DATE=04/21/2001

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-00944

TITLE=ON THE LINE: NORTH KOREA: HOW SERIOUS A THREAT?

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0037

CONTENT=

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Anncr:On the Line a discussion of United States policy and contemporary issues. This week, "North Korea: How Serious a Threat?" Here is your host, Robert Reilly.

Host:Hello and welcome to On the Line. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says that "North Korea is still a country that presents a very serious threat to our ally, South Korea." The U.S. is reviewing developments since the historic summit last June between South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Mr. Powell said the United States is nowhere near establishing diplomatic relations with North Korea. In a setback for President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine" policy of reconciliation, North Korea has canceled cabinet-level talks with South Korea and put off a second summit which was expected to take place in June. The U.S. is concerned about North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs. North Korea fired a multi-stage Taepo Dong missile over Japan in 1998.

Joining me today to discuss North Korea and whether it poses a serious threat are three experts. Robert Manning is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Gary Milhollin is the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. And Henry Sokolski is director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

Gentlemen, welcome to the program.

Robert Manning, let me begin with you. How serious a threat is North Korea?

Manning: It's a serious threat on several levels. First of all, it is exporting weapons of mass destruction to the Middle East in significant quantities that are beginning to affect the military balance.

Host: Where?

Manning: To Iraq, to Iran, to Syria. And not just weapons, but components, facilities, helping them gain the technology to make Scud B and C missiles and even No Dong missiles. So there is that level. Secondly, they have deployed about a hundred No Dong missiles which can hit Japan and our bases in Japan. Thirdly, they have Taepo Dong missiles that they are working on which we don't know how accurate they are. The ones they have tested have not been spectacular successes, but could conceivably hit Hawaii, Alaska. And the Taepo Dong Two could hit the mainland of the United States. Then on top of that, you have the conventional threat. If you got rid of all the weapons of mass destruction, you are still left with the threat of surprise attack against Seoul, fourteen-million people. On any given day, you probably have one-hundred thousand Americans in the vicinity of greater metropolitan Seoul. So I would say they are a significant threat.

Host: Is that the way you see the threat, Gary Milhollin?

Milhollin: Yes, I do. I think that North Korea is a big conventional and non-conventional threat. One of the things we don't know about North Korea, and which is very difficult for us, is exactly how many nuclear weapons North Korea might have. We know that they have made enough material for at least one and possibly more nuclear weapons which could be made into warheads as we speak, could be aimed at our troops in South Korea, could be aimed at Japan, or could be smuggled into the United States. The fact that we don't exactly know what the nuclear threat from North Korea is seems to be one of the major gaps in our intelligence.

Host: But Henry Sokolski, wasn't this problem supposedly addressed by the 1994 Agreed Framework, in which the North Koreans said they would freeze their nuclear program? Has anything happened between now and then that should have led to this U-S reappraisal of its policy toward North Korea?

Sokolski: I think one thing. Under the agreement, we are supposed to supply two large U-S-designed reactors in exchange for North Korea coming into full compliance with its obligations to open its facilities to international inspection - its reactors, its reprocessing plant, etc. It hasn't done that, and it's been seven years. So the question that people are starting to ask is: when are they going to open up so that we can find out how many weapons worth of material they may have made, and find out whether they are serious about living up to their obligations not to acquire nuclear weapons. So right about now, we have to start worrying because we are now beginning to build these reactors and we can't complete them until they get a clean bill of health from the international nuclear inspectors.

Host: What do you think, Bob Manning, about the response to President Bush's announcement that there was a reappraisal of policy? Many people have criticized that, saying that this has put South Korea in a tough spot and that it soured the Sunshine policy.

Manning: I think there may be some valid points in terms of style, in terms of how they presented it. But I think it is essentially a bum rap in the sense that every administration comes in and reviews policies. And in my view, I think the last months of the Clinton administration got quite reckless.

Host: How so?

Manning: Well, that the President desperately wanted to go to North Korea in his last-minute search for legacies as everything else was falling apart. His Middle East legacy does not look too good. And they were trying to jerry-rig a so-called missile deal in which, as I looked at the details and had them explained to me, I guess I would sum up as: they wanted to rent us missiles, not sell them. There was no verification. It was presented, when Bush came in, by the outgoing people as if they were on the verge of a deal and, if it wasn't for the Florida recount, we would have had a missile deal. And that is just absolute nonsense. There were huge gaps in the negotiations and only Clinton's desire to go to North Korea was driving this thing. But nobody in the bureaucracy could say with a straight face that there was a deal worth a presidential visit. So it died. I think the Bush administration is perfectly legitimate to take a hard look at the whole thing. There are a lot of basic questions. Why are we focused on missiles and not conventional weapons? Why are we talking about missile deals when we have not even got the nuclear deal to work quite right? So there are a whole range of questions that can be legitimately asked.

Host: Wasn't there more driving that than simply the desire for a legacy? Because, after all, hadn't the summit between North and South Korea been a major breakthrough? It certainly was in President Kim Dae Jung's mind. Wasn't this propelling a process forward that was for once going to make a difference?

Milhollin: That's possible. There were a lot of signs that North Korea was thawing out and preparing to engage not just South Korea but the rest of the world. But still, I think Bob Manning's point is a good one. If they are still not willing to tell us or let us find out how many nuclear weapons they might have aimed at our troops or aimed at our allies, and if they are still making missile deals with people around the world which they are still doing then what do you get if you continue this policy of friendliness? You may get a promise from them not to sell as many missiles quite so fast, but that is not what you really need. What you need is for them to open up their program so that we can see what they have and to see, after whatever trade we make, how much they have left. It's just very hard to do this by stages. Either you are going to rescue their economy and put them on a diplomatic level somewhat equal to other people, or you are not. And if you do do that, then you want them to come clean and have a clean deal.

Host: But Henry Sokolski, with the economic situation North Korea is in, with the prospects of great starvation continuing, these are the only things they have to sell.

Sokolski: I don't think that is true. There are still many people in North Korea. They are able people. They can work. In fact, they work quite well in small businesses. And the South is going up North and trying to exploit that labor. So they have other things to sell. But as long as that regime is as militaristic as it is and as Stalinistic and clan-like in its rule, it must have a strong military to control the people. I think there is a regime problem here. It isn't just weapons. It is the nature of the regime.

Host: In fact, that is one of the things that Secretary Powell said about President Bush, and I'll quote it: "The President has made it clear that he understands the nature of the regime in Pyongyang and will not be fooled by the nature of that regime and will view it in a very, very realistic way." What does that translate into in terms of policy?

Manning: I think what it does is what I would call a new realism that, if the North Koreans are serious, they will get a serious response. What we had in the past was a sort of process masquerading as policy. When Congress would raise concerns about missiles or nuclear weapons, the answer was invariably, yes, we are going to have a meeting. And then they would send a hundred-thousand tons of rice or wheat to North Korea. And in exchange for that, North Koreans would show up at a meeting at which nothing happened and everyone went home. And that was considered the policy. I think we have had a big change starting a year ago with Kim Dae Jung's initiative in March of last year, which led to the summit in June and kind of a revolution in tactics on the part of North Korea. Kim Jong Il discovered that there was enough fascination with his hermit-like existence that he could manipulate the world media by showing that he was more or less normal. And so you had this sort of fascination about that. But if you look at what has happened since that summit, the South Korean government has been quite generous, giving hundreds of thousand of tons of food, fertilizer, and offering more. And when they ask them for simple things like, how about a hotline or simple confidence building measures, they get nothing. And now they have begun to shut down all the channels of North-South dialogue and try to blame it on the Bush administration. I think there is something else going on. And what else is going on is, as Henry said, you have a regime that knows it has failed, knows what it has to do to sustain itself, and is afraid to do it. So what we have had is them trying to milk everything they could get more or less for nothing and avoid the hard choices. Are they going to open up? And the transparency is not just military, it has to do with what you need to do to get into the World Bank, to get foreign investment, and so on. And across the board, the answer is no. The World Bank invited them to the last World Bank-I-M-F meeting in Prague. They didn't come. The World Bank has offered to send a team to assess their economy. They said, no.

Host: I just want to take a minute to remind our audience that this is On the Line. And this week we are discussing North Korea with: Robert Manning from the Council on Foreign Relations; Gary Milhollin from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control; and Henry Sokolski from the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. What about the point that Bob Manning made. The North is being subsidized with massive amounts of food and supplies from South Korea, Japan, and the United States. It is said that they ran out of indigenously produced food last January and they will not have any until the next harvest. Are we, in effect, sustaining a regime that would otherwise collapse?

Millholin: We are. And there is a good question as to whether we should do that. I think that has been the question all along. Even if you go back to the days when we made our famous nuclear framework agreement with them, the alternative has always been: do we just let them collapse and take the consequences, or do we continue to prop them up?

Host: Or would China prop them up?

Millholin: Other people might prop them up. That does not mean we have to.

Host: So how would you answer that policy question, Mr. Sokolski?

Sokolski: The assumption has always been that unless we do something in the way of assistance, something horrible will happen: World War Three; they will make many nuclear weapons. I hope the review will actually ask the question: is that true? And we don't know about the future. It is very hard to know. But there are a lot of other forces that suggest that, whether the regime collapses or not, and that's hard to know as well I think eventually it will; we just don't know when that there are a lot of incentives for North Korea to be cautious about overtly militarizing with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles because it is not just the United States that objects to this, but China and Russia for very different reasons. They don't want the United States and Japan to have an excuse to militarize or get missile defense. So we need to think about third parties and all of the factors in this review.

Host: There was a visit to China by Kim Jong Il last January and much vaunted visits to the Shanghai stock exchange, some reaction in the state-controlled North Korean press that this meant there was going to be some kind of change. Is that another show, or could it portend, finally, some kind of internal change in North Korea, at least on the economic side, based on the Chinese model?

Manning: There is some change going on. There is no question about that. The question is: is it enough, how far, how fast?

Host: What is it?

Manning: They are doing things that ten years ago they wouldn't have even entertained in terms of trying to entice some degree of foreign investment, tolerating markets in the country areas, mostly because their national distribution system has collapsed. So they have no choice. It is not a policy choice. It is a policy failure. Deng Xiaoping opened the Chinese economy. He said: we are opening up; it's okay to be rich. I have not heard Kim Jong Il say anything like that. And in that kind of system, nobody is going to respond until it becomes a big campaign at the top. I think they know they have to open up to some degree, but they have not been willing to do what the Chinese and the Vietnamese have done, which is essentially open up and try to redefine their sources of legitimacy based on economic performance, rather than sheer terror or power. I think so far the North Koreans seem to be doing pretty well with sheer terror, at least in their minds. And they are continuing to do that. But I think there is a hint of change in the air and I think we should encourage it. And there are certain things we probably ought to be doing, but we don't know how the internal policy deliberations, such as they are, work. And the only way you can find out is to test them. And I think, from our point of view, it is not a complicated policy issue. You ask, what do we want? Threat reduction. And that's across the board conventional, nuclear, missile, chemical and biological. And we want North-South reconciliation because, at the end of the day, this is a Korean problem. If you can solve the Korean problem, all the other ones are much more manageable. Are they willing to do that? Will we buy the threat if they are willing to sell it? And we don't know the answer to that. So far, they have mostly been renting.

Host: Do you agree with that, Gary Millholin?

Millholin: Yes, I think this is essentially a blackmail game. And it is always difficult to know how to deal with it. Do you go along or do you finally say, I'm not paying anymore; do your worst. And I think that is what the Bush administration is trying to figure out right now. Exactly just how far should we go in accommodating the North Koreans and when should we say, look, here is what we want, as Bob Manning says. We want these things and we are willing to pay for them. But unless you are willing to put these things on the line, we are not going to talk to you. And I think, frankly, the missile threat from North Korea has been somewhat exaggerated.

Host: In what way?

Millholin: I don't think it is likely that the North Koreans are going to be able to hit any particular target in the United States any time soon. In five years, they may be able to hit Hawaii, but even then I think it is doubtful. Whether they could hit Honolulu in the next decade is a serious question. So their threat to send a missile against our national territory, I think, has been exaggerated. But their ability to proliferate missiles into, say, Iran or Pakistan has not been exaggerated. They are doing it now. So the problem with North Korea is that it is, if you are looking at the threat, you don't just draw circles around North Korea. You have to draw circles around lots of other countries too. It is their exports that are very destabilizing, and that is worth paying something to stop.

Host: Henry Sokolski, you raised the intriguing question a moment ago of the involvement of other countries that are affected by this. And you included China. There has been some recent friction between the United States and China over the surveillance plane. Are our relations, that is U-S-China relations affected in any way that is going to advance or subvert the possibility of Korean reunification. Or is it in the interests of China?

Sokolski: I don't feel comfortable in the presence of Mr. Manning to speak to that, but I think we need to be clearer about what the threat is, which is the focus here. We don't know what North Korea will do in the next five years. We have been wrong about whether they could de-fuel or refuel their power plant. We have wrong about whether their plants are going to reprocess or not. We have been wrong about whether the missiles have two or three stages. With any luck, we will get it wrong again. We should not count on getting it right all of a sudden. We might. We might not.

Host: How do you construct a policy on being wrong?

Sokolski: You have to start thinking about North Korea as a problem that isn't just the weapons. It isn't just the military, but something which I don't think the Clinton administration gave very much thought to. And that is that the regime is a problem. William Perry, who was Secretary of Defense, said that we must not ask what we would like of North Korea; we must take it as it is. I think this review should ask the question: what is it we would like North Korea to be? How do we get there? And, in the interim, if it is only a few missiles, one of the things that keeps coming up is missile defense. Maybe that takes care of the missile threat from North Korea for a short while until maybe you take care of the bigger Korean problems.

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have and I would like to thank our guests - Robert Manning from the Council on Foreign Relations; Gary Milhollin from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control; and Henry Sokolski from the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center - for joining me to discuss the U.S. and North Korea. This is Robert Reilly for On the Line.