NORTH KOREA SOUTH KOREA U.S. POLICY AT A TIME OF CRISIS

[nefar559]

here's an excerpt from a book
http://www.sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100925650

NORTH KOREA
SOUTH KOREA
U.S. POLICY AT A TIME OF CRISIS
JOHN FEFFER
An Open Media Book
SEVEN STORIES PRESS
New York
Copyright © 2003 by John Feffer
Open Media series editor, Greg Ruggiero.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means,
including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
In Canada: Hushion House, 36 Northline Road, Toronto, Ontario
M4B 3E2
In the U.K.: Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd., Unit 3, Olympia
Trading Estate, Coburg Road, Wood Green, London N22 6TZ
In Australia: Palgrave Macmillan, 627 Chapel Street, South Yarra,
VIC 3141
Cover design: Greg Ruggiero
Cover image: Contemporary North Korean propaganda poster
ISBN: 1-58322-603-6
Printed in Canada.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


I N T RODUCT I O N
The Current Crisis
It was a striking juxtaposition: U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il sitting
side by side at a display of mass gymnastics in October
2000. “Spectacular and amazing,” Albright called the coordinated
movements of the one hundred thousand performers in
the stadium in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. When
a picture of a 1998 rocket launch was displayed before the
audience, Kim Jong Il leaned over to confide that it would be
his country’s first and last such launch. Later the two would
toast one another at a state dinner, and the photo appeared on
the front pages of many newspapers. Albright announced to
the international press that Kim Jong Il was a man with
whom Washington could do business: “very decisive and
practical and serious.” She recommended that Bill Clinton
make the first presidential visit to North Korean before the
year’s end to trade a package of economic incentives for an
end to North Korea’s missile program. The United States and
its longest running enemy, technically at war for over fifty
years, appeared to be finally approaching detente.1
Madeleine Albright was no starry-eyed dove. Long before
joining the Clinton administration, the Czech-born Albright
had acquired a hawkish reputation as a Sovietologist and
served with her mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski on the
National Security Council in the late 1970s. In her first four
weeks as Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, she lectured the
[9]
Chinese government about its human rights record and traveled
to the South Korean side of the demilitarized zone
(DMZ) to hurl harsh words at the North Korean government.
With such anticommunist credentials, Albright was
the perfect person to sell a deal with North Korea, just as
Richard Nixon had earlier surprised the world with his
opening to communist China. Like Nixon, Albright wanted
to seize on a geopolitical opportunity. Four months before
her visit to Pyongyang, Kim Jong Il had met South Korean
president Kim Dae Jung in the first ever inter-Korean summit.
Subsequently, the highest ranking North Korean to
visit the United States, Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, met
with Clinton and signed a joint communiqué that spoke of
replacing the 1953 armistice agreement with “permanent
peace arrangements.”2 The cold war in Asia, which had
already outlasted its European counterpart by a decade, was
entering a new warm spell. Albright sensed a diplomatic
breakthrough in the offing and wanted to go down in history
with her president as resolving one of the thorniest problems
in U.S. foreign policy.
Albright and Clinton did not make history in the fall of
2000.
On her return to Washington, Albright scrambled to
defend her reticence to raise human rights issues with Kim
Jong Il. Pundits lambasted Clinton for overreaching himself
in Korea to save his foreign policy legacy from the flames
engulfing the Middle East. And follow-up talks in Malaysia
between the United States and North Korea failed to yield
an agreement on the missile issue. As the U.S. presidential
elections headed into a procedural snafu in Florida in
November 2000, Clinton decided not to risk a visit to
Pyongyang. He extended a secret invitation to Kim Jong Il to

visit Washington instead, but this last-minute attempt to
save a deal also went nowhere.
And today, roughly three years later, the United States
and North Korea are on the verge of war. How in this short
time did these two countries make such a hash of their reconciliation?
The proximate cause of the current crisis was the revelation
in October 2002 that North Korea was still trying to
acquire nuclear weapons despite a pledge to abstain. Under
a 1994 agreement, North Korea shut down its nuclear reactors
and plutonium reprocessing facility at Yongbyon in
exchange for heavy fuel oil, two light-water nuclear reactors,
and movement toward diplomatic recognition. In 2002, the
Bush administration accused North Korea of covertly working
with Pakistan on a second path to a nuclear bomb. After
making its allegations about this secret uranium enrichment
program, the Bush administration ended all heavy fuel
oil shipments to North Korea. North Korea in turn declared
on 10 January 2003 that it was no longer party to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—a withdrawal that
went into effect three months later—and threatened as well
to pull out of the armistice agreement that put an end to the
fighting in the Korean War.
As the crisis deepened, North Korea sent out signals that
it wanted to return to the status quo ante. It announced that
it would consider rejoining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty if the United States resumed the oil shipments. It
would suspend its nuclear program if the United States
signed a nonaggression statement. Washington ignored these
offers. While maintaining that it wanted a diplomatic solution
to the conflict, the United States refused to sit down
with North Korea for one-on-one negotiations. Although

contemptuous of multilateralism elsewhere in the world, the
Bush administration insisted in this one case on having more
parties in on the talks. Meanwhile, the Pentagon transferred
twenty-four long-range bombers to Guam as well as six F-117
stealth aircraft and at least ten additional F-15 bombers to
South Korea. If attacked, North Korea threatened to turn the
United States and its allies into a “sea of fire.”3
By March, North Korea was preparing to restart its plutonium
facility. The war in Iraq had led the leaders in
Pyongyang to draw three conclusions: a nonaggression agreement
with the United States was pointless, no inspection
regime would ever be good enough for Washington, and only
a nuclear weapon would deter a U.S. intervention.4 Although
the United States and North Korea finally agreed to discuss
the crisis in April 2003—with China on hand as a mediator—
the talks fell apart when North Korea declared that it had
nuclear weapons and would test or sell them if the United
States did not negotiate a deal. The United States rejected
Pyongyang’s offer, declaring that it would not “reward North
Korea for bad behavior.”5 Since making a deal with North
Korea is anathema, the Bush administration has shifted its
focus instead to preventing the export of nuclear material
and shutting down the North Korean economy.6 Despite
pleas from its South Korean ally–and the fact that 92 percent
of South Koreans oppose any type of armed conflict on the
peninsula–the administration has kept a preemptive strike
against North Korea on the table.7 Meanwhile, North Korea
has announced that an embargo or a policy of naval interdiction
would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
This is no minor disagreement. Geopolitics has rendered
the Korean peninsula one of the most highly militarized
areas of the world. The demilitarized zone separating the

two Koreas is perhaps the most dangerous trip wire in the
world, what Bill Clinton dubbed “the scariest place on
earth” on a visit there in 1993. It is a war waiting to happen.
Although the great powers in the region—China, Japan, and
Russia—do not want such a war, they may get drawn in
despite their best intentions. As such, the current conflict
between the United States and North Korea has profound
international implications.
The current crisis is not, as the Bush administration suggests,
simply a result of North Korea’s persistent desire to
obtain nuclear weapons. Nor has the crisis caught the Bush
administration without a coherent policy in place. Contrary
to the claims of administration figures, Bush did not adjust
“policy midstream in response to new information and a
new calculation of the threat from North Korea.”8 As this
book will demonstrate, the current policy on North Korea
was incubating in conservative policy circles during the
1990s. Once in power, the Bush administration has used various
means to pursue its ultimate goal: regime change in
Pyongyang.
Toward this end, the administration has campaigned
against any policies that might extend the life of the current
North Korean government, from the 1994 Agreed
Framework to South Korea’s engagement policy. The Bush
team has so far relied on economic containment and diplomatic
nonengagement to bring down the North Korean
government. Should these strategies prove insufficient, the
administration has drawn up several military scenarios
that, in keeping with a new nuclear doctrine, may involve
the first use of nuclear weapons. As such, Bush policy on
North Korea is of a piece with the more profound doctrine
shift in U.S. foreign policy that the administration was

 

[nefar559]

able to implement with greater ease after the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001: a move away from traditional
containment, a preference for unilateralism over
multilateralism, and a scorning of diplomacy in favor of
preventive war.9
The Bush administration decisively repudiated the
Clinton-Albright approach that was so dramatically
advanced in Pyongyang in October 2000. But the flaws of
U.S. policy toward North Korea did not suddenly appear
when George W. Bush took office in January 2001. The carrot-
and-stick strategy that dominated U.S. policy toward
North Korea in the 1990s established a dynamic of mistrust,
misunderstanding, and missed opportunities that provided a
weak foundation for the brief détente of 2000. The logical
incoherence of the Clinton-Albright approach—in part a
result of conservative resistance to engagement with North
Korea from elements of Congress, the Pentagon, the intelligence
community, and the State Department—made it easier
for the Bush team to destroy one of the few positive elements
of the Democrats’ foreign policy legacy.
That North Korea has been a favorite whipping boy for
American politicians and the U.S. media certainly made it
easier for Bush to challenge engagement. North Korea is the
longest running enemy of the United States. A decade before
North Korea became a member of the infamous “axis of
evil,” General Colin Powell declared in the wake of the Gulf
War, “I’m running out of villains. I’m down to Castro and
Kim Il Sung.”10 Newsweek dubbed North Korea the “headless
beast” in 1994 when its leader Kim Il Sung died.11 His
son and heir, Kim Jong Il, received the title “Dr. Evil” from
Newsweek in 2003 after allegations of the secret nuclear
program surfaced.12 The North Korean leadership has fre-

quently been labeled irrational, even insane, though this
rhetoric from the U.S. government and mainstream media
has ebbed and flowed in parallel with the state of relations
between Washington and Pyongyang.
The North Korean “threat” has played an important role
for Democrats and Republicans alike. Although the North
Korean economy has deteriorated and its military has fallen
on hard times, General Thomas Schwartz, commander of
U.S. forces in Korea, testified to Congress in 2001 that North
Korea’s “military forces are bigger, better, closer and deadlier”
than before.13 When the Bush administration appeared
to be entirely preoccupied with Iraq, Democrats waved the
North Korean threat in the air to get the administration’s
attention. “North Korea, an isolated dictatorship, with a collapsed
economy, controlled by its military, and in possession
of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, represents
a clear and present danger,” Democrat Dianne
Feinstein told the Senate in April 2003.14 This “danger” has
lodged firmly in the American imagination. A poll conducted
after the ouster of Saddam Hussein showed that nearly 40
percent of Americans believe that North Korea represents a
clear threat to the United States compared to only 6 percent
for the next in line, China.15
North Korea is not exactly an innocent bystander. The government
in Pyongyang contains its share of hardliners, has an
atrocious human rights record, and seems determined to
obtain a nuclear deterrent by any means necessary. Although
North Korea’s foreign policy is a logical response to adverse
conditions and a profound asymmetry of power in the region,
its tendency toward brinkmanship has made it more difficult
to sustain popular support for engagement policies in the
United States, South Korea, and Japan. It is a famously closed

society, a country about which it is unfortunately all too easy
to remain in the dark. Such ignorance of North Korea—of its
motives, history, capabilities, resilience—brought the United
States to the brink of war in 1994. In a dangerous déjà vu, the
Bush administration approaches the current crisis with even
less knowledge and sophistication concerning North Korea
than its predecessor possessed.
U.S. misreading of North Korea is a subset of a more profound
lack of understanding of Korea in general. Compared
to Japan or China—both of which have spawned numerous
language and culture programs in American universities and
therefore a cadre of experts—Korea remains the poor East
Asian stepsister. “There is no country of comparable significance
concerning which so many people are ignorant,”
American anthropologist Cornelius Osgood said of Korea in
the middle of last century.16 Ignorance of North Korea is at
least understandable, given its opacity. But South Korea is a
democracy and a close U.S. ally. U.S. misconceptions of
South Korea are grating to South Koreans and poison the
relationship between them and the thirty-seven thousand
American troops based there.
The aim of this book is to shed light on the two Koreas
and their relationship to the United States. This will be a
compact analysis of Korean history, U.S. foreign policy, and
the changing economic and military conditions in East Asia.
This book will present the case that instead of promoting
Korean reconciliation and reunification, the current U.S.
government is pursuing a policy of divide and conquer. For
reasons of shortsightedness, geopolitical hubris, and sheer
ignorance, Washington has decided that a divided Korea—
indeed a divided region—best serves U.S. economic and
security interests.

Such a policy has an unfortunate resonance in Korean
history. Korea has been attacked numerous times in its history,
suffering by one account nine hundred invasions in the
last two thousand years.17 In the twentieth century, it has
endured three terrible shocks—colonization, division, and
civil war. The legacy of imperialism and the wound inflicted
on the national psyche by division, described in the first
chapter, have made self-determination a fiercely held value.
In the south, this desire for self-determination inspired the
democracy movement, fueled the creation of a strong, independent
economy, and lies at the heart of current attempts
to create a more self-sufficient military. In the north, selfdetermination
is what remains after more than a decade of
economic and military decline. North Korea styles itself a
hungry wolf that is at least free and proud, that will show its
teeth and fight vigorously if attacked—unlike the complacent
lapdog of the south.
At the same time, however, North Korea is trying to
change. Pyongyang is trying to snatch economic rebirth
from the jaws of economic collapse and, perhaps quixotically,
transform society while leaving the ruling structures and
prevailing ideology intact. North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear
weapons is largely an acknowledgment that its conventional
military can no longer deter attacks. The leadership has
also recognized that an altered geopolitical balance of power
necessitates a major reorientation of foreign policy. As the
second chapter illustrates, an understanding of these developments
is critical to any future alternative policy options
for the United States.
U.S. policy toward North Korea has traditionally relied on
military containment and economic isolation. The Bush
administration, in casting North Korea beyond the pale of


negotiations, is emphasizing rollback over containment in the
hopes that the regime in Pyongyang will collapse sooner
rather than later. In some sense, the Bush administration is
only being more honest about its intentions than its predecessors.
The third chapter will trace both the transformation
of Korea policy from the Clinton to Bush eras and the underlying
similarities in approach that beg the question of
whether such a radical transformation has in fact taken place.
U.S. policy toward the Korean peninsula is not divorced
from its general policy toward Asia, which can be summed
up by the phrase “gunboat globalization.” In other words,
the United States intends to maintain a large military presence
in the region and expand its economic influence, where
possible, through the promotion of economic reforms that
pry open foreign markets. The fourth chapter will look at
where the economic and military objectives of Washington
coincide and where they seem to be in direct contradiction
of one another. The conclusion will review the various
options for exiting the current crisis on the Korean peninsula
and building an alternative approach for peace and stability
in the region.
In addition to the books and articles listed in the notes, I
have relied on the clipping services provided by the Nautilus
Institute (www.nautilus.org) and the Canadian-DPRK EClipping
Service (www.cankor.ca). Following the Korean tradition,
I have put Korean family names (Kim) before first
names (Dae Jung) with a couple exceptions, including
Syngman Rhee, Sun Myung Moon, and the names of authors
as they appear on their articles and books.
I would like to thank the following people for reviewing
the chapters-Charles Armstrong, Karin Lee, Dave Levenstein,

Tim Savage, Tim Shorrock, and Jae-Jung Suh-the American
Friends Service Committee for employing me for three years
in East Asia, the hundreds of people in the region who made
this work so rewarding, Chong-Ae Yu for piquing my interest
in Korea, Foreign Policy in Focus for publishing some of the
material that appears in these pages, and the Blue Mountain
Center for giving me the time and space to think through
U.S.-Korean relations after time spent in the region.

 

[already dead.]

" though this rhetoric from the U.S. government and mainstream media has ebbed and flowed in parallel with the state of relations
between Washington and Pyongyang."

Bullshit. North Korea sends absolutely nonsensical signals to leaders and diplomats. Everything from "We are committed to possibly dismantling all nuclear weapons" to "We will roast the enemies in flames". North Koreans are known for pulling stupid shit like sawing the legs of the chairs of American ambassadors, playing nonsense cat-and-mouse games at the bargaining table, showing up 3 hours late, etc.

North Korea is in poverty. The villagers there eat rats, corpses, whatever. North Korea spends between 20 to 30 percent of its GDP on the military. Many places in NK lack even electricity.

Bla bla bla. North Korea is a fucking joke. Their leader runs the gambit from looney to nonsensical to outright comic. If there was a democrat in office currently nefar, your article would have read much differently.

Mostly everything from you can be summed up in 4 words: "Republican Good, Democrat Bad". The author of this article basically uses any chance they can to stick Bush with a bad decision or policy.

Every year in NK they have an anti-US rally in which thousands and thousands of people recount the horrors of the Korean war.

Bullshit is fed to the crowds like stories of the American soldiers ripping apart bodies by connecting each leg and arm to horses, etc. The leaders and speakers talk of one day when they will destroy their American enemies, torture U.S. troops, etc.

And this isn't some shit I got from the Fox News Channel. These rallies are regularly covered on Japanese and Chinese TV

Anyone who wishes to portray Kim Jogn Il as a rational and thinking ruler, merely swayed by geopolitical variables is either bullshitting or wishfully thinking. North Korea needs to feel like a big man. King Jong Il, personally, raises his chair at the negotiating table to feel like a big man. NK doesn't need nuclear weapons. They are merely attempting to gain global power by showing that they hold a big stick. The nonsense that dominates King Jong Il and NK is not really something you can do much bargaining with.

While I agree, the Bush administration is handling the situation poorly, the main point of this article is to 1. make Republicans look like bad-bad no-nos, and 2. make NK look like a rational, innocent country, merely thrown into a bad set of circumstances.
unfortunately, at this point Kim Jong Il is NK.

nefar, you are primarily interested in the furthering of the democratic party in the minds of the people here. You attack basically anything/everything conersvative/republican and defend anyone with a (D.) next to their name. You would be better described as a partisan and less as an idealist.

 

[nefar559]

" though this rhetoric from the U.S. government and mainstream media has ebbed and flowed in parallel with the state of relations
between Washington and Pyongyang."

Bullshit. North Korea sends absolutely nonsensical signals to leaders and diplomats. Everything from "We are committed to possibly dismantling all nuclear weapons" to "We will roast the enemies in flames". North Koreans are known for pulling stupid shit like sawing the legs of the chairs of American ambassadors, playing nonsense cat-and-mouse games at the bargaining table, showing up 3 hours late, etc.

North Korea is in poverty. The villagers there eat rats, corpses, whatever. North Korea spends between 20 to 30 percent of its GDP on the military. Many places in NK lack even electricity.

Bla bla bla. North Korea is a fucking joke. Their leader runs the gambit from looney to nonsensical to outright comic. If there was a democrat in office currently nefar, your article would have read much differently.

Mostly everything from you can be summed up in 4 words: "Republican Good, Democrat Bad". The author of this article basically uses any chance they can to stick Bush with a bad decision or policy.

Every year in NK they have an anti-US rally in which thousands and thousands of people recount the horrors of the Korean war.

Bullshit is fed to the crowds like stories of the American soldiers ripping apart bodies by connecting each leg and arm to horses, etc. The leaders and speakers talk of one day when they will destroy their American enemies, torture U.S. troops, etc.

And this isn't some shit I got from the Fox News Channel. These rallies are regularly covered on Japanese and Chinese TV

Anyone who wishes to portray Kim Jogn Il as a rational and thinking ruler, merely swayed by geopolitical variables is either bullshitting or wishfully thinking. North Korea needs to feel like a big man. King Jong Il, personally, raises his chair at the negotiating table to feel like a big man. NK doesn't need nuclear weapons. They are merely attempting to gain global power by showing that they hold a big stick. The nonsense that dominates King Jong Il and NK is not really something you can do much bargaining with.

While I agree, the Bush administration is handling the situation poorly, the main point of this article is to 1. make Republicans look like bad-bad no-nos, and 2. make NK look like a rational, innocent country, merely thrown into a bad set of circumstances.
unfortunately, at this point Kim Jong Il is NK.

nefar, you are primarily interested in the furthering of the democratic party in the minds of the people here. You attack basically anything/everything conersvative/republican and defend anyone with a (D.) next to their name. You would be better described as a partisan and less as an idealist.

lol, your rant didn't make sense one bit to me.

LOL, i am neither a republican or democrat, both parties follow the same bullshit foreign policy.

let me ask you this, what should be done about NK? US should just go there and blow shit up? SK doesn't want another war with NK, the only ones pushing or acting like war is coming is the US.

NK on there part is only doing what the US has been doing since the 1950s, defending there shit. We can have a peacefull tranaction of NK to the world or korea war part II.


btw the only damn democrat i never defended on this forum was Bustamante, thats cuase some stupid fucks, was calling him a racist, and they didn't know shit about Mecha.

 

[nefar559]

and another thing, if i'm not a republican, then it make sense that i attack them every chance that i get.

 

[already dead.]

lol, your rant didn't make sense one bit to me.

Maybe a re-read is necessary. Don't know...

LOL, i am neither a republican or democrat, both parties follow the same bullshit foreign policy.

This is good to hear...(I give people more trust that can say fuck both parties) but alot of times people come in here posting articles that basically do nothing but covertly Republican bash. If you are not one of these people, then good. However, red flags get raised when I hear about "foolish neoconservatives", etc.

let me ask you this, what should be done about NK? US should just go there and blow shit up? SK doesn't want another war with NK, the only ones pushing or acting like war is coming is the US.

This is the impasse. North Korea is, or could be bluffing about, developing nuclear weapons. NK spends 25 percent of its GDP on the army. Thats a fucking insane amount.

King Jong Il is the world leader equivalent to a cross between Michael Jackson and Baby Huey. He has over 25,000 DVDs and he spends a good deal of time watching movies. He makes a huge army with basically no uses, he organizes rallies every year pumping up his citizens about killing americans, etc., and harping on the Korean war, which was what, 50 years ago? He uses absolutely nonsensical bargaining tactics...Basically there isn't much chance of reasoning with him.

If we completely leave them alone, and withdraw all forces, and step down pressure, then they will possibly complete a large nuclear weapon program. Who is to say he won't give/sell/detonate nuclear weapons he creates? Villagers in North Korea eat alot of Dogs and Corpses. When the U.S. wants to talk about "Human rights concerns" with a country, you know shit is fucked up.

Mexican policeman shoot protesters on the streets. Free speech, women's rights, etc., things we constantly talk about in the U.S., are not even issues in other countries. They aren't even considered, and we don't even speak to those countries about Human Rights Abuses.

Someone who doesn't give half a shit about his poor and starving country while he pumps money into the military budget isn't likely to have a good reason for having nuclear weapons.

leaders NK on there part is only doing what the US has been doing since the 1950s, defending there shit. We can have a peacefull tranaction of NK to the world or korea war part II.

But you see a view King Jong Il doesn't. He is defending building a nuclear weapons program. He isn't defending his right to exist. And North Korea under his rule is not a fucking good candidate for an A-Bomb. It's like giving a car to a 10 year old. Yes, a car is useful, and can get you places, only in the right hands.

btw the only damn democrat i never defended on this forum was Bustamante, thats cuase some stupid fucks, was calling him a racist, and they didn't know shit about Mecha.

Perhaps so. However, read above as to why I get suspicious about posts bashing conservatives in general.

All in all, I agree, we can't do much now. Easing tensions would be the best thing. If we withdraw, though, and let NK dedicate half of their income to building A-Bombs while their people starve, where does that leave the world? And he has been possibly talking to Iran about sales. Giving nukes to Iran = impending doom. They don't give a fuck about the U.S., or the rest of the world.

I would support maintaining a small presence, hopefully to deter NK from selling shit once they do build it.