China and East Asia 2004

The Korean Peninsula

On the North Korean nuclear issue, the Bush administration had initially proposed an "anything but Clinton" policy and basically tried to ignore Pyongyang. In the end, and given more urgent preoccupations in the Middle East, it risks to become more Clintonian than Clinton and reward North Korea for a nuclear freeze and possible nuclear disarmament that would be extremely difficult to verify. As with other issues, however, one would have to wait for the US presidential election to make more confident predictions.

For the time being, nobody can tell whether the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has any nuclear weapons at all, but American agencies were probably right when determining in 1993 that Pyongyang's plutonium programme was sufficiently substantial and advanced to build one or two warheads, and that North Korea would not necessarily have to conduct a nuclear test. It was also clear that the DPRK could deploy its warheads on short and medium range missiles and would soon be able to deploy them on long range and intercontinental missiles. Following recent Pakistani revelations, it is also likely that Pyongyang launched a uranium-based programme in 1997 or 1998, although the extent and advancement of this programme would be much more difficult to assess.

The uranium programme would have been launched to circumvent the plutonium freeze agreed with the Clinton administration in 1994 under the terms of the so-called Agreed Framework. According to this agreement, the DPRK would have been rewarded for freezing its plutonium programme under IAEA supervision with two light water reactors that supposedly produce less weapons grade material than graphite moderated reactors, heavy fuel oil to bridge the interim, to be followed by the lifting of all US sanctions and diplomatic recognition by Washington. The PRC had somewhat facilitated the signing of the Agreed Framework by using its own economic leverage on North Korea (since the early 1990s, about 80 per cent of the DPRK's energy imports and roughly one third of food imports have come from China), and the agreement had basically been implemented by both Washington and Pyongyang, although there was some considerable delay in the delivery of fuel oil and considerable delay in the construction of the new reactors. With the moment approaching, however, when North Korea was supposed to lay open its previous nuclear history, and following Bush's January 2002 "axis of evil" speech, the agreement started unravelling. When confronted by the US with evidence on the uranium programme in October of that year, the DPRK negotiator not only admitted the charges but shortly later alluded to the existence of nuclear weapons. As the relevant statements were made on the fringes of meetings rather than in meetings proper, however, Pyongyang could later retract them or repeat them as it thought convenient. In early 2003, North Korea declared its definite withdrawal from the NPT and unfroze its plutonium programme. Further concessions were made contingent on a written US non-aggression guarantee and economic aid.

The Bush administration subsequently called for what has been termed CVID (comprehensive, verifiable, and irreversible disarmament.) Whereas it has thus far refrained from spelling out the terms of a respective agreement, and probably will not do so before the presidential elections, it did increase its military presence in the vicinity of the peninsula while urging the PRC to bring North Korea to the negotiating table. Under the impression of the occupation of Baghdad, the DPRK accepted three party talks with Washington and Peking in the Chinese capital in April 2003 and six party talks also including South Korea, Japan, and Russia in August. The US had suggested the multilateral format because short of a military strike, its own options had been running out. At the same time, China under a new leadership turned increasingly proactive, as it tried to avoid an armed conflict in its backyard while expecting to be rewarded with US concessions on Taiwan. The PRC subsequently kept the talks going through shuttle diplomacy and economic incentives offered to Pyongyang, but given the immobility on both the American and North Korean sides, it did not produce any progress on substance. The breaking point is likely to come once all parties have to reveal their bottom lines, with the US more concerned than the others about WMD ending up with terrorists and in countries such as Iran and unlikely to tolerate any DPRK moves in that direction. In the longer run, the multilateral format signals a new readiness by regional states to explore the possibility, as suggested by South Korea, of establishing an OSCE-like, permanent security mechanism among themselves.

There have also been signs of a PRC debate on the eventual reunification of Korea, although influential members of political and security elites continue to view the DPRK as a buffer against the US and would not want the Kim Chung-il regime to simply collapse. At the same time, however, China's relations with Seoul have improved considerably, and the ever rising number of North Korean refugees in the PRC has confronted the Peking leadership with some difficult choices. China could therefore try to contribute to a gradual and controlled reunification without US troops advancing northwards to its ownborder.