The "Great Game" on the Korean Peninsula

James R. Lilley

Asia Pacific Research Center

October, 1997

Today I'm going to talk about Korea in three parts, if you'll forgive my organizational push. But first I'm going to have a backgrounder, which is based largely on my conversations with and the writings of my respected colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, Nick Eberstadt, who is one of the most thoughtful people and original thinkers on North Korea. I've drawn a lot on what we've talked about. This first stage is calculated thoughts and deep background. Second stage, I'm going to try to talk about how one negotiates with North Korea, how to move North Korea, based on my talks with a man called Jimmy Lee, an American of Korean origin who spent thirty-five years on the Military Armistice Commission, dealing with North Korea. And with Spence Richardson, who was to be our first liaison chief in Pyongyang, but who recently resigned because it was taking so long. And finally, what's really my original contribution is the summary and recommendations. So, let's get on with it and talk first about the background.

Background

In world affairs today, the division of the Korean peninsula into two separate and irreconcilable political entities is taken as a basic fact of life, although the Koreans are a single, distinct people, and lived under a single government for more than a thousand years before the Allies' fateful August 1945 partition of their land. The continuing existence of two suddenly formed and mutually hostile states in this one nation has come to be an established feature of the international order that has emerged since World War II. The international security framework that has evolved in Korea since 1953 is predicated on an expectation that the division of the peninsula will continue. It may seem too obvious to require comment, but the long-standing U.S. policy of deterrence in Korea, the basis for our military commitment to the Seoul government, implicitly presumes that there will be a powerful and hostile North Korea, against which South Korea must be defended. Yet, whatever may be said in its favor, the two-state system in Korea to which the modern world has grown so accustomed will not last indefinitely. The permanent political partition of the Korean nation is quite simply an unsustainable proposition. What complicates this right now is the final failure of the North Korean state, and this is something that cannot be forestalled by external actors, even if they were so inclined. But the manner in which North Korea departs can be influenced. How North Korea departs world politics matters greatly, both within Korea and beyond. We are not talking about a soft landing, we are talking about the disappearance, hopefully with a whimper, of the DPRK. Korea reunification, however, is not foreordained to be a time of tragedy. To the contrary, with the proper preparations and a bit of luck, a free and largely peaceful reunification of the peninsula might also be consummated. The benefits from such a reunion could be enormous and wide-ranging, and would not accrue solely to Koreans.

As you know, North Korea's food problem, like its other major economic problems, is the direct consequence of particular policies that Pyongyang has carefully selected and relentlessly enforced. It is North Korean policy, after all, to assign top priority of all resource allocations to its huge and unproductive military machine. To siphon off state investment into expensive, showpiece projects of political, rather than economic, merit. To throttle the ideologically suspect consumer sector, to minimize the role of financial incentives in the workplace, to smother the transmission of price signals within and between domestic sectors, to divorce the local currency as much as possible from the actual process of economic exchange, to ignore the country's souring international credit standing, and to avoid any unnecessary contact with the world economy. No solid evidence of reform is there yet; little wonder that output is heading down. It is probably safe to say that the economic environment in the DPRK at this time is more severely and deliberately distorted than anywhere else on earth. Yet, despite the obvious benefits that could be grasped almost immediately by moderating its extremist regimen, the North Korean government has rejected the option of charting a new course. The reasoning behind this posture is straightforward, and has been spelled out by DPRK leadership for all those who care to listen. The regime is unwilling to unleash turbulent and unpredictable political forces that current arrangements still keep well under control. North Korean postmortems of the Soviet Union's demise blame a bacillus of bourgeoisie culture. The DPRK's current de facto ruler, Kim Jong Il, said, "One-step concessions and retreat from the socialist principles has resulted in ten- and a hundred-step concessions and retreat, and finally invited grave consequences of ruining the working class parties themselves." Although some acute observers of the Asian scene have speculated that North Korea might be able to evolve into a more open, but still essentially autocratic polity, indications are that the DPRK's own leadership is not at all sure that their hold on power could survive such a transition.

Under such circumstances, what can the North Korean leadership do to protect themselves and to rescue the system? Two radical measures are sometimes mentioned by outside observers who speculate about such things. One, a renunciation of the state's claim to rule Korea South, leading to a peace treaty with Seoul; a redirection of DPRK military resources; and significant foreign assistance. Two, a reconfiguration at the top in North Korea that thrusts the ruling Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il dynasty aside and implements its own version of de-Stalinization. Unfortunately for North Korea's elite, such seemingly bold and pragmatic steps would be at least as likely to shorten the life span of their state as to lengthen it. The claim to dominion over the entire Korean peninsula and to the mission of reunifying Korea, and we can see the recent submarine infiltration in that context, is the cornerstone upon which the legitimacy of the DPRK rule relies, perhaps even more heavily in these austere times than it has at junctures in the past. They have a justification for their own style of socialism. Socialism is science--chuche. In no other country has the identity between a state and its ruling family been so purposely fused. None of the policy alternatives before the North Koreans can look attractive to this DPRK leadership.

Yet there is one stratagem that may seem decidedly more promising than any other. That is to continue to augment their potential to inflict devastation on neighboring or more distant adversaries. The international community, they may correctly calculate, can be expected to take rather less interest in the survival of their state if the North Korean question were construed as a purely humanitarian problem than if it were framed as an issue in international arms control. To extend the life of their state by this reasoning--to enhance still further the strength of the DPRK's conventional forces and to upgrade progressively the threat posed by its weapons of mass destruction--is not only desirable, but essential. As best we can be told this is exactly what North Korean policymakers are attempting to do. They are having a continuing improvement in the quantity and quality of armaments at their disposal. A Defense Department policy paper of 1995 cites that North Korea continues to expend its national resources to mechanize its huge, offensively postured ground forces, expand its already massive artillery formations, and enhance the world's largest special operational forces. They have assembled an arsenal, including nerve gas, according to some reports, and they have the third largest inventory of these compounds. They are moving into the No Dong class of missiles, with an estimated range of 1,000 to 1,300 kilometers, and the Taepo Dong, which when perfected may have a range of 10,000 kilometers, according to some analysts. The North Koreans have continuously warned that they have the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, and the thousands of emplaced artillery tubes already capable of targeting Seoul provide what Pyongyang may view as its best long-term bet for securing support from abroad.

We have looked at this problem, and we have had varying approaches to it. Although President Bush declared in Seoul in 1992 that the day will inevitably come when Korea will be whole again, American policy does not anticipate that advent any time soon. To the contrary, Washington's agreed framework on the nuclear agreement with Pyongyang envisions a prolonged and expanding American engagement with the DPRK. The obligations outlined in the document are not to be fulfilled for years to come, not at least until the year 2003. If, in fact, you have a continuation of the North Korean regime, according to present estimates the circumstances will result in an absolute gap in per capita income between North and South, which will continue to widen. Every year that reunification is delayed, this gap will widen more. And as you know, if we want to look briefly at the German unification model, even today in Germany most of the payments made from West Germany to East Germany are not for investment but for social welfare. This would be at least triple that problem in North Korea. And I think that we also have to realize that if the United States disengages from North Korea, even on the friendliest terms, Korea will have to pay a commensurably higher risk premium for any capital it does manage to attract. And its ability to attract international capital will almost surely be compromised. Simply put, strong security ties with the United States are essential if the project of Korean reunification is to pay off.

Negotiating with North Korea

Let's move into looking at the North Koreans and seeing what lessons we've learned from negotiating with them. In the first place, we've been negotiating with them since 1951. We have freight cars loaded with documents, pulling out everything these people have said. There has been negotiation after negotiation on a whole series of issues with the North Koreans. And there are certain factors that emerge as consistent patterns. Number one, their objective is always to drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea. It's been there from the beginning. It's there today. Second, it's to get American forces out of South Korea. It was there in the beginning, it's there today, and it's there tomorrow. And finally, it's to downgrade and humiliate the role of South Korea. That's been a permanent part of their tactics in dealing with us. It is important that you recognize what they're up to, and it's rather transparent (and I was engaged in this process when we had our first talks with them in New York in January 1992). We have reviewed the entire record of the negotiations with North Korea on a whole series of incidents. The Blue House attack in '68, the Pueblo incident, the Rangoon assassination, KA-858, all incidents that we've dealt with the North Koreans through our system. And what I've done is to take three instances where we've dealt with North Korea, and try to give you what happened when we acted in a certain way.

First, the situation off the DMZ in the Western Sea off South Korea. In the Armistice Agreement, there was no water boundary defined, but the islands were put under United Nations control. North Korea immediately insisted that the waterways were under their control, and that we had to get permission from them to resupply the islands in that area. The United States refused to ask permission to transit the waters, sent gunboats through, the North backed down. It's still a vulnerable situation, but I picked it out as a clear case where you have a vague situation, they stake out a position, you challenge it, they back down.

Second, in 1976, the North Koreans ax-murdered two Americans in the joint security area. The U.S. then sent in a team to finish cutting down that tree. General Stillwell ordered B-52 bombers to overfly the DMZ, and to give the North Koreans the clear impression that we were willing to go to the mat on this one. Fighter aircraft were sent from Japan, U.S. forces were put on an increased def con. North Korea was well aware of the strength of our combined forces, was afraid that we might go even farther, and called for a meeting immediately. Kim Il Sung sent a personal message to General Stillwell, requesting a private session. He said the ax-murders were unfortunate, and retreated from the southern portions of the joint security area, and they have not come back.

Number three. We flew reconnaissance planes over North Korea; they were called the SR-71, the Blackbird. In August 1981, they fired a missile at the Blackbird. We gave them a sharp warning--don't do that again. We said, if you take action, we will go to the root. That was seen as a threat to knock out their missile sites. North Korea did not try to shoot down reconnaissance planes again.

What does this tell us about North Korea? In the Pueblo case, we had to make compromises in terms of apologies. In the helicopter incidents--the one that took place in 1977 and the one that took place most recently in 1995--how did they negotiate? It was quite different. In 1977, when we dealt with it through the Military Armistice Commission, our helicopter pilots were out in a matter of two or three days. In 1995, when we dealt through the State Department, it took seventeen days. It was clear in the 1977 issue that Kim Il Sung felt that if he managed the United States well on this particular incident, it would perhaps accelerate President Carter's troop withdrawal plans. In 1995, it was quite clear that once they had engaged the State Department in direct negotiations on a matter on the DMZ without the South Koreans present, it was a desirable circumstance and they stretched it out as long as they could.

There are certain aspects of the North Korean negotiating style which we should note. First of all, they are opaque. It's hard to figure out sometimes what their objectives are. The North Koreans always seem to assume, as the Chinese do, what we call the "victim status." It's your fault, we're the victim of your aggression. They are always classifying themselves as the underdog. The accusations come that we are trying to strangle them. This in turn causes you to try to convince them by actions and words that this is not what you're trying to do; namely, they get concessions. They attempt to exclude certain areas from negotiations. It's always exactly what you want to bring to the table which they take off the table. What am I talking about?

We met them first in January 1992 in New York in the delegation that was headed by Kim Young Sun, who is their number seven man. Our leader was the number three man at State, Undersecretary Arnold Kanter. When we talked to them it became quite clear that what they wanted was a continuation of these political talks. This time they were quite transparent. They telegraphed their punches, because they did not have much time. We said to them that there were conditions for continuing these talks; namely, full challenge inspections of their nuclear facilities and a full resumption of North-South dialogue. When the new team came in to talk to them in 1993, the North Koreans said there are two issues which we will refuse to discuss, and if you put them on the table, we cannot make progress: (A) North-South dialogue, and (B) full challenge inspections, because these go after the nuclear waste areas which we consider military and therefore off the reservation. That's what I mean by building a fence around areas and then taking them off the table. We can talk about everything but what you want. It fences you off, and any concessions have to be major ones to get progress.

They use drama and catastrophe. They threaten, demand, scold, take umbrage, walk out. Certainly Admiral C. Turner Joy, who was our first negotiator, was subjected to this in spades. He had to advise the U.S. to watch the North Korean propaganda motive. They select the sites and the venue very carefully to load it up in their favor. They try to set the agenda for the talks. They take the initiative, we react. They try to manage the press and public affairs, as their Chinese friends do--many of these techniques are common to the Chinese. They do not expect honesty, and we should not expect either honesty or compliance. It's very important that when you deal with them, you have clear, limited, and well-defined objectives, as well as patience. The agenda is very important. They try to put theirs up front. We have to seize that agenda away from them. It doesn't work to let them set the agenda, because you're left trying to react to what they give you. They always try, as the Chinese do, to get what you call an "agreement in principle." Get control of the principles. In the Chinese case, if you want to normalize with us, you must break the security treaty, withdraw all your troops from Taiwan, and break diplomatic relations. One, two, three. These are the principles on which we will negotiate normalization. In the North Korean case, we will negotiate with you if you do not bring up North-South dialogue and if you do not raise challenge inspections.

In most instances, the North Koreans are rational in pursuing their interests, and diligent about what they do. There's always been a difference between how the North negotiates with the U.S. and how it negotiates with the South. The North is threatened by negotiations with the South, fears loss of advantage and face, but sees opportunities from the United States. They see the likelihood of increased stature and perhaps survival with us. It doesn't exist in South Korea. There has been a valuable adjunct of our relationship in dealing with the North, namely the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission. They have now terminated that because we put a South Korean general in charge of it. I think, again, by the same token, liaison offices in Pyongyang and Washington would be useful to make our points; not to give them something they want, but to make our points in a given crisis situation. But one of the essential things, and it comes through in dealing with North Korea, is you have to have a clear message. It is probably the most important factor in negotiating with the North Koreans. This has, however, evolved somewhat since 1990. Certainly since 1990, ideology is not as important on their side. They have no leverage from their Leninist allies. The death of Kim Il Sung certainly caused them a major loss of legitimacy. Their period of mourning, as you know, has been adjusted to deal with the lack of appearance of Kim Jong Il--is it two years, is it one year, is it three years? Who knows?

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and East Germany and the death of Kim Il Sung, North Korea certainly has found itself with less bargaining power. There is this possibility, out of desperation, that the North might seek to provoke opportunities for attack. They are constrained, however, because they must be careful about inviting a large-scale retaliation. And certainly in the past when this has come up, they've backed away from it. The Pentagon has said that the North Korean situation is the most important security problem in Asia, if not the world. It is the number one threat to regional Asia stability, much larger than the Taiwan Strait, Senkaku Islands, South China Sea, even the India and Pakistan confrontation. The Pentagon feels it is important for the United States to get on the same track with the Republic of Korea again. This has diverged, as you know. This cannot be solved with words. It needs to be solved with actions. One of the things that has upset our friends in South Korea was moral equivalence statements made after the submarine infiltration. We encouraged both sides not to become rash. And this was repeated twice. The South Koreans felt this was insulting and insensitive to their position. Similarly, they felt that when we negotiated the Korean agreed framework, and they were given the bill for $3 or $4 billion, they felt they were not properly consulted. Yes, they were briefed, but they were not consulted on the process. This was resented. A number of other things came up which have caused them concern about what the Americans are doing. A lot of this goes back into history a long way, but still I think there are areas of tension, and right now it's been heightened.

Summary and Recommendations

Let me just spend a little time, finally, on what I think can be done to deal with this situation. I've tried to talk to you about the background, and what I see on negotiating with North Korea. Taking this altogether, what can be done to solve this situation? I will simplify for the sake of the presentation a most complicated situation.

Number one, before you do anything else, you have to establish a credible deterrence. You have to make it clear that there is only a no-force option on the Korean peninsula. Force has to be take off the table as an option. Even if it takes massive retaliation, spelling out the destruction of the infrastructure of North Korea by cruise missiles (conventional). It seems to me that you have to make this clear, that we are not going to fight another Korean war, that whatever happens will bring the destruction of North Korea. President Clinton, in 1993, made a statement in reference to nuclear weapons that if they proceeded on the program and ever used these, their country would not exist as they know it. (I'm paraphrasing.) In 1994, Secretary Perry said, if they ever attack, they will be decisively and rapidly defeated. Now, that sounds definitive. It's not definitive enough. We have to make an authoritative but quiet statement that there is a no-force option. It's important to establish this, because it reduces the irrational factor. North Korean military leaders, in our experience, are cunning and calculating, despite the blind bravery of the submariners. If they are given the order to attack South Korea, you would have increased their chances of not following that order if the devastating consequences were quite clear to them. If they see their homeland destroyed, if they see their buildings, their Juche Tower, the Nampo Dam, whatever it is, I think they would be less inclined to attack. So it's very important that we do this. The Soviet archives now give us a very interesting slant on the negotiating process in 1951Š53, when Admiral Joy was negotiating with the North Koreans and Chinese for a cease-fire and an armistice. It became quite clear that by 1952, with the devastating losses that the Chinese had taken, and the North Koreans almost completely destroyed after the Inchon landing, that the North Koreans and Chinese were anxious to cut a deal. The man who kept them fighting was Joseph Stalin, who thought it was important for his worldwide plans to have the Americans kept bleeding in Korea and diverted from Europe. And it wasn't until Stalin died in March of 1953 that we began to see movement in the Korean armistice talks.

My point is that the North Koreans understand force, and when the young guide took me to the top of the Juche Tower in January 1995, and showed me the city of Pyongyang and all of its magnificence, and she said, "Did you know that the Americans dropped 400,000 tons of bombs on this place from 1951 to 1953?" And I guess I was supposed to apologize, but I said, "I flew in the plastic nose of a B-26 from Seoul to Pusan in 1952, and I saw the absolute devastation in South Korea. There were no trees, the villages were smashed, Seoul was gone, there was a terrible devastation in the South." The conversation ended. To reiterate, get the force option off the table. The North Koreans with their "sea of fire" and their threats have used this very effectively to get concessions out of us. That game should now be over.

Number two. When you start dealing with the negative aspects of deterrence, it seems to me you have to go beyond deterrence to the positive aspects, and you have to get back to agreements that the North Koreans have made in the past. We want confidence-building measures. We want them as they were spelled out in the two communiquˇs signed between North Korea and South Korea in 1991 and 1992. Mutual inspection, hotlines, a common power grid, notification of exercises, and drawdown at the troop levels with verification. Most of these were agreed to by the North, and even in the Pyongyang Times today there's a piece calling for the reduction of forces down to 100,000 on each side. They've said this for a long time. Of course, there's no verification in their proposal. But the fact is, when you get them to start echoing this, you begin to see opportunities, and we're beginning to hear this theme pop up again and again in their publications.

Number three. You have to get four-party talks going. And it's interesting, in some of the most recent North Korean statements they are claiming that we're backing off on the four-party talks. That's interesting, because they are the ones that have been the dog in the manger on this one. The Chinese have become more positive towards this. The Chinese have always pushed for North-South dialogue. It seems to me that the four-part talks must be pushed, and these must be pushed with a clear idea that they are leading to a full, constructive two-part North-South dialogue. Constructive and contentious, we know that. It's not going to be easy, there's going to be backing and filling and walkouts and all that, but we've got to get that going again. When I was in Pyongyang in January 1995, Kim Young Sun said to me, "You know these bureaucrats really get in our way. When I took my South Korean counterpart into the back room we talked as Koreans, and we got things done. We got that meeting with Kim Il Sung done." I think the South has quite a different version of that particular event. But in any case, what the North Koreans choose to say and choose to emphasize is rather important because it gives a hint of the direction in which they might move.

Number four. The implementation of the Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization. We stick with that. We've signed onto it. We're therefore committed. Quite frankly, it was not very skillfully negotiated, but many agreements aren't. But it's on the record and we've got to carry through on it. But we should never relent on full challenge inspections. We have to put them on the defensive. This was part of the agreement from the beginning. We shoved it aside in the agreed framework, and we kicked it down the road. But, nevertheless, I wouldn't ever let a meeting go by when I wouldn't say to them that there is still the suspicion that you have concealed nuclear weapons. The waste sites have never been seen. We know they exist. You really have to open up if we're ever going to have confidence in you. I think you just keep hammering on this. Liaison offices, they said--that's all right. I was in the first liaison office in China. We didn't sell our soul to put that liaison office in there. We didn't give in to the Chinese. We got a great deal out of it. You have to be careful that you don't mislead them as to the reason you're doing it. We've had some very bitter experiences in ambiguous signals to the North Koreans and how they've reacted. I'm sure you've heard again and again Dean Acheson's statement of January 1950 to the National Press Club about drawing the line south of the Korean peninsula. Kim Il Sung, according to Russian archives, took this to heart, decided, and told Stalin, "We can take South Korea in three weeks and the Americans won't intervene." He was wrong. Four million Koreans died, 55,000 Americans, half a million Chinese. We can't afford ambiguous signals to them. It's important to be straight.

A unilateral move, as President Carter wanted to do in seeking peace in 1976Š77, believing the best of humanity, and deciding that cutting the American troop levels in South Korea would bring about a response from the North, caused the opposite. The director of Central Intelligence delivered the message to President Carter just before he left government in 1978 that the combined intelligence estimates were that the North Koreans had increased their troop strength by 150,000 as we considered withdrawing. It was the wrong signal.

So in implementation of KEDO, be careful about your signals. The liaison office doesn't really give much away. We also ought to lift commercial restrictions that are imposed on them. We want to help American business. North Korea is in a terrible mess economically. Some of the horror stories of them coming over and trying to sell magnesite to us, and the convoluted arrangements that we make, are not reassuring. And the bitter arguments they have among themselves about whether they should deliver on magnesite, because the politicals say--promise it. The technical people say--you can't do it. We don't have the equipment. We don't have the roads. We've promised it to the Indians. It's then a fight. The political people won, but we never got as much magnesite as we ordered.

And, finally, I think it's important that we tackle the problem of North Korea's economic reform. We cannot really influence their political system. It's George Orwell, it's Nuremberg 1936, it's the cult of personality of the cultural revolution in China, and it's partially a Midwestern marching band. It's a mix of strange slogans, right out of 1984: freedom is slavery, love is hate. It's a different world, it's their political world, and I suppose we've got to let them have it. What we have to work on is the economic part. We take the military option off the table. We let them have their own sick, obnoxious political system, and we get to work on the economics of it. There you focus right on agriculture. And the people that know agriculture and can make it move from collectivization to the individual responsibility system is their close neighbor--the Chinese. They did it 1978; they had a successful harvest in 1984, in fact, the largest harvest in history. The North Koreans have problems of deforestation, chemical fertilizer, poor irrigation, very poor damming systems. They are farming marginal lands up the hills without taking care of erosion, and they're living with the consequences now. I'm sure the Chinese could give them good advice on this. This is the key. It's not going to happen tomorrow. The Chinese will tell you that North Koreans pay no attention to them. You don't just throw food down the black hole of North Korea, or let them build these obscene mausoleums to Kim Il Sung with $100 million. You try to build basic reforms.

In the industrial field, you've got to begin to make inroads. A good place to start is textiles. Textiles is where the developing countries have climbed up the ladder from import substitution to export promotion to technology intensive. The North Koreans have a textile industry. They even export textiles to Japan. The Russians helped them build it. The Russians, bad as they are, are willing to come back and help them again. Daewoo has a small plant in the Nampo area, outside of Rajin Sonbong. Some South Koreans are even going beyond textiles. It seems to me that this is an area where the North Koreans can naturally contribute--cheap labor, workforce, facilities, and they've got the machinery--they have to be modernized, and move up scale. Textiles now, Reebok, Nike shoes in five years. It's also important that the Japanese come into this in a major way. What the Japanese government and the Japanese business community can now begin to focus on is the potentialities of mutually beneficial economic cooperation in a united Korea, not on the problems that must be avoided or resolved if such cooperation is going to bear fruit. The Japanese business and financial community may also be well placed to participate in the major infrastructural development projects that could draw together the economies of North Korea, China, and Russia. The power grid between North and South, the developing of the roads are crucial.

There are ways that you can get things done in North Korea. We're going through a fairly difficult period right now. We've gone through difficult periods in the past. We're beginning to see some signs that they're working themselves into some sort of a different posture. Certainly, Kim Il Sung, for the first time in 1993, recognized that they were an economic failure. He gave priority to trade, light industry, and agriculture as the areas they should focus on--for three years, of course. But, that could become part of the permanent change in North Korea. There are people--Kim Dal Yon--who seemed to understand. He was prominent in our negotiations early on. He came into Seoul, he saw what was happening. Unfortunately, right now, he seems to be in the boondocks, but he's still alive. Some other people have suffered a more grim fate for their miscalculations. It is very dangerous--we have 37,000 American troops, they have these missiles, they have the capability to cause horrible damage. Yet we know that in the economic field, that the light must be breaking through. The Chinese say, we say, you focus on the things that you can get done, and you try to set aside some of your differences.

Questions and Answers

My first question is regarding U.S. troop withdrawal. During the 1992 high-level talks between North Korea and the United States, Kim Il Sung was reported to say that U.S. troops must not withdraw from the Korean peninsula because the U.S. and Korea have to prepare for some kind of possible threat from Japan. That comment flabbergasted the U.S. representative, so I'm wondering if it's true or not. And my second question is, you said North Korea's negotiating style is a well-calculated strategy. If so, how can you explain North Korea's action in April of this year, when we held a general election in South Korea? North Korea took some kind of offensive measure along the DMZ, which helped South Korea's ruling party lead in the parliamentary election. So how can we explain that kind of action? And my third question is about the current situation between North Korea and South Korea. I fully agree with your proposal of how to make the Korean peninsula more stable and peaceful. But the current situation is getting worse, and serious. What is your personal opinion of South Korea's initiative? You are reported to say that even if South Korea is fully mature, it will be difficult for it to achieve reunification of the Korean peninsula because of the China and Japan factor. But I don't think China and Japan are very supportive of reunification, so I'd like your opinion about China and Japan's direction regarding this.

Kim Young Sun says a lot of things. It has been the policy line of the North Koreans to get the American troops out of South Korea. I don't think anything that Kim Young Sun says will change that. He may use it for tactical purposes. He certainly, in my conversations with him, is always trying to stick it to the Japanese and make common cause with us. He could very easily make some breezy comment like this. This doesn't commit anybody to anything. But that they are firmly committed to the American troops leaving--that is true. Given that statement, there are North Koreans who feel that, as their situation deteriorates, the American troops in South Korea do form a holding action on South Korea, and they take advantage of that. I mean, their minds go in very peculiar ways, and they always see Team Spirit, Foal Eagle, as offensive operations--which they are not. They see it that way, and I think they believe it. I got a call from Ho Jung, after we resumed Team Spirit, and he was obviously reading from a paper for fifteen minutes on the phone, and it was all about we have to go to general mobilization, and we have to be prepared for war, and on and on he went. It strikes me that you have to sort out what games they're playing at the particular moment, and what they're trying to achieve politically. If they're buttering up an American, and they want to give him a sense that they aren't as hard-line on troop withdrawal, it's perfectly within the line that he would say that. He may have said that to one of our party, and I just didn't hear it. I just wouldn't take it very seriously, because their policy is to get us out of there. The Chinese fired missiles at Taiwan during its election in April, and Lee's vote went up probably 5 percent. It had the exact opposite reaction, but it did curb Taiwan independence. I'm sure you know this, but their policy is to carry out the unification of Korea by whatever means they can. And I think the submarine intrusion falls right into that category. Actions on the DMZ, they've always tried those. They've tried to make the South Koreans nervous. They've always tried to have their presence known. But when they really use it, you get the Yonsei riots. Now that was an operation; that was something designed to cause real disorder in the South. Again, it backfired. I'm not saying their tactics will always succeed, but there's a cunning in what they do. And they were able to force the South Koreans to take pretty strong action against the students. They were hoping that this would cause a reaction such as happened in June of 1987, that the people would join the students--because the military would overplay its hand, or the police would. That didn't happen. But I think their calculations were that it would happen. The North stresses that the South has no role to play on the DMZ. We will only deal with the Americans, because the South is the puppet of the Americans. If we intrude on the DMZ, it's not your business. We'll talk to the Americans on the problem. And they could have forced the Americans to do that--they did in the helicopter incident. And there was a strong feeling among certain Americans in the U.S. government that we deal with them directly. And they came fairly close to succeeding. Luckily, wiser heads prevailed, and we pulled back. Japan and China on Korean reunification--they probably don't want it in the short term. It doesn't make sense to China. That's what they fought the Korean War about. They do not want a unified Korea, under Seoul, allied to the United States. This is territory on the borders of China which is essential to its security. The same was true in Vietnam. They could not tolerate a unified Vietnam under Saigon, allied to the United States. They cannot accept a Tibet backed by India. They cannot accept Taiwan with a defense treaty with the United States. They see as a challenge a unified Korea on the borders of Manchuria, which is one of their most troubled areas, where unemployment is probably up around 20 percent, struggling with these dinosaur state-owned enterprises. And sixty-four million tough Koreans looking right down their throat, with maybe two million more in Manchuria, in the Yenbien area, makes the Chinese uncomfortable. It's better to have a despotic, socialist buffer zone for an indefinite period, until you negotiate enough leverage in South Korea that you can offset the American influence. Then you will see the Chinese perhaps moving more positively to unification. They've said clearly, in a number of meetings that I've been at, and they've said it publicly recently: North Korea will not collapse. Japan for its part can support infrastructure projects, where they bring their huge financial and engineering and manufacturing talent into this and gradually move towards, let's say, not a soft landing, but the disappearance of North Korea into a single Korea over time.

What is South Korea's role in reunification?

Their role is the major role. I mean, there was much more progress made between North and South Korea between 1991 and 1992, when South Korea took the leading role. And America deliberately put itself in the supporting role. And that's when you saw the breakthroughs. And yes, we gave advice to our South Korean friends. We certainly pushed for abolishing reprocessing, to be put in the denuclearization agreements, and both sides eventually agreed to that. I think that was positive. But the people who took the lead on it were the others in the South Korean government. And I think it's important to reestablish that as soon as possible.

As you mentioned, close cooperation between the ROK and the U.S. is a key element in preventing North Korea from making any miscalculation. However, it is reported that there is discord and misunderstanding between the two surrounding food aid policy to North Korea. Since North Korea is such an unpredictable regime, it is feared that the U.S. contacts with the North might give the wrong signal to them. So, I presume that the ROK-U.S. consultation mechanism should be further strengthened. In this regard, could you give some recommendations for a desirable relationship between the ROK and the United States? During your tenure of office in Seoul, what were the main stumbling blocks to deepening the bilateral friendship?

People I've talked with on the policy side of defense certainly understand that problem. And one of them told me, and he's in an influential position in defense, that getting the South Korean relationship back on track is the first order of business of the new Clinton administration. We've let it slide. It was quite an admission on his part, because a lot of people are defensive about this. They say things have never been better. I don't know what you're talking about. Why are you trying to make trouble by raising these things? But when they talk frankly with you, they say--yes, things have gone bad, and it's very important that we turn this around. One of the problems is that you do change foreign ministers a lot. There were three while I was there, and four defense ministers. Not that this changes your policy. I've liked every South Korean foreign minister I've dealt with, but it does cause a certain gap. I mean, certainly we had gotten to know Chie Kwang Soo very well, and we felt that we really were on the same wavelength. And then one day he wasn't there. And the next man came in, a very effective man, but it takes time, it takes months to build up the kind of trust and importance. I think Ambassador Laney's done a lot of good work on this. He's worked very hard on it. I won't speak for the Koreans, but they seem to have a good impression of him. And certainly, we've had a good impression of your ambassadors in the United States. They've changed quite frequently again, but when I think of the highest caliber people you sent there, like Kim Kyung-wan and Park Gun-woo, people like this, we really saw that we could talk to somebody who understood what we were saying and reflected it accurately back to Seoul. I think another confusing thing in the Korean situation is built into the American side, because you do have a unique situation, which really doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. You have a commander in chief and an ambassador. And the commander in chief with direct lines to the defense department through the secretary of defense to the president. And some people say it's creative tension. Maybe that's so. I find it also often troublesome. During the Kwang-ju riots in the Chun Doo-huan suppression, there were some mixed signals being given from the American side. And this confused Koreans. I would be in favor of unifying the American side in Korea as soon as we can. It's hard for us to do, believe me. We have built-in bureaucratic institutions of our own, which are sometimes unshakable. I remember when I tried to move the golf course from downtown Seoul out to, what was it--Sung Hon? That took three and a half years, plus the intervention of the president of the United States. I have the greatest respect for our military. They're great people, but they have their own institutions, their loyalties. And have somewhat of a different approach sometimes.

When the original ruler of North Korea died, his son took over. If he were to pass on, by fair means or foul, would there be conflict over a successor? Would they choose someone of a more moderate nature? Second, if you would please discuss the whole reactor situation, wherein South Korea is to supply a pressurized water reactor, or maybe it's two of them. Although the fuel can be reprocessed, I know there is plutonium in this fuel; presumably we will feel that it will be a safer and gentler world.

Churchill once described the Soviet Union as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." It looks to us like North Korea is going through a crisis of confidence. The cult of personality for Kim Il Sung is stronger than ever. This is calculated, because obviously there are many indications that North Koreans know that Kim Jong Il, for all the old man's faults, is no Kim Il Sung, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen. It's important at this stage that Kim Jong Il be there for the legitimacy of the regime. There's no other legitimacy, except naked power. This comes from the God King, and it's given to the anointed heir apparent. And if you go with the God King concept, which most of them do as they don't know anything else--if he says junior is the new dear leader, and then becomes the new great leader, so be it. And it's important to the guys that are actually running Korea that junior have this air of legitimacy from the God King to him, so he's useful to them at this point.

You start counting the mourning period when the old man dies, that's the first year. The second year is in 1995, and the third year is in 1996, and that's three years of mourning. And the Chinese went to them and said--you told us in 1995 that mourning would end in 1996, in the third year. It's now '96 and a half. What happened? Well, the North Koreans said, we changed our mind. This is filial piety, this is the deep feelings of the son for the father. You gave us the concept of filial piety, we're merely practicing what you preach. And if this young son is so carried away by the love of his father that he can't come out, then so be it. The other factor may be that he might fall on the floor and start scratching under his arms. I mean, I think that there's a real problem in programming him to appear on the world stage if he becomes their leader. And certainly we get all these cameo performances in their papers and television all the time. Where everything is very carefully structured about his appearances. And the few people that have met him, at least the ones that I've talked to, say there's a problem--the eye movements, the body movements, the very quick mind that has sort of an erratic quality that is rather unnerving. This is Russians who have met him, Italians who have met him, Koreans who have met him, and of course the famous movie couple wrote a great deal about him. And it's unnerving.

It seems to me that once they get through the mourning period Kim Jong Il has to get his legitimacy by delivering. The old man didn't have to deliver; Jong Il does. And if you have this terrible situation, where the economy is collapsing and people aren't getting enough to eat, he's got to get them out of it. And he's somehow got to become a beacon to rally the people to pull them out of what they're in. But it seems that once they're able to make the hard decisions it's still very hard for them, because it's sort of a zero-sum, Catch-22. If you want to survive, you've got to reform. If you reform, you aren't going to survive. What are you going to do in this case? You're going to muddle through and you're going to try to take Rajin Sonbong, 700 square kilometers, and build a high-wire fence around it and have people come in and develop it. This is not a special economic zone like they have in China? Now they are trying to, as the Chinese say, cross the river by feeling the stones. They're beginning to try to work themselves out in an erratic way, to get themselves out of this gridlock that they're in. And he's critical to them at this point. He's probably more important to them behind the scenes. Because if they surface him, it's high-risk stuff. And they may, by next year, reprogram him. I don't know, put a chip in his head or whatever they do that programs people to get somebody out, or perhaps get a double, or do whatever it is to make this thing salable. But right now, I don't think they have something they can put together to make it work.

The reactors--light water reactors produce less plutonium (or the high energy fuel) than the graphite reactors. I think this is fairly well established. It does undercut our whole counterproliferation regime, though. It puts us in a difficult position, to try and stop the sales to Iran, for instance. We've kicked it down the road and this is going to haunt us. It's not going to go away. You're hooked into this 500,000 tons of oil, and they're spending their hundreds of millions of dollars on hotels with elevators that don't work and stadiums that nobody goes to see, or roads that go nowhere, for victories in a Korean War, which they lost. And all these things go on and on. And the remittances from Japan--my friend, Nick Eberstadt, thinks it's less, but the general assumption is it's around $500 million a year. If they took that, it would pretty much take care of their food problem. So, we're reacting to them. I do not go along with the idea of humanitarian aid without conditions. I took this position in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and there were about five witnesses, and most of them were against me. But, unfortunately for them, it was the day after the submarine went in. And the argument was won, not because I was so persuasive, but because the North Koreans got caught. And there was less inclination to do it. The nuclear problem, the light water reactors, the money that goes into this, is not a good deal. But I don't think we have any choice but to pursue it. The best operation we have, by the way, is Steve Bosworth and company on KEDO. They are competent people, and Steve has done a good job under very difficult circumstances.

In the discussions regarding the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, no one seems awfully concerned about the fact that North Korea is hardly mentioned, and the State Department actually declared that North Korea was a non-issue with regard to the Test Ban Treaty. Given that the international monitoring system that they suggested can hardly detect all forms of nuclear testing and that North Korea is still capable of maybe developing weapons in the future, and considering, as you said before, that North Korea is the greatest threat to regional security in Asia, how can the State Department take that stance?

There are lots of good people who think that you get things done by being nice to other people. I think President Carter is of this persuasion. And if you look at his track record, he's done some pretty good things; and also, I think, some fairly dangerous things. Certainly, he was instrumental in defusing the situation in Haiti. He had a certain role in North Korea, which infuriated the White House, but which nevertheless may have contributed to Kim Il Sung's death--I don't know. But there's a feeling, among certain circles in the United States and in the government, that North Korea is through. That we're never going to have to carry out this agreement, because they're going to be gone. And therefore, we can make these allowances for North Korea because they're finished. Since they are so proud and difficult, why antagonize them with a kind of gratuitous insult, since Kim Il Sung said we have no nuclear weapons. Are you calling the great leader a liar? So, the easiest thing to do is to sort of push North Korea aside, and say it's a non-issue. And get on with the serious issues of what Iran is doing or what Pakistan is doing, or what is happening in the former Soviet Union, who's smuggling the stuff out to Libya. These kinds of things we've got to focus on.

And it's important to stress that the agreed framework was a major foreign policy success, and it works, and there's a bit of that in there too. And if people run around saying well, they may blow off a bomb or they may do something, then the agreement framework didn't work. So there's probably a complex of reasons why these things are said. Again, we get into the sort of contradictions in what we do--because, as I pointed out, Nick Eberstadt, my colleague at AEI, thinks that what we're doing is prolonging the life of the North Korean regime by the agreed framework. They've made it quite clear that they have violated the basic rules of civilization and that a better arrangement is for them to join their brothers in the South, in a minority role of some kind, and then they will rejoin the world and their country will be developed, as it was before they took over. When North Korea established a Stalinist regime in 1945 under Kim Il Sung, who as you know was put in by the Russians, after the Korean War to about the mid-1960s they were doing pretty well. They were outstripping South Korea in many different areas. They almost got South Korea in 1950 at the Naktong River. And it's infuriating and frustrating for them to have this happen, and what can they do? What's left to them? Almost nothing but military means. And if the West seems at all gullible, or anxious for a victory, or careless in its interpretation of events, then take advantage of it. And then keep doing what we have to do to survive and to carry out our sacred mission of liberating South Korea. I think that's part of it.