Understanding North Korea: It's not crazy Q&A with William M. Drennan
02/16/2003
While the standoff with Saddam Hussein holds the world's attention, North Korea's dispute with the U.S. over nuclear capabilities looms as large. Intelligence officials warn that North Korea has an untested missile that could reach the western U.S. All of this sits on the U.N. Security Council's agenda, along with Saddam.
One American who's made a career of understanding Korea is William M. Drennan, deputy director of the United States Institute of Peace. The institute is a federally funded research group dedicated to the resolution and management of intractable conflicts around the world.
As a child, and while serving as an U.S. Air Force officer, Mr. Drennan lived and traveled extensively throughout Asia. His last foreign assignment sent him to South Korea, where he led the strategy and policy division, J-5, for U.S. forces there. That 1988-1990 stint in downtown Seoul changed the focus of his career to Korean peninsula issues.
He visited Dallas recently to address a luncheon of the World Affairs Council of Greater Dallas. Before the event, he spoke with free-lance writer Jennifer Nagorka. These are excerpts:
Question: What should Americans understand about the North Korean regime?
Answer: First and foremost, it is not crazy, and it is not irrational. It is very different. Second, they probably will never give up their nuclear weapons program because their fundamental interest is the survival of their regime. The chances of peaceful, manageable, negotiated reunification of the Korean peninsula under current and foreseeable conditions are extremely slim. I think that the division of the Korean peninsula will end badly.
North Korea is arguably the world's most perfect totalitarian state. It is a combination of a cult of personality and an organized criminal element.
Question: Could you give a couple of specific examples of how North Korea's rulers are different from those in Iraq?
Answer: North Korea has been very, very successful at sealing itself off. The oldest living North Korean has only known the demise of the last dynasty of the united Korea, followed by 35 years of Japanese colonial rule, followed by the division of the peninsula in 1945 – that took on permanence 1948 – followed by three years of war, and now, 50 years of intense Cold War standoff and the inculcation of this god-like quality to Kim senior and Kim junior. Because of this world-class security apparatus that the Kims have installed, there's almost no chance of the regime being threatened from below.
Question: If they're that isolated, how did they produce nuclear weapons technology?
Answer: They've been working on this for decades. They've gotten some training from outside, principally from the Soviets, but much of their program is indigenous. They've got large natural resources in uranium. Over the decades, they've acquired the technology. That's the plutonium-based system that's based principally in Yongbyon. And after we thought that we had successfully frozen that plutonium-based system, within two or three years, they embarked on a clandestine program to get this highly enriched uranium capability.
Question: Why is this crisis happening now? Is it related to President Bush's "axis of evil" speech?
Answer: The administration, which objected to its predecessor's handling of North Korea, announced in early June 2001 that it was ready to talk with the North Koreans any place, any time, without preconditions. That invitation sat on the table about 13 months. [Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly] scheduled a trip to North Korea for early July 2002.
Also about this time, we started to get irrefutable evidence that they had this highly enriched uranium program. So when Kelly did go in October, he did have a precondition – to confront the North Koreans with this evidence and to tell them that nothing was going to happen until they visibly and verifiably dismantled this program. Initially, the North Koreans denied it. Then they had this all-night meeting and came back and said basically, "Yeah, we're doing it. What are you going to do about it?"
Now, to the "axis of evil." I'm not sympathetic to the view that it has caused North Korea to act in the ways it's acting now. They started cheating on their promises not to develop nuclear weapons back in 1997 or so, long before the 2000 elections, long before the "axis of evil" speech.
Question: What was the 1994 agreement?
Answer: It represents North Korea's success in making its nuclear weapons program a bilateral issue, solely between North Korea and the United States. That's one of the things that this administration is struggling mightily not to allow to happen again. This is a challenge to the international community. It's a violation of at least four different international agreements. By all rights, it should be something that the U.N. Security Council addresses.
The first nuclear crisis burst on the scene at about the seven-week point in the Clinton administration. And it was not managed well. The situation came very close to igniting a war on the Korean peninsula in the summer of 1994.
Why didn't we have a war in 1994? Because Jimmy Carter inserted himself into the situation, hijacked American foreign policy, remade it in ways to his liking, and struck a deal with Kim Il Sung. The provisions of the agreed framework were that North Korea would first freeze its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, in return for, among other things, the provision of two light water reactors. North Korea would come into full compliance with its nuclear responsibilities before the critical components of the light water reactors were provided.
North Korea, somewhere along the line, realized that it was going to be years before they ever got these light water reactors because of all kinds of delays – not necessarily political delays. They blame us for this. They said it was supposed to be provided in 2003, and it wasn't, and therefore the United States has violated the agreed framework, which means that they're free to violate it as well. This is bogus.
Question: How strong is their military?
Answer: Nobody knows for sure. In quantitative terms, it's the fourth or fifth largest army in the world. It's got 60s- and 70s-era Soviet equipment. It is forward deployed, which means that most of it is very close to the demilitarized zone. Seoul is within artillery range of a huge number of artillery tubes and rocket launchers just north of the demilitarized zone. It's Seoul being held hostage, coupled with the fact that North Korea has weapons of mass destruction, that all but precludes a military option to this. North Koreans know this. They're dealing from a position of strength.
Question: What should be the U.S. foreign policy goal now?
Answer: The institute published a little analysis of the policy options. The choices were loosely formulated: tolerate, negotiate or retaliate. Tolerate is just wait them out. We have more leverage now than we did in the earlier crisis. North Korea has more to lose.
The second option would be to negotiate. The administration is very reluctant to do that, and it should be. This is a terrible precedent for global nonproliferation efforts. I don't know how we get out of this, except there might be a third party that can act as a go-between, a mediator.
The third option is retaliate. I don't necessarily mean by military threat. Going to the United Nations, getting sanctions put on North Korea, making them pay a price, etc. That may not work. They're already being squeezed pretty darn tight.
I don't think North Korea is ever going to give up its nuclear weapons, even if we strike a new agreement. They absolutely cannot be trusted. They have never lived up to any agreement they've ever signed.
Jennifer Nagorka is a Dallas-based free-lance writer.
This is an informative, atypical-of-mainstream-media, article on North Korea and Carter's trade of U.S. security for his Nobel Peace Prize.