Let’s face it, everyone: North Korea’s Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, is not going to give up his nuclear weapons either for US President George W. Bush or for senators John McCain, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, one of whom is most likely to be the next president of the US.
The latest twist in wishful thinking holds that Kim has decided that he will not get what he wants from Bush so he has instructed his negotiators to stall until the new president takes office on Jan. 20 next year. This notion says that the new president, challenged by Iraq, a depressed economy and a myriad of other demanding problems, would be willing to take a softer stance on North Korea.
Consider the evidence of the last week or so. The North Korean propaganda machine has “blasted” (the North Korean verb) the US, South Korea, Japan, the UN and the EU for a wide range of perceived transgressions.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) asserted that the six-party talks intended to get Pyongyang to stop making nuclear weapons was “at a deadlock due to the behavior of the US.” The US has not lifted sanctions “but insisted on its unreasonable demands” that Pyongyang declare all of its nuclear assets as agreed earlier.
The North also claims that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is “a conservative political charlatan” and a “traitor” who served the “fascist dictatorial regime” of the late president Park Chung-hee in the 1960s and 1970s and has been revealed as a “sycophant towards the US” and an advocate of confrontation with North Korea.
Japan has insisted that the US not remove North Korea from its list as a “sponsor of terrorism” because Pyongyang has not resolved the question of its abduction of Japanese citizens. Referring to Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945, Pyongyang said “Japan’s shamelessness and moral vulgarity” have been keenly felt by Koreans.
A spokesman for the North’s Foreign Ministry, commenting on a UN resolution criticizing the country for suppressing human rights, said the resolution was “the most vivid manifestation of the act of politicizing human rights, selectivity and double-standards” and served to tarnish “the image of the dignified DPRK.”
The North Koreans also swept the EU into a condemnation of the UN resolution, contending it was a “political plot hatched by the EU and Japan at the prodding of the US” and they would be “held fully accountable for all the unpredictable consequences.”
Taken together, those are not exactly words that come from a rational government willing to sit down to a serious negotiation, no matter who is president. To the contrary, they are the words of a bully who is frustrated because he does not understand who he is dealing with and cannot figure out why he cannot have his own way.
What to do? Three possibilities: Continue to muddle along, go to war or walk away.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who does most of the negotiating with the North, seem content to muddle along. They appear to be hoping against hope that Hill will hit on a magic formula that will persuade the North Koreans to bargain realistically.
In a war with North Korea, the US and South Korea would surely prevail; Operation Plan 5027 calls for driving speedily to capture Pyongyang. That would be possible because the North’s forces have been weakened by prolonged shortages, South Korean ground forces are well-trained and armed, and the US has sufficient air and sea power to dominate.
The trouble is, tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of people would die, including many South Koreans caught in the line of fire, before South Korea and the US had cracked the heavily-armed border (technically a demilitarized zone) that divides the peninsula and had defeated the North Koreans.
That leaves walking away, telling North Korea that there will be no peace treaty formally ending the Korean War, no diplomatic relations with the US, no lifting of economic sanctions and no trade. And any military move made against South Korean or US forces would be met with overwhelming retaliation.
If and when you are ready to negotiate in good faith, here’s a telephone number to call.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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