed to a U.S. scientist in November. The disclosure triggered concerns that it could serve as a second way of building nuclear bombs in addition to its existing plutonium program. Pyongyang claims it is producing uranium fuel for power generation.
A U.N. report recently said that North Korea has at least one more secret nuclear facility than the one revealed in November.
In a joint statement after last week’s summit, Obama and Hu called for “the necessary steps that would allow for early resumption of the six-party talks,” and “expressed concern” over North Korea’s “claimed uranium enrichment program.”
hdh@yna.co.kr
(END)
South Korea has announced that it will hold military talks with North Korea in Panmunjom. President Lee Myun-bak said further talks or any resumption of economic assistance will hinge on a demonstrable change in behavior by Pyongyang, adding that the upcoming military talks will provide North Korea with “a good opportunity to show that it is willing to change.” Even a summit with Kim Jong-il is possible.
Read Mark McDonald’s New York Times report here.