창작과 비평

 

The prospects for improved South-North relations in 2003 are not as dark as it first appeared when North Korea revealed that it is seeking to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium. Since this revelation on October 4, it has become increasingly clear that the enrichment program is not yet far enough advanced to produce fissile material and that Kim Jong Il is prepared to give it up in return for U.S. steps to remove North Korean security concerns and to normalize economic and political relations.

 

South Korea should continue its efforts to persuade the United States that North Korea is bargaining and that U.S. and South Korean interests require renegotiating the 1994 Agreed Framework, not abrogating it. If Seoul takes a firm stance with Washington, the prospects for further improvement in South-North relations will be promising. If not, the prospects will be uncertain, but I do not expect a serious military confrontation in 2003.

 

According to North Korean and U.S. accounts, First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, meeting on Oct. 4 with visiting U.S. emissary James Kelly, offered to:

 

• End the effort to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium
• Continue to abide by existing safeguards on plutonium-based nuclear facilities shut down under the 1994 agreement
• Accept whatever inspection and verification measures are deemed necessary by the United States

 

In return, Kang told Kelly, the United States would have to:

 

• Make a public pledge not to stage a preemptive attack on North Korea.
• Sign a peace agreement ending the Korean War and replacing the 1953 armistice. Subsequent statements have referred only to a "non-aggression" agreement.
• Normalize diplomatic relations, thus opening the way for economic aid from U.S.-controlled multilateral financial institutions.

 

Kelly says he told Kang that this offer was "upside down": North Korea must first shut down its nuclear program. Only then would the USA "consider" what it might do to meet North Korean concerns.

 

The Bush administration justifies its refusal to bargain by arguing that the enrichment program is a violation of the 1994 U.S.-North Korean agreement, proving that Pyongyang cannot be trusted. North Korea did indeed violate the spirit of the agreement, but not the letter. While the 1994 accord refers to the shared goal of a "nuclear-free Korean peninsula," it covered only specified plutonium-based facilities then in existence.

 

Moreover, the United States itself has failed to fulfill two key provisions of the accord: steps to normalize relations (Article Two) and "formal assurances" ruling out "the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the United States" against North Korea (Article Three).

 

The administration's National Security Doctrine announced on September 20 was, in effect, a repudiation of that second provision, because it asserted that the United States reserves the right to preemptively strike--- with nuclear weapons, if deemed necessary--- any state regarded as a potential peace threat.

 

North Korea is in a strong bargaining position: It could make four plutonium bombs from spent fuel rods put in storage under the 1994 agreement. Kang told Kelly that North Korea is no longer bound by the agreement. But Pyongyang has yet to violate the ban on reprocessing the spent fuel.

 

It is critically important for the United States to pursue a dialogue with Pyongyang to keep the key provisions of the 1994 agreement in force, while renegotiating the rest of the accord to settle the nuclear issue once and for all.

 

Such a dialogue will not be easy. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his pragmatic advisers, such as Kang, face powerful hardliners in the armed forces who want to develop nuclear weapons. To give the pragmatists ammunition, the United States should recast the agreement to help meet North Korea's acute energy storage