NEGATIVE/ROGUES/NORTH KOREA

NORTH KOREA CAUSES PROBLEMS IN ORDER TO GET WHAT IT WANTS — WE MUST STOP REWARDING THIS CYCLE OF EXTORTION

NORTH KOREA ACTS THREATENING SO IT CAN GET AID AND CONCESSIONS

Editorial; The Boston Herald, October 17, 1999, SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 026, HEADLINE: New North Korea policy is needed // ln-10-29-99-acs

What the coalition failed to appreciate was that the only way North Korea's rulers can think of to survive is to extract aid from others by explicit or implicit threats, such as their test launch of a missile over Japan last year.

This extortion has been going on for five years, and shows no sign of ending. Last month Clinton took the process another step, agreeing to lift certain trade sanctions in exchange for a commitment not to conduct another missile test. Since then the Communist Party newspaper has claimed for the government the sovereign right to "launch a missile any time it feels necessary." In other words, the government won't even reaffirm a test ban agreement it reached a month ago.

FAILURE TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON EARLIER THREATS HAS LED TO INCREASED NORTH KOREAN BLUFFING

Editorial The Detroit News August 12, 1999, Pg. A14 HEADLINE: An Unpredictable World // lnu-acs

And it's assumed by many that North Korea, whose economy is in even worse shape, is merely bluffing -- encouraged, perhaps, by the Clinton administration's failure to follow through several years ago on threats of retaliation if North Korea didn't open its suspected nuclear sites to inspection. Instead, the United States decided to buy access by offering food and other aid.

NORTH KOREA USES A "CYCLE OF EXTORTION" TO GET WHAT IT WANTS

JANE PERLEZ, The New York Times, October 15, 1999, SECTION: Section A; Page 12; HEADLINE: DEFEAT OF A TREATY: THE ARMS EXPERTS; A Nuclear Safety Valve Is Shut Off, but U.S. Maintains Other Safeguards // ln-10-29-99-acs

Skeptics on the Clinton Administration's approach to North Korea complain of a "cycle of extortion" by the Communist authorities. Fear of North Korea's intentions intensified last year when it fired a missile that could potentially land weapons on the United States and when it threatened to repeat the exercise again this fall.

Last month, Mr. Clinton ordered the relaxing of a total trade embargo, imposed in 1950, in exchange for a temporary halt to tests of North Korea's long-range missiles.

NORTH KOREANS GET WHAT THEY WANT, GO INTO A TACTICAL LULL, AND THEN CREATE A NEW CRISIS

Richard Halloran; International Herald December 9, 1999, SECTION: Opinion; Pg. 8 HEADLINE: Reunification of Korea Is Deferred // acs-ln-12-28-99

Some South Koreans are skeptical that the North will negotiate in good faith. ''This is just a tactical lull,'' said one official, ''before they go back to being belligerent again.''

NORTH KOREA USES THREATS AS A BARGAINING SHIP

CHARLES LEE United Press International December 9, 1999, HEADLINE: UPI Focus; N.Korea takes new hard line with US // acs-ln-12-28-99

South Korea Thursday accused it northern communist neighbor North Korea of saber rattling to win concessions from Washington.

A South Korean government official said Thursday North Korea's growing condemnation against the Unites States was an old tactic of threat as a bargaining chip in order to gain more from increasing talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

WHEN NORTH KOREA HAS NEEDS ITMERELY MANUFACTURES A CRISIS IN ORDER TO GET WHAT IT WANTS

Douglas H. Paal; president of the Asia Pacific Policy Center, International Herald Tribune December 17, 1999, SECTION: Opinion; Pg. 10 HEADLINE: An Easing of Korean Tension for Now, but It May Not Last // acs-ln-12-28-99

Fearing the impact of outside influence on its essentially fragile regime, the North may now be content to sit on its hands until the cupboards are bare again. Then it can turn to the United States, South Korea and Japan to set a price in new commitments in exchange for further, limited cooperation.

If this is the case, then it is reasonable to expect Pyongyang to repeat its past behavior by ending the current lull with tensions and new moves intended to rebuild its leverage on Washington, Seoul and Tokyo in advance of further talks.

NORTH KOREA USES THE THREAT OF MISSILE STRIKES TO GAIN CONCESSIONS FROM THE WEST

Nicholas Eberstadt The National Interest 1999 FALL HEADLINE: The Most Dangerous Country // acs-ln-12-28-99

At one particularly heated moment in the Kumchang-ri inspection negotiations, a North Korean military official declared:

"'Surgical operation'-style attack and 'preemptive strike' are by no means an exclusive option of the United States. . . . It must be clearly known that there is no limit to the strike of our People's Army and that on this planet there is no room for escaping the strike."

He was alluding to North Korea's long-range missile capabilities, whose latest advance was suddenly demonstrated in August 1998 by the firing--without advance warning--of a multistage ballistic rocket over the main island of Japan. (At this writing, North Korea is threatening the imminent launch of a new and improved ballistic missile--one that may at last be capable of reaching American soil.) That missile program happens to be another instrument through which Pyongyang intends to derive concessional payments from abroad.

NORTH KOREA USES EVER EXPANDING THREATS OF MISSILES AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO EXACT TRIBUTE FROM THE WEST

Nicholas Eberstadt The National Interest 1999 FALL HEADLINE: The Most Dangerous Country // acs-ln-12-28-99

Weapons of mass destruction are now the financial and political lifeline for that starving, decaying state. By the perverse logic of this design North Korea's vital interests lie in magnifying the deadly risks it can pose to the outside world. Perfecting weaponry with ever greater reach and killing force correspondingly increases Pyongyang's scope for exacting international tribute. Just as business magnates in postwar South Korea strove to balloon their concerns into hypertrophied conglomerates that would be "too big to fail", so North Korea's leaders may be gambling that they can make the DPRK "too lethal to fail."

PERPETUATING NORTH KOREA'S CYCLE OF EXTORTION ONLY MEANS A BIGGER AND MORE HORRENDOUS DISASTER LATER ON

Nicholas Eberstadt The National Interest 1999 FALL HEADLINE: The Most Dangerous Country // acs-ln-12-28-99

But that vision--if indeed it is the vision that shapes Pyongyang's policy--is an empty fantasy. The DPRK's extortionist diplomacy is utterly inadequate to the task of revitalizing the economic foundation on which the state rests. In a world where South Korean export revenues exceed two billion dollars a week, the sums that North Korea schemes to obtain are almost negligible. Under any circumstances, those sums would be insufficient to purchase a new industrial infrastructure, or to prepare a work force for manning it, especially when extensive commercial and technical contacts with the outside world are unacceptable. North Korea's endgame stratagem promises only to slow the country's relative and absolute economic decline, not to reverse it. At the very best, that game plan will only extend the ghastly, deepening twilight in which the regime is already enveloped.

If I am correct that the DPRK is slated for still further decline, and correct as well about the logic of the North Korean system, the implications for the international community are ominous indeed. More than any other state in the current global order, the DPRK makes its living not through the export of goods and services, but through the methodical export of strategic insecurity.

POLITICAL REALITIES OF NORTH KOREA GUARANTEE THAT GIVING IN TO THEIR CYCLE OF EXTORTION ONLY EXACRBATES EVENTUAL INSTABILITY AND SECURITY THREAT

Nicholas Eberstadt The National Interest 1999 FALL HEADLINE: The Most Dangerous Country // acs-ln-12-28-99

But if North Korea's rulers--as they have so often stated--are resolved not to follow Gorbachev gently into the night, then we can only conclude that every extension of the regime's tenure will be marked by a corresponding improvement in Pyongyang's ability to inflict injury and provoke instability beyond its borders.

And yet, as North Korea fails, the international community moves to intervene with support. For Pyongyang, that is a highly satisfactory arrangement. It is less clear why it should be satisfactory to other governments. Wittingly or not, the principal powers with which North Korea interacts have fallen into a de facto policy of appeasement toward Pyongyang.

As a diplomatic approach, appeasement has recorded some successes at different junctures over the course of history, but only when the objects of that policy were capable of, and disposed toward, being appeased. In the DPRK, there is every reason to believe that the world community is dealing with an insatiable state.

NORTH KOREA MANUFACTURES NUCLEAR THREATS TO GAIN CONCESSIONS AND TRIBUTE WITHOUT HAVING TO MAKE REAL CONCESSIONS

Nicholas Eberstadt The National Interest 1999 FALL HEADLINE: The Most Dangerous Country // acs-ln-12-28-99

North Korea has demonstrated, furthermore, that nuclear threats can be manufactured for new, additional payments, irrespective of previous understandings. After signing the Agreed Framework, the DPRK began work on an enormous underground site whose observed specifications closely matched those to be expected of a surreptitious effort to continue a program for the development of nuclear weaponry. After detecting that suspect facility, the United States naturally demanded access to it. Subsequent high-tension negotiations in late 1998 and early 1999 resulted in an American pledge of over five hundred thousand tons of food aid to the DPRK--and an almost simultaneous North Korean promise to allow an American delegation to "visit" the site at Kumchang-ri.

NORTH KOREA USES A CYCLE OIF EXTORTION TO GET WHAT THEY WANT, TRIBUTE, WITHOUT MAKING CONCESSIONS

Nicholas Eberstadt The National Interest 1999 FALL HEADLINE: The Most Dangerous Country // acs-ln-12-28-99

Tribute is overseas aid on terms established by the recipient, not the donor. To be in a position to dictate just how foreign beneficiaries should bestow their largesse, of course, requires considerable and reliable leverage. How to obtain that leverage? North Korea apparently believes that it can achieve it through a carefully managed stratagem of military extortion. By establishing itself as an ever more menacing international security threat, North Korea evidently means to compel its neighbors--and, even better, its enemies--to propitiate the DPRK with a constant and swelling stream of financial gifts.

POLICIES TOWARDS SO-CALLED "ROGUE" STATES LIKE NORTH KOREA MUST REQUITE RECIPROCAL CONCESSIONS IN ORDER TO PREVENT NUCLEAR DISASTER

The New Republic NOVEMBER 8, 1999 SECTION: Pg. 21 HEADLINE: The Trouble With Treaties // acs-ln-12-28-99

But, like the old Soviet Union, the rogue states (North Korea, Iraq, Iran, perhaps Libya) at which this argument is principally aimed are not dangerous because of the military technology they possess. They are dangerous because of the odious intentions of their governments, which lead them to seek such weaponry in the first place. Just as internal political change in the Soviet Union was the precondition for meaningful arms reductions as the cold war wound down, the internal transformation of these rogue states is a precondition for rendering them less of a threat to the United States and to the international community generally.

JAPAN NEGOTITIONS SHOW THE REALITY OF NORTH KOREAN POLICY OF A CYCLE OF EXTORTION

The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo) December 4, 1999, SECTION: Pg. 6 HEADLINE: Editorial / No easy concessions to N. Korea // acs-ln-12-28-99

The resumption of dialogue between Japan and North Korea may be in response to the agreement among Japan, the United States and South Korea that they would cooperate with each other in improving relations with North Korea, made on the basis of a report made by former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry on Washington's policy on North Korea.

North Korea apparently now attaches its highest priority to obtaining food aid from Japan, while at the same time reserving for the future its policy of keeping Japan off balance by dealing with it in a high-handed manner one moment and in a conciliatory manner the next.

It is important for Japan to remain firm, while maintaining close coordination with the United States and South Korea in dealing with North Korea.