FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2002
N Korea in crisis after nuclear revelation
HARVEY STOCKWIN
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
HONG KONG: North Korea is currently beset by several grave crises arising from its pursuit of nuclear weapons as it has appeared to backtrack on its apparent confirmation on November 17 that it does already possess nuclear weapons.
First and foremost there is a crisis in food supply for the 20 million North Koreans. This emergency is talked about only by foreigners. It is never mentioned in the strictly controlled North Korea media.
Right now the World Food Programme has had to cut back on its food aid to the North. Donor fatigue has set in, not least because of continuing doubts about whether or not aid reached the people who need it. The North prevents aid organisations from closely monitoring donations. The suspicion that food aid is diverted to the huge Korean military apparatus is thereby enhanced.
The WFP has made another appeal for more donations, if a further massive increase in already pervasive malnutrition is to be averted. Much depends on what is decided by the Bush Administration.
The fact that WFP food aid to North Korea has had to be cut reflects the fact that many countries, not just the Americans, have a hard time reconciling Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons with its inability to feed its people, or to talk about this problem openly.
Secondly, there is crisis in fuel supplies as North Korea heads into the frigid Korean winter. This is the direct result of the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union agreeing last week to suspend monthly deliveries of 42,000 tons of heavy fuel oil from December.
The deliveries are a part of the 1994 Agreed Framework under which North Korea received fuel while two water-cooled nuclear power stations were being built. The suspension follows North Korea's admission that it has developed a uranium-enrichment programme as part its pursuit of nuclear weapons -- a clear violation of the 1994 Agreement.
Since the North Koreans admitted to the existence of the uranium programme on October 4th, two monthly deliveries have been made, despite the violation. Now the parties to the Agreed Framework are demanding that the North abides by its terms before deliveries are resumed. North Korea does not have the means to obtain fuel supplies from the open market. Whether old ally China will fill the shortfall in fuel supplies remains to be seen.
Thirdly, while promised aid from Japan would do much to ease the North's critical shortages, it remains well over the horizon. Tokyo has stipulated that relations must be normalised before any aid-giving is considered. Now it appears that a further round of normalisation negotiations due later this month will not be held.
This is because the abduction issue between Japan and North Korea remains unsolved. To the contrary North Korea has taken an intransigent posture which guarantees that the highly emotional issue will be further exacerbated.
North Korea allowed the five surviving abductees to visit Japan for two weeks, while keeping their children as hostages. Japan insisted that the abductees must stay in Japan and that their children should be sent to join them.
North Korea asserts that the abductees must return to the country which abducted them, thereby implicitly insisting that the initial crime of their abduction must continue.
Naturally this has further aroused Japanese public opinion. The Japanese government has now made the return of the children a precondition for further normalisation negotiations.
Instead of speedily acting to get this highly emotional issue out of the way, North Korea has instead further aroused Japanese public opinion by hinting that it may resume intermediate-range ballistic missile tests through Japanese airspace. These tests were suspended to placate the US and Japan after Pyongyang conducted one such test in 1998.
Against this background, it is small comfort that North Korea has seemed to back away from its apparent insistence on Sunday that it already possessed nuclear weapons.
A Pyongyang Radio said that North Korea "has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons to deal with increased nuclear threats by the US imperialists". Those monitoring the broadcast stick by this translation.
But some South Korean officials maintained that what was said was actually a reiteration of the North Korean current line that it "is entitled to have nuclear weapons". Another North Korean radio commentary on November 18 ended the linguistic controversy by returning to this verbal formula.
The hard fact remains that North Korea will only be able to improve its increasingly dire position on food, fuel, and aid if it abandons its habitual intransigent postures and quickly shows a willingness to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Since this is unlikely, the increasingly complex Korean crisis seems certain to escalate. As if to emphasise this, on Wednesday there was the first firing between South and North Korean navy ships in four months on their disputed maritime border.
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