Policy Forum

Brad Glosserman, director of research at Pacific Forum CSIS, asserts that any real solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis will ultimately be a “Grand Bargain” with military, economic, political, and diplomatic components. Fashioning that deal will require aggressive and creative thinking. One possibility is the formulation of a Korean Peninsula Nuclear Verification Regime

In this essay, Mindy Kotler, Director of the Japan Information Access Project, argues that the interdiction of North Korean ships is the right thing to do. Slowing the export of illicit arms, currency, missiles, and drugs from North Korea is the most direct way to get the attention of the DPRK’s elites. We need to hit hard North Korea’s leaders in a place they understand: their own pocketbooks. Interdiction, however, may potentially have a number of dramatic, unintended consequences for which the US policy officials need to be prepared. The most important is the likely revelation that some “legitimate” elements among our Chinese and Japanese “allies” also benefit from this trade.

In the paper below, Su-Hoon Lee and Dean Ouellette of Kyungnam University argue that given the breakdown in U.S.-DPRK relations, a viable alternative to avoid possible catastrophe on the Korean peninsula is urgent. The authors assert that energy sector cooperation may provide the most sound and politically acceptable solution to the problem we now face in Northeast Asia. This paper examines Northeast Asian regional energy cooperation by briefly reviewing North Korea’s energy situation, the problems associated with KEDO, and regional positions toward North Korea and energy sector.

Moon Chung-in is professor of political science at Yonsei University in Seoul. In his open letter to United States President George W. Bush, Moon refutes the notion that South Koreans are willing to tolerate a nuclear North Korea. However, Moon urges that the most effective way of transforming the North is not through invoking ultimatums, but by recognizing and engaging it. Unless earnest negotiations are first attempted, South Korea cannot support punitive measures against North Korea for its failure to comply with inspections and dismantling.

The essay below is by Ruediger Frank, Visiting Professor at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University. Based on research done on the DPRK’s extraordinary 1998 ideological switch and quantitative analysis of its 2002 price reforms, Frank argues that the DPRK is on the brink of profound and meaningful economic reforms. Moreover, Frank concludes that by allowing the DPRK a fair chance to reform themselves would produce a much more sustainable result than a change induced from the outside.

Alexandre Y. Mansourov argues Kim Jong Il’s game plan in Beijing includes a) treating the Chinese intermediaries as a pro-American party at the talks, which are best approached as a two against one boxing match; b) giving both, the PRC and the United States, an advance notice about pending initiation of reprocessing operations; c) tying down Washington at the negotiation table and buying time for military build-up at home; d) watching for the “canary in the mine” to die as an early warning signal about possible American attack; and e) framing the United States up in a way delegitimizing any U.S. unilateral military action against the North in the eyes of the international community. He further argues that the trilateral talks offer the United States a venue to present a real ultimatum to North Korea in the presence of Chinese witnesses – disarm and open up or else, with China’s tacit support behind the scenes for further enforcement action in case of the North Korean non-compliance. Dr. Mansourov concludes that the Beijing trilateral talks are likely to end up with a spectacular diplomatic disaster and may lead to further escalation of nuclear tensions on the Korean peninsula.

This paper was originally prepared for the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy sponsored by the Center for International Policy and Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago, Brookings Institution, Washington, January 9, 2003. The 28-member panel included Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., former Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs of Staff; two former U.S. ambassadors to South Korea, Donald P. Gregg and James T. Laney; Lee H. Hamilton, Vice-Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States; Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci, who negotiated the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea; and Selig S. Harrison, Chairman of the Task Force, Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy and a leading Korea expert; and the directors of research institutes specializing in Korea and East Asia at ten leading Universities. The Task Force convened on three occasions between November 2002 and January 2003. It was co-sponsored by the Center for International Policy and the Center for East Asian Studies of the University of Chicago. Funding was provided by the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation and the Center for East Asian Studies. For more information on the task force: http://www.ciponline.org/asia/

Mindy Kotler, director and founder of the Japan Information Access Project in Washington, DC, asserts that the Bush administration must examine its three fundamental assumptions of North Korea: 1) Kim Jong Il is a gangster and not a legitimate head of state; 2) North Korea is a client state of the People’s Republic of China; and 3) North Korea’s neighbors are not concerned with another Asian nuclear power. By failing to analyze these assumptions, the Bush administration has hindered a creative response to North Korea’s nuclear program.

William Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and Phillip Saunders, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, argue that given the current war in Iraq, North Korean efforts to potentially escalate the crisis carry a high risk of misperception and unintended consequences. The potential for major miscalculations by both the United States and the DPRK is compounded by lack of agreement in Washington about what the United States seeks from North Korea and what it should be prepared to pay. The administration’s failure to draw “red lines” about proscribed behavior means that North Korea can only guess what actions might prompt a forceful U.S. response.

In this essay, Kimberly Ann Elliott, Research Fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. outlines the strategy and potential efficacy of economic sanctions on North Korea. Consequently, Elliott concludes, multilateral cooperation and negotiation are critical to peacefully resolving the current nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. While North Korea’s closest neighbors are again resisting the sanctions option, if economic sanctions were part of a carrots and stick strategy to negotiate a resolution to the crisis, they might choose to cooperate-especially if the principal alternatives are continued instability or a military strike.