The recent six-nation talks held in Beijing were mainly aimed at resolving the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. Concrete outcomes were not achieved in the meetings because of discrepant views between Washington and Pyongyang, the two main parties in the dialogue. Leaving the unwavering North Korea behind, the other five countries came to the modest consensus that the Korean peninsula should be denuclearized, thus making dismantling North Korea's nuclear arms the theme of the talks. But is denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula even feasible?
First of all, we need to understand why Pyongyang wants to develop nuclear weapons. It has been attempting to do so since the Cold War, when it was still under the protection of China and the USSR. After China successfully tested its first nuclear weapon, Kim Il-sung twice asked Mao Zedong (毛澤東) to help his country develop nuclear arms, but Mao turned him down. Later, North Korea was found by US intelligence to have secretly run nuclear programs beginning in 1979. Toward the end of the Cold War, faced with Russia's retreat from East Asia and China's drawing closer to South Korea politically, Pyongyang speeded up its nuclear weapons program, resulting in the first North Korea nuclear crisis in 1994. Even after it signed the Agreed Framework that year, Pyongyang risked losing economic support because it continued to pursue its nuclear development.
North Korea developed nuclear weapons not as a threat to gain economic benefits; rather, it was the country itself that felt threatened. Despite being a communist country, Pyongyang lost financial support from the USSR, while China began using fuel and food as a control mechanism after the Cold War. Faced with economic bankruptcy and isolation in the international community, developing a nuclear program thus became an important security option for North Korea, because by doing so, it could deter Washington, curb Beijing's oppression and, furthermore, sabotage the Japan-US alliance by being a menace to Japan and fomenting Korean nationalism.
Under such circumstances, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula seems unlikely. First, we can follow the India-Pakistan model penned in 1998 and allow North Korea to have a limited number of nuclear weapons while preventing their export and cutting off all economic support before the International Atomic Energy Agency is allowed to execute intrusive and regular inspections. Formally entitled to possess nuclear arms, Pyongyang would not be able to blackmail for economic benefits with its unfinished nuclear programs anymore. Second, we can pursue democratization in the region. If we are reluctant to pursue democratization of the Korean Peninsula because we are afraid Kim Jong-il might feel threatened and therefore pursue a policy that would destabilize the region, we'd just be going backward in time. This would mean the bankruptcy of the Non-proliferation Treaty and the possible rampant nuclearization of Northeast Asia.
Liberalization and democratization of North Korea are not a part of current discussions about the nuclear crisis. If we exclude them from the agenda simply because we are worried that their impact on Pyongyang would endanger the stability of Northeast Asia, then not only denuclearization of the Korean peninsula would be impossible but the whole of Northeast Asia might pursue nuclear programs. Therefore, a political agenda set to democratize the peninsula in addition to the security agenda is essential to resolving the nuclear crisis and to establishing a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
Lai I-Chung is director of Foreign Policy Studies, Taiwan Thinktank.
Translated by Jennie Shih
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