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De-escalation on the Korean Peninsula
https://fellowtravelersblog.com/2020/11/23/de-escalation-on-the-korean-peninsula/
Dark Clouds of Military Tension Over the Korean Peninsula, North Korea Waited, Disappointed and Now Angry
North Korea as a Threat – the Numbers https://sites.google.com/site/nzdprksociety/commentary/north-korea-as-a-threat-the-numbers
Vancouver Group Meeting on North Korea - an exercise in futility
Make Cash Not War: Swiss who Made Pyongyang Home Calls for End of Sanctions
https://sputniknews.com/asia/201705201053814199-north-korea-trade-sanctions-business/
https://www.facebook.com/HiddenTruthPH/posts/655256634666911
'Swiss businessman Felix Abt has a unique insight into life in North Korea, where he's conducted business for 14 years and lived for seven.
Abt began working in North Korea as a representative of the Swiss engineering group ABB, and later became managing director of a drug manufacturing plant built with foreign funds.
He was closely involved in setting up the country's first foreign chamber of commerce, the Pyongyang Business School, and Nosotek, a North Korean software company whose developments include the game "Pyongyang Racer."
Abt, who now lives in Vietnam, detailed his experiences in an interview with Sputnik Deutschland. He has also written a book about his experiences, called "A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom."
"There were 12 of us foreigners living in North Korea, who founded the European Business Association in Pyongyang in 2005.
This was the first-ever foreign chamber of commerce in North Korea. Later, Chinese businessmen also created a Chinese Chamber of Commerce. For many years the European Chamber of Commerce had a stand at international exhibitions in Pyongyang and helped European companies to gain a foothold in North Korea and North Korean companies to find business partners in Europe," Abt explained
While the standard of living in North Korea has significantly improved over the last decade and a half, new sanctions threaten the well being of ordinary people, Abt warned.
"This year, at the instigation of the US, the UN banned the export of North Korea's most important commodities – metals, minerals and coal. If China, by far its most important trading partner, fully adheres to this embargo, North Korea will lose almost all of its foreign income overnight. It can't do anything without this foreign income.
This would be a serious blow to the economy and the countless North Koreans who make a living from importing goods. This would really shrink the economy, which has been growing over the past several years, and could lead to famine like in the 1990s," Abt warned.
"The standard of living has greatly improved over the past fifteen years, not only in the capital but also in the countryside. Reforms have made a contribution to this: farmers are now allowed to sell part of their goods on the market and keep the profits for themselves.
Throughout the country, an entrepreneurial middle class has developed. Markets and shops are well supplied, there are more and more restaurants and there are the first traffic jams in the cities."
In order to help North Korea out of international isolation, other countries should negotiate with Pyongyang instead of imposing sanctions, Abt said.
"Instead of strangling the country with sanctions, we need to cultivate contacts there in many ways. Only by going there can you know the intentions of the North Koreans and influence things for the better.
Foreigners who deal with North Koreans confront them with new ideas, which they question but often accept, as I know from my own experience."
In recent months, tensions between the US and North Korea have increased. As Pyongyang continues to develop and test nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, Washington has demanded the complete abolition of these weapons.
Abt said that North Korea is keen to bolster its defenses since Pyongyang is fearful that the US will attempt "regime change" as it has recently accomplished in the Middle East. He suggested the implementation of a regional defense pact that would assuage Pyongyang's fears and enable it to disarm to an extent.
"North Korea has closely observed what happened in Iraq and Libya when these countries did not have any weapons of mass destruction. Saddam and Gaddafi had nothing left to deter the West from waging war against them.
The North Korean leadership will not give up nuclear weapons, so that it doesn't suffer the same fate. But it will certainly not use nuclear weapons first, because that would certainty mean its end."
"If the Trump administration really wants to end the almost 70-year-old Korean War with a peace treaty and normalize relations, which North Korea has wanted for a long time, he has to take into account North Korea's security needs.
A compromise would be that North Korea stops the production of additional nuclear weapons, but it might retain some of the existing ones. This would also be best regulated by a regional security pact that neighboring states would also have to contribute to," Abt suggested.
North Korea's most recent missile test was last Sunday, when it successfully test-fired a new surface-to-surface ballistic missile.
Some observers believe that the missile test was prompted by the US attack on a Syrian army base last month. According to reports, North Korea is making preparations for a similar attack from Washington and repairing walls to better protect itself from airstrikes.
http://38north.org/2017/05/vorontsov052517/?__s=%5Bsubscriber.token%5D&__s=ugvygsk5zhzduogx69xb
25 May 2017
As a Korea specialist who regularly visits both North and South Korea (at least annually) and speaks with high-ranking officials, among others, I have noticed a disturbing trend over the last several months. In February, just after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, one of the highest-ranking officials in Pyongyang indicated to me that the North Koreans had monitored all of Trump’s statements about North Korea during the presidential election, but would judge his intentions by his real actions, not his words. Thus, they were preparing for a period acute of confrontation with the new administration in its early months. Given what we have observed so far of Trump’s North Korea policy, a direct military action seems unlikely, but an exceptionally long and exhausting stand-off seems inevitable. In the meantime, the North Koreans are ready to respond to any scenario to ensure the ultimate survival of their political and economical system.
Recently, multiple governments and international organizations have intensified efforts to “impenetrably” seal North Korea’s borders with China and Russia, with recommendations to block the traffic through the main railway bridge across the Yalu River and cut off access to the cross-border pipeline. To facilitate such an unprecedented move, US military officials have even requested Congressional authority for the right to examine North Korean commercial ships at other countries’ harbors, including the Russian Federation.[1]
It is well known that the tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program development have escalated in recent years, attracting mainstream attention. In that process, however, there are a growing number of critical voices who have only a vague understanding where North Korea is even located. Mainstream media coverage of North Korea has portrayed Kim Jong Un as a villain, and followed a common logic, “Carthage must be destroyed.” I recall, in terror, that this was the case in 1950, when the United Nations went against its symbol—“the pigeon of peace”—and officially became a party of war against North Korea. Recent events, to a large extent, are reminiscent of the situation in 1950. Surely, both then and now, there are serious reasons—naturally seen as diametrically opposite by the parties involved—to escalate the North Korea issue, requiring an “exemplary punishment of a bad actor.”
Being in contact with a wide circle of international experts professionally studying Korea, I am assured that I am not the only one frustrated by renewed attempts by the UN, presented as the main agent of justice and peace in the world, to impose a de facto economic embargo on the DPRK, a state with a population of 25 million people; in essence, it is an unarmed war.
If the habit to discriminatorily punish “bad guys,” selected by the “stakeholders” in the UN’s elite at their own will persists, the majority of the ordinary members of the UN General Assembly may rebel and start asking rather sticky questions: if such a practice becomes standard, what will become of the UN itself?
How did we get to this point, using the UN in such a provocative way? In my mind, it is very simple: Washington wants to force Pyongyang to start talks from a position of capitulation, while Pyongyang wants to enter talks from a position of equality. Frankly speaking, this is nothing special or new.
While the popular belief these days is that negotiations with North Korea have never worked, it is important to remember the progress made under the US-North Korea Agreed Framework. For the time the agreement was in place, key components of North Korea’s nuclear weapons infrastructure were irreparably shuttered while the two countries worked toward normalization of relations. Had it been kept in place, it might have found a suitable way to deal with issues of cheating. But its abrupt end made subsequent efforts to negotiate difficult to start, with mistrust high on both sides, leading to the complex and dangerous situation we are in today. In order to get back to negotiations now, which most stakeholders seem to want—conditions for talks would need to be seriously discussed.
For this reason, I would like to highlight another problem, which in my opinion is equally fundamental–the near-term future of the United Nations. The states directing the UN, mobilizing its mechanism and possibilities, and above all exercising its authority, are trying to induce a total economic embargo on the DPRK, a UN member state, for actions that can be understood as mainly asserting its right to live in a way it has chosen for itself in accordance with its national traditions. Moreover, let’s keep in mind that for a long time, there has been considerable debate about the need for deep reformation of the UN. Apparently, there are strong reasons for it, but so far, such discussions have been carried out mainly in a peaceful, philosophical and academic sense.
But would happen if the UN succeeds in imposing an embargo against one of its member states? What will be the reaction of other members of the UN that are not part of the privileged minority and thriving G-20? Most likely, the reaction will be a rather emotional and long-lasting one with far-reaching consequences.
If the UN succeeds in imposing an economic embargo against North Korea, it is possible that members of the UN General Assembly could immediately and firmly raise a question of radical reformation of the UN’s structure and its authorities with principle and fundamental revision of their rights and powers. In my opinion, the deeper, institutional consequences of attempting actions such as trying to impose large-scale punitive sanctions against North Korea should not be ignored by the international diplomatic, academic and expert community.
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[1] This provision has not been confirmed by US government officials, but has been widely reported in Russian media. See for instance (in Russian): https://svpressa.ru/world/article/171856/;http://tass.ru/politika/4235908; http://stockinfocus.ru/2017/05/05/ssha-obyavili-sebya-xozyaevami-v-primorskix-portax-rossii/; andhttps://topwar.ru/115068-kongress-ssha-o-kontrole-rossiyskih-portov-nas-ne-tak-ponyali.html. It should be noted that at least one of the reports acknowledges the possibility of misunderstanding.
Diplomacy With North Korea: A Real Benchmark For President Trump’s 100 Days 28th April 2017
By Christine Ahn*
The Trump administration recently announced an emergency meeting with 100 senators at the White House, where many speculated that Trump would disclose new intelligence to justify U.S. military action against North Korea, or else more sanctions.
Neither would constitute a success in the Trump administration’s first 100 days. What would is calling for diplomacy to avert nuclear war.
Any military action by the United States, however limited, would provoke a conflict that could instantly kill millions on the Korean peninsula — and threaten a regional nuclear war that could draw in Japan, China, and Russia. Every president before Trump considered a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, but they were quickly sobered by the reality that a military option would trigger a counter-reaction from Pyongyang. The Obama, Bush, and Clinton administrations all felt they couldn’t justify military action that would kill millions of South Koreans and endanger the 28,500 U.S. soldiers and 230,000 U.S. citizens residing there.
The most serious brush was in 1994, when President Clinton considered a pre-emptive strike on North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor. The Pentagon concluded — well before Pyongyang possessed nuclear weapons — that even limited action would claim a million lives in the first 24 hours, if North Korea retaliated with conventional strikes on Seoul. President Obama, too, considered surgical strikes, but as The New York Times journalist David Sanger reported, “the risks of missing were tremendous, including renewed war on the Korean peninsula.”
Stratfor, a global intelligence firm, also raises questions about the suggestion that it’s possible to destroy North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure in a single strike. “We simply do not have a comprehensive or precise picture of the North Korean nuclear program, especially when it comes to the number of weapons and delivery vehicles,” it says. “We do not know for sure where they are located or how well they are protected.” Pyongyang was sure to communicate this during its military parade on the 105th birthday of its founder Kim Il Sung, when it showcased its nuclear-capable and mobile Transporter Erector Launchers (TELs). Not a sitting duck, TELS would allow North Korea to fire missiles from anywhere, from a forest or mountain, against Japan and South Korea.
“There is no South Korean leader who thinks the first strike by the U.S. is okay,” said Suh Choo-suk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. “The Security of South Korea is as important as that of the U.S.,” reminded Moon Jae-in, the leading South Korean presidential candidate. “No pre-emptive strike should be carried out without the consent of South Korea” — especially “in the absence of a South Korean president.” The second leading candidate Ahn Chul-soo cautioned, “We need to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue in a peaceful manner.”
Importantly, North Korea has threatened to retaliate only in response to a U.S. pre-emptive military strike. In its 7th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un affirmed that his country would not use nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty was violated.
Last week, DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol explained that his government’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles was “to protect our government and system from threat and provocation from the United States.” Former Secretary of Defense William Perry, who helped negotiate a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear program during the Clinton administration, agrees: “I believe that the danger of a North Korean ICBM program is not that they would launch an unprovoked attack on the United States — they are not suicidal.”
President Trump must avoid at all costs a direct military confrontation with North Korea, which has a long history of engaging in brinksmanship. The United States has been successful in defusing past crises by working in partnership with U.S. allies in the region. Today, China calls for restraint, and South Korea is urging a diplomatic solution. That diplomatic solution must include a formal resolution of the Korean War, which was only temporarily halted by a ceasefire when North Korean and American military commanders signed the Armistice Agreement in 1953.
President Trump could demonstrate his art of deal making by advancing the only solution that’s ever worked: diplomacy and engagement.
Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Christine Ahn is the international coordinator of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing for peace in Korea.
N. Korea tacitly approves expansion of market economy: report 27 April 2017
The North Korean government has tacitly approved an expansion of market economy for years as local marketplaces have grown in size, a report said Thursday.
"Since the current leader Kim Jong-un took the helm (in 2011), the North Korean authorities have given tacit permission to introduce some elements of a market economy, which led to the growth of local marketplaces," said the report published by the state-run Korea Development Institute.
As the Pyongyang government has not clamped down on market activities, the size of local marketplaces has expanded steadily and the private sector has pulled off modest growth along with the public sector.
The KDI report said there are 1,500 taxis in Pyongyang, with their basic fare set at $2 and $0.56 added for each kilometer, while private pharmacies can do business after getting a government-approved license.
It also said North Korea seemed to have removed a ban on beef trade, as local people can easily buy beef in marketplaces.
"The North Korean marketplaces are expected to expand further as the North Korean government sees that markets are useful to its regime, instead of regarding them as a big threat," said the KDI report. "But it will make constant efforts to put the development pace under control." (Yonhap)
U.S.-North Korean Relations in a Time of Change
Since 1953, North Korea has never been at war.
During that same period, to list only a sampling of interventions, the U.S. overthrew the government of Guatemala, sent a proxy army to invade Cuba, and bombed and invaded Vietnam, at the cost of two million lives. It bombed Cambodia and Laos, sent troops into the Dominican Republic, backed a military coup in Indonesia, in which half a million people were killed, organized a military coup in Chile, backed Islamic extremists in their efforts to topple a secular government in Afghanistan. The U.S. invaded Grenada, mined harbors and armed anti-government forces in Nicaragua, armed right-wing guerrillas in Angola and Mozambique, armed and trained Croatian forces and supplied air cover as they expelled 200,000 people from their homes in Krajina, bombed half of Bosnia, armed and trained the Kosovo Liberation Army, attacked Yugoslavia, invaded Iraq, backed the overthrow of governments in Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Georgia, Honduras, and many other nations, bombed Libya, and armed and trained jihadists in Syria.
And yet, we are told that it is North Korea that is the threat to international peace.
http://www.zoominkorea.org/u-s-north-korean-relations-in-a-time-of-change/
North Korea missile test a response to U.S. provocations, not the other way around
By Derek Ford
Feb 14, 2017
On February 12, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) successfully tested the Pukguksong-2, an intermediate range ballistic missile, firing it into the East Sea. The test should not have been a surprise, as Kim Jong-Un publicly announced plans for a missile test more than a month earlier.
Like almost anything the country does, it was met with immediate condemnation from the mainstream media and the imperialist governments and their institutions. A spokesperson for UN Secretary General António Guterres issued a statement accusing the DPRK of violating Security Council resolutions, demanding that the country “return to full compliance with its international obligations and to the path of denuclearization.”
This is a markedly different response than that which greeted the U.S. Air Force in September 2016, when they tested an intercontinental ballistic missile—with a range 12 times greater than the DPRK’s missile—by firing it into the Pacific Ocean. There was no international condemnation. The UN wasn’t up in arms. They didn’t insist that the U.S. was behaving recklessly. They didn’t use it as an opportunity to point out that the U.S. is clearly in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
To point out this hypocrisy is just to scratch the surface of what is really at issue in both the discrepancy of the “international community’s” response and the “North Korean threat” to which it is allegedly responding. For while the DPRK is presented in the Western media as irrational, unpredictable, and provocative, the reality is precisely the opposite.
Trump’s Pacific provocations
After filling up his cabinet with generals, one of Trump’s first presidential memoranda concerned “rebuilding” the U.S. military. The memorandum directed Secretary of Defense James Mattis to “assess readiness conditions,” and to submit a report within 60 days that identifies “actions that can be implemented within the current fiscal year and that are necessary to improve readiness conditions.”
Less than a week later, Mattis went on his first official trip abroad, stopping first in South Korea and the next day in Japan. While in South Korea, Mattis confirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to implementing the controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD), a U.S.-designed anti-missile system that will ostensibly be aimed at the DPRK, but that could also be turned on China and Russia. Mattis said that the Trump administration is making the northwest Pacific “a priority.”
In Japan, Mattis told Prime Minister Abe Shinzo that the Trump administration would stand by the U.S.-Japan security treaty, highlighting Article 5, its mutual defense clause. Mattis denounced North Korean “provocations,” and also condemned China’s presence in the South and East China Seas. Mattis assured Japan that it would defend the Japanese occupation of the Diaoyu Islands—which Japan annexed from China in 1895—in the East China Sea.
Abe is a man after Trump’s own heart. Deeply nationalistic and militaristic, Japan under his leadership has increased military spending five times since 2012. In July 2014, the Japanese government approved a reinterpretation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which is popularly known as its “pacifism clause,” to grant more power to its armed forces.
The situation is South Korea is more complex. Current President Park Geun-hye has had her powers suspended and is facing impeachment proceedings, after months of truly massive sustained street demonstrations across the country. She will likely be impeached by March.
There would then be new elections later in the year, as early as May. Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who has been empowered in the face of Park’s trial, supports THAAD. Moon Jae-in, likely candidate of the main opposition party, has not spoken out against THAAD, but has been a bit more measured in his approach, suggesting that it could be a bargaining chip in negotiations with China, or that it could be deferred the National Assembly.
A measured and rational response
The Trump administration’s latest moves do not represent an aberration from U.S. foreign policy, but rather an acceleration of it. This was no doubt a grave disappointment to those who hoped that Trump’s isolationist campaign trail rhetoric would mean a retreat of U.S. imperialism from the region.
There are currently around 50,000 U.S. troops stationed across 23 military bases in Japan. In South Korea, there are around 28,000 U.S. troops stationed across 15 military bases.
Together, the U.S. and South Korean armies routinely conduct so-called “war games” right on the DPRK’s border and shorelines. There were two rounds of joint military drills in 2016, one in March and one in August-September. The second round of military drills included the simulated pre-emptive bombing of North Korea and the “decapitation” of the government’s leadership. The next round of war games are scheduled to begin next month.
This is the situation facing the people of North Korea. The most powerful military in history is stationed right at its border. Having refused to sign a peace treaty for over 60 years, the U.S. remains technically in a state of war against the DPRK. Given this, it has hard to see the recent missile launch as anything other than a measured, rational response to U.S. aggression.
Can one even imagine what the U.S.’s response would be were the situation reversed, if the DPRK had 28,000 troops stationed on the Mexico border, and was conducting the simulated bombing of key targets in the U.S.?
North Korea has never invaded, bombed, or otherwise waged war against the United States or against any other country. It has no foreign military bases. It has no warships patrolling anywhere outside of its own territories. It has no drone program. It has never used a nuclear weapon. And not only does its nuclear arsenal pale in comparison with the United States’, but in recent years the DPRK has shifted resources away from military development.
From Songun to Byungjin
In 2013 the Central Committee of the governing Korean Workers’ Party adopted the byungjin paradigm, or parallel policy, which emphasized the dual development of the military and economy. Byungjin replaced the songun, or military first line, that had been in effect officially since 1995 and unofficially since the early 1960s.
Byungjin was further entrenched in June 2016 at the 13th Supreme People’s Assembly, the legislative body of the country that consists of 687 elected representatives (one from each constituency) who each serve five-year terms.
During the fourth session of the Assembly, the National Defense Commission was dissolved and replaced with the State Affairs Commission. While the former body prioritized—but did not focus exclusively on—military development, the latter prioritizes state economic development, and is tasked with the implementation of the latest five-year plan. Significantly, the State Affairs Commission has more representatives from the government and Korean Workers’ Party, and fewer from the army.
In other words, the 2016 Supreme People’s Assembly instituted a transition of state control away from the army and toward the Korean Workers’ Party.
The real threat to stability
What, then, is the reason for the U.S.’s aggressive maneuvers on the peninsula?
There are several answers to this question. For one, the DPRK defeated the U.S. in the Korean War, and has since pursued an independent path of development. In an era in which the capitalists declare that “There Is No Alternative” to neoliberal globalization, the DPRK proves otherwise. On one level, then, the U.S. hostility toward the DPRK is similar to that of Cuba, in that both represent alternative social and economic systems.
For two, the separation of Japan and South Korea from China has been a key component of U.S. strategy in the Pacific ever since the end of World War II. The “threat” of North Korea keeps this division in place and keeps China isolated from its neighbors. This strategic imperative has become increasingly important as China’s economic and political power has grown.
Relatedly, the illusion of the North Korean threat keeps the Pentagon’s war machine pumping in the Pacific. Without an “irrational” enemy, the U.S. would have little justification for its occupation of South Korea and its massive military presence in the Pacific.
Why progressives must defend independent Korea
There is a terrible legacy on the U.S. left of word-for-word parroting of the imperialist slander against Korea. Much of this is xenophobic and racist, and all of it is chauvinistic. Our task is not to tell the Korean people what to do. They don’t need our critiques or our enlightenment.
Those of us who want peace in the world, in the Pacific, and on the Korean peninsula, must fight for the preconditions to that peace: an immediate end to the occupation of South Korea, the signing of a peace treaty and the normalization of relations with the DPRK, and a halt to aggressive military maneuvers in the China Seas.
The bourgeois media and imperialist politicians constantly portray the DPRK as unpredictable and uncooperative enemy power. Yet the North Korean government has consistently demonstrated its willingness to negotiate with the U.S. The U.S., however, has just as consistently—save for a brief period in the 1990s—refused that cooperation.
The government and people of the North want nothing more than peace and stability. They will not sacrifice their independence at any cost, however, nor should they.
2nd February 2017.
Congress and North Korea: Diplomacy Not on the Table
https://lobelog.com/congress-and-north-korea-diplomacy-not-on-the-table/
by Tim Shorrock
The first Senate hearing on North Korea since President Trump came to office reveals a Congress bereft of any ideas except regime change. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee appears to be torn between sanctions that haven’t worked and military action that would almost certainly trigger a wider war.
“Something obviously has got to give,” declared Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), the chairman of the committee, as he opened the hearing Tuesday. He called North Korea, which has produced five atomic bombs and tested at least 20 long-range missiles over the last 10 years, “one of the most urgent security challenges facing the United States.”
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the committee, opened with the grave observation that the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) is in the “final stage” of testing an ICBM and joining Russia and China as “the only countries in the world with the ability to launch attacks on the United States.” But America alone “has little chance of stopping” this trend, so must work with South Korea and Japan to resolve the situation, he argued.
In that context, he noted approvingly that Secretary of Defense James Mattis was leaving Wednesday for South Korea and Japan. Mattis will discuss military and diplomatic options, including the Pentagon’s decision to move forward with the deployment in Korea of the missile defense system known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).
Cardin also noted that Trump tweeted recently that North Korea’s ICBM launch “will not happen,” and speculated whether the president was drawing a red line with that declaration.
If stopping such a launch is the intent, Corker laid out three choices for the United States. One is “pro-active regime change” aimed at toppling the government of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s 30-something hereditary leader, through “non-kinetic” (or non-military) means such as stricter sanctions. Another is to “exploit pockets of regime instability,” such as the spectacular defection to South Korea last month of Thae Yong-ho, North Korea’s ambassador to London, to convince others in the North that nukes and political isolation are not the way to go.
The third would be collaborating with U.S. allies in South Korea and Japan on a pre-emptive strike on Kim’s missile facilities. “Otherwise, we’re staring down the barrel of an ICBM,” Corker said.
Much of the hearing was devoted to China and how it can be pressured to increase its sanctions on its old ally in Pyongyang. Other questions focused on the chimerical American belief that foreign powers could accelerate the unification of Korea—under the pro-U.S. South, of course—and bring about stability by eliminating the North as a nation-state.
The Regime Change Option
Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, set the general framework for the hearings. He is an outspoken proponent for regime change and using military pressure against the North Korea, which he referred to several times as “the DPRK killing machine.”
“North Korea is embarked on a steady, methodical, and relentless journey, whose intended endpoint is a credible capacity to hit New York and Washington with nuclear weapons,” he stated, making the case that the DPRK is “prepared to win a limited nuclear war and force a nuclear showdown with the U.S. where the U.S. blinks.”
Asked how the White House should respond to an ICBM launch, Eberhardt suggested that the United States could covertly go after North Korea’s fleet of submarines capable of carrying missiles. “What happens if they don’t return to port?” he asked.
In general, the hearing reflected the U.S. view that America is an innocent bystander in a peninsula it has dominated militarily for 71 years. According to this conceptual framework, held by both Democrats and Republicans, massive US military exercises conducted several times a year with South Korea, the Pentagon’s frequent dispatches of nuclear-armed warplanes to the peninsula, and a military alliance with a high-tech Japan have nothing to do with Pyongyang’s fears.
Scott Snyder, a Korea specialist at the Council of Foreign Relations, did offer one reason for Kim’s insistence on building nuclear missiles. “North Korea has decided based on lessons from Iran, Iraq, and Libya that its only sure means of survival is to be ‘too nuclear’ to fail,” he said, a recognition of the blowback created by U.S. regime-changing policies in the Middle East and Africa.
Corker seemed to understand his point. “What they learned is, you get rid of your WMDs, we take you out.” The United States, of course, used the pretense of weapons of mass destruction to invade Iraq and pressured Libya’s Muammar Kaddafi to eliminate his nuclear program a few years before the Obama administration supported a UN military offensive against his regime.
One note of caution came from Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA). “Should we in fact be talking about pre-emptive attacks?” he asked Snyder after hearing the idea floated several times. Snyder’s response was to urge that such planning be done in secret. “I support US and South Korean military planning, but it’s not wise to broadcast it,” he said, adding that the allies “need to manage it in a quiet and effective way.”
Markey’s inquiry drew approval from John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University and a close observer of the Korean peninsula. “Good line of [questioning] from @SenMarkey pointing out how ‘decapitation’ threats on [Kim] increase risk of escalation/nuclear war,” he tweeted from Seoul. He also suggested a question for Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who left the hearing early. “What about negotiating a freeze as starting point for longterm diplomatic strategy?” he asked.
The Diplomatic Alternative
Indeed, not once in the 90-minute session did anybody offer an alternative to the militaristic path that was the hallmark of Obama’s approach to Korea and appears to be Trump’s as well. Excluded, for example, were any proponents of direct negotiations with the Kim government, as suggested in recent months by a range of former U.S. officials experienced with the region.
Among them is former Secretary of Defense William Perry, who considered launching a U.S. military attack on the North’s nuclear facilities in 1994. “I believe it is time to try diplomacy that would actually have a chance to succeed,” Perry wrote in The Washington Post on January 6, just days after Kim declared his intention to test an ICBM that could potentially carry a nuclear weapon far beyond East Asia.
But Eberhardt scoffed at the idea of negotiations. “Engagement will never produce” an agreement to phase out North Korea’s nuclear weapons, he said. “It’s an illusion to engage North Korea into denuclearization.” The Kim regime, he added in his written testimony, “is the North Korean nuclear threat; that threat will not end until the DPRK disappears.”
Snyder did offer a suggestion that Trump appoint a “senior envoy” for North Korea who would report directly to the White House and separate the nuclear issue “from the overloaded agenda in Sino-US relations.”
But he admitted that the “window of opportunity” for actual negotiations “may have closed,” and suggested that the best alternative to military action may be to pressure China to tighten its sanctions by shutting down coal exports to Pyongyang and cutting North Korean access to its banking system. At the same time, he warned that the U.S. “must avoid the trap of unilateral military action that would weaken alliances” with South Korea and Japan.
“It’s unconscionable to me that the hearing included no voices calling for engagement or serious diplomacy,” said Christine Ahn, a Korean-American activist who has organized citizens’ visits to North and South Korea to encourage the peace process. In addition to an envoy, she said in an email, the United States could establish a liaison office “that could help facilitate the humanitarian exchanges that can be the starting point for mutual trust-building.”
Tim Shorrock is a Washington-based writer who was raised in Japan and South Korea during the Cold War. He is the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.
NZDPRK SOCIETY COMMENT.
Nicholas Eberstadt's, myopic neocon viewpoint blinds him to the fact that North Korea has been repeatedly asking for a peace settlement agreement every year since 1972.