Gregory Treverton:            

The batting order is going to be Norman Levin first.  Norman will talk about the external drivers, one in particular – the future of the Korean Peninsula.  Then we’ll turn to Prof. Lee who will talk about the global backdrop in both North and South and finally we’ll turn to Michael Parks — we’re always trying to take the “s” out of Michael’s last name and pass him off as Korean during the course of this task force but he will give you the benefit of his seasoned journalist nose about what this crisis looks like, how it fits in a broader historical and global background. 

Norman Levin:

Thank you.  First, I want to say what a pleasure it is to be here and have this opportunity to share some thoughts and some views with you and I look forward to the discussion period afterwards.  As Greg mentioned, my assignment is to say something about the global and regional environments and their impact on the current situation on the Korean peninsula.  This was not a topic that the task force addressed in any detail.  Although the final report did briefly note how Korea just happens to live in a pretty tough neighborhood, and it certainly emphasized the importance of U.S. policy in shaping future events.  The task force intentionally steered clear of regional and global trends in an effort, as Greg described, to focus on the internal drivers of change inside Korea itself.  But there no question, of course, that developments outside of Korea, and there have been many, have also had a significant impact on the course of events.  So what I thought I’d do in the 8-10 minutes that I’ve been allotted is to say a few words about one of these developments, namely the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.  Although this happened well over a decade ago, its impact continues to reverberate throughout Korea and helps account for much of what we’re seeing today.

I should say at the outset that that impact is not exactly self-evident.  That is to say that the demise of the Soviet Union, for example, did not precipitate the collapse of North Korea as it did the communist states of Eastern Europe nor did it bring about Korean unification as it did in the case of Germany.  Nor did the end of the Cold War end the physical division of the Korean peninsula, or replace the tenuous armistice arrangements with a durable peace agreement.  But these events did have a profound effect beneath the surface by accelerating the fundamental shift in the balance of power in South Korea’s favor.  The consequences of this shift were particularly acute in North Korea.  The Soviet political, economic and, especially, military support spurred a major North Korean effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction as a means of countering South Korea’s growing conventional strength and ensuring its own survival.  It also stimulated North Korean efforts to develop the long-range missiles that are necessary to deliver these weapons of mass destruction partly to deter potential U.S. military action and partly to increase North Korea’s declining leverage in both inter-Korean and international negotiations. 

Things have gone from bad to worse.   North Korea has maintained its on-again-off-again dialogue with South Korea and has adopted several measures that were designed to improve its disastrous economy, on raising wages and cutting state subsidiaries to failed enterprises.  It has also accelerated, and broadened, expanded its weapons of mass destruction efforts.  These include both secret uranium enrichment programs, which North Korea apparently began a number of years ago in violation of multiple solemn international commitments, and its more recent decisions to unseal its so-called frozen nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.   

Meanwhile, the fledgling steps that it took, mostly over last spring and summer, to improve its economy have had an absolutely disastrous economic effect, with runaway inflation and production shortages seriously exacerbating the country’s economic crisis.

Whether all of this increases North Korea’s willingness to trade its nuclear programs for some appropriate combination of security assurances and economic assistance or, conversely, whether it heightens its determination to hang onto these weapons precisely to ensure that it doesn’t become another Afghanistan or Iraq is a matter of widespread debate and speculation.  I must say that with each successive step that the North Koreans have taken in recent weeks it’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe that it will ever voluntarily give up these capabilities.

The shift in the balance of power that was accelerated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Cold War continues to have a huge effect inside North Korea.  It also serves as an important driver of events within South Korea by altering the view that many South Koreans have of the North and by sharply reducing public perceptions.  This development was reinforced, of course, by the economic free fall in North Korea [and partly caused by the] cut off of Soviet financial, energy, and other forms of economic assistance.  Actually, the North Korean military capabilities continued to increase over the last decade, as measured not just by North Korea’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs but also by quantitative increases in North Korea’s conventional forces and further forward deployment close to the demilitarized zone.

South Korea’s escalating preeminence in its competition with North Korea helped shift public attitudes and public feelings towards the North from fear to something between sympathy and pity.  Kim Dae Jung’s Sunshine Policy reinforces this development, at least indirectly, by actively encouraging South Koreans to think of North Korea and its people not as enemies seeking to conquer but rather as brothers and sisters needing South Korean help.  One result of that is a domestic political climate in South Korea today, particularly among the younger generations, that the group that has risen to power in South Korea recently is increasingly intolerant of anti-North Korean actions or even of public criticism of Kim Jung Il and North Korean policies.  Not surprisingly, particularly in the context of 9/11 and the U.S. global war on terrorism, these developments turned what was already a significant gap in the way the U.S. and South Korea viewed North Korea into a major chasm that is increasingly difficult to paper over.  They’ve also helped shift the image of the U.S. in certain South Korean circles from a protector of South Korean security to a potential impediment to inter-Korean reconciliation.  In addition, the general rise in importance of nationalism in South Korea, which itself actually derives, in part at least, from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the overwhelming success of South Korea in its competition with the North, complicates these trends by spawning a greater perceived link between security and unification issues.  One by-product, it seems to me, is the increasing difficulty that the South Korean government is having in communicating the importance of the U.S.-Korean relationship to the South Korean public and in maintaining a balance between its security and unification of objectives more broadly.

All this creates, obviously, a very complex environment for U.S. policy makers.  They need to deal with the growing threat from North Korea while not appearing to reward bad behavior and simultaneously to demonstrate sensitivity and responsiveness toward the changed attitudes and conditions inside South Korea.  Navigating between these imperatives is the central challenge facing U.S.-Korean policy today.

Dr. Chae-Jin Lee

As a person born, raised and educated in Korea, I do deeply appreciate your interest and concern about the current development in the Korean peninsula.  Korea, as written in the Korean traditional way, is known as the Land of Morning Calm, but I’m sure by now you know that it is the Land of Morning Surprises.  In fact, I must confess to you that I’m very optimistic early in the morning because oftentimes some big surprises happen in the Korean peninsula.  Now that the United States is faced with another potentially explosive confrontation with North Korea, it is timely and appropriate to think about the war relationship between the United States and the Korean peninsula.  Now, my assignment this afternoon is to look at the domestic situation that is thought in North Korea and South Korea to shed some light on the international aspects that Norm discussed earlier.  In retrospect, it seems to me that when the Bush administration was inaugurated it wanted to deviate from the previous administration’s distinctly liberal tendencies in the context of foreign affairs, and intended to chart a new way of dealing with the Korean situation, particularly North Korea.  In this process however the Bush administration demonstrated what I may call cognitive dissonance with the South Korean leadership, whose policy towards North Korea was known as the Sunshine Policy and was essentially designed to usher in a period of reconciliation, cooperation and the peaceful coexistence.  The most recently inaugurated government in South Korea—President Roh Mou-hyun, was inaugurated only two weeks ago—inherited this approach.  As a result, we see a very serious danger of policy differences between the United States and South Korea as well.  Hence, the Bush administration faces two Koreas, both North Korea and South Korea, in what I may call a vicious cycle of mutual distrust.  So it is no longer the U.S. relationship with North Korea but also that the United States should pay attention to the role being played by South Korea in this difficult triangular relationship.

This leads me to give some general observations on North Korea as well as South Korea to accept the domestic basis for the international situation.  Norm already mentioned economic failure in North Korea; there is really no question about that.  When we look at any organization, including the state, we like to look at the organizational capabilities. There are three dimensions that we can identify.  First is the economic dimension, second is normalcy or the ideological dimension, and the third one is coercion or, more precisely, the military aspect.  When we look at North Korea I must say that North Korea remains an enigma to me.  It’s archaic, it’s very difficult to understand exactly what is going on, especially the decision-making processes.  I had a chance to visit North Korea for 19 days in 1981 and then two days in 1998, but the surface observation is certainly not sufficient to understand the dynamics in the society.

Insofar as economic capabilities are concerned it is indeed a failed state.  There is a shortage of food, energy, infrastructure and capitol management skills for the people of North Korea.  On the basis of newspaper reports, there has been massive starvation and death in the range of millions of innocent people in North Korea. 

In the area of normalcy, North Korea now advocates a certain ideological tendency, which is known as “self-reliant ideology.” But as far as we can tell, on the basis of witnesses and other reports the moral fiber of the society is, indeed, bankrupt.  The society is not held by mutual support, mutual understanding or moral rectitude. In that sense, the normality aspect of the past Korean society and the state has also failed.  Hence, the only remaining method by which Kim Jung Il, the leader of North Korea, rules the country is through coercive mechanisms.  One is the military.  North Korea has what is known as a military-first policy. Much of the budget is earmarked for defense.  Many estimate 20-25 percent of the gross national product, GNP, is earmarked for military expenditure.  North Korea is known to have more than one million standing military forces plus command and other paramilitary type forces, so that the military is a source of power for Kim Jung Il. 

It’s not just the military, but the society is organized in such a way that there’s no room for a civil society.  There is nothing less than a totalitarian control of this society by the state.  So that when we look at the most recent events that Mr. Hayama mentioned earlier it should be seen in this light. 

A number of questions arise:  Is Kim Jung Il in control?  All the indications suggest that so far he seems to be in firm control, but he cannot rule the country by himself.  Therefore, he has to rely upon his immediate associates.  Mostly we have seen that military leaders have become more and more important in the management of the society and the state, so that the decision-making process is geared towards the interests of the North Korean military.  There is also a danger of miscalculations on the part of Kim Jung Il and his associates.  From his vantage point, the widening gap between the United States and South Korea on a number of issues is a welcome sign for the success of his policy, the so-called wedge policy, to drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea.  Furthermore, in the case of South Korea, there is a deep division of public opinion in dealing with North Korea and its perception of the United States.  It works from Kim Jung Il’s point of view for his united front strategy, that is, you divide and rule in South Korea.  We need to pay a great deal of attention to such a possibility so that any miscalculation or misperceptions on his part should be minimized if not eliminated.

In regard to nuclear policy, I believe that the North Korean leadership decided a long time ago to become a nuclear weapons state no matter what.  North Korea wants to be a nuclear power, unless there is a sustained package of benefits that can be exchanged for their nuclear capability.  The question is why do they want to become a nuclear power?   They like to use it as an instrument to guarantee the survival of the regime.  From the experience in Iraq Kim Jung Il may think if Iraq was a full-blown nuclear power the U.S. support might have been different.  That is a possibility of misperception.  In other words, the fear of war and military confrontation has been a very important method by which North Korea has been able to extract concessions, especially economic assistance. They could export nuclear weapons of plutonium or technology for cash because of the economic failure they face.  It would also mean that Kim wishes to solidify his power base by recognizing the interest, desire, and aspirations of the military.  He may want to use nuclear weapons as a demonstration that he is a supporter of the military.  By the way, he had no military experience, but is now known as a general.  Of course, if North Korea does have nuclear weapons and missile capabilities they can hold South Korea, Japan and the U.S. forces deployed in South Korea—about 37,000 U.S. forces—as hostages for their policy.

As I mentioned earlier if there is some kind of package of benefits they could bargain with.  It seems to me that North Korean leadership assumes that no matter what kind of rhetoric the Bush administration may show, the United States would not attack.  The Bush administration while taking care of the immediate issue of Iraq, tries to deny that there is a crisis; the term “crisis” is a sort of taboo in the current administration.  So by challenging the unarmed U.S. reconnaissance plane over international waters North Korea wishes to create an atmosphere of crisis in order to force the United States to come to the negotiating table.  And what do they want at the negotiating table?  Of course, they would like to have direct negotiations with the United States one-to-one; they’d like to have a non-aggression treaty, a legally binding treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate, which is highly unlikely, but anyway that’s what they want, and they’d like to have the normal relationship, economic and political, with the United States.  We have to understand this particular incident, not in isolation, but in the larger context of the dilemma difficulties and aspirations that we can recognize in North Korea.

The situation is seen as a way to test the U.S. intentions and reactions and mobilize anti-Bush forces in the United States. The New York Times came out in an editorial asking for direct talks, Senator Kennedy and others in the Democratic leadership criticized President Bush’s dealings with North Korea.  It used to be that North Korea didn’t understand the complexity and dynamics of U.S. politics, but now they know them very well, so they play the “domestic politics” card in this regard.  So, it seems to me that this is a very difficult situation for the United States exactly to understand how to deal with North Korea.  Added to this dimension, is the new government, which was inaugurated two weeks ago.  Now we know that the newly installed President is inexperienced in the conduct of current affairs.  He has never been to the United States; he’s independent-minded, nationalistic, populist and a risk taker.  He is a very interesting person in South Korean politics.  He was a labor lawyer, a human rights lawyer, he demonstrated in democratic activities; he was in prison, quite a character.  And yet, in regard to foreign affairs, he does not have a great deal of expertise, which means that who he has as his advisors in the context of foreign affairs seems to be very important. 

As I mentioned earlier I studied in Korea, I attended Seoul National University, and studied political science. It was a small department, which had only 80 students, and subsequently President Park, the former president of South Korea, felt that this department was a hotbed of troublemakers, so he decided to downsize it to 40. In time the department was divided into two departments – the department of political science and the department of international relations, as they exist now.  But now I think the total number of students in both departments is about 70-80.  It’s a very small program.  All major foreign policy advisors for President Roh came from this tiny department. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Unification Minister, the Senior Secretary for National Policy, and the former ambassador to the United Kingdom is from this department. Senior Secretary of foreign and diplomatic affairs is from this department and the current South Korean Ambassador to the United States is from this department.  I know them all very well personally.  They are somewhat liberal in their orientation, but they are very competent, sophisticated and they are knowledgeable.  So, if only the newly—installed-president listens to them it will be OK.

Also, President Roh had very strong views on international affairs.  In his inauguration address he said he wanted to see that North Korea should be nuclear free and he wanted to seek dialogue for peaceful means, and he wanted to have a greater degree of cooperation with the United States and Japan in resolving this. 

As far as the rhetoric is concerned this is all right, but let me quote another statement that he made the eve of his inauguration.  He said “If we give them (the North Koreans) what they desperately want, reduced security, normal treatment and economic assistance then they would be willing to give up their nuclear ambitions.  We should not, therefore, shoot them as criminals.  They are not “evil doers.”  Hence, he opposes any kind of economic sanctions that might be sponsored by the United States and the U.N. Security Council; he would be opposed to any kind of military pressure from the United States.  So that’s another factor that the U.S. government needs to take into account.  In the end, it seems to me that the Bush administration will be faced with a very difficult choice between comprehensive accommodations with North Korea and some kind of course of diplomacy including military maneuvers or military action.

Instead of looking at the manifestation of the foreign policy from North Korea and South Korea, just as in the case of the United States’ foreign policy is an extension of domestic politics. We need to look at a dynamic development of domestic affairs, both for North Korea and South Korea, to see how we can deal with the current crisis in the Korean peninsula.

Michael Parks

I wake up in the morning just a little before six to make sure that I’m fully alert when I turn on the news because, like Professor Lee I’m afraid, very afraid, and I think all of us should be.  North Korea is forcing itself on the world.  It’s setting a deadline.  It wants to conclude this package that Professor Lee talked about, while the U.S. is preoccupied and in some sense in a weak position. 

Just go through the list of things starting with the acknowledgement that “Oh, yes.  We do have a nuclear weapons program,” through things like “We’ve just tested a missile in the middle of the South Korean inauguration, that will sort of fly towards Japan.”  All the steps in the nuclear program that are being noticed are almost a drumbeat, and the closer the United States gets to war in Iraq the closer North Korea is going to come, I fear, to testing a nuclear device.  It wants to get attention from the United States in a way that they can deal on its terms — and it does have a missile, details to come, that the CIA and the Pentagon think could reach the United States.

And then we see in The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times that, well, maybe the United States is just going to accept North Korea as a nuclear power.  You can’t ignore a potential nuclear power deal with us!! 

Well, what do they want?  That benefits package that Professor Lee has talked about?  The legitimacy of a failed regime that would come with a non-aggression pact?  He can put together a package, but how long would it last?  The package that Clinton administration put together was supposed to last for a while longer than it has.  So, saving a failed state – that’s kind of the bargain we’re in.  Otherwise, what do we have?  Do we want to submit to blackmail?  Well, no, we say.  Why don’t we just go take it out?  Surgical strikes.  What would be the number of people killed if a war ensued on the Korean peninsula?  General Gary Locke estimated a million people. That’s a lot.  He estimated 80,000-100,000 Americans would be among them.  Seoul is within artillery range of the North Korean army.  Think about that for a little bit and you begin to see the policy dilemma.  You don’t want to be blackmailed, but can you afford a war?  Can you afford it morally?  Can you afford it in terms of Korean lives? 

Well, what about just recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state?  We’ve accepted that India and Pakistan are.  We accepted Israel is, although not declared.  India, Pakistan and Israel have a rational political process, at least an observable political process, even if it’s not rational at times.  You know what’s going on.  This is why I wake up with fear each morning.  We don’t have the slightest idea what goes on in Pyongyang.  We can deduce, we can surmise, we can speculate and we can do it wisely, as my colleagues have done, but we don’t know.  We don’t know the quality of the decisions.  We don’t know and it is clearly wrong to say “dismiss Kim Jung Ill as a nut, he’s a maniac, he’s a madman.”  This is one of the most cleverly calculated policies that we’ve seen, confirming the United States as the remaining super power in a way that we have to pay attention.

And what do we have in the United States?  An ability to deal with one crisis at a time so we’re not going to call the second crisis a crisis?  The Bush administration has an approach that says we can do this diplomatically; we can do it in regional terms.  The Democrats who have a vested interest say it’s a major crisis and that North Korea has a record of selling these weapons and it is unpredictable.  So we don’t have a U.S. approach that we can agree on.

What about the neighbors?  Wouldn’t Japan be concerned?  You bet.  What about China?  Yes.  They don’t want another million or two refugees from Korea.  What about Russia?  Well, moderately interested because they are an Asian power as well as a European power, but that’s a long way from Moscow.  The thought that the United States is going to get together with China and Japan and Russia to settle the problem of North Korea is pretty big stretch.  I can’t see the Russians wanting to be involved as a main actor.  The Chinese like to work quietly.  The Japanese work even more quietly.  So who’s the challenge to?  The United States.  And what’s the response?  At this point I don’t think we have a thought-out response. 

So I wake up in the morning afraid, afraid of a miscalculation, because the escalation continues week to week.  The countdown on Iraq is the deadline.  “What’s it going to take?” is the question on Jong-Il’s mind.  “What’s it going to take to get the U.S.’s attention to deal with me, one-on-one, to put together that package to recognize our legitimacy, to save this failed state?”  What does he do?  What does he do to save it?  I think that’s what’s driving these morning surprises.  So I’m afraid, and I think we all should be.