NORTHEAST ASIA PEACE AND SECURITY NETWORK ***** SPECIAL REPORT ***** This report is distributed to e-mail participants of the NAPS Network. The following is a collection of excerpts from the regular press briefing given by US Defense Department Spokesman Ken Bacon on April 29. The excerpts include mainly discussion of the security situation on the Korean peninsula and the military threat posed by the DPRK, as well as comments on the DPRK famine situation. A summary of the briefing was included in the April 30 Daily Report. The transcript was issued by the United States Information Agency (USIA) on April 30. -------------------- PENTAGON SPOKESMAN'S REGULAR TUESDAY BRIEFING Washington, DC, April 29, 1997 US Defense Department Spokesman Ken Bacon briefing. Transcript Excerpts: Q: About the famine in North Korea, there are reports that the situation is worsening. I was wondering if you could tell me the Pentagon's assessment on how much of a threat this causes to the peninsula and overall security along the peninsula. A: I think you can look at the food shortages in North Korea on several levels. The first, of course, is humanitarian. We have reports from non-government organizations, from the news media, from others, of widespread starvation or famine in North Korea. I can give you a few facts. Generally, food is distributed by the central government to about 65 percent of the population in North Korea. The military has its own distribution system, collective farmers have a separate distribution system, but in general, about 65 percent of the population receives a ration from the central government. That ration has been decreased dramatically over the last couple of years. There have been a number of problems with the North Korean agricultural program. We think that the main problem is widespread mismanagement over a long period of time -- lack of fertilization, lack of proper crop rotation, exhaustion of the land, etc. In addition, there have been floods and natural disasters which have further curbed food production. The rations now are quite low. They probably constitute about 15 to 20 percent of what we would consider here, what our Department of Agriculture would consider the minimum daily caloric requirement. In addition, many citizens of North Korea are going out and foraging for food. In other words, they get a ration. Some of those rations are now coming from local governments or from collectives themselves rather than from the central government. There seems to have been some change in the distribution setup . But they get their ration, and then in addition, they're going out and foraging on their own. If you take their ration on the one hand and what they're able to get through foraging on the other, it probably adds up to about maybe 80 to 90 percent of the minimum daily U.S. caloric intake requirement. So judged by American standards, these are pretty minimal diets. So there's the humanitarian problem. There were reports recently of children starving. There's a second problem, of course, which is an economic problem. Because people are going out to either plant their own food or forage for food, they're not always showing up in their factories or other places of employment. There have been reports recently from visitors to North Korea that say that in some areas only one in 20 factories seem to be operating because people are off trying to get food. So the humanitarian problem of low rations, not enough food, translates into an economic problem. We do not yet see signs, and I think it's very difficult to predict that we will see this, but we don't see signs that this is translated into a political problem. The country has a very strong military, a very strong security force. Its leadership appears to be secure. Therefore, we don't see political turmoil or disarray in North Korea today -- we don't see political instability. The question you raised goes beyond these three issues - humanitarian, economic and political, to stability. Peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. North Korea is and has been for some time a military threat to South Korea. It has a huge army -- the fourth largest in the world, 1.4 million people. The army appears to be better fed than the population as a whole. And the army is continuing to train, but some types of training have dropped off from past patterns. We do not see signs of heightened military readiness in North Korea; we don't see signs that any sort of military action is imminent in North Korea. But I want to be very clear, that most of the army -- about 50 percent of it -- is arrayed along the demilitarized zone. They have one of the world's largest artillery forces along the demilitarized zone trained on South Korea. They would be able to launch a very potent military strike in a very short amount of time. Having said that, we and the Republic of Korea also, have extremely effective, powerful, well trained and well fed forces. We can respond with devastating force to any attack that came from North Korea. We're prepared to do that, we're trained to do it, and that's why we're there. Right now the security situation on the Korean peninsula is really unchanged. It has been a potential tinderbox for some time, and it remains a potential tinderbox, but we don't see new factors in terms of troop movements, in terms of planning, that leads us to believe the situation is any more dangerous today than it was last month or last year. Q: You said 1.4 million -- I guess you meant... A: I meant to say 1.2 million. It's about 1.2 million. and of course there are also six million people in the North Korean Reserves, so it remains a very powerful and well trained military force, and the country appears to be largely under military rule. Q: Can you characterize the dropoff in military training and do you attribute this to be mainly due to economic problems? A: I think we don't have enough knowledge about North Korean thinking to be able to explain these. Any explanation I gave now would be speculation and I'd rather not speculate about it. Q: I wanted to expand on your point if I could, Ken. The VIP defector from North Korea to the South has said recently two things. I want to see if you feel they're propaganda or based in fact. One, that war is likely or imminent. And two, North Korea now has nuclear weapons. Despite the fact that there doesn't seem to be any change in military posture, what's the current intelligence of this building? Is war likely? Any more likely than it was before? Before being the past few months or a year. And two, do we now believe that North Korea does, in fact, have nuclear weapons? A: We have believed for some years that North Korea may have generated or accumulated enough plutonium to make at least one nuclear weapon. We don't know whether it has. We believe that it acquired enough plutonium to be able to do that. The point to make about the security situation on the Korean peninsula is that the clearest way for both countries to remain stable and safe, and the clearest way for North Korea to solve its domestic, economic, and humanitarian problems is to reach a peace agreement on the peninsula and to concentrate on economic growth and political reform rather than military buildup. That is what we've been trying to achieve in talks with the North Koreans; President Clinton has proposed the four party talks. Those talks have not gotten off the ground as much as we'd like. We are hopeful that they will. In some ways, North Korea has been more forthcoming in the last couple of years than in the past. It's cooperated some on searches for the remains of U.S. soldiers from the Korean War; it signed, most significantly, the framework agreement in 1994 to freeze its nuclear program, and it's stuck to that. As you know, there has been some humanitarian aid granted by Japan and the United States, South Korea, and other countries to North Korea. So there is a little more engagement now with the international community than there has been in the past. Q: Let me ask you very specifically. Do we feel war is likely based on what this VIP has been reporting now that he's in the South? A: We feel that war has always been a threat on the peninsula. It remains a threat on the peninsula. We do not see signs today that it's more likely than it has been in the past months or recent years. Q: If I could follow up. The defector, Mr. Hwang, in a report that was published last week, spoke about casting a sea of fire on the south from the North; spoke of blackmailing the United States into inaction by threatening Japan with annihilation. And now we have, I believe, the No Dong missile, the North Korean missile that can reach Japan, has been deployed, is operational. And Ken, I would ask what does the Department say about the capabilities of that missile? Can it carry a nuclear device? A: I'm not going to comment on the No Dong missile. There have been some reports in the Japanese press about that in the last couple of weeks, and I don't want to get into intelligence information on that or any other missile system that hasn't been discussed publicly before. Q: What do you think about Mr. Hwang's credibility, and have we actually talked to him yet? A: We have not talked to him yet. We are getting backbriefed by the South Koreans. As you know, South Korean authorities at the highest level have promised that we will have access to him. I wouldn't anticipate that will happen for several weeks, but we will have a chance to talk to him. I'd just point out that defector Hwang used to be "Mr. Ideology" in Pyongyang. He was the person who was sort of in charge of their ideological or propaganda program. Much of what he said recently is what North Korea has been saying for years about raining a sea of fire down on its enemies, etc. So beyond that, beyond saying that his comments aren't particularly new, don't have a particularly new ring to them, I don't want to say more. Q: In the conference with Mr. (Qian) Qichen this afternoon, will Secretary Cohen and the Chinese, our people and the Chinese, be going over these issues about Korea? Especially the credibility of Mr. Hwang? A: Without getting into specifics, I'm sure that Korea will be one of the issues that Secretary Cohen and Foreign Minister (Qian) Qichen discuss. [End of transcript excerpts]