[Senate Hearing 108-56]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-56
REGIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE CHANGING NUCLEAR EQUATION ON THE KOREAN
PENINSULA
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 12, 2003
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio BARBARA BOXER, California
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BILL NELSON, Florida
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire Virginia
JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Staff Director
Antony J. Blinken, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware, prepared
statement...................................................... 4
Cha, Dr. Victor D., D.S. Song Associate Professor of Government
and Asian Studies, director, American Alliances in Asia
Project, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown
University, Washington, DC..................................... 42
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, prepared
statement...................................................... 21
Gill, Dr. Bates, Freeman Chair in China Studies, Center for
Strategic and International Studies [CSIS], Washington, DC..... 48
Prepared statement........................................... 52
Kelly, Hon. James A., Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian
and Pacific Affairs, Department of State, Washington, DC....... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Lilley, Hon. James, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC 36
Prepared statement........................................... 39
Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening
statement...................................................... 3
(iii)
REGIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE CHANGING NUCLEAR EQUATION ON THE KOREAN
PENINSULA
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m. in room
SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard Lugar
(chairman of the committee), presiding.
Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Chafee, Allen, Alexander,
Sununu, Dodd, Feingold, Bill Nelson, and Rockefeller.
The Chairman. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee is called to order.
Before making an opening comment, recognizing my colleague,
the distinguished Senator from Connecticut, I would like to
greet to this hearing 60 students from Evansville and Elkhart
High Schools in Indiana that include--and out of home town
pride, I will recite all of them--Evansville Bosse High School,
Evansville Harrison, Evansville Central, Evansville Reitz,
Evansville Memorial, the Signature Learning Center, Elkhart
Central High School, and Elkhart Memorial High School.
In addition to that, Reverend Jack Scott, of Columbia City
United Methodist Church, has brought 25 students from Columbia
City, Fort Wayne, Goshen, and Valparaiso to our hearing today.
So all 85 of these distinguished Hoosier students and
teachers are with us, Secretary Kelly, so you have a good,
fair, critical audience for your testimony.
Today, the Foreign Relations Committee will examine the
regional implications of the changing nuclear equation in North
Korea. This will be the fifth hearing we have held this year
that has dealt with issues related to North Korea. On February
4, we reviewed the broad strategic implications of weapons of
mass destruction on the Korean Peninsula. That same week, we
welcomed Secretary of State Colin Powell, who addressed many
questions related to North Korea. On February the 25th, the
committee considered the issue of global hunger with specific
reference to North Korea. Last Thursday, we explored the
possible structure and objectives of diplomatic engagement
between the United States and North Korea.
We have devoted this concentrated attention to the Korean
Peninsula because of the enormous stakes for United States
national security. The stakes are high, in part because the
North Korean pursuit of nuclear weapons will change the
security calculations of Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and
Taiwan, among others. These are extremely important nations to
the United States. Japan and China are our third and fourth
largest trading partners. South Korea and Taiwan rank seventh
and eighth, respectively. The cooperation of each of these
countries is critical to northeast Asian security and the
broader war on terrorism.
Given North Korea's extreme isolation in past years, it has
been tempting to de-emphasize its impact on northeast Asia
outside of the Korean Peninsula. Commerce and economic
development have moved forward in the region almost without
reference to North Korea. But the continuation of North Korea's
nuclear weapons program will force its neighbors to adopt new
strategic strategies, perhaps including the acquisition or
repositioning of nuclear weapons. Our analytic task would be
simplified if all the security responses of northeast Asian
nations were directed at North Korea like spokes connected to
the hub of a wheel. But security enhancements undertaken by any
of North Korea's neighbors will, in turn, change the
calculations of the rest of the group. The North Korean nuclear
weapons program could spark a northeast Asian arms race that is
fed by the interlocking activities of each of its neighbors.
President Bush is working to construct a multilateral
approach to the escalation of nuclear activity by North Korea.
Multilateral diplomacy is a key element to any long-term
reduction of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. But it is vital
that the United States be open to bilateral diplomatic
opportunities that could be useful in reversing North Korea's
nuclear weapons program and in promoting stability. We must be
creative and persistent in addressing an extraordinarily grave
threat to national security.
In reviewing the regional impact of North Korea's nuclear
program and also considering previous testimony before this
committee regarding North Korea, many questions deserve close
attention and will be a focus of our hearing today.
One, if North Korea does not abandon its nuclear program,
will South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan eventually develop nuclear
capabilities?
Two, given our lack of knowledge about North Korea and our
inability to verify operational details of their weapons of
mass destruction programs, how can we be certain that North
Korea is not already exporting plutonium or perhaps biological
or chemical weapon components?
Third, there are recent reports that China has sold North
Korea large amounts of a chemical known as tributyl phosphate,
TBP, which can be useful in extracting material for nuclear
bombs from spent nuclear fuel. Although TBP also has commercial
applications, is this sale evidence that China is not fully
engaged in helping achieve a peaceful solution?
And how can we involve China as a positive influence on
North Korea? Or how do calculations in China and South Korea
about the possibility of an abrupt collapse of the North Korean
regime impact the ways in which those countries, China and
South Korea, approach the North Korean crisis?
And, fifth, Russian officials have visited Pyongyang as
part of their diplomacy in response to the crisis on the Korean
Peninsula. How can the United States maximize cooperation with
Russia on this issue?
Sixth, in the event that North Korea does not agree to
suspend its nuclear programs and subscribe to a full
verification, how should our security guarantees to Japan,
South Korean, and Taiwan be adjusted, and should we pursue a
common theater missile defense for the region?
These questions, admittedly, only scratch the surface of
the security challenges that we face in regard to the Korean
Peninsula. Currently, the United States is deeply engaged in
diplomatic efforts related to Iraq. But, simultaneously, we
must be working with allies in Asia to develop an effective
strategy toward North Korea, and this committee looks forward
to the testimony of each of our witnesses today as we continue
that inquiry into these critical problems.
[The opening statement of Senator Lugar follows:]
Opening Statement of Senator Richard G. Lugar
Today the Foreign Relations Committee will examine the regional
implications of the changing nuclear equation in North Korea. This will
be the fifth hearing that we have held this year that has dealt with
issues related to North Korea. On February 4, we reviewed the broad
strategic implications of weapons of mass destruction on the Korean
Peninsula. That same week we welcomed Secretary of State Powell, who
addressed many questions related to North Korea. On February 25, the
Committee considered the issue of global hunger with specific reference
to North Korea. Last Thursday, we explored the possible structure and
objectives of diplomatic engagement between the United States and North
Korea.
We have devoted this concentrated attention to the Korean Peninsula
because of the enormous stakes for U.S. national security. The stakes
are high, in part, because North Korean pursuit of a nuclear weapons
arsenal will change the security calculations of Japan, China, Russia,
South Korea, and Taiwan. These are extremely important nations to the
United States. Japan and China are our third and fourth largest trading
partners. South Korea and Taiwan rank seventh and eighth respectively.
The cooperation of each of these countries is critical to Northeast
Asian security and the broader war on terrorism.
Given North Korea's extreme isolation, in past years it has been
tempting to deemphasize its impact on Northeast Asia outside of the
Korean Peninsula. Commerce and economic development have moved forward
in the region almost without reference to North Korea. But the
continuation of North Korea's nuclear weapons program will force its
neighbors to adopt new security strategies--perhaps including the
acquisition or repositioning of nuclear weapons. Our analytic task
would be simplified if all of the security responses of Northeast Asian
nations were directed at North Korea like spokes connected to the hub
of a wheel. But security enhancements undertaken by any of North
Korea's neighbors will in turn change the calculations of the rest of
the group. The North Korean nuclear weapons program could spark a
Northeast Asian arms race that is fed by the interlocking anxieties of
each of its neighbors.
President Bush is working to construct a multilateral approach to
the escalation of nuclear activity by North Korea. Multilateral
diplomacy is a key element to any long-term reduction of tensions on
the Korean Peninsula. But it is vital that the United States be open to
bilateral diplomatic opportunities that could be useful in reversing
North Korea's nuclear weapons program and in promoting stability. We
must be creative and persistent in addressing an extraordinarily grave
threat to national security.
In reviewing the regional impact of North Korea's nuclear program
and also considering previous testimony before this committee regarding
North Korea, many questions deserve close attention.
1. If North Korea does not abandon its nuclear program, will
South Korea, Japan and Taiwan eventually develop nuclear
capabilities?
2. Given our lack of knowledge about North Korea and our
inability to verify operational details of their weapons of
mass destruction programs, how can we be certain that North
Korea is not already exporting plutonium or perhaps biological
or chemical weapons components?
3. There are recent reports that China has sold North Korea
large amounts of a chemical known as tributyl phosphate (TBP),
which can be useful in extracting material for nuclear bombs
from spent nuclear fuel. Although TBP also has commercial
applications, is this sale evidence that China is not fully
engaged in helping achieve a peaceful solution? How can we
involve China as a positive influence on North Korea?
4. How do calculations in China and South Korea about the
possibility of an abrupt collapse of the North Korean regime
impact the ways in which China and South Korea approach the
North Korean crisis?
5. Russian officials have visited Pyongyang as part of their
diplomacy in response to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
How can the United States maximize cooperation with Russia on
this issue?
6. In the event that North Korea does not agree to suspend
its nuclear weapons program and subscribe to full verification,
how should our security guarantees to Japan, South Korea and
Taiwan be adjusted and should we pursue a common theater
missile defense for the region?
These questions only scratch the surface of the security challenges
that we face in regard to the Korean Peninsula. Currently, the United
States is deeply engaged in diplomatic efforts related to Iraq. But
simultaneously, we must be working with allies in Asia to develop an
effective strategy toward North Korea. The committee looks forward to
the testimony of each of our witnesses as we continue our inquiry into
this critical problem.
First we will hear from Assistant Secretary for East Asian and
Pacific Affairs, James Kelly. The second panel is composed of
Ambassador James Lilley, now with the American Enterprise Institute;
Dr. Victor Cha, Associate Professor of the Department of Government and
the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University;
and Dr. Bates Gill, Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.
The Chairman. We are honored to have you all with us this
afternoon. First we will hear from the Assistant Secretary for
East Asian and Pacific Affairs, James Kelly. The second panel
is composed of Ambassador James Lilley, now with the American
Enterprise Institute, Dr. Victor Cha, associate professor of
the Department of Government and the Edmund Walsh School of
Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Dr. Bates Gill,
Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
It is my privilege to call now upon the distinguished
Senator from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, for an opening
statement.
Senator Dodd. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And
once again, it was said yesterday, that Senator Biden, of
course, is the ranking Democrat on this committee, but is
recovering from some surgery and not going to be in the Senate
this week. And Senator Sarbanes is unavoidably tied up in
another meeting and could not make this one. So there could be
statements submitted by them and, if so, I would ask that they
be included in the record.
The Chairman. They will be included in the record in full.
[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
north korea: listening to allies
Mr. Chairman, North Korea's pursuit of nuclear arms, in clear
breach of its international treaty obligations has brought Pyongyang to
the edge of the same precipice it approached in 1994.
Our challenge is clear: we must stop North Korea from becoming a
plutonium factory churning out fissile material for the highest bidder.
We must not acquiesce to the North's nuclear ambitions. In order to
accomplish this objective, we will need the active cooperation of
friends and allies.
There is good news on this score. All of our regional partners--
South Korea, Japan, China, Russia--as well as several other interested
parties--the European Union, Australia, Thailand, Singapore--share our
goal of preventing North Korea from building nuclear weapons. All
recognize that their own interests would be undermined if North Korea
were to continue on its present path.
The bad news is that we do not have consensus on how to deal with
the North Korean threat. South Korea supports an engagement strategy
backed by maintenance of a strong deterrence. They want to avoid
coercive measures and have ruled out military moves to take out the
North's nuclear facilities.
Japan, China, the European Union, and Russia all support direct
talks between Washington and Pyongyang in an effort to defuse the
crisis.
The Bush administration insists that this problem must be resolved
through a multilateral process, rightly pointing out that North Korea's
violation of its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitments is a
matter of concern for the entire world, not just for Washington.
Although the administration prefers a peaceful diplomatic solution, it
has made clear that all options, including the use of force, remain on
the table. The administration has refused to sit down with the North
for direct, bilateral, dialog, arguing that such talks would constitute
a reward for North Korean bad behavior.
For its part, North Korea has repeatedly rejected any multilateral
forum, arguing that its problem is with Washington. Pyongyang wants
direct bilateral talks with Washington and claims that it is prepared
to abandon its nuclear weapons program only in exchange for formal
security assurances from the U.S. Government.
One fact is undeniable: while we argue about the shape of the
table, the Korean Peninsula is becoming more dangerous by the day, with
cruise missile tests, DMZ incursions, interceptions of U.S.
reconnaissance aircraft, and threats by North Korea to reprocess the
spent fuel from its Yongbyon reactor. If North Korea takes that fateful
step, they could harvest enough fissile material for 5-6 nuclear bombs
by the end of the summer.
As I have said before, the North says the ball is in our court. We
say it is in their court. And from where I sit, the ball is stuck in
the net and someone better go get it. In fact, I think we're putting
form over substance and losing sight of the ball.
The whole point of doing something multilaterally is to secure the
support of friends and allies who have something to contribute to the
resolution of this crisis.
Well guess what? We have consulted our friends and allies, and they
all agree that we should sit down and talk with the North to test their
willingness to abandon their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Our friends stand ready to assist those talks and to contribute
diplomatically and economically to a solution.
At a Washington Post forum on North Korea policy held on February
6, 2003, Deputy Secretary of State Wolfowitz explained the
administration's insistence on a multilateral framework this way: ``I
think absolutely key as we go forward to solving this nuclear problem,
but also to achieving our larger goals in Northeast Asia, is to
maintain the solidarity that we have had with South Korea and with
Japan over many years.''
I couldn't agree more. But in this case, ironically, maintaining
solidarity with our allies means being willing to sit down bilaterally
with North Korea.
As for whether bilateral talks would constitute a ``reward'' for
North Korea, I guess that depends on the content of the dialog. I
believe the purpose of any dialog is to articulate clearly and
convincingly why the world rejects North Korea's pursuit of nuclear
weapons and to hold out to them the promise of a fundamentally
different future--including positive security assurances--if and only
if they are prepared to abandon their nuclear weapons ambitions.
This is not appeasement. This is not a reward for bad behavior.
This is about offering North Korea a choice of two futures, and I would
add, making our own future much more secure.
Frankly, I am not optimistic that at this stage North Korea can be
convinced to change course. It's a long shot. But I can promise you
this: if the administration sustains its current policy of malign
neglect of the Korean Peninsula, North Korea is almost certain to
accelerate its nuclear program. If that happens and we move to adopt
sanctions or other coercive measures against the North, as seems
likely, we will have a tough time rallying allies to our cause if we
have ignored their advice all along. They will rightly ask us why we
failed to test the North's intentions by sitting down and talking
directly to them.
Senator Dodd. And I, too, want to welcome, by the way,
these students. Is anyone left in Indiana? You have filled the
room here with all these wonderful students, and we are
delighted you are here. And what an honor it is to have you as
an audience in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and what
a true honor it is for you to be here and watch your Senator
preside as chairman of the committee.
I have served with Senator Lugar for 22 years now in the
U.S. Senate, and I do not say this merely because he is here or
you are here, America is truly blessed to have someone of Dick
Lugar's talents and abilities to be serving as the chairman of
this committee, and you in Indiana are very, very lucky to have
him as United States Senator.
So we are glad you are here to witness and listen to
Senator Lugar, who has made a very fine opening statement
asking some very pointed and serious questions about the
problems that persists in North Korea and, as well, to thank
him once again for having a series of hearings as we have had
on major foreign policy issues around the world that the United
States must deal with and the challenge for us to be able to
multi task, which is difficult for any nation, but if you are
in the position we are as the United States where so much
depends upon what we do every day, it is important that we be
able to juggle, if you will--maybe ``juggle'' is not the right
word I would like to use, but the idea of handling a variety of
challenges that confront us every single day. And certainly the
issue of North Korea is one of those issues, despite the
problems in the Middle East, that we are going to have to
grapple with.
So I thank the chairman immensely for holding what has now
been the third hearing examining North Korea and our policy
toward North Korea in the last month, reflecting the urgent
nature of this crisis.
Now, I know that the administration does not like me to use
the word ``crisis,'' or anyone else to use the word ``crisis,''
but I do not know how else to describe the prospect of North
Korea, where they might, in a matter of days, and that is not
an exaggeration, become a plutonium factory selling fissile
material to the highest bidder around the globe. There has been
a lot of talk recently about what we are going to do about this
particular problem, how we can convince North Korea to abandon
its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the long-range ballistic
missiles.
The Bush administration says it is willing to sit down with
North Korea, but only in a multilateral setting. The President
has argued, rightly, in my view, that North Korea's nuclear
activities are the concern of the world, not just the United
States. He is absolutely correct in that view. So it is
desirable for many interested parties--South Korea, China,
Japan, Russia, the European Union, perhaps others--to
participate in the solution to this particular crisis. And I
agree with him. That would be the best possible way to proceed.
But I would add, Mr. Chairman, that there is a bit of an
irony here, the administration insisting on a multilateral
approach to the North Korean crisis while pursuing what many
see as almost a unilateralist strategy with respect to Iraq.
In any case, there is a catch with respect to any
multilateral approach to North Korea, namely that North Korea
has categorically rejected multilateral talks. They want to sit
down directly with us and no one else at the table. I regret
that. I think that is a mistake. But, nonetheless, that is the
situation we find ourselves in. They seek security assurances
from the United States, in exchange for which they claim they
are prepared to address our concerns about their nuclear and
ballistic missile programs.
So how should we resolve this impasse? What do we do about
this? We should start by listening, really listening, to our
friends, in my view. Our South Korean allies, who understand
the North Koreans probably better than anyone else, have a
suggestion. They have urged us to engage in direct bilateral
talks to test North Korea's intentions. I think we should
listen to them. What do the other players say? China, Russia,
the members of the European Union all agree that direct U.S./
North Korean talks have the best chance of convincing North
Korea to change direction. I think we should listen to them, as
well.
We have the blessing, indeed the encouragement, of our
friends and allies to sit down with the North for direct talks.
In my view, we should proceed with bilateral talks, all the
while, of course, keeping our allies informed of how they can
contribute not just in the negotiations, but also to any
agreement that promises to fully and irreversibly dismantle the
North's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Now, I understand, of course, the President's reluctance to
negotiate with North Korea. The regime of Kim Jong Il is one of
the most brutal authoritarian governments on the planet; not
just now, but throughout history. They cannot be trusted, in my
view, and they have a track record of behaving badly, very
badly, in order to get the world's attention and to try and
extract concessions in return for more reasonable behavior.
But this is not about trusting or liking North Korea. We
did not trust or like the Soviet Union either when we engaged
in arms-control treaties with them throughout almost five
decades. And this is not about rewarding bad behavior either.
Talks are not a reward unless the message is surrender.
Certainly the administration knows this.
When General Anthony McAuliffe of the 131st Airborne
Division held direct bilateral talks with German officers on
December 22, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, he did not
engage in appeasement. He answered their call for surrender
with one word, ``Nuts.''
The reason for us to talk with North Korea, in my view, is
to test their intentions and to offer them an alternative to
the disastrous path that they are currently on. If North Korea
is prepared to verifiably dismantle its nuclear and ballistic
missile program, then we should stand ready with our friends
and allies to offer them a brighter future.
But maybe they will tell us, ``Nuts.'' If the North Koreans
refuse to take the path of peace and reconciliation, at least
we will have tried. And if we, in the end, return to a
containment or even more coercive steps, then we will have a
far better chance, in my view, of securing multilateral support
for our efforts if we have first exhausted diplomatic avenues.
Surely, the administration can appreciate this given all that
is going on in New York this week.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
I am deeply grateful to the Assistant Secretary for being here
to share his thoughts with us, and our other witnesses, who
bring a wonderful expertise to the particular issue of the
Korean Peninsula. It can be tremendously helpful to all of us
in gathering our own opinions and deciding what course we ought
to follow.
Certainly, we have had wonderful witnesses already, and
scholars, including Ambassadors Donald Gregg and Arnie Cantor,
all of whom have endorsed, of course, that dialog with North
Korea is essential to any peaceful solution to this crisis. And
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Dodd.
It is a real privilege to have Assistant Secretary Kelly
before us today. He is a veteran of the trail of American
diplomacy, with a remarkable career, and he is an expert on the
subject on which he is going to testify today from his personal
experience.
Now, I just want to say that I hope we can release
Assistant Secretary Kelly sometime around 3:45 or thereabouts
so that he can continue his work of American diplomacy in
addition to his work with us today. But he is flexible, and
members will be heard. So I want to offer that reassurance that
we will have opportunities to question our witness.
Would you please proceed, Assistant Secretary Kelly?
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES A. KELLY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Kelly. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of
the committee and distinguished citizens of Indiana, as well. I
thank you very much for this opportunity to discuss the
regional implications of the changing nuclear equation on the
Korean Peninsula, which is, as you have said, an issue of vital
importance.
With your permission, I would submit my longer statement
for the record and will get right to the bottom line.
The Chairman. It will be published in full, and proceed as
you wish.
Mr. Kelly. Thank you, sir.
In the past several months, North Korea has initiated a
number of serious provocations designed to blackmail the United
States and to intimidate our friends and allies into pushing
the United States into a bilateral dialog with the North,
giving the North what it wants and on its terms. What the North
wants is acceptance by us that North Korea's nuclear weapons
are somehow only a matter for the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea [DPRK] and the United States. This may be tempting to
some nations, but it is not true.
We tried the bilateral approach 10 years ago by negotiating
the U.S./DPRK Agreed Framework. In 1993 and 1994, and
subsequently over the past decade, we made a number of
statements relating to North Korea's security. We met our end
of the bargain. While the Agreed Framework succeeded in
freezing the North's nuclear weapons program for 8 years, it
was only a partial solution of limited duration. It was easier
for North Korea to abrogate its commitments to the United
States under the Agreed Framework thinking it would receive the
condemnation of only a single country.
This time, a more comprehensive approach is required, and
that is because nuclear North Korea could change the face of
northeast Asia undermining the security and stability that have
underwritten the region's economic vitality and prosperity and
possibly triggering a nuclear arms race that would end
prospects for a lasting peace and settlement on the Korean
Peninsula. The stakes are equally high for the international
community, which would face the first-ever withdrawal from
among the 190 signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty.
We and others fear an economically desperate North Korean
regime might sell fissile material or nuclear arms abroad, and
other nuclear aspirants are watching. If North Korea gains from
its violations, others may conclude that the violation route is
a cost-free one. In fact, the past 6 months has shown the
international community is united in its desire to see a
nuclear-weapons-free Korean Peninsula.
States cannot undertake this task alone. International
institutions, particularly the International Atomic Energy
Agency [IAEA] and the U.N. Security Council, will have an
equally important role to play. For all these reasons, we are
moving forward with plans for multilateral, rather than
bilateral, talks to achieve a verifiable and irreversible end
to North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Achieving a multilateral resolution to North Korea's
nuclear weapons program will take time. The key States to
northeast Asia--South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia--all
share the common goal of seeking a denuclearized Korean
Peninsula. However, each also have a unique historical
experience with North Korea and very distinct concerns. Japan
has suffered a legacy of North Korean abductions of innocent
Japanese civilians, as well as the threat posed by North
Korea's ballistic missile program. The cool admission of
kidnapings from the Japanese home islands followed by untimely
deaths stunned many Japanese.
For China, a nuclear North Korea raises the specter of a
regional arms race in a neighbor with a very unstable economic
backdrop to its nuclear ambitions and a potentially huge burden
on Chinese resources.
Russia is, likewise, concerned about a regional arms race
and instability on its far eastern border.
And the people of South Korea want national reconciliation,
yet worry about the economic costs and burdens that this could
impose.
As the foregoing should make clear, all of North Korea's
immediate neighbors feel they have a stake in the outcome of
the diplomatic process, and they want to be consulted and
engaged in achieving a resolution. They all support the
principle of multilateral dialog. Indeed, since the Secretary's
trip to the region just 2 weeks ago, our discussions with
Japan, South Korea, China, and others have been focused on the
specific modalities of a multilateral approach, rather than on
its merits. These countries have also asked that the United
States address DPRK concerns directly. We have told our
partners that we will do so, but in a multilateral context.
This time, we need a different approach. We cannot risk another
partial solution.
The United States is open to ideas about the format for a
multilateral solution. The process for achieving a durable
resolution will require patience. It is essential that North
Korea not reprocess its spent nuclear fuel into plutonium. That
could produce significant plutonium within some 6 months. But
the highly enriched uranium alternate capability is not so far
behind. Resolution is not just a matter of getting the North to
foreswear its nuclear weapons ambitions, but also to accept a
verifiable and reliable regime of that verification, including
declaration, inspection, and verified elimination.
North Korea has, so far, rejected a multilateral approach,
but we do not believe this is necessarily its last word or its
final position. In the end, North Korea will have to make a
choice. Over the past 10 years, Pyongyang has been in pursuit
of two mutually exclusive goals--the first is nuclear weapons;
the second is redefining its place in the world community and,
incidentally, its access to international largesse--by
broadening its diplomatic and foreign economic relations. The
DPRK needs to accept that it cannot do both. The international
community is impressing on the North that its in its own best
interests to end its nuclear arms program.
In the past, North Korea has indicated it wanted to
transform its relations with the United States, South Korea,
and Japan. It has the ability to achieve such a transformation.
The question is whether it has the will.
President Bush has repeatedly said we seek a peaceful
diplomatic solution with North Korea, even though he has taken
no option off the table. The President has said he would be
willing to reconsider a bold approach with North Korea which
would include economic and political steps to improve the lives
of the North Korean people and to move our relationship with
that country toward normalcy once the North dismantles its
nuclear weapons program and addresses our longstanding
concerns.
While we will not dole out rewards to convince North Korea
to live up to its existing obligations, we and the
international community as a whole remain prepared to pursue a
comprehensive dialog about a fundamentally different
relationship with that country once it eliminates its nuclear
weapons program in a verifiable and irreversible manner and
comes into compliance with its international obligations.
Of course, for full engagement, North Korea will need to
change its behavior on human rights, address the issues
underlying its appearance on the State Department's list of
states sponsoring terrorism, eliminate its illegal weapons of
mass destruction programs, cease the proliferation of missiles
and missile-related technology, and adopt a less provocative
conventional force disposition. But we remain confident of a
peaceful diplomatic solution based on the common interests of
our friends and allies, and we will continue to work closely
with the Congress as we move ahead.
Thank you, sir. I am ready to respond to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kelly follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. James. A. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of
State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, it is an honor and a
privilege to appear before you today to discuss a vitally important
issue, the regional implications of the changing nuclear equation on
the Korean Peninsula.
the problem
Let me begin by recapping the problem.
For many years, North Korea's nuclear weapons program has been of
concern to the international community.
In 1993, North Korea provoked a very serious situation on the
Peninsula with its announced withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty, setting in motion a crisis-and-negotiation
scenario that culminated in the 1994 Agreed Framework.
While North Korea adhered to the Agreed Framework ``freeze'' on its
declared plutonium production facilities at Yongbyon, last summer it
became apparent that the North had been pursuing for several years
another track covertly to acquire nuclear weapons, a uranium enrichment
program.
Our discovery of this program and North Korea's refusal even after
acknowledging it to us, to dismantle it, forced us to set aside a
policy we had hoped would put us on a path towards resolving all of our
concerns with North Korea--a path that would have offered North Korea
an improved relationship with the United States and participation in
the international community, with the benefits and responsibilities
conferred by membership in the international community.
Instead of undoing its violations of existing agreements with the
U.S. and South Korea, as well as of the NPT and IAEA Safeguards
agreement, the North has escalated the situation, first by expelling
IAEA inspectors, then announcing its withdrawal from the NPT.
More recently, the North restarted its reactor at Yongbyon,
conducted test firings of a developmental cruise missile, and
intercepted an unarmed U.S. aircraft operating in international
airspace with four armed North Korean fighter aircraft.
Each of these North Korean provocations is designed to blackmail
the United States and to intimidate our friends and allies into pushing
the United States into a bilateral dialogue with the North--giving the
North what it wants, and on its terms. What the North wants is
acceptance by us that North Korea's nuclear weapons are somehow only a
matter for the DPRK and the U.S. This may be tempting to some nations.
But it is not true.
why a multilateral approach
We tried the bilateral approach ten year's ago, by negotiating the
U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework.
We agreed to organize an international consortium to provide the
light water reactor project and to finance heavy fuel oil shipments, in
exchange for the freezing and eventual dismantling of the North's
graphite-moderated nuclear program. Our agreement also set. aside North
Korea's obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In 1993 and 1994, and over the past decade, we made a number of
statements relating to North Korea's security.
And we found the North could not be trusted.
This time, a new and more comprehensive approach is required.
The stakes are simply too high.
North Korea's programs for nuclear weapons, and the means to
deliver them at increasingly longer range, pose a serious regional and
a global threat.
A nuclear North Korea could change the face of Northeast Asia--
undermining the security and stability that have underwritten the
region's economic vitality and prosperity, and possibly triggering a
nuclear arms race that would end prospects for a lasting peace and
settlement on the Korean Peninsula.
The stakes are no less compelling for the international community,
which would face the first-ever withdrawal from among the 190
signatories to the NPT, dealing a serious blow to an institution that
may be even more relevant and necessary today than ever in its history.
And an economically desperate North Korean regime might sell
fissile material or nuclear arms abroad.
Make no mistake, we believe we can still achieve, through peaceful
diplomacy, a verifiable and irreversible end to North Korea's nuclear
weapons programs.
However, to achieve a lasting resolution, this time, the
international community, particularly North Korea's neighbors, must be
involved. While the Agreed Framework succeeded in freezing the North's
declared nuclear weapons program for eight years, it was only a partial
solution of limited duration. That is no longer an option.
That is why we are insisting on a multilateral approach, to ensure
that the consequences to North Korea of violating its commitments will
deny them any benefits to their noncompliance.
It was easier for North Korea to abrogate its commitments to the
United States under the Agreed Framework, thinking it would risk the
condemnation of a single country.
In fact, the past six months have shown that the international
community is united in its desire to see a nuclear-weapons free Korean
Peninsula. North Korea has no support in its policies as reflected in
the 35-0-0 and 33-0-2 IAEA votes.
If our starting point for a resolution is a multilateral framework,
therefore, we believe that this time, it will not be so easy for North
Korea, which seeks not only economic aid, but also international
recognition, to turn its back on all of its immediate neighbors and
still expect to receive their much-needed munificence.
This would further North Korea's own isolation with an even more
terrible price to be paid by its people, who are already living in
abject poverty and face inhumane political and economic conditions.
States cannot undertake this task alone. International
institutions, particularly the International Atomic Energy Agency and
the UN Security Council, will have an equally crucial role to play.
Thus, as Secretary Powell explained to our friends and allies in
Northeast Asia when he visited the region last month, we are moving
forward with plans for multilateral rather than bilateral talks to
resolve this issue.
But the rubber hits the road when we are faced with violations of
those agreements and commitments.
Moreover, it is important to underscore that multilateral support
for such regimes as reflected in the NPT is critical.
We must, in dealing with North Korea, be mindful that other would-
be nuclear aspirants are watching. If North Korea gains from its
violations, others may conclude that the violation route is cost free.
Deterrence would be undermined and our nonproliferation efforts--
more critical now than ever--would be grossly jeopardized.
regional implications
Achieving a multilateral approach to eliminating North Korea's
nuclear weapons program will take time. The key states in Northeast
Asia--South Korea, Japan, China and Russia--all share the common goal
of seeking a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. However, each also has a
unique historical experience with North Korea and very distinct
concerns.
Japan has suffered a legacy of North Korean abductions of innocent
Japanese civilians, as well as the threat posed by North Korea's
missile program. The cool admission of kidnappings from the Japanese
home islands followed by untimely deaths stunned many Japanese.
For China, a nuclear North Korea raises the specter of a regional
arms race and a neighbor with a very unstable economic backdrop to its
nuclear ambitions--and a potentially huge burden on Chinese resources.
Russia is likewise concerned about a regional nuclear arms race and
instability on its far eastern border.
And, the people of South Korea want national reconciliation, yet
worry about the economic costs and burdens that this could impose.
As the foregoing should make clear, all of North Korea's immediate
neighbors feel they have a stake in the outcome of the diplomatic
process and want to be consulted and engaged in achieving a resolution.
For that reason, all of them support the principle of multilateral
dialogue.
Indeed, since the Secretary's trip to the region last month, our
discussions with Japan, South Korea, China and others have been focused
on the specific modalities of a multilateral approach, rather than its
merits.
What I would like the committee to understand, however, is that in
response to North Korean demands for bilateral US-DPRK dialogue, they
have asked that we also address DPRK concerns directly.
We have told our partners that we will do so--but in a multilateral
context. This time, we need a different approach. This time, we cannot
run the risk of another partial solution.
The process for achieving a durable resolution requires patience.
It is essential that North Korea not reprocess its spent nuclear fuel
into plutonium. That could produce significant plutonium within six
months. But the HEU alternate capability is not so far behind.
Resolution is not just a matter of getting the North to forswear its
nuclear weapons ambitions, but also to accept a reliable, intrusive
verification regime, including declaration, inspection, and
irreversible and verifiable elimination.
North Korea has so far rejected a multilateral approach, but we do
not believe this is its last word or its final position.
Members of the Committee will recall that last year, North Korea
loudly refused our proposal for comprehensive talks until finally
convinced to follow through on that offer by Japan, South Korea, and
China. We then had to shelve our talks with the discovery of the
clandestine HEU program, of course. This time our friends and allies
have again begun working on North Korea. Indeed, as the South Korean
Foreign Ministry noted on March 7, ``North Korea could find some
benefits from multilateral dialogue which bilateral dialogue cannot
provide.''
In the end, though, North Korea will have to make a choice. Over
the past ten years, Pyongyang has been in pursuit of two mutually
exclusive goals. The first is nuclear weapons. The second is redefining
its place in the world community--and, incidentally its access to
international largesse--by broadening its diplomatic and foreign
economic relations.
The DPRK needs to accept that it cannot do both.
Unfortunately, North Korea's choice to date has been to proceed
with nuclear weapons development and to escalate international
tensions, while demanding commitments and dialogue.
North Korean provocations are disturbing, but they cannot be
permitted to yield gains to North Korea.
The international community must, and indeed is, impressing on the
North that it is in its own best interest to end its nuclear arms
program.
The North must understand that to choose the path of nuclear
weapons will only guarantee further isolation and eventual decline, if
not self-generated disaster.
The United States is open to ideas about the format for a
multilateral solution.
One idea is for the Permanent Five--the U.S., China, France, Great
Britain and Russia--to meet together with the Republic of Korea, Japan,
the EU, and Australia.
Others have suggested other ideas, such as six-party talks: North
and South Korea, the U.S., the PRC, Japan, and Russia.
President Bush has repeatedly said we seek a peaceful, diplomatic
solution with North Korea, even though he has taken no option off the
table.
The President has also stressed that we will continue to provide
humanitarian assistance to the people of North Korea and that we will
not use food as a weapon.
We recently announced an initial contribution of 40,000 tons of
food aid to North Korea through the World Food Program, and we are
prepared to contribute as much as 60,000 tons more, based on
demonstrated need in North Korea, competing needs elsewhere, and
donors' ability to access all vulnerable groups and monitor
distribution of the food.
In closing, I would note that in the past, North Korea has
indicated it wanted to transform its relations with the United States,
South Korea and Japan.
North Korea has the ability to achieve such a transformation.
The question is whether it has the will to do so. The DPRK will
need to address the concerns of the international community.
First, North Korea must turn from nuclear weapons and verifiably
eliminate its nuclear programs.
President Bush has said he would be willing to reconsider a bold
approach with North Korea, which would include economic and political
steps to improve the lives of the North Korean people and to move our
relationship with that country towards normalcy, once the North
dismantles its nuclear weapons program and addresses our long-standing
concerns.
While we will not dole out ``rewards'' to convince North Korea to
live up to its existing obligations, we and the international community
as a whole remain prepared to pursue a comprehensive dialogue about a
fundamentally different relationship with that country, once it
eliminates its nuclear weapons program in a verifiable and irreversible
manner and comes into compliance with its international obligations.
Of course, for full engagement, North Korea will need to change its
behavior on human rights, address the issues underlying its appearance
on the State Department list of states sponsoring terrorism, eliminate
its illegal weapons of mass destruction programs, cease the
proliferation of missiles and missile-related technology, and adopt a
less provocative conventional force disposition.
As I said, we remain confidant that diplomacy can work--and that
there will be a verifiable and irreversible end to North Korea's
nuclear program.
To that end, the United States is intensifying its efforts with
friends and allies.
Thank you for this opportunity to discuss this important issue
today with you.
We will continue to work closely with the Congress as we seek a
multilateral, diplomatic solution with respect to North Korea.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Assistant Secretary
Kelly. We will try a 7-minute limit for each of us on a round
of questioning, and I will start the questioning and ask the
timekeeper to start the clock.
Secretary Kelly, you have described, certainly, an
excellent format for negotiations, a multilateral approach in
which all the parties have responsibility for enforcement, and
North Korea would have responsibility to all the parties. I
want you to address the question of timing that is involved in
this. Press reports indicate attempts to engage China and
Russia, for example, to be more forthcoming, to be more
cooperative, to indicate that there has been some progress--and
yet not nearly enough, it would appear, thus far. There are
announcements periodically by the North Koreans that they are
progressing with their plutonium program again. Since we do not
have international observers any longer on the scene, it is
difficult to verify that. On the other hand, we would obviously
hope that they would not do so, that the proliferation dangers
would increase. We would hope to see their ability to hide or
sequester material reduced in due course, quite apart from the
worst option, and that is selling it in some commercial way.
So what if the other parties who are involved in the
multilateral agreement, because of their national interests and
their preoccupations with other issues, are unable to work with
us to try to get this format, while the North Koreans continue
to indicate that they may not be interested in it at all? Of
course they could change their minds under some circumstances,
while the proliferation dangers move ahead. What do we do to
stop the latter if we are not really meeting in the former
format? And can you give some idea at least of your own view of
the urgency of the proliferation situation, leaving aside the
broader issues that we might bring together if we had this
group around the table?
Mr. Kelly. Well, Mr. Chairman, you described the dilemma
very well, that there is an element of urgency. I would not say
that it is a matter of days, but if North Korea begins
reprocessing, and so far we do not have any evidence that they
have done so, yes, they could, within a period of some months,
develop this fissionable material.
But you may recall, it was exactly 10 years ago today, on
March 12, 1993, when North Korea withdrew from the Non-
Proliferation Treaty [NPT] for the first time. It took until
October 21, 1994, in a bilateral format, before the agreement
was completed. This was a whole year and a half later. A hasty
agreement is likely to have the result of not solving the
problem, and we have to solve all aspects of the nuclear
weapons problem.
And the element of speed does not only apply to the
plutonium issue. Some have assumed that is somewhere off in the
fog of the distant future. It is not, Mr. Chairman. It is only
probably a matter of months, and not years, behind the
plutonium. So we really have to address this entire issue.
Now, the importance of North Korea not reprocessing is
something that is known very much to the North Koreans. We have
told them ourselves. Our allies and friends in the region
understand this very well, and I am sure that many of them have
passed on this information to North Korea.
So I think there are some opportunities that are being
worked. We are mindful of this difficulty. We are able to chew
gum and walk at the same time. This is an important issue that
is addressed by our nation's senior leadership. I talk to
Secretary of State Powell about the North Korean issue at least
once every single day, and that includes weekends.
The Chairman. Well, that is reassuring. At the same time, I
suppose, it is very difficult to note the progress of this just
as observers.
Now, granted, it took a long while for the bilateral
negotiation to take place. But what you have had to say today
about the highly enriched uranium project is not reassuring. We
have concentrated on the plutonium issue, with which there has
been some success, and presumably there might be some more. We
really did not know, I guess, where the highly enriched uranium
project was going when you had this initial contact that turned
out to be a confrontation--you had hoped it might be a talk--
with the North Koreans in which they informed you that they
were doing this.
All of these announcements that are provocative, such as
those of missile tests or even buzzing a United States
aircraft, continue on. Our responses have been, I suppose,
appropriate. We have sought not to become unduly exercised, to
indicate that the military option is not there, and that we are
still plowing ahead. But the lack of urgency, as perceived by
China or Russia, for example, in this is obvious. And I suppose
I am simply curious, do we need more time simply to pull
together our South Korean friends? Is a part of our lack of
urgency the need to take time with them before we make sure
that we are all together in this?
Mr. Kelly. I think the point, Mr. Chairman, is that North
Korea has been working on nuclear weapons for more than 20
years in various ways and forms. This is not something that is
going to be easily given up on their side, and it is very
important that we get serious results.
As for offering them the alternatives, that is what I did
when I went in in October. My presentation to the North Koreans
was not some ultimatum that they had to give up this uranium
enrichment program that we had learned about. I talked about
all the things that President Bush had had in mind with his
bold approach that is described in the statement here and all
these opportunities. And, in a quiet manner, I wanted to make
clear to the North Koreans that there was another path that
they could take.
The allies in the region, in many ways, have problems of
their own. China is in a kind of a transition. There are
serious economic problems in Japan. South Korea has had a
President who has been in office now for 2 weeks and is putting
together an administration also at a time with some economic
difficulties facing him. They certainly do all wish that we
would take care of this issue in some way and make it go away
so that they did not have to think about it.
But after 20 years of work on nuclear weapons in North
Korea, the threat and the nature of the problem is one that
absolutely involves all of these countries, and I think we have
made a great deal of progress in convincing them. All of us
together, really, have to convince the North Koreans. It is
they who have to make the choice of whether they want to stay
the nuclear weapons route or look for something a little bit
better.
The Chairman. Senator Dodd.
Senator Dodd. Well, thank you very much, again, Mr.
Chairman. And thank you, Assistant Secretary Kelly, for being
here.
And just to pick up on those points the chairman is
raising, I certainly would agree with you, Mr. Secretary, that
all of North Korea's nuclear issues ought to be resolved and
dealt with here, not just an incremental approach. But would
you not agree, as well, that if, in fact, our willingness to
enter into direct talks with North Korea would result in North
Korea bringing about a verifiable freeze in those programs
while those talks were ongoing, would be a worthwhile goal?
Mr. Kelly. It is very possible, Senator Dodd, for North
Korea to freeze these programs, with plenty of positive
outlook. There is plenty of precedent for security guarantees.
I count five that were given by the United States to North
Korea at various times during the 1990s and the year 2000. All
these opportunities are there.
But the other side of their demand for bilateral
negotiations is a demand that the outcome of these be something
that is verified only by the United States. The International
Atomic Energy Agency is not supposed to be a part of that. That
is just an unacceptable development for us. The IAEA has to be
involved in the nuclear weapons issues around the globe.
Senator Dodd. Well, I do not disagree with that. We are
sort of arriving at the final result of what negotiations would
produce. My question was, if, in fact, you began direct talks,
in the result of doing so there was a freeze on all of their
nuclear programs from going forward, my simple question is
would that not be a worthwhile goal if the result of directed
talks would produce that result?
Mr. Kelly. The problem, Senator, is we would have no way to
verify that freeze other than what we can do right now, as to
whether North Korea is going forward with existing weapons
programs. There are serious limitations on our ability to
verify the uranium enrichment. Of course, I suppose if the
reactor were to shut down, that would perhaps solve that
concern.
It is true that this would be one way to make progress. But
a better way to make progress is to convince the North Koreans
that working with other interested countries that do not wish
them ill is also in their interests.
Senator Dodd. Well, I do not disagree. If I could--anytime
I have to sit down and negotiate with someone I disagree with,
if they would just agree with me it would be wonderful. My
concern here is they have obviously rejected that, and we need
to now find some common ground here that would let us step back
from this pending crisis.
I certainly acknowledge the fact that this is a 20-year-old
problem with North Korea. It did not happen in the last few
weeks. But to pick up on a point the chairman has raised, my
concern is that we are having a series of events here that
would--causing the potential to lose that steadiness and
stability here, in terms of arriving at a way to resolve these
issues, that could explode on us. And I am worried about that,
where all of a sudden you have, instead of just following a
reconnaissance plane, one gets shot down or we shoot down one
of theirs, for instance. All of a sudden, you are moving
divisions closer to the DMZ, you are firing missiles that get
closer, all sorts of things that we have already seen some
evidence of that could result in a response that would all of a
sudden move this away from sort of a movements by chess pieces
on a board to something that brings us to a far more serious
situation.
And in light of the potentiality of that, and assuming, if
you will, that talks are not a reward, that we have engaged in
them historically, to our great success, with people we did not
trust, for very good reason. I am mystified, along with many
other people, why we are taking a position contrary to those of
our allies in the region who have far more at risk than we do
immediately, when they have urged us to move in a direct-talk
basis.
I do not disagree with you. They ought to be multilateral
talks. This needs to be a multilateral solution to this
problem. It cannot just be the United States. But it seems to
me, to get the ball moving in a direction away from the
potential problem we are looking at here, it is in our interest
and the interest of our allies, particularly when they are
urging us to do so, to try this. And I am mystified why we are
unwilling to take that step.
Mr. Kelly. Well, first of all, Senator, our allies wish
that this problem would go away. This came through very clearly
in the visit of Secretary Powell to Japan and China and South
Korea just a couple of weeks ago. I have had four visits to all
those countries in the last 4 months. It is very clear that
there is also a great deal of interest in the multilateral
process, and various formats and ways are being explored.
North Korea only withdrew from the NPT on the 10th of
January. We are less than 2 months away. And I would suggest,
Senator, that the timing of when a tack is abandoned is a
sensitive issue.
There is not the slightest doubt that North Korea would
like to enter into these negotiations only with us. They say
so, and they want to underscore this, as you point out, with a
whole series of incidents. The more that they emphasize
bilateral negotiations, the more that we believe that they
think that the way to successful negotiations is to get us
isolated out there so that after the call is for talks, then
the next call is for concessions. This is a problem that has
gone on for much too long. It was solved in some respects. It
was postponed in others in 1994. We have got to take care of it
once and for all this time, sir.
Senator Dodd. Just one last question. My time is almost up.
But you have suggested that because there has not been a
reprocessing of spent fuel, that we ought to offer some glimmer
of hope here. Have we been offered any evidence, either
directly or indirectly, by the North Koreans, through whatever
sources, that they are not going to reprocess the spent fuel?
Mr. Kelly. They have not said that at all, sir. But if they
do so, it will be a very serious measure, and they certainly
know that it will be a very serious measure that will intensify
the difficulty of this situation significantly.
Senator Dodd. But we have no assurances they are not going
to do that, either.
Mr. Kelly. We have no assurances that they are not going to
reprocess. They have been working on nuclear weapons for 20
years, and there is not the slightest sign that they have any
interest in stopping.
Senator Dodd. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Dodd.
Senator Hagel.
Senator Hagel. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I add my welcome to
your constituents from Indiana. I know you are very proud of
them, as they are of you. So we are glad that you are with us
today.
Assistant Secretary Kelly, thank you. As always, we
appreciate your time here.
Could you share with the committee thoughts that might
reflect the administration's thinking about the possibility, if
we go to war in Iraq, the North Koreans might accelerate their
dangerous, threatening behavior, activities? Do you think that
might happen, expect that to happen? What will we do about it
if it did happen?
Mr. Kelly. The North Koreans have already, Senator Hagel,
taken quite a number of steps, as you know very well. Some have
been publicized more than others, such as the interception of
the U.S. reconnaissance airplane, which was very distant from
North Korea and very, very far from its territorial airspace.
There have been other somewhat unprecedented, or not recently
precedented, incursions across the northern limit line by a
North Korean fighter airplane.
North Korea is hard at work sending us signals and we
cannot exclude that they will send others, but the ability of
our military forces, and especially, of course, those of our
South Korean ally, to deter serious measures that would break
the unstable peace that has existed, for almost 50 years in
South Korea along the DMZ remains very strong.
Senator Hagel. So you would expect to see an acceleration
of activity if we are at war in Iraq?
Mr. Kelly. I cannot speculate about that, Senator Hagel,
but I certainly could not exclude it.
Senator Hagel. And you have thought through that, I would
suspect----
Mr. Kelly. We and our colleagues at the Department of
Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Military
Command in Korea have thought long and hard about all these
options, and we are not weakened in either our resolve or our
capability, given the situation in Iraq.
Senator Hagel. Are there any plans underway in thinking--
and I know it is dynamic, always, when we look at forward-
deployment of forces--of withdrawing any of the 37,000
Americans from the DMZ in Korea?
Mr. Kelly. There have been some press stories about that,
Senator. In December, we had a meeting of Secretary Rumsfeld
and his South Korean counterpart, and they launched at that
time a study of the future of our alliance. State and Defense
Department officials visited South Korea just a couple of days
after the inauguration, and they are planning to go back in a
few weeks. Any changes that will be made are going to be done
in very close coordination with our South Korean ally, and I
know that is the position of the Department of Defense.
Senator Hagel. So no position, as far as you know, has been
taken regarding that.
Mr. Kelly. No decision has been taken about reducing any
forces or, for that matter, increasing forces in South Korea.
Senator Hagel. Can you tell the committee what you know
about what assistance China gives to the North Koreans?
Mr. Kelly. China is the provider of food and petroleum of
last resort, I would characterize it, to North Korea. Their
quantities are significant. They are also, to the extent
anybody is a trading partner with North Korea, probably its
largest trading partner, as befits a very long border and a
significant number of Chinese citizens of Korean ancestry. I
should mention, of course, the serious concerns we have for
refugees who have crossed the border there.
China, of course, has an alliance going back to 1961 with
North Korea, but China has made clear to us in every discussion
we have had, and there have been many, including many recently
with Secretary Powell, with the President about to leave
office, Mr. Jiang Zemin, the incoming President, Mr. Hu Jintao,
and, of course, Secretary Powell's counterpart, the Foreign
Minister, about China's response to North Korea's nuclear
weapons program. China is firm, as we are, against the nuclear
ambitions of North Korea.
Senator Hagel. If I might point to part of your testimony
and just quickly paraphrase what you said, if I open it this
way, quoting you, ``President Bush has said he would be willing
to reconsider a bold approach with North Korea with which he
would include economic and political steps,'' so on, so on,
``once the North Koreans dismantle their nuclear weapons
program and address our longstanding concerns.''
That is a noble effort, obviously, and we would hope they
would do that, but why would you include that in your
testimony, when, in fact, the North Koreans are moving exactly
in the opposite direction? What gives you any reason to believe
that there is any incentive here or any reason for them to do
this?
Mr. Kelly. North Korea has gone through a tumultuous 10
years. It has felt somewhat isolated. North Korea really does
not have any friends around the world. And in a very stilted
way, it has been trying to pursue some economic reforms.
There is the possibility, however remote, that North Korea
may decide to turn its back on these weapons programs and
proceed in a better direction, and we just want to make clear,
on the record, that if it is willing to give up its nuclear
ambitions and its nuclear weapons, there can be a better
future. We know that South Korea, Japan, China, Russia would
all support that, and we certainly would, too.
Senator Hagel. Thank you. Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Hagel.
Senator Feingold.
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Assistant
Secretary Kelly, it is good to see you again. And I thank you,
Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing and thank all the
witnesses for being here today.
I am glad that we are discussing the regional implications
of this crisis today, because obviously those implications are
profound. And I find it hard to argue with President Bush's
characterization of the situation in North Korea as a regional
issue, but it is also, obviously, an international crisis and a
major threat to U.S. security.
The prospect of a nuclear weapons producing North Korea, a
country with an extremely troublesome history of proliferation,
is not a problem that I am willing to set aside in the hopes
that a regional solution develops at some point. The sobering
testimony that this committee heard last week relating to the
North Korea crisis left no room for doubt about the stakes for
American security. And so while I am eager to learn more about
the very complex regional dimensions to the crisis, I want it
to be clear that I believe the United States' leadership in
this regard is essential and very urgent at this time.
Mr. Secretary, what is the position of key countries in the
region regarding the U.S. position on engaging in bilateral or
direct dialog with the North Koreans?
Mr. Kelly. As I said earlier, Senator Feingold, about the
countries in the region, first of all--I will run through them.
Japan strongly supports the multilateral process. They have had
direct contacts with North Korea themselves to that effect, and
they believe this is the best outcome. South Korea is
interested in a multilateral process, but would not mind a bit
if the United States takes care of it. China, I would say, is
in a similar process. All, however, do seriously believe and
recognize that the best solution of this longstanding problem
is going to be in the multilateral arena and are helping us
explore various modalities that might make this a more
attractive and more likely outcome.
This process has not been going on forever, Senator
Feingold, because, as I noted, it is only 2 months since North
Korea stepped back from the NPT.
Senator Feingold. What is Russia's position on the direct
talks, bilateral talks?
Mr. Kelly. Two weeks ago, I met with the Russian Deputy
Foreign Minister. Deputy Secretary Armitage had met in Moscow
and has had long discussions, as has Under Secretary Bolton,
with the Russians, and we are in very close touch with them on
this issue.
The Russians are also a little bit ambivalent on this one.
First of all, they tell us--and, frankly, I do not know why--
that they are not so sure that North Korea really is interested
in nuclear weapons or has a nuclear weapons program. But they
are unequivocal in taking the strong position that this is an
international issue and concern and that North Korea must not
become a nuclear weapons program. And, that said, they feel
that they have useful access to North Korea and that that is
something that they can bring to the table. And we hope that,
in fact, that will turn out to be helpful.
Senator Feingold. Would it be fair to characterize your
answer as saying that Russia really would oppose direct talks,
that South Korea and China would not necessarily be opposed to
it, and that Japan, I took your answer to mean, would be
opposed to us?
Mr. Kelly. I think the true answer is that all of those
countries, at the moment, would be very happy if the United
States made this problem go away, but they do recognize the
difficulty and the complexity of the problem. Japan is probably
the closest to us on multilateral talks, but the others are not
at all far behind and are very heavily engaged in finding a way
to solve the problem.
Senator Feingold. With regard to South Korea, you indicated
that South Korea would not mind a bit if we were to take care
of it, but have they not really done more? Have they not
specifically called on the United States to have direct
bilateral talks?
Mr. Kelly. There have been such statements, particularly
during the political campaign, but the government has been in
office now for 2 weeks, and that was not the position that we
heard in our discussions with senior levels of the new South
Korean Government. We have a number of other meetings with our
friends, the South Koreans, coming up. The Foreign Minister
will be here within the next few days, and President Roh is
expected to visit Washington very early in his term.
Senator Feingold. Let me just ask you one other way,
because this is so important, when we talk to our colleagues
and our constituents, to understand why we would or would not
have direct talks. Have any of the countries in the region
urged us to engage in direct talks since the North Koreans
rejected multilateral talks? I understand, as you have
described with regard to each country, it might not be their
first choice, but is it their preferred choice in light of the
recently stated North Korean position?
Mr. Kelly. Well, first of all, Senator Feingold, direct
talks--bilateral talks mean just the United States and North
Korea and nobody else. Multilateral talks involve any number of
other countries. Within multilateral talks, there are all kinds
of arrangements, but it is inevitable in such situations that
there is a direct conversation, dialog. So I think the direct-
talk language has probably been confusing, especially when used
by some of our allies.
Senator Feingold. But if you could just answer, have any of
the countries urged us to engage in direct talks?
Mr. Kelly. They have all urged us to engage in direct
talks. And----
Senator Feingold. Have they urged us to do it?
Mr. Kelly. The question, sir, is whether they have urged us
to be in bilateral talks. Some have done that, and some have
not; and some have urged both bilateral and multilateral talks.
Senator Feingold. And who, again, has urged us to do the
bilateral talks? Which countries?
Mr. Kelly. The Chinese and the Russians have made that
point, but they have also--or especially the Chinese--have
shown a great deal of interest in various formulas for
multilateral talks.
Senator Feingold. In your view, are the key players in the
region, such as South Korea and Japan, sort of, resigned to the
idea of a nuclear weapons producing North Korea?
Mr. Kelly. No, sir.
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Senator Feingold follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Russell D. Feingold
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing and I thank all
of the witnesses for being here today.
I am glad that we are discussing the regional implications of this
crisis today, because those implications are profound. And I find it
hard to argue with President Bush's characterization of the situation
in North Korea as a ``regional issue.'' But it is also an international
crisis, and a major threat to U.S. security. The prospect of a nuclear-
weapons-producing North Korea--a country with an extremely troublesome
history of proliferation--is not a problem that I am willing to set
aside in the hopes that a regional solution develops at some point. The
sobering testimony that this committee heard last week relating to the
North Korea crisis left no room for doubt about the stakes for
America's security. And so while I am eager to learn more about the
complex regional dimensions to the crisis, I want to be clear that I
believe that U.S. leadership is sorely needed now.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Feingold.
Senator Chafee.
Senator Chafee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Welcome,
Assistant Secretary Kelly.
We had a hearing a couple of weeks ago, or last week, and
Ambassador Gregg testified, former Security Advisor to Vice
President Bush, I might note. And he was critical of our
present approach toward North Korea and especially the language
that has heightened the tensions between our two countries. And
obviously ``axis of evil,'' referring to the President of North
Korea, in very denigrating personal language, according to
Ambassador Gregg, was very harmful to our relations and what he
considered a thaw that was happening prior to this escalation
of harsh rhetoric. And certainly, common sense would tell you
that that kind of language is not helpful in a diplomatic way.
How can you defend that?
Mr. Kelly. Mainly, Senator Chafee, it is because it is
true. There is a problem of weapons of mass destruction being
produced by countries that then offer them for sale through our
state and non-state actors, and that was the defining issue
that the President was talking about in the State of the Union
Address of 2002.
I have talked very often with Ambassador Gregg. He is a
very old colleague and friend. In fact, we have talked within
the last 24 hours about various topics, and I respect his
opinion.
But the State of the Union is not a forum for using
diplomatic language. It is a forum for telling the American
people what the serious issues that endangers and confront us
are.
Senator Chafee. Would, I assume, a common goal of having
some kind of relationship with North Korea--do you see or
foresee a continuance of this kind of approach?
Mr. Kelly. Well, I have just outlined in my statement our
policy and our approach, which is very broad and which provides
all kinds of opportunities for North Korea, if it is willing to
stop and step back from its nuclear weapons programs, in
particular, and also from its other weapons of mass destruction
programs.
Senator Chafee. I guess that leads to the question of,
similar to Iraq, how are we going to verify? We are in a
situation in Iraq where we are trying to prove a negative. We
say they have weapons of mass destruction; they say they do
not. We have not found any. And certainly North Korea has more
of a visible--with reactors and the like. But are we going
through a similar exercise down the road with North Korea?
Mr. Kelly. This has been a problem for a long time, Senator
Chafee. The Agreed Framework provided verification of some
aspects of their programs, and it waived a verification to
which North Korea had earlier acceded, specifically, their full
responsibilities under the Safeguards Agreement with the
International Atomic Energy Agency. This is a big problem, and
it is one that North Korea is going to have to face if it wants
to have an improved relationship with not only its neighbors,
but the rest of the world and certainly with us.
Senator Chafee. I just know how difficult it is once you go
down that road of, as you said in your statement, ``eliminating
all its weapons of mass destruction and ceasing proliferation
of missiles and missile-related technology.'' It is a long,
difficult road that you are asking that country to go on.
But I would like to just change course a little bit. And in
your statement, you continually talk about how important it is
to have a multilateral coalition as we approach the problem of
North Korea, and even mentioning that it is going to be
important to have the U.N. Security Council play a role. And,
of course, that begs the question if what we are doing at
present jeopardize our success at building this multilateral
coalition of friends and allies. And can you play out how what
we are doing at present, just in the hours as are dealing, arm
twisting--and even here in Congress, I saw an article, we are
going to ``punish'' nations that are not friendly to us in this
quest in Iraq. How is that going to help us down the road? As
you have said over and over in your testimony, it is important
to have a multinational approach to this problem.
Mr. Kelly. Well, most countries, and certainly most major
countries, view these problems as the problems that they are.
Those other items that I mentioned and you mentioned, Senator,
are important, but the nuclear weapons issue certainly takes
precedence right now.
But with respect to that, in the International Atomic
Energy Agency Board of Governors votes in January and then
again in February, the votes were 35 against no opponents and
no abstentions on the first vote. The second vote had two
abstentions, from Russia and Cuba, and nobody voted against it,
and 33 voted for it. There is a lot of unity on this.
The French Ambassador, for example, notwithstanding some
important differences we have in other areas, has come to see
me with his officers on a number of occasions. The French, I
think, yield to no one in their distaste for the nuclear
activities of the North Koreans, and that is the same for most
of the other serious players in the world.
So the Security Council remains not only an institution
with responsibilities for peace and security around the world,
but I think it may well turn out to have a role, if we are not
going to get a breakthrough soon, on North Korea.
Senator Chafee. Thank you. I am on my last several seconds.
So you can unequivocally say that, as you say in your
testimony, that we are going to have a multilateral approach to
the problem in North Korea, that that is our goal? Because
certainly it is at odds with some members of the administration
that are advocating a sole superpower status in the world.
And----
Mr. Kelly. The administration is very solid, Senator
Chafee, that this is a multilateral problem and that it has to
be solved in that way.
Senator Chafee. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Chafee.
Senator Nelson.
Senator Nelson. Mr. Chairman, I am going to yield to
Senator Rockefeller.
The Chairman. Very well. Senator Rockefeller.
Senator Rockefeller. Thank you, Senator Nelson, very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Kelly, it strikes me, as I listen to this, that
we are talking about North Korea like it was, sort of, like
most other countries in the world. And two things come to mind
when I think about the Koreas and northeast Asia. One is that
it still amazes me that Japan was able to shut itself off for
250 years during the Tokugawa period up until the middle of the
19th century, and then they had to have bilateral talks with
Admiral Perry because he arrived in their harbor. They were not
pleased about it. But it says something remarkable about that
area of the world, and there is quite a lot of DNA history in
that part of the world.
Second, that if you look at South Korea, which is--about 48
million people?
Mr. Kelly. Yes, sir.
Senator Rockefeller. There are--I do not know what point
this proves, but it makes a point to me--there are, I think,
about 250 last names in the entire country. Now, what does that
say? Perhaps not very much, or perhaps it says that this is--
and I assume it is sort of the same in North Korea, with about
half that many people--that it is an entirely different
society, that they are extraordinarily disciplined--and I talk
now particularly of the North Koreans. The South Koreans, I
think, are going to go through a period when they reevaluate
their relationship with us. I think that is natural; not just
generationally, but in terms of the new government and the way
the world works, generally. But that is not what we are talking
about.
North Korea is in terrible straits. They are always about
to collapse, except they never do because they are always
willing to draw their belts in another two or three inches,
because that is what they do. And they do not blame it on Kim
Jong Il; they blame it on the political commissar around the
corner, and so it gets away with that.
And really there are not a lot of other countries like
that, and yet we, sort of, are treating them like we would
treat a European country or some other country in the way they
ought to behave. I mean, what strikes me from this conversation
is that everybody is saying, well, the Japanese think that we
should do multilateral, the Chinese maybe do and maybe do not.
And my theory on the Chinese is they would probably like to see
us do it and then come in and help, sort of, settle it, take
some credit for it, which would not bother me at all if it
settled it. South Koreans have been on both sides of the issue,
as Senator Feingold indicated.
But what strikes me as most important is that North Korea,
which is the country which is at stake, says they want to have
bilateral talks, which means that they can say, ``We will not
have multilateral talks.'' They can decline to talk.
I do not understand what the advantage is if we press for
multilateral talks along with some of the other countries, but
they decline to have them. Now, there could be reasons they do
not want to have them. It could be simply that they have the
nuclear bomb, they have very little else, they seek
recognition, they want to have something which says, ``We are
here, and we are important, and we can engage the United States
in bilateral talks if we insist on it.'' But the important
thing is, they can refuse to have the multilateral talks, that
they are controlling, in a sense, in this issue unless we
decide that we are simply so wedded to multilateral talks that
we will not talk with them, which brings in the questions that
others have raised, and that is the way they have upped the
stakes. You used the word ``the stakes are very high,'' or
``simply too high,'' in your own statement, and they have grown
a great deal higher rather rapidly.
Now, my question is this. We have been stuck with them
before when they have been in very difficult situations. And,
you know, Jimmy Carter went over there in 1994, and Kim Il Sung
had his wife there, which was kind of unusual. She did not go
to those kinds of things. And then he, Kim Il Sung, turns to--
because Jimmy Carter wants to do something about the MIAs, and
he turns to his wife, and he said, ``What do you think?'' And
she said, ``I think we should do it.'' And so he went ahead and
did it. And then he--and Yongbyon got frozen for a period of
time.
Well, I mean, maybe that is kind of a--sort of, an odd
construct, but it was a way that seemed to work with Kim Jong
Il's father. We have never really dealt with Kim Jong Il that
way. Maybe when he deals with U.S. Government officials, that
he simply--you know, that he cannot do that in quite the same
way because he has not had experience in that, he has not been
out of the country enough, or whatever.
So the possibility is twofold, it seems to me. One is that
we accede to his request and we do the bilateral. And if the
bilateral does not work, then we are in, sort of, a pickle.
But, on the other hand, I think if we decide to have the
multilateral, it would not work because they would decide that
they did not want to do it. You indicated that they did not
want to have international inspections, but then that is
exactly the kind of thing which, if you have a bilateral and
you give that to them in a time of high crisis for us in many
parts of the world and enormous danger from them, that they
might either change on--or somebody else could come in,
including--my suggestion would be Jim Baker could come in and
help on that, or the Chinese could come in and help on that.
I mean, I cannot severely predict the failure of bilateral
talks, other than the fact--as you apparently can--other than
the fact that we do not want to have them and that some other
countries would prefer--particularly Japan, would prefer to
have the multilateral.
And, to me, the point is that the North Koreans do not want
that, and they do want this. And, frankly, I understand why
they do want it. Because it is what, sort of, needed at this
point. It is, sort of, the equivalent of, let us say, you know,
x-billions of tons of wheat or something of that sort. I mean,
it gives them something that they psychologically need, that
he, personally, needs, and the people will be behind him. Why
do we insist on having this process fail?
Mr. Kelly. Well, one reason, Senator Rockefeller, is that
it would represent advance concessions that the nuclear weapons
issue is something to be settled only between the United States
and North Korea.
One of the reasons that North Korea wants to try this is
because it has worked for them before. Yes, the discussion that
you describe went on with President Carter. And then, a number
of months later, an agreement was made which had as its goal
the ending of nuclear weapons programs in North Korea. But it
did not end nuclear weapons programs in North Korea. It ended
one particular nuclear weapons program, but it set the stage
for another alternate program to begin.
And so North Korea has had success with bilateral
negotiations and getting the results both ways, and we are
determined that this time we really have to solve its nuclear
weapons problem including verification.
And, incidentally, sir, Kim Jong Il did have discussions
with the Secretary of State of the former administration on
that visit in November of 2000.
Senator Rockefeller. That is true.
Mr. Kelly. And that involved some suggestions of offerings
of missiles, that if we would provide some compensation, then
maybe North Korea would stop selling missiles. But when it came
to verification, that administration ran into a complete dead
end, and there was absolutely nothing going forward.
So we feel, Senator Rockefeller, that a different way has
to be tried, and this issue has come to a head within the last
couple of months, and it is one that we would like to see--we
would like to test just what is the best way to solve this.
Because we do not think that the North Koreans are insane or
irrational. We think that they are looking out for their best
interests. It may well occur to them that the way that they
have tried in the past is not going to work and that that is
going to lead to increased isolation and pressure on its
already stressed economy.
Your analysis, I think, was just excellent, Senator. One
thing I would say is that I think the North Korea leadership
pulls in the belts of the people and not their own.
Senator Rockefeller. I agree.
Mr. Kelly. But that also is a part of the issue.
Senator Rockefeller. But they do accept it.
Mr. Kelly. They accept it because they do not have any
choice, Senator, as you know very well.
Senator Rockefeller. You are correct. But that is the
nature of the country.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Rockefeller.
Secretary Kelly, let me just say we are indebted to members
of our committee for their loyalty in coming. We had a quorum
this morning to pass the treaties. We have a quorum this
afternoon to see you. This means we have four more Senators.
Mr. Kelly. Whatever your pleasure, sir.
The Chairman. I just wanted to try and establish the fact
that all four of our remaining members could be heard for their
7 minutes and--because we----
Mr. Kelly. There is not much else I can do that is more
important than trying to make our case with this committee,
sir.
The Chairman. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Senator Allen.
Senator Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing. And thank you, Assistant Secretary Kelly, for being
here and sharing with us your views.
It is good to have the folks, Mr. Chairman, from
Evansville. I was through Evansville this summer with my son
and stopped at the Flying J truck stop there--decent gas
prices--heading west on Route 41 and Interstate 64. At any
rate, good to have you all here. I wish we still had those gas
prices.
I want to commend you, Assistant Secretary Kelly, for your
great diplomacy and calm in what could easily develop into--it
is a crisis; I am not going to argue over words, but something
that is much more worrisome and belligerent.
We are not dealing, in my view, with rational leadership in
North Korea. And it is interesting, or somewhat ironic, that
while others say, ``Gosh, the United States is doing too many
things on their own,'' in some parts of the world; here, where
we are trying to get multilateral or international folks
involved, you are getting prodded and poked to, well, go ahead
and do it the U.S. versus--in interactive bilateral talks--just
United States and North Korea. This is a dangerous situation. I
know that you and the Secretary of State Colin Powell are
trying to manage it as best as possible.
The question is, is what--there are several questions. The
Japanese. The Japanese, in the past, when it was the United
States versus USSR, felt that they could be under our nuclear
umbrella. Obviously, you have stated none of the countries want
North Korea to have nuclear weapons. They clearly have a few
now, and they are--I do not know what the prospects are that
they do not have nuclear weapons. What will be the Japanese's,
the Japanese Government's, view be of the United States, of the
protection provided by a nuclear umbrella in the event that
North Korea continues to possess these weapons of mass
destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, and clearly the
missiles capable of hitting the Japanese?
Mr. Kelly. You are right to point that out, Senator Allen.
The Japanese and the U.S./Japan alliance remain very firm, and
the Japanese commitment not to proceed in any direction of
nuclear weapons is a very strong one. And that is true
notwithstanding their serious concern not only over the
abductions, but, as you point out, the missile problem, not to
mention the potential nuclear weapons.
So the U.S./Japan alliance provides that nuclear umbrella,
and that is a very important part of our commitment and our
relationship with Japan, and it was strongly emphasized during
the visit that Secretary Powell had not long ago with Prime
Minister Koizumi and in telephone calls from President Bush to
Prime Minister Koizumi.
Senator Allen. So your view is that the Japanese would not
reconsider their nuclear posture?
Mr. Kelly. The Japanese are not going to reconsider it.
What is happening is the Japanese are starting to talk about
these issues. In many ways, this was just a part of the air
that was breathed every day by Japanese people. And now, more
and more, there is a discussion of such things and a
recognition in the context of that discussion that the U.S.-
Japan alliance is not insignificant and that it really means
something and that this is a situation in which Japan does not
have to throw off its nuclear allergy.
Senator Allen. All right. There are questions about who can
actually have the greatest influence on North Korea. What
percentage of the North Korean Government's functions are
funded by the People's Republic of China?
Mr. Kelly. I do not think I know, Senator.
Senator Allen. Could you give us a ballpark figure? Would
you say at least half of their support and funding, food, fuel,
whatever all----
Mr. Kelly. I suppose we would say in terms of the
assistance in food and fuel. To the best of my knowledge China
is not providing direct monetary assistance. There is a lot of
money that has come in the past from Japan. There is a lot less
of that now. There are other sources of money for North Korea
and they are very hard to sort out. The sale of ballistic
missiles and cruise missiles and arms is a source of money. The
sale of illegal drugs and the sale of counterfeit currency are
other sources of income that certainly do not involve China.
Senator Allen. All right, which country provides the most
assistance to North Korea?
Mr. Kelly. Unquestionably, China.
Senator Allen. Are there any others anywhere close to
China? In the event the People's Republic of China wanted to
use that leverage and their assistance to try to get North
Korea to comport to the desires of the nations, as stated, in
this region, would that have any influence on North Korea's
Government?
Mr. Kelly. It might; but then again, it might not, for the
reasons that have been mentioned here. Additionally, there are
some pretty significant amounts of aid that come from South
Korea, as well, including the recent food aid. There have been
a lot of reports of moneys paid from South Korea. So China is
not the only one there. The blunt instrument of China
threatening to cutoff North Korea is one that I think China
does not want to explore very much, because they have a lot of
fear of instability and refugees.
Senator Allen. Right. On refugees, there are hundreds
daily, if not thousands, of people desperately trying to get
out of North Korea and into China. I would hope that we provide
as much assistance as we can for to help those people escape
this tyrannical regime, and China is the one place that they
are coming in to.
I would ask you if you would--I was reading Ambassador
Lilley's very thoughtful remarks, and he was talking about, in
his remarks, the worry about them raising the ante of
provocation. The biggest worry is that their economy is falling
apart. And so, therefore, I think his theory--Ambassador, if I
am getting it wrong, I am sorry, but it is still--they are
probative questions or thoughts--is would Kim Jong Il try to
strike out and provoke us to try to avoid the accountability
for his own ineptitude and the terrible conditions in their
country, and that hides his economic weaknesses and
vulnerabilities? Is that a legitimate concern as I have
paraphrased?
Mr. Kelly. That is a very possible scenario. And Ambassador
Lilley knows a great deal about that subject, and that is one
of the possibilities that we have to recognize.
Senator Allen. Thank you. My time is up. Thank you, Mr.
Secretary. I look forward to working with you as you patiently
work through this very difficult, dangerous situation.
Mr. Kelly. Thank you, sir.
Senator Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Allen.
Senator Nelson.
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr.
Secretary.
Mr. Secretary, in response to your comments to Senator
Rockefeller, it seems like you indicate that the question of
bilateral negotiations, discussions, are off the table. Is the
military option off the table?
Mr. Kelly. Nothing is off the table, Senator Nelson.
Senator Nelson. So your answer to Senator Rockefeller was
that it is still a possibility for bilateral?
Mr. Kelly. I do not want to get into that. The President
has made clear that all of our options with respect to North
Korea are on the table. Now, usually that is thought of as in a
different context, but since you put it that way, we are not
ruling out anything at any end. But our position is a very
strong and sturdy one right now, sir, that multilateral
negotiations are the way to proceed. We would certainly have to
carry out our own responsibilities in that process, and we
would be ready to do so.
Senator Nelson. Well, let me show you how the logic goes.
And I am just a country boy from Florida, but here is how it
sounded in your response to Senator Rockefeller, that bilateral
is off the table. Certainly, you do not want to put up on the
table the military option. They say multilateral is off the
table. And that leaves us nowhere. Sounds like that means that
we accept the status quo.
Mr. Kelly. We do not accept the status quo, sir, and we do
not----
Senator Nelson. We certainly----
Mr. Kelly [continuing]. And we do not accept future nuclear
developments in North Korea, and neither do the countries in
the region.
Senator Nelson. OK. At the end of the day, we want them to
be defanged as a nuclear power.
Mr. Kelly. Yes, sir.
Senator Nelson; That is clearly in our interest, it is
clearly in the interest of the folks in the region. It is in
the interest of the world. How do you do that?
Mr. Kelly. There are a lot of different ways that we work
to do that, and they are not necessarily easy. North Korea has
been a very serious problem for us even before the invasion of
June 25, 1950. The armistice in 1953 was never resolved. There
have been series of very dangerous incidents over the years,
the 1976 axe murder of American soldiers, the shooting down of
a reconnaissance aircraft, 1969, the seizing of the Pueblo.
This is a long-time troublesome country, and if our problems
had been solved, we would not be having to deal with North
Korea now.
Senator Nelson. I agree. But what we want to do is--at the
end of the day, we want them non-nuclear.
Mr. Kelly. Yes, sir.
Senator Nelson. And so it seems to me that, first of all,
is it any wonder that we are kind of getting a lot of flack in
that part of the world with our ally, South Korea, that they
make the peace overtures with the previous President, suddenly
there is a new feeling of goodwill. Then, the new election
occurs, and there is that track for a peace overture, and the
United States looks like it comes along and throws cold water
on that. Is it any wonder that we are getting a negative
reaction from South Korea?
Mr. Kelly. I would argue, sir, that we are not getting so
much of a negative reaction, especially over our negotiation
policy. The withdrawal from the NPT was after the South Korean
election. To be frank, sir, the flack to the administration on
whether to pursue a bilateral or multilateral solution is much
more intense in Washington, DC, than it is in any Asian
capital.
Senator Nelson. Let me ask you about China. I was really
shocked--first of all, let just say that your boss, I think, is
just marvelous and I think he is one of the best in the
business--but I was shocked when Secretary Powell went to
Beijing and he seemed to be rebuffed by the Chinese. He, of
course, would like to get them into it. We need them in the
game, we need Russia in the game, we need Japan in the game.
Why was he rebuffed?
Mr. Kelly. Well, the answer, Senator Nelson, is he was not
rebuffed. He was rebuffed only by anonymous and unnamed
spokespersons here in Washington, DC. I was on the trip, and I
was in all the meetings that he had, and ``rebuffed'' does not
even begin to describe this.
In fact, there was a very energetic discussion that went
way over time with the Chinese Foreign Minister, went into
great detail with the President and Vice President of China.
And afterwards, Secretary Powell gave a press conference and
described the meetings he had had.
But the work is not finished, and the efforts that China is
undertaking and that we are trying to work with it are not
concluded. And so I think, as a result of that meetings, some
people, if they do not see the results right away, conclude
that there was some kind of a rebuff, and that is absolutely
not the case, sir.
Senator Nelson. Well, that is encouraging. Would you say,
then, if we were not rebuffed, that there is really a chance
that we can get China in the game to defang the nuclear North
Korea?
Mr. Kelly. Secretary Powell met with the Foreign Minister
of China again in New York last Friday, a second meeting in
less than 2 weeks, and discussed this issue, and this is
working along. I am not able to go into the details of it in
this kind of session, though, sir.
Senator Nelson. Mr. Secretary, you give me hope. Thank you.
Mr. Kelly. Well, sir, we are going to try to work on it to
see if we can get some results. Working with the Chinese, the
South Koreans, Japanese, Russians, and there are others who
want to help. The ASEAN Regional Forum has some ideas. Various
Europeans have some, too.
Senator Nelson. The fact that you give me hope, I would
just offer this one piece of advice in passing, Mr. Chairman,
and that is that where we have gotten into trouble with this
Iraq situation, sometimes with our European allies, sometimes
with Turkey, in appearing too heavy-handed and appearing too
arrogant, maybe we have to go and meet somebody one to one and
look them in the eye. And if that is what it takes to defang
them, then that would be my advice.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson.
Senator Alexander.
Senator Alexander. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary,
thank you for being here.
Am I correct that it is pretty clear policy that we have
said to North Korea that, ``If you attack South Korea, we
attack you''?
Mr. Kelly. Yes. We will resist the attack and deter the
attack.
Senator Alexander. But there is no doubt in their minds
that if they were to----
Mr. Kelly. No, sir.
Senator Alexander [continuing]. If they were to attack
South Korea or Japan, for example, that that would require, in
diplomatic language, the most severe action by us.
Mr. Kelly. Our alliances are clear, firm, and longstanding.
Senator Alexander. So there is no question about that.
Everyone understands that.
Now, let us take--and that is the nuclear umbrella, that is
the umbrella that--maybe not nuclear umbrella; that is the
defense umbrella that protects our allies in that region, and
we have lived with that for a long time, people have a good
understanding about that. I have no doubt in my mind that
President Bush is absolutely convince of that.
But now we are moving into a different set of what-ifs,
which makes this all so difficult, it seems to me. Maybe you
said this earlier, but is it as clear that we are unwilling to
live with North Korea as a nuclear power? Are we firm about
that, or is there some wiggle room in that?
Mr. Kelly. There is no wiggle room in that, Senator
Alexander. We are determined that North Korea not become a
nuclear power, acknowledged or unacknowledged.
Senator Alexander. So that really leaves us, as we have
heard from other people who have come before this committee in
the last 6 weeks, with two general options. One is to negotiate
a solution, and the second is some sort of action by the United
States that stops the development of the nuclear programs in
North Korea, or some multilateral group that stops the
development of nuclear programs in North Korea.
Mr. Kelly. Well, the best is for the North Koreans to
recognize what is the truth, that it is not in their interest
to proceed this way and that their suggestions of danger and
threats are very overblown and not true.
Senator Alexander. Right. Given that those are--and I will
use my own words and not put words in your mouth--that those
are really the only two general directions left for us; one is
some sort of action to disarm their program or the other is
some sort of negotiated settlement of it--would it be fair of
me to suggest that the administration is trying to deal with
one crisis at a time here?
I am not so surprised that you are saying that you prefer a
multilateral approach and that you are unwilling to commit to a
bilateral approach. I think that would be the logical thing for
us to do at this stage, hoping that that is the kind of
discussion we eventually end up in. And I would also assume
that at this time, with all of the focus of our country on
Iraq, that, just given human nature, that we will deal with
Iraq first and North Korea second. Is that right?
Mr. Kelly. No, sir. I do not think that is right. There is
an urgency and a seriousness all of its own in the North Korean
issue, and this strategy is not a strategy of simply buying
some time to get past the Iraq issue at all. Those individuals
that characterize our strategy in that way are not correct.
It is a strategy that is determined to deal with this
problem in a holistic way. This is a large problem and it is
one that is going to have to be dealt with, and we are
determined to work through that. As the President puts it, a
diplomatic solution is the preferred way, but none of his
options are off the table.
Senator Alexander. If I could go back to one of the
questions one of the other Senators asked--I believe it was
Senator Allen--about the umbrella, in a way that is saying,
``If you hit us, we will hit you.'' But we are now beginning to
live in a world where we find that even in the United States we
cannot think that way always, that we have to look at, for
example, Saddam Hussein and say, ``You may not have hit us, but
we may have to hit you anyway.'' It could be that Japan or
Taiwan or South Korea would want to do that and would not feel
like the traditional cold war umbrella provided by the United
States was sufficient, in terms of their defense.
So I wonder if there might not be more of a domino effect
here in the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Asia than we
have been thinking. I wonder if Japan, which could quickly--
might not be able to quickly change its mind, but if it ever
did change its mind, it could quickly move with nuclear
programs, or Taiwan, South Korean, others. I wonder if North
Korea continued with a program if we would not have more of a
ripple effect. If Japan were to move, then China would feel
threatened, et cetera.
Mr. Kelly. I think we could discuss the relative likelihood
of that. But if North Korea is seen to get away with having
nuclear weapons, there are many players, many far more
dangerous than the ones you name that are--in other parts of
the world, that are going to take sustenance in that. The
newspapers have had discussions of Iran's work in areas of
nuclear weapons and there are other countries that are pretty
unstable who might try to go the same way. And that makes it
all the more important that this strategy that we are working
with North Korea be successful.
But with respect to the immediate danger, of North Korea,
our deterrence, our alliances with South Korea, with Japan, are
very firm, and I do not anticipate that either of those
countries are going to feel the need to turn toward nuclear
weapons anytime soon. But it does command their attention in
joining with us to resolve this issue, we hope, diplomatically
with the North Koreans.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Alexander.
Let me just mention, activities in the outside world that
are on the floor. We are likely to have a rollcall vote in a
few minutes' time.
I am going to recognize Senator Sununu. And in the event,
Senator, that all other Senators disappear, you are in charge
until you finish your questioning, at which time Secretary
Kelly will retreat, and we will come back to see another
excellent panel. But I want to try to keep the continuity of
the hearing if we can.
Senator Sununu.
Senator Sununu. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and let
the record show that I do not believe that offer to put me in
charge temporarily bears in any way as to what the appropriate
constitutional succession would be. I do not want such an
assumption to limit my long-term political viability.
Mr. Secretary, in the material that we were provided it
says that the official Russian position has been that North
Korea does not now possess nuclear weapons. That seems to be in
direct opposition to what the stated official U.S. position is,
and that is no small difference in my mind. Is that your
understanding of the official Russian position?
Mr. Kelly. Their position is a little softer than that,
Senator Sununu. The Russians say the experts that they have
think that the North Koreans are not as far along as we think,
and I had a direct conversation with the Russians about this
matter and said that it was a matter in which we disagreed
very, very strongly.
Senator Sununu. I do not quite know what to make of the
description, soft. Either you have an official position that
they are in possession of a nuclear device, or you have an
official position that they are not currently in possession of
a nuclear device, but it would seem that if there is a
difference of opinion on that basic issue, then it may well be
an obstacle to working cooperatively toward a long-term
solution, because such a difference of opinion would indicate
likewise a difference in feeling of the immediacy of the
problem.
Mr. Kelly. And it may be a diplomatic way of dodging the
problem, too, I would suggest, Senator.
Senator Sununu. Is this the reason, or does this in any way
relate to the reasons that the Russians have for opposing
bringing this issue to the U.N. Security Council?
Mr. Kelly. It is not clear, sir, that the Russians oppose
bringing it to the U.N. Security Council. They abstained in the
IAEA vote. I do not think we can conclude that they oppose
bringing it to the Security Council and, in fact, the issue has
come to the Security Council and been referred to experts. It
is sort of sent off into a committee until such time as the
Security Council brings it back, but the official words were
that members of the Security Council were seized with the
problem, and that included Russia as well as the other members.
Senator Sununu. In your opening remarks you said that a
bilateral approach has failed and a multilateral approach is
therefore desired by the United States, and we had a lot of
questioning on that point. I want to give you an opportunity,
though, to develop the arguments for a multilateral approach a
little bit more strongly. I think the fact that a bilateral
approach has failed in and of itself is not reason not to
continue to pursue a bilateral approach. You can have a
bilateral agreement that was a bad agreement, unenforceable,
poorly designed, but still believe that a bilateral approach
can yield a successful agreement.
Could you lay out in a little bit more detail what the
reason is that a multilateral approach would be more effective,
and why a multilateral agreement would be more likely to last
for the foreseeable future?
Mr. Kelly. Well, first of all, because this is inherently a
multinational problem, the NPT has been a very widely observed
treaty. Second, by engaging more parties in negotiation, the
assurances that any one of the parties might provide are
emphasized and endorsed.
Third, if North Korea chooses to step back from nuclear
weapons programs, the other countries of the region are
certainly ready to begin to offer them all kinds of tangible
inducements, building on things that have been done before, and
since North Korea needs literally everything, especially
electricity, there are things that other countries might choose
to do. That is way down the line, but those are among the
incentives.
Senator Sununu. But you seem to put it, though, in somewhat
material terms, more inducements, more levels of sharing of
materials. You mention electricity.
But you also said that the Chinese were not likely to use
any of their current assistance or support as bargaining in a
multilateral negotiation, and if we are just talking about
material things, well, the United States, we are the wealthiest
country in the history of the world. We could certainly provide
far and away what any other group of countries could provide.
What other inducements or benefits could be provided by other
countries that could not be provided by the United States in a
bilateral agreement?
Mr. Kelly. Well, there is, of course, the negative reason,
and I suppose this is one of the reasons the North Koreans do
not want to proceed multilaterally, is they fear that a
multilateral negotiation will emphasize their isolation, and
their isolation, as I pointed out, with these unanimous votes
against North Korea in the IAEA, is, in fact, quite intense on
this issue.
But China's assistance to North Korea is a reality. I do
not know that that would be increased. Japan was on the
threshold of offering what it described as economic cooperation
that could have certainly been as high as some $12 billion had
they reached a settlement, but it was disrupted first of all by
the North Korean admission without further explanation of the
abductions of Japanese citizens and, second, of the nuclear
weapons programs. There is a lot more money from those sources
that, if North Korea earns it, than would ever practically come
from the USA.
Senator Sununu. Are you concerned that the reluctance of
other countries to fully embrace a multilateral approach is in
part due to their desire to avoid responsibility for helping to
enforce a multilateral approach and their responsibility to
take action if, in fact, the multilateral approach were to
fail?
Mr. Kelly. That is possible, Senator, but what is probably
more likely is just that North Korea is a difficult outfit to
deal with, and other countries would perhaps rather have us do
it.
North Korea, for its part, sees that the United States, as
a major military power, is perhaps the one above all that would
interfere with whatever it is that they might try to do.
Senator Sununu. A few of the members talked about the
nuclearization of the peninsula, or asked questions regarding
the nuclearization of the peninsula. It was mentioned in your
remarks. That is naturally a concern.
It was expressed, I think by Senator Alexander, that it was
a concern because it might drive other countries to engage in
nuclear programs, Japan, South Korea, et cetera, but it would
seem to me that that competition of nuclear programs is one
concern, and a genuine one, but perhaps even more pressing
would be the risk of weapons proliferation, not competition,
but proliferation, a willingness on the part of the North
Koreans to sell this technology.
Can you speak a little bit to the history that the North
Koreans already have for selling missile technology and any
other technologies that you are aware of to anyone who is
willing to put up enough money?
Mr. Kelly. Well, you are exactly right, Senator.
Proliferation is a much, much greater worry than the earlier
concern cited. North Korea has a pretty bad history of
exporting not only ballistic missiles, but cruise missiles and
other military equipment and particularly selling them to
countries that have, for excellent reason, difficulty buying
this sort of nasty supply anywhere else.
There is not evidence of which I am aware of the sale of
chemical or biological weapons, or of nuclear components, but
we cannot exclude that in the future, and that is one of the
reasons that this problem has to be dealt with.
Senator Dodd. I want to warn you about that clock and the
time.
Senator Sununu. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Dodd. Go ahead.
Senator Sununu. Is it the Department's public position
today that North Korea has access to both chemical and
biological weapons material?
Mr. Kelly. The administration's position publicly is, I
believe, that we believe that they definitely possess chemical
weapons. With biological weapons, it is much more obscure, and
there is a little formula that I will provide for the record,
but it is not conclusive evidence, Senator Sununu, but it is an
unfortunate suggestion.
Senator Sununu. Thank you.
Senator Dodd. Could I just--just to complete the thought
that Senator Sununu has raised, and that was raised earlier,
and just ask you to comment on this quickly, and that is the
suggestion somehow that we might convince the Chinese to reduce
their support of food or other such issues. Would that, in your
mind, also increase, then, the danger or the likelihood of
North Korea, since so much of its hard currency seems to be
coming from the sale of these materials, that, in fact, to the
extent we reduce or diminish the support they are getting,
whatever, however limited it might be, increases the likelihood
that they may seek, of course, then resources through the sale
of these other----
Mr. Kelly. That is logical and possible, Senator Dodd, but
I am not sure that it is the equation. I think to be frank,
North Korea will sell these things as fast as they can mainly
because they have hardly any other products.
Senator Dodd. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. We
appreciate your staying extra time, too, to hear the questions.
Mr. Kelly. Thank you, Senator Dodd.
Senator Dodd. The committee will stand in recess until the
return of Senator Lugar.
[Recess.]
The Chairman. The hearing is called to order again. The
Chair would like to welcome to the panel table Hon. James
Lilley, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, Dr.
Victor D. Cha, associate professor, Department of Government
and the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown
University, Washington, DC, and Mr. Bates Gill, Freeman Chair
in China Studies, Center for Strategic and International
Studies [CSIS], in Washington, DC.
Gentlemen, it is a privilege to have you before the
committee. I will ask you to testify in the order in which I
introduced you. Your statements in full will be made a part of
the record. Please proceed as you wish. First of all,
Ambassador Lilley.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES LILLEY, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE,
WASHINGTON, DC
Ambassador Lilley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to
take a slightly different approach on this case. Being an Asian
hand, I tend to look at it more in the long-term view, and we
have been talking about the immediate problems today, and I
believe we are making a mistake in focusing too much on that,
because the main issue is, you cannot snatch defeat from the
jaws of victory. We are going to win this one. If we get pushed
into premature actions, if we get jerked around by the North
Koreans, if our allies and friends whine too much and we try to
follow them around, we are going to end up in a morass.
We have a chance to really make a difference in North Korea
now, mainly, because China is facing a crossroads on this
issue, and this could help our common cause a great deal. In my
paper, I have gone back into the origins of this, the various
ways the Chinese have played a role in the past, but let me
just look at this China question for a minute.
China is approaching a crossroads. They have a new
leadership. The fourth generation is coming in this month, and
the message that we have gotten from them is basically, hold
off. We can deal with this problem. We know it a hundred times
better than you. These are the worst people on the face of the
Earth. We have dealt with them for 50 years, we saved them
during the Korean war. They invaded South Korea and we, in
effect, lost Taiwan because of what Kim Il-Sung did. He said he
could take South Korea in 3 weeks, the Americans would not
intervene. What happened is, the Seventh Fleet went in to the
Taiwan Strait. He said, I will take South Korea first, then you
can take Taiwan. Well, neither of them happened.
China is going on a track, and I am dealing with trends
now. They have got the Olympics coming in 2008. They
participated in the Seoul Olympics in 1988, their first real
breakout. They have joined the World Trade Organization. They
recognized Seoul in 1992. They were the instrument in getting
both Koreas into the United Nations in 1991. Their trade
comparisons between North and South are just astronomical,
probably 40 times as much trade with the South as with the
North.
China fever is seizing South Korea, but Seoul too is going
through a transition period. When Vice President Cheney comes
in April, he can start really talking with both China and South
Korea seriously about this North Korean problem.
China tends to go with winners, too. They have made some
bad choices in the past. They supported leaders like Pol Pot,
Milosevic, Hoxha in Albania, and now Kim Jong-Il. They
supported big losers in the past, so they know what it is to
lose. I do not think they are going to make that mistake this
time.
What we recognize, and what the Chinese see clearly, is two
things about North Korea, desperation and incompetence.
Desperation because North Korea has never been in worse
economic shape. They see that a combination of forces around
them are beginning to coalesce. This is their nightmare, that
they have lost their backing from the Soviet Union and China,
and they are sitting out there alone trying to deal with the
United States, using these nasty provocations.
When Kim Il Sung wanted to provoke, he seized the Pueblo or
shot down EC-121. His son so far does not seen to know how to
do it. I am not saying he will not do it, and do something very
dangerous and awful, but I am saying the one thing that really
characterizes Kim Jong-Il is incompetence. He cannot reform his
economy. His economic reform moves in July 2002 were a
disaster. He has his eye on $12 billion worth of reparations he
desperately needs from Japan, and he mishandled it on the
abduction cases. It blows back in his face.
Then he tries this Sinuiju free economic zone, and it is a
fiasco. He gets some Chinese crook over from Manchuria to run
it for him. The guy Yang Bin is in a Chinese jail. The Chinese
are fed up with him, and they see also that if he keeps up on
this path of missile firings and nuclear developments, Japan
could go nuclear, Japan already has an active civilian space
program and could get long-range missiles quickly, Taiwan,
South Korea could follow. The Chinese can see a ripple effect
that is decidedly not in their interest, also ballistic missile
defense could get a boost, and North Korea has been the cause
of this.
How much longer can China prop Kim up? They supply perhaps
80 percent of his oil and food imports, but it is interesting
to note, and you can never prove these things, in 1994, when we
were trying to get the Agreed Framework, and the North Koreans
were getting very difficult at the end--they tend to do this--
Chinese grain shipments to North Korea were reported to have
gone down 40 percent. We cannot make a direct connection, but
all of a sudden, Kim goes along with the Agreed Framework.
Again, it was the sweetest deal he ever got in his life. Why
would he not go along with it. He was trying to extract last-
minute concessions.
So I am saying that this is a major situation for the
Chinese, and they have got to begin to move in a different
direction, and I think it is important for us to move in
coordination with them, not push them too hard now.
The Japanese appear to be becoming more assertive
militarily. Ishiba makes a statement about preemptive strike on
North Korea, Japan is getting the Patriot PAC-3s, and we are
talking about new standard missiles on the Aegis class
destroyers. We are talking to Japan about interdiction. Some of
the people I have talked to recently--who are former U.S. Navy
people--say, we can interdict North Korean attempts to ship WMD
if we get the Japanese behind us on the sea, if the Chinese
interfere with and inspect North Korean air travel over China
there is a good chance of winning this interdiction issue, not
completely, but enough to cut into what the North Koreans are
trying to do--namely, proliferate WMD to unfriendly nations and
possibly to terrorists in the Middle East.
As for South Korea, there is a great deal of fuss being
made over our dismay at their Sunshine Policy. This is not
accurate. I was present in March 2001, when all of this
hullabaloo broke loose about Kim Dae-Jung and the President not
getting along. I personally heard two important agreements.
First of all, the President supported the Sunshine Policy. No.
2, Kim Dae-Jung supported the American-Korean security
alliance.
A real possibility of doing something constructive about
North Korea lies in the South Korean movement into the North.
Leaders in South Korea have said confidentially, that bribery
and other huge pay-offs have been counter-productive. The
Hyundai project on tourism was a huge financial loser. The pay-
offs for Pyongyang, were a bad move. It is likely that is not
going to happen again. The linkages of railroads, roads, the
Gae Son Industrial Zone, the Inchon Airport, the linking of
power grids inevitably will draw North Korea to the South and,
of course, this is the long-term view of strategists in the
South.
The North Koreans know this and they say, we will never
allow ourselves to be taken over by this sort of evolutionary
approach by the South Koreans. They probably no longer have
much of a choice.
The United States should resist the temptation to go into
talks with North Korea too quickly--and I am talking about
direct bilateral talks. From 1989 to 1992, we did it right.
President Bush pulled the nukes out of South Korea in September
1991. North Korea signed on for the first time to safeguards
agreements which they had resisted since 1985 when they signed
the NPT. We got access to Yongbyon, and an inventory of nuclear
materials. The IAEA, sent inspectors to Yongbyon and the
process started to move forward. Most important, there was
active North-South dialog at the level of premier. Two
agreements between North and South were signed, the joint
agreement on denuclearization, and the joint agreement on
reconciliation. These were comprehensive agreements and brought
the North and South together more closely than at any previous
time.
As these processes advanced and as an added inducement, in
January 1992, we had our first bilateral talks with the North
Koreans in New York City. They were North Koreans clearly
desperate for them. I was in New York as part of the U.S.
delegation. We talked to them almost all day. As they appeared
to be so anxious for these talks, we laid down two conditions:
No. 1, North Korea could continue to deal with the South, and
No. 2, North Korea should allow challenge inspections of
nuclear facilities and North Koreans did not respond but
undoubtedly took it back to their great leader. Not much
happened, because they then got caught cheating on their
statements on plutonium. The United States had previously
canceled Team Spirit as a goodwill gesture but this did not
affect North Korean intentions. Team Spirit was started again
in 1993, and this was viewed by the North as a provocation.
This led to the escalation, which culminated in 1994, in the
Agreed Framework agreement. The claim by the U.S.
administration at the time was that the Agreed Framework
avoided war.
The people I have talked to in the Clinton administration
said there was no real consideration of a preemptive strike.
They knew it was impossible, and we know that today. A
preemptive strike on North Korea without complete concurrence
of South Korea, would not work. The North Koreans could take
out Seoul with conventional artillery poised north of the DMZ,
and this is the real problem.
So I end on this note. There is reason to be optimistic. If
we go back through the negotiating record, the 1968 crisis and
how it was managed, the 1993-1994 problem and how it was
managed, then we have precedent in handling the issue in 2003.
There is a well documented historical record of how to deal
with these people. We have written a book documenting 40 years
of negotiating in the Military Armistice Commission. There are
certain important techniques which emerge. The need to resist
caving to brinkmanship, demonstration deterrence in strength,
understanding their goals, anticipation of their next move, not
treating them like inferiors, but in a way that they understand
what we are trying to do to help them on the one hand, and then
getting reciprocal action out of them. Also the consequences if
they choose a negative path.
So it strikes me that we are moving in the right direction.
I agree with Secretary Kelly that the real problem we have now
is reminiscent to herding cats but it is essential to have a
consensus of our friends and allies before we approach the
North. This is no easy job, with our Chinese friends, our South
Korean allies, our Japanese allies, and the Russians--this is a
tough one.
We should have a sense of how to make this work and I
believe we can make it work. We have to be careful about
lunging into some sort of a premature acceptance of their
game--namely the problem is the U.S. threat of North Korean
DMZ.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Lilley follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. James Lilley, American Enterprise Institute
Appearances in Korea can be deceiving. A foreigner's impressions
and generalizations about Seoul or Pyongyang can be misleading.
Pyongyang resembles Wal-Mart and Times Square. Kim Jong-il is
interested in the Swedish Economic Model.
Korean folklore touches on this in the anecdote: A foreign
missionary comes across an old Korean walking down a road with his wife
six paces behind. The foreigner explains to him that they should walk
together, as they are equals. The Korean answers, ``this is our way,
for a thousand years.'' He moves on. Six months later, the missionary
encounters the Korean again. This time his wife is walking six paces in
front of him. The missionary says, ``You are equals. There is no need
for her to walk in front of you.'' The Korean replies, ``This road is
mined.''
We often deal with North Koreans with a particular negotiation in
mind. Our knowledge of them is based on the latest intelligence
reports. I want to walk back further and select 2 out of many Korean
traditional concepts that influence their approach to us and to the
world.
Nunchi: the character and intentions one sees in another's
eyes.
Han: The Korean melancholy view of the world. A shrimp among
whales. Resentment of arrogant officials, hatred of
colonization by larger powers, a wife's dislike of an
overbearing husband.
Why nunchi? Kim Daijung looked into Kim Jong-il's eyes in Pyongyang
in June 2000 and must have seen things we foreigners can never see.
Desperation, fear, arrogance, insecurity, all with unique Korean
characteristics. The U.S. knows about his military hardware, but Kim
Daejung looked into his soul. This has both positive and negative
aspects, as Korean history has demonstrated. In the late 16th century,
Hideyoshi, the great Japanese shogun, was preparing to move out
militarily against his neighbors. The Chosen Dynasty sent spies and
envoys to Japan to observe his nunchi. They saw in Hideyoshi the eyes
of a rat and declared that no invasion would happen. The Koreans,
however, did not measure his spears, which were longer than theirs.
Hideyoshi struck Korea with initial success. Today we primarily measure
and assess North Korea's weapons systems--our South Korean friends tend
to emphasize character as a gauge of intentions. Therein lies at the
root of some of our current differences.
The concept of Han focuses on the immediate big guy. Bullies on
Korea's periphery have been around for a long time. Now, the local big
guy runs over little Korean girls with lumbering weapons carriers.
Anti-foreignism, anti-Americanism are always below the surface but can
flare up dramatically over a single incident.
What are the historic characteristics of North Korean regimes with
which we are dealing? Korean dynasties tend to last a long time. The
Chosen Dynasty was around as long as the Ming and Manchu dynasties
together. Corruption, foreign intervention, weakness and incompetence
characterized the Chosen for its last 100 years, but the dynasty lasted
and lasted. Leaders, bad as they have been, have had long tenures. Kim
Ilsung's tenure was about 50 years. Kim Youngnam, the current SPA
president, has been around as a leader since 1960. Collapse of a regime
in Korean History is uncommon. Using discipline, toughness, and
insularity, the cunning Koreans have survived but have had to fight for
what they wanted--or some big guy would take it away. By estimates,
Korea has had 900 invasions in the last 1000 years. A political vortex
exists in North Korea, and until democracy came to South Korea, it
characterized the South. A centralized rule from the top, prevailed
with minimum local autonomy. Part of this was brought about by the
homogeneous nature of the Korean people.
Foreign contrivances, such as roadmaps. frameworks, armistice
treaties in the North Korean view are to be circumvented and
undermined. North Koreans see them as devices to lock in foreigners but
not to restrict Korean behavior or actions. These foreign agreements
are primarily useful in getting what the Korean regime needs to survive
and to flourish. The conditions are met only in so far as they
accomplish these purposes. Power, not trust, is what has gotten the
North Korean compliance such as it is. The 1953 Armistice, the most
successful of the foreign contrivances worked not because we were
trusted but because we and South Koreans were strong enough to inflict
damaging consequences on North Korean circumventions. The 1968 Blue
House Raid, the submarine infiltrations in the late 1990s, the recent
gunboat intrusions, the Rangoon assassination bombing, the sabotage of
KA-858 are examples of North Korean provocations, their plans, and what
they are capable of carrying out.
A few comments on contemporary North Korea: Kim Jong-il and his
military are basically in synch. He is the great symbol of leadership.
He has the legacy and the legitimacy the military needs, and he in turn
needs their power to maintain his most precious commodity--his
survival. He needs the military for the security of the state against
foreign threat as well as to maintain domestic stability. Out of 1200
generals, 1100 are probably his. In addition, there are perks:
promotions, access to his luxurious palaces, high-grade consumer goods,
and travel overseas.
Although Kim Jong-il is no Kim Ilsung, he is the single dominant
leader of North Korea today. Unlike his father, he has to work in
tandem with other forces, particularly the military. He is less able to
inflict his will.
Kim Jong-il's handling of his current challenge--his so-called
``ratcheting it up''--almost parrots what his father did in 1993: pull
out of the NPT, kick out the IAEA inspectors, fire a missile, threaten
to turn Seoul into a sea of fire. Kim has added in elements of an
earlier crisis in 1968. In 1968, North Korea seized the Pueblo; in 2003
he directed his MiGs to try to get a U.S. reconnaissance plane, but
unlike his father--he failed. In April, 1968, Kim Il-song's pilots shot
down an EC-l21 with all aboard lost. This was a great risk by Kim Il-
song. Whether Kim Jong-il escalates terrorism against the ROK, as his
father did in 1968 in the failed Blue House Raid, or creates a new more
aggressive approach (in 1968, it was tunnels under the DMZ) is not yet
clear. Kim would probably be more likely to keep his focus on U.S.
targets and the threats the U.S. represents to arouse supportive
elements in South Korea who are against the U.S. presence. As in 1969
in Vietnam, the U.S. may be diverted by another major war--this time
Iraq in 2003, and this could create a favorable environment for the
North Koreans to act.
A word about the North Korean view of bilateral talks with the
U.S.: this has had some support of Russia, China, and the ROK, and in
the U.S., as well in the arguments of the ``why not talk'' crowd. What
is there to lose, they say. Kim's goal is to make the U.S. threat the
issue and to divert emphasis from their weapons of mass destruction.
The North Koreans are pressing for a non-aggression pact, saying
withdrawl of U.S. forces is a prerequisite for lowering pressure.
Before bilateral talks with the North, the U.S. needs to work with its
friends and allies in the area, notably Japan, ROK, China, and Russia
to develop a coordinated program of incentives and disincentives in
dealing with North Korea. To jump in prematurely before China is ready
to engage fully would probably accomplish little. Korea is not a U.S.
problem, it is a regional one.
Kim Jong-il has a failed economic system. He is on life support
from the outside in terms of oil and food. Ungrateful as North Korea
has been for past aid, this time it is complicated by a starving
population, even including cadres. Kim's moves so far on economic
reform in July 2002 have failed badly, his attempt to get the Japanese
reparations package, for which he lusts, backfired in the Abduction
Cases issue. His economic zone in Sinuiju started out as a fiasco and
certainly irritated the Chinese. Kim still has the generous hand of
South Korea reaching out--but now hopefully in a more measured and
balanced way. Huge bribes and grotesque one-sided tourism deals to Kum
Gang-san lost large amounts of money for Hyundai, and the ROKG. Hyundai
is reported to have funneled $1.7 billion direct to Pyongyang. South
Korean's Sunshine Policy is viewed by the North's leadership as a
dangerous subversion, according to the highest level defector Hwang
Jong yup, who is the most complete source on Kim Jong-il. A takeover of
the North by the South, Kim Jong-il believes, should be resisted at all
costs, even if it means less aid.
Perhaps the most disconcerting development for Kim Jong-il is the
possible coming together of surrounding states, ROK, China, Japan,
Russia, and the U.S. in a loose coalition. This group of states has
already agreed in principle that the Korean Peninsula should be free of
Nuclear weapons and should have economic reform. The potential use of
economic leverage on his WMD programs is a frightening prospect for Kim
and is one of the greatest dangers that, North Korea has faced in the
past 50 years.
According to Hwang Jong yup, after the disastrous starvations of
1995 and 1996, Kim Jong-il was desperate and talked of a strike on the
South, which he had persuaded himself could work. He did not do it
then. He fired off a three stage missile instead which then lost him
his Japanese contacts and hopes for immediate reparations worth by some
estimates to be over $10 billion.
A recent internal KWP document that has surfaced in the Japanese
press describing KWP concerns about internal corruption and
dissatisfaction among the population. The flight of hundreds of
thousands of North Korean refugees to China has dramatized public
desperation in the face of continuing economic hardships. The
combination of factors could move Kim in the direction of more
desperate external moves and to divert attention from domestic failure.
In this, he will get the support of his military.
As was the case in 1968, Kim Jong-il lacks support from Russia and
China--who had backed his father in 1950 and for years after. This
undercuts his strength and his maneuverability.
So will he raise the ante with provocations? Most probably, he
will. Will he focus on the U.S. and not on the ROK? Most likely. Will
he risk a major confrontation with the U.S. by striking out at U.S.
installations, military, air, ground and naval hardware? He will try
but will probably stop short of a casus belli. He recognizes his main
vulnerability is his economic weakness and dependency. Again, Hwang
emphasizes that this is where Kim Jong-il can be undone. He has to keep
economic aid under continuing tight control, and he must arrange to get
credit for it. But it remains his Achilles heel. And it is the most
likely instrument of regime change.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Ambassador Lilley. Dr.
Cha.
STATEMENT OF DR. VICTOR D. CHA, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT
OF GOVERNMENT AND THE EDMUND WALSH SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE,
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Cha. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
inviting me to speak today on the regional implications of a
nuclear North Korea. I thought the way I would do this is to
focus in particular on South Korea, and what the implications
were for South Korea, and here essentially I wanted to talk
about the implications for the street, for the elite, and then
for the alliance.
As you know very well, we have all witnessed the
groundswell of anti-American sentiment in Seoul. The proximate
cause for this was, of course, what was known as the Highway 56
incident, the death of the two teenage schoolgirls, but also
fueling this sentiment was the perception on the South Korean
street that the current crisis with North Korea was, or is as
much a fault of U.S. policy as it is of North Korean
truculence. I disagree with this view, but nevertheless, that
is the perception on the street.
I guess the one observation I wanted to provide to the
committee on this particular point is, I know that many people
view this new street view as the new reality, that it is
permanent, that this is the view of a younger generation and it
is not going to change, and it seems to me still it is
uncertain whether it is permanent or whether it is just
ephemeral, and the reason I say this is because I still
believe, and I think the poll numbers show that there are
significant numbers of South Koreans in the 30-plus range that
really do see problems with North Korea and that really do not
have this sort of Pollyanna-ish view of the North.
A January 1 poll showed that 47 percent of South Koreans
se4e North Korea's drive for nuclear weapons as real, and as
dangerous, and that was January 1. That was before the NPT
pull-out, that was before the missile tests, and before the
buzzing of the U.S. intelligence plane, so I think that, in
short, there is a silent majority there in Korea that is
waiting to be heard, and the more the North provokes, I think,
the more opinion will shift, even among the younger generation.
Second, in terms of the elite, I cannot disagree in terms
of the implications of a nuclear North Korea in the region with
anything that Ambassador Lilley said. I think it would have a
huge implication for Japan, it has major implications for
China, and I would agree that it is a matter of time, that
Chinese equities are shifting, and that they will eventually
come onboard, but it is very clear that they want the United
States to do all the heavy lifting first, and then, as Senator
Rockefeller said, sweep in at the end and try to take credit
for it.
Where I would like to focus my comments on the implications
of a nuclear North Korea is with regard to the costs, and
particularly the economic costs, because I think it is
something we have not talked about this afternoon, and there
are clearly major economic costs to East Asia and the United
States if this crisis results in a nuclear North Korea, and
these costs are frankly ones that the South Korean Government
discounts, or does not want to talk about, and I point this out
because it is at the core, I think, of the disparate views that
the South Korean Government and the United States hold on
dealing with North Korea.
What I mean by this essentially is that the South Korean
Government says the only option with regard to dealing with
North Korea is engagement. You have to take off the table any
contemplation of coercive measures, whether that is isolation,
sanctions, attack, because in their view this could potentially
precipitate a collapse of the North, and as one South Korean
official said to me from the Noh Moo-Hyun Government, if you
precipitate a collapse of the North, then the South collapses.
I find a problem with that logic for two reasons, one I
think it overestimates the cost of a North Korean collapse and
unification, and here, rather than go into the details, I would
direct you to some work the Institute for Financial Economics
has done recently that shows the cost of reunification may not
be as high as popularly believed, but more importantly, I think
the problem with this logic that we see in Seoul is that it
underestimates the costs of a nuclear North Korea as an
outcome.
A North Korea with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles,
would have huge costs in terms of capital flight, slowed
growth, faltering stock markets and the like, there is already
evidence of this out there. On February 11, Moody's downgraded
South Korea's sovereign credit rating and country outlook for
the first time in 5 years since the financial crisis, because
of the growing threat from North Korea.
I attended the inauguration in Seoul, and despite the fact
that there was an inauguration, Secretary Powell had a very
good meeting with President Noh, the United States announced
the resumption of food aid, on that very day the South Korean
stock market index, the KOSPI tumbled 4 percent, largely
because the North Koreans shot a missile into the Sea of Japan,
and there are many other examples. After the second North
Korean missile test, the Japanese Nikkei closed at its lowest
level since 1983.
The point here is that the costs of a North Korea with a
mid-size nuclear arsenal, mated with a ballistic missile
program, are much higher than the South Korean Government is
willing to contemplate, and more importantly, there are no
decoupling incentives here, which is my essential message. The
South Koreans cannot simply worry about artillery and then say
the North Korean proliferation problem is a redundant threat
and should be passed off to the United States.
Senator Sununu asked a moment ago what is one of the
logical arguments for multilateral over bilateral? Well,
frankly, one of the arguments is because you want to prevent
decoupling. You want to prevent allies from being able to say,
North Korean nuclear proliferation, that is the United States'
problem, and they should deal with that, and we decouple from
that particular problem.
My final set of points is on the alliance, and it seems to
me here, and I will be very quick, even if the United States
and the new South Korean Government can close some of the gaps
on policy to North Korea, it seems to me that changing the
nature of the U.S. force presence and the alliance is
inevitable, if not imminent, and I think that this is the case
because there are a historically unique constellation of forces
that have emerged on the peninsula today having to do with the
balance of forces, democratization, development, the revolution
in military affairs, the Sunshine Policy, all of these things
may have existed in themselves at one point in the past, but
never have we seen them all come together like we have now, and
for that reason, I think actually the most important issue that
the Government of South Korea is going to have to deal with
before it leaves in 2008 is not North Korea, but it is going to
be the alliance.
Having said that, in my written testimony and in longer
pieces I have written I explain how I think that presence might
change. I will not go into that here. I would only say that
however this presence is going to be reconfigured, it has to be
done in a careful, deliberate fashion, and not a knee-jerk,
reactive one.
There are undeniable military rationales for changing the
presence, but the value-added of these changes would be even
greater if they could be accomplished without the negative
political externalities of, for example, a North Korea
declaring victory, or our South Korean and Japanese allies
fearing abandonment, and it seems to me that these revisions
are entirely possible through close consultation, as Ambassador
Lilley said, while maintaining the U.S. traditional political
influence and stature in the region.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Cha follows:]
Prepared Statement of Victor D. Cha, D.S. Song Associate Professor of
Government and Asian Studies, Director, American Alliances in Asia
Project, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown
University
Mr. Chairman, thank you for your kind invitation to testify today.
I am honored to have the opportunity to speak before this distinguished
Committee on an issue of vital American interest, the regional
implications of the nuclear crisis with North Korea.
In particular, I have been asked to address South Korean
perspectives with regard to the current crisis. I will attempt to
address this subject in three parts: 1) at the ``street'' level, the
groundswell of anti-Americanism in South Korea that has been, in part,
precipitated by the North Korean nuclear revelations; 2) at the
``elite'' level, the disparity in South Korean and U.S. government
views on what is an acceptable outcome to the crisis; and 3) a longer-
term look at the future of the US-ROK alliance.
south korean perspectives: the street
We are all familiar by now with the standard explanations for the
groundswell of anti-Americanism in the streets of Seoul over the past
five months. The proximate cause was popular dissatisfaction with the
military trial acquitting two US servicemen in a vehicular accident
killing two Korean teenage schoolgirls. As the Committee members are
all aware, however, the brewing crisis with North Korea after the
October 2002 nuclear revelations, fueled this street sentiment to the
point that we witnessed tens of thousands of South Koreans
demonstrating in Seoul, ostensibly against the alliance.
These demonstrations highlighted for many how much the domestic
political context had shifted in Seoul. Anti-Americanism was not the
same radical, ideological strain (``banmi'') that was evident in the
1980s among a fringe group of students and labor, rather it was a view
less ideological but no less critical of the United States (``bimi'').
Moreover, this new strain of anti-Americanism was spread across a wider
swath of society. With regard to the crisis with North Korea, scholarly
and media analyses characterized the link in two ways: First, the
demonstrations against US policy toward North Korea reflected the views
of a younger, affluent, and educated ``post-Korean war'' generation
less fearful of North Korea after the June 2000 summit. Second, many of
these younger generation saw the United States stand-offish policy
toward North Korea to be as much a cause for the current crisis as the
North's nuclear cheating and truculence. Perhaps the grossest popular
characterization of this was the 60 Minutes portrayal last month of
four Korean students blurting out with impunity that George Bush was
more threatening to them than Kim Jong Ii.
Committee members are undoubtedly aware of these arguments so I
won't go into them in any more detail. The one observation I would like
to make in this regard is based on numerous academic conferences, Track
II dialogues, and meetings with South Korean legislators, foreign
policy advisors, and the new president himself on this topic.
What has become clear to me is that the South Korean perspective
privileges the self-righteousness of this street sentiment at the
expense of underestimating its negative impact on American attitudes
toward the alliance. This is a dangerous tendency. Americans see the
demonstrations in Seoul; witness the burning of American flags and
effigies of President Bush; hurling of Molotov cocktails onto US bases;
and hear news of US servicemen being accosted in Seoul. These are very
real events and images that upset Americans to no end.
In stark contrast, however, Koreans discount these very acts as the
deeds of a marginal few. Instead, Koreans explain the demonstrations in
Seoul not as anti-Americanism but as ``peace'' marches or anti-war
movements. They claim that this represents the self-expression of a new
generation that is not afraid to have a different view on policy to
North Korean than its ally. They assert that this difference of opinion
on North Korea should not be construed by Americans as anti-
Americanism. They further assert that this new Korean identity is
actually very American--i.e., a new generation that speaks their mind
without fear of persecution.
The gap in these two views, therefore, is quite stark. If it is not
minded (particularly on the Korean side, given the real acts of
violence), then the result is, frankly, a train wreck in slow motion:
What Americans focus on as the primary manifestation of anti-
Americanism, the South Koreans dismiss as the incorrect message to take
away from the demonstrations. Mutual recriminations would then send the
alliance (and popular sentiment on both sides of the Pacific) into a
downward spiral.
An important variable or signpost of the extent to which this
dynamic could spin out of control is what I have termed the ``silent
majority'' in South Korea. There has been tremendous attention given to
the younger electorate's role in bringing the engagement-friendly Roh
Moo-hyun to the South Korean presidency. But there still exists a
significant portion of the population that is less enamored with the
sunshine policy after the October 2002 revelations and genuinely
worried about North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Polls in
January 2003, for example, showed as high as 47 percent of the street
seeing Pyongyang's nuclear truculence as a real threat.\1\ One would
imagine that the DPRK's subsequent withdrawal from the NPT, restarting
of the experimental reactor, and spate of military provocations has
buoyed these numbers. The extent to which this silent majority becomes
more proactive will be an important determinant of how wide the gap
becomes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Chosun Ilbo-Gallup Polls, January 1, 2003.
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south korean perspectives: the elite
At the elite level, the tensions over North Korea play out in a
different albeit no less important fashion. It seems to me that the
dispute between the United States and South Korean positions over the
nuclear crisis with North Korea boils down to the inherent tension in
two principles held by the Roh Moo-hyun government. The newly-
inaugurated president declares that a nuclear North Korea can never be
condoned by Seoul. At the same time, he argues that the use of force is
not an option in dealing with the North. How can one rule out the use
of force, Americans ask however, and hope to advance any policy with
the nuclear ambitious regime beyond a toothless appeasement policy? The
South Korean response is that coercive measures (i.e., surgical attack
or sanctions) must be ruled out because they could precipitate a
collapse of the North, the costs of which could be too crippling to the
South.
This is funny math. As I argue in a forthcoming co-authored book,
Nuclear North Korea (Columbia University Press, 2003), it is based on
the belief that the costs of unification are prohibitive for the South.
As one member of the Roh Moo-hyun's foreign policy team stated to me in
simple terms: ``We can't press the North on the nuclear issue. If we
press them, they might collapse. If they collapse, then we collapse.''
More important, this South Korean view implicitly assumes that there
are relatively lower costs associated with any other option that does
not have the potential to precipitate regime collapse--even if this
means a nuclear North Korea as an outcome.
Both are highly questionable propositions. Let's look at the first
part of the equation. It has become a truism that the costs of
unification are astronomical. In short, Germany was expensive, and all
the macro socio-economic indicators are that Korea would be more so.
Relatively speaking, the population gaps between the Koreas are
smaller, and the economic gaps are wider.
Beyond this superficial understanding, however, current research
shows that the costs of unification may not be as catastrophic as the
conventional wisdom argues. Marcus Noland at the Institute of
International Economics shows that if unification-handlers take
advantage of efficiency gains through DPRK marketization, a younger
DPRK (than East German) work force, and optimal movements of labor and
capital, absorption could result not in negative growth, but in only a
mild slowing in South Korean growth rates and overall increases in
peninsular output relative to a no-collapse outcome.
Perhaps more important, to fixate on avoiding the potential costs
of unification, as the South Korean government and public do,
implicitly assumes that the alternative outcome--a nuclear North
Korea--is acceptable. Nothing could be further from the truth. A North
Korea with nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities would have untold
costs both direct and indirect. These include capital flight, and a
faltering stock market, not to mention the price of rolling back an
extant North Korean nuclear weapons program and the costs associated
with an arms race and nuclear proliferation ripple effect to Japan,
Taiwan and even Southeast Asia, all resulting in a tension-filled
region created by North Korea.
Skeptics might counter that such costs are negligible, if not
impossible to calculate with accuracy. The recent record shows
otherwise. On February 11, Moodys downgraded South Korea's sovereign
credit rating and country outlook for the first time after successive
years of positive assessments since the financial crisis some five
years ago. The following week, Standard and Poor's did not increase
Korea's foreign currency and local corporation credit rating, and cut
back expected growth outlook from 5.7 percent to 5 percent. What makes
this fairly innocuous judgment significant is that S&P upgraded Korea's
credit rating the year prior (to A-) and its general country outlook to
stable, leading many experts to bank on further upgrades given
improvements in South Korean credit fundamentals in the public and
private sectors, and progress in corporate restructuring.
The primary reason for these sober assessments? S&P Director
Takahira Ogawa could not have been more direct, stating ``There is a
risk from the North, which constrains the sovereign rating of South
Korea.'' Those who think that an eternally optimistic South Korean
government, committed to the peaceful status quo and engagement with
North Korea, will be able to muddle through are sorely mistaken. All it
took was one short-range missile test by Pyongyang into the Sea of
Japan for the KOSPI (Korean Composite Stock Market Price Index) to
tumble almost 4 percent (24 points) in one day despite a litany of
parallel confidence-inducing events including Roh Moo-hyun's
inauguration, the US announcement of the resumption of food aid to the
North, and Secretary Powell's statements in Seoul that the US would
eventually seek to dialogue with North Korea.
After North Korean MiGs intercepted the US surveillance plane in
the Sea of Japan last week, the KOSPI dropped to its lowest level in 16
months. After the North Koreans tested a second short-range missile in
as many weeks on March 9, the South Korean won depreciated to a four-
month low. The Japanese Nikkei 225 closed at its lowest level since
March 1983. South Korean economic officials are already expressing
concern that these trends could negatively affect FDI in Korea which
has been steadily increasing since the 1998 financial crisis. The Korea
Economic Research Institute estimated growth rates for 2003 to be as
low as 1.4 percent (2002 was 6.2 percent) because of uncertainties
created by the North Korea crisis. I have conducted conference calls
with hundreds of institutional investors in the past month where the
primary question was not about the fundamentals of Roh Moo-hyun's
economic plans or the competencies of his cabinet. The main question
pertained to the effect of the North Korea crisis on investor
confidence in Japan and South Korea.
This is a dynamic that should begin to weigh increasingly more
heavily in South Korean thinking as the North continues to escalate.
The bottom line is that Washington and Seoul need to get back on
the same page vis a vis North Korea both to resolve the current crisis
and salvage the alliance. The anticipated costs of unification are
lower than we think. And the costs of a nuclear North Korea are much
higher than we think. The argument here is not to advocate the use of
force, but that the Roh government may want to rethink the basic cost
calculation that causes them to take it off the table completely as an
option. Historically, the most credible and successful engagement
policy has been a proactive choice of the strong, rather than an
expedient of the weak.
the coming change in the us-korea alliance
Even if the differences in perspectives on North Korea between
Washington and Seoul could be closed, the inevitable fate of the Roh
Moo-hyun presidency may be that the most critical foreign policy issue
it will have to contemplate before its departure in 2008 will not be
North Korea but the alliance with the United States.
This is because a historically unique constellation of forces
indicates that change to the U.S. military presence in Korea is
inevitable, if not imminent. The U.S. ground troop presence's success
in deterring and defending against North Korean aggression has also
made its tailored forces less useful to overall American strategy in
East Asia. At the same time, the ROK military has grown more robust and
capable, a far cry from the feeble force trained by the United States
fifty years ago.
As noted earlier, civil-military tensions over the U.S. military
footprint have grown immeasurably in past months, show casing a younger
generation of Koreans who see the United States less favorably than
their elders. The sunshine policy also had the unintended consequence
of worsening perceptions of U.S. troops in the body politic. On the one
hand, the exaggerated success of the policy caused the public to be
less welcoming of the U.S. presence. On the other, the failure of the
policy led to the search for scapegoats, for which the U.S. presence
was a ready target.
Larger trends in U.S. security thinking also presage change. The
Pentagon's 100,000 personnel benchmark in Asia is viewed as obsolete
among experts. The revolution in military affairs, moreover, with its
emphasis on long-range, precision-strike capabilities foreshadow
alterations in the face of U.S. forward presence around the world.
Those Koreans who believe that the U.S. is too comfortably self-
interested with its position on the peninsula to contemplate serious
change are dead wrong. As noted above, the images beamed back to the
U.S. of ``Yankee go home'' demonstrations, burned American flags,
accosted GIs, and young Korean assertions that George Bush is more
threatening than Kim Jong-Il have had a real effect in Washington.
There is anger, expressed in Congress and in the op-ed pages of major
newspapers about South Korean ungratefulness for the alliance. With no
imperial aspirations, the United States indeed would withdraw its
forces in the face of an unwelcoming host nation.
Secretary Rumsfeld's recent remarks about possible modification of
U.S. forces in Korea offers a glimpse, in my view, of a deeper,
serious, and longer-term study underway in Washington on revising the
alliance. The anti-American tenor of the election campaign in Korea and
the subsequent ``peace'' demonstrations have created a momentum in
Washington that proponents of alliance revision can ride. The
ostensible goal of such plans is the same alliance but with a smaller
and different (i.e. less ground, more air/navy) footprint, but if the
vicious circle of anti-Americanism in Seoul bearing anti-Korean
backlashes in the U.S. continues unabated, then the outcome could also
entail a downgrading of the alliance in U.S. eyes.
President Roh Moo-hyun does not want to go down in South Korean
history as the leader who ``lost'' the alliance. His entreaties to NGO
groups to damp down the anti-American rhetoric, and meeting with USFK
were well-advised steps in this regard. But he needs to do much more.
As is underway in the United States, President Roh and his foreign
policy team need to undertake a bottom-up review of the alliance. They
need to assess Korea's long-term interests in the alliance. And they
need to come up with a longer-term vision of what the alliance stands
for, rather than what it stands against.
This vision must showcase the new U.S.-Korea alliance as the
embodiment of values including democracy, open markets,
nonproliferation, counter-terrorism, human rights, rule of law,
civilian control of the military, and freedom of worship in a region of
the world that does not yet readily accept these values. At its
military core, the alliance's regional stability function would require
a force presence that meets three criteria. The revamped presence must
be militarily potent, but flexible enough to react swiftly to a broad
range of regional tasks (Deployable). The presence, however downsized
and changed, must still preserve America's traditional defense
commitment to South Korea (Credible). Finally, as critical as being a
potent, credible, and deployable, the revised presence must not be seen
as overbearing by South Koreans (Unobtrusive).
The long-term scope of such a study should not belie its urgency.
Coming up now with a mutually agreeable vision and military rationale
for the alliance ensures that future revisions to the force presence
take place in the right political context and are not misinterpreted.
Otherwise, the U.S.-ROK alliance runs the risk of entering its middle
ages as a brittle cold war relic, prone to being overtaken and outpaced
by events.\2\
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\2\ For an expanded study, see Victor Cha, ``Focus on the Future,
Not the North,'' The Washington Quarterly (Winter 2002-2003), http://
www.twq.com/03winter/docs/03winter--cha.pdf
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Cha. Dr. Gill.
STATEMENT OF DR. BATES GILL, FREEMAN CHAIR IN CHINA STUDIES,
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES [CSIS],
WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Gill. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks also to
the other members for inviting me here today to speak about the
regional implications of a changing nuclear equation on the
Korean Peninsula. I was asked to focus most of my remarks on
China's perspective on this issue, and I will do so in three
parts, first offering a brief background of China's interests
vis-a-vis North Korea, followed by a discussion of China's
reaction and policy responses, and then finally focusing on how
the changing nuclear equation might affect U.S.-China relations
as we go forward.
First, looking at an overview of key Chinese interests, we
do have to recognize very clearly that China does have an
enormous stake in the outcome of the evolving nuclear equation
on the Korean Peninsula, and I am encouraged by some of the
things I have heard today both from the committee and from
Assistant Secretary Kelly, that we are taking China's role much
more seriously, and that it should be considered as one of the
key four players in resolving this problem.
Two-way trade, for example, between China and North Korea
amounted to something on the range of $728 million in 2002,
which accounts for nearly one-third of North Korea's total
trade volume. The figures I have suggest that approximately 35
to 40 percent of North Korean imports come from China, and
those are largely critical basic commodities such as
foodstuffs, fertilizer, and energy.
More importantly, though, of course is the China-North
Korea political-military relationship, which, while it has been
troubled in recent years, has functioned much like a formal
alliance for significant periods of the past 50 years,
including, importantly, the transfer of military equipment in
the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as assistance to North
Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program as late as the
mid-1980s. Recall, too, the 1961 Beijing-Pyongyang Alliance
Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, which
is still in effect, and which agrees that both parties, ``will
immediately render military and other assistance by all means
at its disposal if either party is subjected to aggression,''
and it also stipulates that ``neither contracting party will
conclude any alliance directed against the other contracting
party or take part in any block or in any action or measure
directed against the other contracting party.''
As I say, neither party has formally withdrawn from this
treaty, and the two sides continue to carry out high-level
party-to-party and military-to-military exchanges. I do not
think we can simply dismiss the fact that this is simply a
piece of paper between these two countries. I think there is
more to it than that.
We know, however, that the alliance continues to be fraught
with an enormous amount of tension, probably culminating in the
August 1992 establishment of diplomatic relations between
Beijing and Seoul. Nevertheless, I would argue that in spite of
that step, China and North Korea have maintained a basically
good relationship, and China's two-Korea policy has been
largely a great success. At the end of the day, though, China's
North Korean ally is increasingly becoming a potentially
disastrous burden, rather than a political-military advantage.
Second, we should ask the question, mutual interest between
the United States and China, but how mutual? We often say that
the United States and China have a shared interest in seeing a
non-nuclear North Korea. This is a point that Secretary Kelly
came back to time and time again. I would agree that that is
true, but I think things are more complicated than that.
We have to recognize that, while China may prefer to see a
non-nuclear North Korea, its bilateral relationship has chilled
considerably with North Korea in the 1980s, especially with the
introduction of market reforms, and since China opened
relations with South Korea in 1992. North Korea has returned
some snubs of its own, particularly under the leadership of Kim
Jong-Il.
His father, for example, Kim Il-Sung, spent his formative
years in China. He spoke Chinese. He studied in Chinese
Manchuria, and he participated in pre-1945 Chinese Communist
political and guerrilla movements and, of course, was eternally
indebted to China for the intervention in the Korean war. Kim
Jong-Il has nothing like that kind of personal or political or
security ties to China. That further underscores my point that
China's ability to influence the situation on North Korea is
constrained.
China's position is also constrained because it continues
to place, I think, its highest priority not on a non-nuclear
North Korea, but, rather, on a stable North Korea, and the
avoidance of measures which, in Beijing's view, would escalate
tensions and prompt even more reckless behavior on the part of
Pyongyang. Refugees are just a near-term problem. Over the
longer term, Beijing will want to avoid measures which would
lead to further instabilities of its key neighbor, such as
military action by the United States, and politically Beijing
would prefer a gradual change in North Korea, largely on
Chinese terms, which would include the introduction of China-
style economic and political reforms, stabilization of North-
South relations, and the eventual reconciliation of a non-
nuclear, stable North Korea within China's sphere of influence.
This is its long-term goal.
A part of this effort, third, is to have the successful
two-Korea policy. China will do nothing, or will be reluctant
to do anything that is going to undermine this very successful
two-Korea policy that has as its long-term goal the reassertion
of Chinese influence over the Korean Peninsula.
Currently, Chinese and South Korean interests are
increasingly similar toward North Korea. We see them both
calling for the downplaying of tensions in favor of a more
gradual and accommodating policy toward North Korea. I think in
this regard, Mr. Chairman, we need to be careful not to drive
South Korea further into Beijing's camp with our policies.
Fourth, getting to the point about China's interests vis-a-
vis the nuclear weapons program in North Korea, this, too, is
complicated and contradictory. China itself, of course, is
responsible in part for this having provided assistance to
North Korea in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and,
moreover, China should be considered at least indirectly
responsible for the recently revealed enriched uranium bomb
program. This pathway to nuclear weapons is similar to the
program that Pakistan pursued, with Chinese assistance.
In any event, China does recognize that it could soon be
facing its fourth nuclear armed neighbor on its borders,
joining Russia, India, and Pakistan. This is a situation it
would certainly prefer to avoid, but it is not necessarily at
the top of its priority list, and it has to be weighed in the
balance with other interests that China has vis-a-vis the
peninsula that we have already discussed here.
Some Chinese strategists and scientists even go so far as
to express skepticism that Pyongyang's program could advance to
weaponization and operational deployment, perhaps similar to
what we hear from the Russians. Whether that is a diplomatic
ploy or a scientific assessment, we need to judge, but it is a
point that we are beginning to hear coming from China.
I would also add that it may be quite telling that even in
the face of the Indian nuclear weapons deployment, where China
is obviously a target, Chinese reaction, beyond sort of
official and diplomatic rhetoric, has not been particularly
forceful, and China and India continue to have a generally
favorable and mutually beneficial relationship. By Chinese
comparative reckoning, North Korea poses a relatively minor
nuclear threat at this stage and in the near term.
So that is a short background, Mr. Chairman, on some of the
views I think China brings to this issue, and its interests.
Let me speak second on China's policy response. It has
basically been a three-part approach. China insists we restart
diplomacy and dialog, to avoid, second, escalatory and
provocative actions, and it seeks to assure the
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. This was reiterated
most recently in a telephone conversation between Presidents
Bush and Jiang just a couple of days ago.
But reading between the lines of this policy, I think we
need to see some important nuance. First, when they say the
importance of diplomacy and dialog, I think they really are
talking about bilateral dialog. There may be some wiggle room
and flexibility in there, but this is an important first step
for China because it recognizes North Korea's core interests,
and second, China can expect bilateral dialog hopefully to
result in outcomes that are favorable to China, like
stabilizing the peninsula, denuclearizing North Korea, but have
all that happen without all the heavy lifting, so it makes some
sense for China to pursue, or to encourage us to take the
bilateral path.
Also, I think we should expect China in calling for a
peaceful resolution to probably oppose the application of
coercive measures like sanctions or force against North Korea,
so if it is in our mind to go to the Security Council for a
resolution for sanctions, we will have to carefully craft that
to gain Chinese support.
Let me conclude, Mr. Chairman, with just some thoughts
about U.S.-China relations with regard to this issue. We can
say, probably fairly, that we do share some common interests
with China on this, but under the surface, there seem to be a
number of differences which are apparent, and these differences
could increase in the months ahead as we pursue this issue.
First, as I said, Beijing, like others in the region, like
South Korea and Russia, and even Japan, would likely oppose a
coercive approach to forcing North Korean compliance. A serious
split could emerge between Beijing and Washington over the
means to bring about North Korean compliance if we do not play
our cards correctly.
Second, beneath the surface of common interest toward North
Korea, Beijing does not hold Washington blameless. Many
strategists in China point out that the Bush administration's
tougher approach toward North Korea only forces North Korea's
back to the wall, and this can only lead to more provocative
and potentially destabilizing responses by Pyongyang.
I do not necessarily fully agree with that analysis, but we
have to recall that this is a widely held view in Beijing, so
when we go into our negotiations with China, we are having to
be prepared to deflect or overcome those views.
In any event, if escalating confrontation does lead to
conflict by either design or miscalculation, Beijing will
resent Americans' insensitivity to Chinese interests, and
America's inability, as the world's sole superpower, to chart
and lead a negotiated solution to this.
Third, if things go badly in North Korea, the U.S.-China
relationship would also suffer because I think China could be
widely seen as part of the problem for not having taken enough
action, and U.S.-China relations would suffer considerably.
In our dealings with China, and I understand they are
intensifying, we need to consistently and persistently convey
to Beijing the risks it takes in not having a more proactive
approach, but also remind them of the benefits that will accrue
to them in U.S.-China relations by doing so. China needs to
recognize that most of the nuclearization that is going to go
on in the world following North Korea, if it goes that path,
will happen in its own neighborhood.
China needs to understand that if North Korea chooses to
proliferate its nuclear materials to States and sub-State
actors who seek nuclear weapons, that this is only going to
further destabilize the international system, which is against
Chinese interests as well.
North Korea probably represents the most unstable and
weakest regime yet to openly brandish nuclear weapons, which
should raise enormous concerns in Beijing, especially in times
of crisis, or the collapse of political, social, and economic
order in North Korea.
I think we can also get to China by reminding them that, as
North Korea's most important supporter, and a country which has
supported North Korea militarily in the past, it bears an
enormous responsibility in assuring a peaceful outcome in the
resolution of this standoff. China's reputation as an aspiring
great power is at stake, and it needs to step up to the plate
and take a more proactive position.
We should encourage Beijing to do more as a go-between. It
is political difficult, often, for us to encourage that, but I
think we should try, and see if Beijing can facilitate a
bilateral dialog between the North and the United States, but
embedded within a multilateral, regional set of consultations
which includes North Korea and South Korea, certainly, and
perhaps also Japan and Russia.
But for all of these words of cautionary diplomatic advice
to work, and to gain greater cooperation from Beijing, the
United States is going to need to demonstrate its seriousness
in advocating a truly multilateral approach to this issue which
genuinely offers others a stake in the outcome of this process.
It is going to have to begin with a much more intensive set of
diplomatic consultations with our allies in the region, getting
on the same page, as Dr. Cha said, with South Korea and Japan,
and then moving from that trilateral unity on this issue to
engage the others.
This is going to be a very, very difficult process, but if
we can present that more unified front not only to North Korea,
but to China, we can expect greater cooperation from them, and
discourage China from exploiting intra- and inter-alliance
differences which are emerging between the United States and
its friends in the region.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Gill follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Bates Gill, Freeman Chair in China Studies,
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Thank you, Chairman Lugar, Senator Biden, and distinguished members
of this committee, for the opportunity to speak with you today on the
regional implications of the changing nuclear equation on the Korean
Peninsula. It is highly important and commendable that the committee
convene this series of hearings: a nuclear-armed North Korea undermines
our national security interests, presents a serious threat to the
global and regional nonproliferation goals of the United States, and
would have negative repercussions for U.S. relationships with key
players in Northeast Asia and beyond.
I was asked to place an emphasis in my remarks on the Chinese
perspective with regard to the changing nuclear equation on the Korean
Peninsula. In doing so, the testimony will proceed in three principal
parts: (1) a brief background and overview on Chinese interests vis-a-
vis North Korea and the changing nuclear equation on the Korean
Peninsula; (2) a discussion of China's reaction and policy response to
the changing nuclear equation on the Korean Peninsula; and (3) a focus
on how the changing nuclear equation will affect U.S.-China relations.
overview of key chinese interests
Brief background: China has an enormous stake in the outcome of the
evolving nuclear equation on the Korean Peninsula. China and North
Korea share a lengthy border (at 1,416 kilometers or about 870 miles,
it is North Korea's longest border, as opposed to only 238 kilometers
with South Korea and 19 kilometers with Russia). China is also North
Korea's largest trading partner. Two-way trade amounted to
approximately US$728 million in 2002, accounting for nearly one-third
of North Korea's total trade volume of US$2.23 billion. Approximately
35 to 40 percent of North Korean imports come from China, largely
critical, basic commodities such as foodstuffs, fertilizers, and energy
supplies.
Perhaps most importantly, the China-North Korea political-military
relationship, while more troubled in recent years, has functioned much
like a formal alliance for significant periods over the past 50-plus
years. The China-North Korea alliance was established de facto in late
1950 when Chinese troops surged across the Yalu River to push U.S.-led
United Nations forces back across the 38th parallel on the Korean
Peninsula. Chinese forces remained on the peninsula until the latter
half of the 1950s. In the early years of this military relationship,
China provided generous support to North Korea, including significant
transfers of military equipment in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as
well as assistance to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile
programs as late as the 1970s and early 1980s.
In July 1961, as the Sino-Soviet relationship deteriorated, Beijing
and Pyongyang signed a Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual
Assistance. The treaty envisioned that the two sides would ``adopt all
measures to prevent aggression against either of the Contracting
Parties'' and that if either were subjected to aggression by any state
or group of states, the other would ``immediately render military and
other assistance by all means at its disposal.'' The treaty also
stipulated that ``Neither Contracting Party shall conclude any alliance
directed against the other Contracting Party or take part in any bloc
or in any action or measure directed against the other Contracting
Party.'' \1\ Neither side has formally withdrawn this treaty, and the
two sides continue to carry out official Party-to-Party and military-
to-military exchanges.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ ``Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance
between the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, Peking, 11 July 1961'', in D. C. Watt, ed.,
Documents on International Affairs 1961 (London: Oxford University
Press, 1965). pp. 258-59.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nevertheless, this alliance was constantly fraught with tension as
Pyongyang sought advantage by playing Moscow and Beijing off one
another. While professing eternal communist fealty with North Korea,
the Chinese leadership steadily weaned itself away from an overtly
supportive position toward Pyongyang, and, from the late-1980s, built a
``two-Korea'' policy. The culmination of this process was the August
1992 establishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Seoul,
bringing a practical and peaceful end to decades of Cold War animosity
between China and South Korea and effectively ending China's one-sided,
pro-Pyongyang approach to the Korean Peninsula. It is true that China
continued to provide considerable material and financial support to the
economically faltering North throughout the 1990s and into the early
2000s, and portrayed itself as a useful political and economic model
for Pyongyang to follow. But what had begun in the 1950s as an alliance
hallowed in blood and joint sacrifice had, by the early 2000s, turned
into a close relationship for many of the wrong reasons in Beijing:
China's North Korean ally became a potentially disastrous burden,
rather than a positive political-military relationship.
Recent irritants in the Beijing-Pyongyang relationship include
North Korea's continued repudiation of Chinese-style economic and
political reforms, enduring economic mismanagement, the resultant flow
of North Korean refugees--including an embarrassing flurry of asylum-
seekers seeking high-profile entry into foreign diplomatic compounds in
the spring 2002--and the effort to open the Sinujiu Special Economic
Zone opposite the Chinese border town of Dandong, and have it run by an
errant Chinese businessman, Yang Bin, all without consultation
whatsoever with Beijing. The current and lengthening list of
provocations related to the nuclear stand-off--the clandestine uranium
enrichment program, withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
(NPT), missile tests--only add to Beijing's headaches as tensions rise
in the region.
Mutual interests, but how mutual?: It is often said that the United
States and China have a shared interest in seeing a non-nuclear North
Korea. This is true. But, for a number of reasons, the difficult
Beijing-Pyongyang relationship has complicated U.S.-China cooperation
in assuring a non-nuclear North Korea. The committee should weigh these
factors carefully in contemplating how and whether the United States
can gain greater support from Beijing on the issue of a nuclear-armed
North Korea.
First and foremost, China-North Korea bilateral relations have
chilled considerably since the 1980s and the introduction of market
reforms in China, and especially since China opened diplomatic
relations with South Korea in 1992. China's more reform-minded,
outward-looking and growth-oriented leaders viewed its isolated and
recalcitrant neighbor with disdain at best and alarm at worst, all the
more so given the political cult style of leadership in North Korea,
reminiscent of the disastrous latter Maoist years in China. By the mid-
1990s, China halted officially sanctioned barter trade, no longer
accepted payment in non-convertible North Korean currency, cut off
regularized direct subsidies, and required foreign currency for trade
payments, though perhaps at ``friendship prices.'' Humanitarian aid has
been made available--in 1997, for example, China provided some 262,000
tons of free food to North Korea--but on a more restricted and case-by-
case basis.
In response, North Korea returned some snubs of its own, especially
under the leadership of Kim Jong-il. Unlike his father who spent his
formative years in China, spoke Chinese, studied in Chinese Dongbei
(Manchuria), participated in pre-1945 Chinese communist political and
guerrilla movements, and was indebted to China for intervening in the
Korean War, North Korea's current leader, Kim Jong-il does not have the
same personal, political, and security ties to China.
Second, even in the chillier climate for China-North Korea
relations, Beijing places its highest priority on a stable North Korea,
and the avoidance of measures which, in Beijing's view, would escalate
tensions, prompt even more reckless behavior from Pyongyang, and
unnecessarily destabilize North Korea and the strategic ``buffer'' it
provides for Chinese interests. In the near-term, China already faces a
growing presence of illegal North Korean economic migrants who seek
better life opportunities across the border in ethnic Korean parts of
northeastern China. By some estimates, there may be as many as 300,000
North Koreans illegally resident in China. That number, and the
challenges they pose to Chinese local and central authorities, would
rise exponentially were North Korea to devolve further into economic,
social, and political chaos. Beijing has thus far resisted efforts by
the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees and other U.N.
agencies to fully assess the refugee situation along the China-North
Korea border or prepare for the possibility of larger inflows of
persons on the move in a time of greater crisis.
Most importantly, over the long-term, Beijing will want to slow and
avoid measures which could lead to further instabilities and
uncertainties for this key neighbor. Military conflict in North Korea
could be a major factor for instability and open all kinds of
uncertainties for Beijing: potential refugee flows, political
instability, and the possibility of U.S. and allied troops positioned
at or near China's border. A rapid alteration of the political
situation in Pyongyang and on the peninsula could also stimulate
nationalistic responses among China's ethnic Korean population along
the Jilin Province-North Korea border. Beijing wants to avoid a
dramatic change in North Korea which could quickly result in less-than-
positive outcomes for Chinese strategic interests. Beijing would much
prefer a gradual change in North Korea, largely on Chinese terms, to
include the introduction of China-style economic and political reforms,
the stabilization of North-South relations, and the eventual
reconciliation of a stable, non-nuclear, Korea within China's sphere of
influence.
Third--and a point too often overlooked in U.S. assessments--
Beijing will work hard to avoid outcomes which would set back its
meticulously crafted two-Korea policy. Since the normalization of
Beijing-Seoul relations in 1992, China has carefully--and largely
successfully--balanced relations between both North and South, with the
long-term aim of reasserting China's traditional sway over the Korean
Peninsula. Many near-term benefits have accrued as well, most notably
the robust economic and trade relationship enjoyed between China and
South Korea: China is South Korea's second largest export destination,
and is South Korea's third largest source of imports; South Korea is
China's third largest import source, and one of its largest export
partners. Politically, too, Beijing and Seoul have come closer together
on a range of regional issues. Most recently, their common interests
have included similar approaches toward North Korea: downplaying
tensions in favor of a more gradual and accommodating policy of
political, economic, and diplomatic engagement. Thus, Beijing's
interests weigh against policies toward North Korea which would be
significantly at odds with those of South Korea. In many respects,
Beijing and Seoul are closer in their approach toward North Korea than
Washington and Seoul.
Fourth, Beijing's interests vis-a-vis North Korea's nuclear weapons
program are likewise complicated and contradictory. To begin, China
itself is partially responsible for North Korea's nuclear pursuits,
having provided some assistance to North Korea's nuclear development
program beginning in the late 1950s. China and North Korea signed a
cooperation agreement in September 1959 for the peaceful development of
nuclear energy, and in 1964 China assisted its neighbor to conduct a
uranium mining survey. Reports indicate that China continued providing
training and exchange visits for North Korean nuclear engineers and
scientists into the late 1970s. By 1987, China apparently halted such
official nuclear-related training and assistance for North Korea, but
reports persisted of other forms of cooperation, mostly involving
Chinese enterprises exporting various technologies and components to
North Korea which could have applications for Pyongyang's nuclear
weapons programs. For example, as recently as December 17, 2002, the
Washington Times, citing leaked intelligence information, reported
China exported some 20 tons of tributyl phosphate to North Korea, a
chemical substance which has commercial applications, but which could
also be used in the extraction of fissile material from spent nuclear
fuel.\2\ Moreover, China should be considered at least indirectly
responsible for the recently revealed enriched uranium bomb program:
this pathway to nuclear weapons is similar to the program Pakistan
pursued with Chinese assistance; Pakistan in turn is believed to have
assisted Pyongyang in the development and design of a uranium-triggered
weapon beginning in the late 1990s.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Information on China-North Korea nuclear related cooperation
drawn from the Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies
database available from the Nuclear Threat Initiative Web site,
www.nti.org.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While the precise extent of China's role is unclear and may not in
the end have been critical for the North Korean nuclear weapons
development program, nevertheless North Korea is or soon could be
China's fourth nuclear-armed state on China's border, joining Russia,
India, and Pakistan. Today, this is a situation Beijing would obviously
prefer to avoid, but it must be carefully analyzed and weighed in the
balance with the other interests discussed here. On the one hand, many
Chinese strategists and scientists discount the nuclear threat from
North Korea, either expressing skepticism that Pyongyang's program
could advance to weaponization and operational deployment, or noting
that even if North Korea can successfully deploy nuclear weapons, China
would probably not be a target.
On the other hand, Chinese strategists and scientists also
recognize that North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile development
helps drive military modernization programs elsewhere in the region,
most notably in Japan. Japan's steps toward the development and
deployment of missile defenses in cooperation with the United States,
are not viewed favorably in Beijing, especially to the degree those
systems might someday strengthen Japanese and U.S.-Japan allied
postures during a Taiwan-related confrontation with China. More
broadly, threatening North Korean nuclear- and ballistic missile-
related provocations strengthen the case for a more robust and ready
Japanese defense and military modernization program, including a
stronger U.S-Japan alliance relationship--and, in some circles, a
discussion of a more offensive conventional and even nuclear
capability--again, moves which are not in Beijing's interests.
Similarly, provocative North Korean steps with regard to its nuclear
program also sparks an escalated American military response, with ``all
options on the table'', according to the White House. Some Chinese
analysts are prepared to concede that a nuclear North Korea could
conceivably provide weapons or weapons-grade material to others, but
this concerns is not given anywhere near the same degree of importance
as in the United States.
Consider this: even in the face of Indian nuclear weapons
development and deployment, where China is obviously a factor in New
Delhi's planning, Chinese reaction, beyond an initial flurry of
rhetoric and continuing low-level diplomacy, has not been forceful.
Indeed, China and India continue to have generally favorable and
mutually beneficial political, economic and security relations in spite
of India's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development and
deployment. By Chinese comparative reckoning, North Korea poses a
relatively minor nuclear threat at this stage and in the near-term.
Finally, China's interests regarding the changing nuclear equation
on the Korean Peninsula are further complicated by Beijing's genuine
desire to maintain positive and friendly relations with the United
States. The United States continues to hold a number of critical keys
for China's overarching national goals of continuing socioeconomic
modernization and development at home. On the one hand, the United
States is a major source of markets, capital investment, technology,
and know-how, all of which helps drive the Chinese modernization
process forward. On the other hand, China needs a stable international
environment to pursue these goals, especially in East Asia, and will go
to great lengths to deflect a crisis in the region involving the United
States, and will try most of all to avoid a direct confrontation with
the United States, if possible. Again, with regard to the North Korea
nuclear issue, Beijing is faced with a delicate and increasingly
challenging balancing act.
In sum, Beijing's interests and priorities with regard to North
Korea and its nuclear weapons program are a mixture of constraints,
frustrations, and difficult choices. Beijing may wield the most
influence in Pyongyang of the major powers concerned, but it is an
influence China is constrained from exercising fully. Placing Chinese
interests within a strategic context, we see that with a direct border
on Korea, stability and peaceful solutions are given highest priority
in China, with the longer-term expectation of expanding China's
traditional geostrategic influence over the peninsula. With that broad
aim in mind, Beijing must balance a host of difficult to bad choices in
its relationship with North Korea.
With specific reference to Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, while
Washington and Beijing wish to see a non-nuclear North Korea, questions
arise over where each side places that priority on their respective
list of interests vis-a-vis North Korea. Whereas a non-nuclear North
Korea would rank at or near the top of such a list for Washington,
other priorities and constraints may have greater weight for China.
Given these other contending priorities and constraints, and until the
possibility of an openly nuclear North Korea becomes more evident,
Beijing will be reluctant to strong-arm North Korea and expend what
political and economic leverage it may have in Pyongyang.
china's policy response
Consistent policy approach: Beijing's policy toward the changing
nuclear equation on the Korean Peninsula has been relatively clear and
consistent: faced with a complex and often contradictory situation,
Beijing supports a fundamentally cautious walk-back to the status quo
ante, with a strong emphasis on a diplomatic solution, fearful that any
precipitous action would only make a bad situation even worse. China's
preferred solution stresses three elements: (1) restart diplomacy and
dialogue; (2) avoid escalatory and provocative actions; (3) assure the
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
This approach has been consistently reaffirmed at the highest
levels in China over the past five months. During their summit in
Crawford, Texas--a mere two weeks after North Korea acknowledged its
clandestine uranium enrichment program--Presidents Bush and Jiang
agreed that both Washington and Beijing oppose nuclear weapons on the
Korean Peninsula and that they would pursue peaceful methods to bring
about a solution to the impasse with Pyongyang. During their summit in
December 2002, Jiang Zernin and Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement
urging the United States and North Korea to enter into a dialogue and
underscoring their view that the Korean Peninsula should be nuclear
weapons-free. On January 10, 2003, Presidents Bush and Jiang addressed
the North Korea nuclear issue in a telephone conversation following
Pyongyang's announced intention to withdraw from the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty. Both leaders shared the view that the
peninsula should be nuclear weapons-free and that a solution on this
issue should be reached peacefully. Shortly after that conversation, in
mid-January, during the visit to Beijing of Undersecretary of State
John Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, China went so
far as to make a good-intentioned but ill-defined offer to provide a
venue for talks between Pyongyang and Washington.
Most recently, on March 10, 2003, the two presidents spoke again by
telephone, including a discussion about the North Korea situation.
According to the official Chinese report on the conversation, President
Jiang expressed China's hope that ``various sides should keep calm and
avoid actions which may make the situation tenser'' and that China
supports addressing outstanding issues through dialogue. Jiang added,
``The form of dialogue is not the most important, the key is that
whether both sides have sincerity, whether the dialogue has substantial
content and result, whether it is favorable to the denuclearization in
the peninsula, to solving the matters which the United States and the
DPRK care about and to safeguarding the peace and stability of the
peninsula.'' \3\ As recently as last week, the Chinese Foreign Minister
Tang Jiaxuan called on the United States and North Korea to hold
direct, bilateral talks, and added that pressures or sanctions on
Pyongyang, ``Rather than solving the problem . . . can only lead to the
complication of the situation.'' \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ From `Jiang, Bush Talk over Phone on DPRK, Iraq Issues'',
accessed from the Web site of the Chinese Embassy in the United States,
http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/44284/html.
\4\ From ``China opposes pressure, sanctions on North Korea'',
Reuters, March 6, 2003, and condensed in NAPSNet Newsletter, March 6,
2003.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reading between the lines: Reading between the lines of official
Chinese policy, we can glean other important, but less prominent
elements to China's approach. First, Beijing continues to emphasize the
importance of bilateral, face-to-face dialogue between Washington and
Pyongyang. Beijing recognizes this as a core interest for North Korea,
and also sees merits in acting as an outside supporter of such dialogue
and negotiation, but not a direct participant. China may expect that
any such face-to-face dialogue would go a long way to stabilize
relations on the peninsula, curb or rollback North Korea's nuclear
weapons (and possibly ballistic missile) program, and result in some
reassurances from the United States about North Korean security, all of
which are very much in Beijing's interests, but without having to do
the heavy lifting or be forced to ``take sides'' in a multilateral
setting.
Second, in advocating dialogue and the eschewal of provocative
steps, Beijing expresses its opposition to applying coercive means such
as sanctions or force against North Korea. That language is also
Beijing's diplomatic reminder to the United States to rein in its
threatening posture toward North Korea which, in the Chinese view, is
in part responsible for Pyongyang's belligerence. At the moment, the
threat or use of force by the United States is Beijing's primary
concern, but the question of sanctions may arise in the weeks ahead
should the Bush administration choose that route within the United
Nations framework. Should it arise, it seems very unlikely Beijing
would support a sharp-edged Security Council resolution favoring tough
sanctions, forced inspections, or authorizing the use of force when
other means to gain North Korean compliance are exhausted.
It is worth noting the degree of consistency versus flexibility in
Chinese policy toward North Korea's nuclear programs over the past 10
years. For example, with the brief exception of the now-moribund Four
Party Talks, Beijing has consistently declined active participation in
multilateral mechanisms to resolve security problems on the Korean
Peninsula, preferring instead to support more direct U.S.-North Korea
dialogue. China did not take part in the multilateral Korean Peninsula
Energy Development Organization (KEDO), though it supported its aims as
well as the bilateral U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework which set up
the KEDO mechanism. China has also consistently opposed or deflected
the application of sanctions against North Korea, dating back to the
1993-94 North Korean nuclear crisis. Since the early 1990s and China's
accession to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992, China has
also consistently sought the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,
beginning with its pressure on Pyongyang in 1992-93 to accept full IAEA
safeguards and inspections.
However, in contemplating future policy approaches with China,
Washington should consider two important exceptions to an otherwise
consistent policy. The first point involves the threat of sanctions.
During the 1993-94 crisis, China initially voiced its outright
opposition to the imposition of United Nations sanctions and open-ended
language of ``further Security Council action'' in the event of North
Korean non-compliance, and threatened to exercise a veto if such a
resolution came to a vote. However, as a crisis loomed, the United
States readied for military action, the evidence of North Korean non-
compliance mounted, and a Security Council sanctions vote became more
likely, Beijing modified its position from opposing sanctions to ``not
supporting'' sanctions (meaning Beijing would not exercise its veto to
quash a possible sanctions resolution). Shortly after Beijing made this
known to North Korea, Pyongyang moved forward to avoid looming
sanctions and negotiate what would become the Agreed Framework.
Second, while China declined multilateral participation in the KEDO
process, Beijing did agree to participate in the Four Party Talks,
first proposed in April 1996 by the United States and South Korea and
lasting, fitfully, over six rounds, until August 1999. Beijing may view
such a framework more favorably for a number of reasons. First, the
make up and smaller number of parties helped Beijing to appear ``on
North Korea's side'', while also avoiding the appearance that the
region was ``ganging up'' on North Korea. The smaller framework also
allowed Pyongyang to meet its goal of dealing more directly with the
United States, which a larger mechanism might not allow. Of course, in
the smaller framework, China's role was also comparatively more weighty
than it would be in a larger multilateral setting, such as the proposed
``Six Party Talks.'' Finally, the Four Party Talks were intended to
address larger strategic issues of replacing the 1953 Korean War
armistice agreement (to which China was a direct party) and fostering
reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, arenas where China can more
comfortably operate than dealing with the stickier questions of North
Korean disarmament, which Beijing prefers to view as a U.S.-North Korea
problem.
u.s.-china relations and the north korea nuclear challenge
U.S.-China relations: Given Beijing's interests and responses thus
far regarding the changing nuclear equation on the Korean Peninsula, a
mixed picture emerges for U.S.-China relations on this issue. On the
one hand, the two sides can fairly say they share common interests in a
denuclearized Korean Peninsula and a peaceful resolution to the issue.
But under the surface, a number of differences are apparent, and, under
certain conditions, these differences could increase in the months
ahead.
First, Beijing, like others in the region--particularly South Korea
and Russia--will likely oppose coercive steps to force North Korean
compliance. In the absence of overtly hostile acts aimed at the home
islands, Japan too would prefer a diplomatic, as opposed to a coerced,
solution. In this context, Washington should avoid driving South Korea
too far into Beijing's camp, a process already underway in some
respects. But depending on how far North Korea takes its gambit and the
forcefulness of response deemed necessary in Washington and elsewhere
in the region, a more serious split between Beijing and Washington
could emerge over the means to bring about North Korean compliance.
Second, beneath the surface of common interests toward the North
Korea situation, Beijing does not hold Washington blameless. Many
strategists in China point out that the Bush administration's tougher
approach toward North Korea--including Pyongyang in the ``axis of
evil,'' leaking nuclear preemption contingencies aimed at North Korea
as part of the nuclear posture review, and personalizing attacks
against Kim Jong-il--only force North Korea's back to the wall. In
Beijing's view, further tough rhetoric and escalatory actions by
Washington would only lead to more provocative and potentially
destabilizing responses by Pyongyang. If escalating confrontation leads
to conflict--by design or miscalculation--Beijing will resent American
insensitivity to its interests and its inability, as the world's sole
superpower, to chart and lead a negotiated solution.
Third, if the current North Korea nuclear situation continues to
fester and worsen, pressure will build even further on China to exert
greater pressure on Pyongyang. If matters go badly--the emergence of an
openly nuclear-armed North Korea, a damaging and costly conflict on the
peninsula, or the proliferation of nuclear materials from North Korea
to American adversaries--China will likely be seen as part of the
problem. Depending on such outcomes, U.S.-China relations could suffer
considerably.
Policy approaches: To avoid these kinds of challenges, Washington
should continue to engage with China in order to gain steadily more
cooperative responses from Beijing. In particular, Washington should
consistently and persistently convey to Beijing the risks it takes in
not recognizing and acting on the challenges posed by a nuclear North
Korea, and the benefits that would accrue for China and U.S.-China
relations by doing so.
At a global level, the further weakening and breakdown of
international nonproliferation regime inherent in North Korea's
pursuit of nuclear weapons will only encourage others to more
seriously consider the nuclear option, such as Iran, or to more
vigorously pursue their extant nuclear programs, such as
Pakistan and India. These countries are in China's neighborhood
for the most part, holding out the prospect for further
nuclearization, rather than denuclearization, around China's
periphery.
North Korea has demonstrated its willingness to link with
other proliferating states in the spread of nuclear and
ballistic missile technologies. Given this record, North Korea
must appear very attractive to states and sub-state actors who
seek nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and who might use
them for terrorist purposes, further destabilizing the
international system.
China's own security interests are at stake. North Korea
would become the fourth nuclear-armed nation on China's
borders, joining Russia, India, and Pakistan. Not only will
this even further complicate China's relations with its
neighbor and ostensible ally, and leave Beijing open to
potential nuclear blackmail and coercion at a future date, but
further lowers the threshold for possible nuclear weapons use
in China's backyard.
North Korea would perhaps represent the most unstable and
``weakest'' regime yet to openly brandish nuclear weapons,
raising enormous concerns over command and control,
reliability, materials protection, control, and accountability,
and potential for misuse, theft, and export, especially in
times of crisis or the collapse of political, social, and
economic order.
Chinese security and economic interests will not benefit
from a more disruptive and unstable regional security
environment, especially one brought on by the potential
emergence of a new nuclear power in the region.
As North Korea's most important supporter and bordering
major power, and as a country which aided North Korea
militarily in the past, including the provision of nuclear
technology and assistance for the North Korean missile
development program, China bears an enormous responsibility in
assuring a peaceful resolution of the nuclear stand-off and a
rollback of the North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile
programs.
Unlike the current Iraq situation, the North Korea crisis
should be of immediate strategic concern to Beijing, and the
world will look to China to take a more proactive and
responsible position in assuring a peaceful outcome and the
rollback of Pyongyang's nuclear weapon programs. China's
reputation as an aspiring great power is at stake.
As the principal regional player best positioned to work
with both the United States and North Korea, China should be
strongly encouraged to do more as a ``go-between'', clearly
conveying messages, constraints, and red lines from both sides,
while facilitating a bilateral dialogue embedded within a
regional set of consultations which includes North Korea and
others such as South Korea, Japan and Russia.
For these words of cautionary diplomatic advice to work and
gain greater cooperation from Beijing in dealing with North
Korea, the United States will also need to demonstrate its
seriousness in advocating a multilateral approach to this
issue, and one in which China (and others) have a stake in the
process. In pursuing a multilateral approach, Washington must
engage in an even more intensive set of diplomatic
consultations to bring the United States, South Korea, Japan,
China, and Russia closer together on how to address the
challenges North Korea poses to the international
nonproliferation regime and regional security. This process has
to begin first with a serious reconstruction of U.S.-South
Korea ties and from there coordinating within and across our
Northeast Asian alliances so the trilateral U.S.-Japan-South
Korea relationship can speak in a more effective and unified
way. This not only strengthens the U.S. hand vis-a-vis
Pyongyang, but also discourages others such as China from
exploiting intra- and inter-alliance differences which have
emerged. With Japan, South Korea, and the United States working
more closely together, the step toward a more region-wide
mechanism will be easier to accomplish.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Gill, and I
appreciate the testimony of each one of you. You offer
complementary views, at least in my judgment.
I want to explore this situation for the reaction of all
three of you. This morning, in a different venue, the nuclear
threat initiative group that is now headed by my partner in the
Nunn-Lugar business, Sam Nunn, and I participated in a press
conference. We had Dr. Matthew Bunn from Harvard and other
associates who have worked on a remarkable report trying to
detail all of the nuclear weapons, fissile material that is not
weaponized, facilities and what-have-you, in Russia, just for
the sake of having an inventory of, to the best of our
knowledge, what is there.
Because of the openness of the relationship we have a
reasonably good idea of how much of it could in any way be
called secure. That is, there are guards, either Russian,
American, or of some combination, as opposed to some
laboratories that appear to be unguarded, or spent fuel even
outside the former Soviet Union.
The point of this exercise is that fissile material is
sought by many parties in the world. One of the arguments on
Iraq has been that if a program has not progressed to the point
of weaponization, then surely it would be accelerated if the
Iraqi's became successful in obtaining fissile material. Most
of this material is in the United States and in Russia,
arguably more than 95 percent.
The problem here is that there at least is a fear that
without active work on our part with the Russians, first of all
securing the material, and then second go into an active,
cooperative destruction of it, at some point, if not al-Qaeda,
some other cells of somebody's terrorist organization, not
necessarily a nation State, maybe a very small subgroup, will,
in fact, obtain both the expertise and the ability to create
even small nuclear weapons. We are talking today just about
nuclear capability. There will be existential problems for our
country and Russia and lots of other places, and these are so
difficult for people to imagine. Even though theoretically you
see the concentric circles of destruction wherever it may be,
and the hundreds of thousands of people being enveloped, that
still is--it seems far-fetched.
The dilemma that people like I have with the North Korean
business is that it appears, for all the reasons you have
discussed, that conceivably this might be a government, through
either its desperation or maybe its normal trade practices,
that is prepared to produce even fairly small amounts of
fissile material and/or even small weapons and sell them.
Now, there may be some reassurance, as Ambassador Lilley
has pointed out, in our ability to interdict such shipments,
but I do not know what the odds are, and small amounts tend to
defeat interdiction unless it is extraordinarily multilateral,
I would think, and successful. So this is the dilemma that I
see.
For example, I understand from the experience that you had,
Ambassador Lilley, you point out the idea of the Chinese saying
hold off, do not get excited about this thing, we have been
there before. Others could say that, too, including our
government, that in the fullness of time, with all the proper
consultations--and they take time. You try to find some stake
that everybody has in them, and eventually sort of working
month by month, maybe year by year, you get everybody sort of
in a mood to get around the table together, and something good
happens.
Now, if our judgment is that nothing really is going to
happen in the meanwhile--first of all that the estimate that
North Koreans already have weapons is untrue, or that our
prophecies that as you split the plutonium off of the rods and
such, and move toward weaponization of that, that, in fact,
this is a lot tougher, or it will take longer, or you really do
not get to weapons even in that process, despite all the
bluff--why, that is very reassuring indeed.
In other words, we could listen to all the bluff going on,
all the dismissal of the atomic energy inspectors, and say, we
have got time, these folks really cannot do it, and they are
trying, struggling and so forth, but we surely are adept at
watching all of this, trying to stop it, frustrate it, whether
we are Chinese or Japanese or so forth.
But what if, in fact, they do have bombs? What if, in fact,
the prediction comes true that six might be built in another
year if this thing progresses? What if the North Koreans
announce all the steps, provocative or not--in fact, if they
are not telling the whole truth, they are telling enough of it,
that this pretty well describes what they are doing--and in the
meanwhile, we continue to say, hang on here now, do not get
half-cocked in trying to make a bilateral deal because you have
got all sorts of other factors involved here and a lot of other
unwilling players.
This leads me to be very uneasy. If I were not concerned
about the proliferation issue, about the willing arms, and the
fact of people desperately trying to get their hands on this
stuff, and the willing seller, the rest of the North Korean
situation might work itself out, but I am not sure this part
will, so if that is true, does this create any more urgency?
Even if it is urgent, you might say, well, urgent or not,
there is not a whole lot you can do about it. Maybe, as Dr.
Gill has said, the Chinese take a calm attitude toward
development of nuclear tests in Pakistan and India, a calm
standpoint. They have not apparently tried very hard, through
aggressive maneuvers, to stop it, and maybe we are much more
worried about it in the United States.
We certainly were as we proceeded to Afghanistan, and we
are deeply worried something might be going on in Kashmir even
while we are busy working on the al-Qaeda problem in
Afghanistan, nearby. So we became much more interested in both
India and Pakistan, both because of geographical situations,
but likewise, volatile elements that appeared to be in both
countries that might even have wanted to mix it up, and that
maybe did not understand the implications of what might happen
to them, have not had experience in dealing with these weapons
for very long.
So this is my sense. You know, what about the urgency, or
is there urgency? Do we have time? If so, then it appears to me
the general prescription that we heard from Secretary Kelly and
maybe from you, but I am not certain, is right, that carefully,
thoughtfully, step by step, understanding the nuances, looking
for something, we sort of put the thing together and we are
steady and persistent, and we can go at it month after month,
year after year, until we get there.
Do you have any feel about urgency? Is this nuclear thing
for real and, if so, does this not change the equation in terms
of a steady and more patient course?
Ambassador Lilley, do you have any reflection about this?
Ambassador Lilley. Stating the obvious, Mr. Chairman,
diplomacy is all about hard choices, and in this case, as I try
to point out, the solution to this awful situation in North
Korea lies in the economic field. As Sun Tzu said, do not hit
them at their strong point, hit them at their weak one, and
economics is where we get them. That is where you are going to
win this fight.
You raise the case about their proliferation. That is what
frightens me, not the fact that they are sitting on 20 nuclear
bombs in some cave in North Korea. It is what they are going to
do with them, and here, I think we have common cause with
Japan, China, Russia, et cetera. We have got to have it with
South Korea as well.
The Chairman. You mean they are prepared really to sit with
us and to try to stop it there.
Ambassador Lilley. The answer is a common cause. The South
Koreans have to help us do everything possible in intelligence,
interdiction, whatever is needed to stop proliferation of WMD
from happening. North Korea must understand it will pay a
price, not necessarily sanctions. The Chinese in the past have
had an exquisite and subtle way of exerting leverage without
sanctions. None of these Westernized ``road maps'' or agreed
frameworks for them. If we get cooperation, we should succeed
in the long run. North Korea will get the message.
Howls, screams, tantrums, threats, everything will emit
from the North. We need to keep a steady course. We need work
on our allies and friends. Work on the big countries in Asia,
not the ugly little ones such as North Korea. We need to keep
focus on the economic front with our friends and allies, which
is the North Korean weakness, and then to encourage these
countries to help us. That is what we are after, and that is
where we can do something with China. Namely, when those North
Korean planes start flying over you, stop them, inspect them,
see what is on them. We will do it, Japan will do it.
The Chairman. Perhaps, then, maybe we ought to say up front
right now that we are working intensively with each of these
countries on nonproliferation. In other words----
Ambassador Lilley. Of course, China has been no boy scout
on this one.
The Chairman. No. Well, that is why even this course has
its problems, but as you say, the Chinese, perhaps informally,
maybe when the Vice President goes or somebody, and we sort of
discuss Realpolitik and the problems of the world makes
headway. I am trying to look for some silver lining in this
situation.
Ambassador Lilley. Yes. Well, our leaders including Paul
Wolfowitz and others, when Xiong Guangkai, the Chinese chief of
their military security intelligence came over here, had two
messages for him. First of all, we want to reestablish a
military relationship with you. We think this is important and
we want to do it.
No. 2, the first item on the agenda is North Korea. It is
not exchanges, it is not waltzing in the officer's club, it is
North Korea.
So I think we can begin to build a common front with China,
and as Bates says, it is very difficult to do, but I think we
can do it.
Dr. Gill. Mr. Chairman, there may be some precedent for
this, because while China has, I would say, 99 percent of the
time been opposed to sanctions and more coercive measures,
there is, I think, some precedent back in 1993-1994. China
consistently, through 1994, opposed the idea of a U.N. Security
Council resolution issuing sanctions, opposed, opposed,
opposed, opposed.
However, as the issue came to a head, and as it became
increasingly possible that there would or could be some
military action, and as the international community gathered
steam to condemn North Korean action, lo and behold, messages
were quietly sent to North Korea from Beijing that China would
move its position from oppose a sanction to not support. In
other words, they would not issue their veto.
My point is this. We need to do all we can with the Chinese
to show our hand here, as much as we can, provide the evidence
to the Chinese that this is a looming problem, that we have
evidence of their bomb-making capability, of their intentions
to move forward in the development of nuclear weapons. To the
degree we are able to reveal those bits of evidence, I think
that is going to go a long way in convincing the Chinese. That
is point one.
Second, mobilize a broad swath of the international
community behind us on this one. We may have squandered a lot
of opportunities in other parts of the world. We cannot let
that happen here with North Korea. We have to have a broad
cross-section of the international community behind us on this
issue.
With those two cards in our hand, I think we can get the
Chinese to do the kinds of arm-twisting that is going to be
needed to get the North Koreans to come along.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Cha, do you have a comment?
Dr. Cha. Yes. Mr. Chairman, I would agree with all of the
concerns that you have raised, and I think when we think about
as it relates to China, it is very clear, as both Ambassador
Lilley and Bates Gill have said, that the very thing that you
are concerned about, fissile material that could be sitting in
one of 10,000 caves in North Korea that could possibly be sold
to a third party is something that is not simply of concern to
the United States, it is a concern for China as well.
And I think one of the most important things to do is
obviously to make this aware to China, but in particular, also
to say that China cannot wait. China cannot be tactical about
this and hope that it can reap the benefits by waiting to the
very end, after the United States has done most of the heavy
lifting and then hope to get onboard at that point, because
that is not going to gain the leadership and the leverage in
the region, that Beijing desires.
So I think those are two very important points, and
finally, the third point is that, you asked about urgency. It
is a very urgent situation, but how urgent it becomes, I think,
will frankly depend on how much worse North Korean behavior
becomes.
I think if we get conclusive evidence that they have
already started reprocessing, that obviously speeds up the
clock for all of us, but in the meantime, I think for both
China and the United States, the notion of going to the U.N.
and having a soft Security Council resolution that does not
talk about sanctions, but states very clearly what is the
obvious fact, that North Korea is way outside the
nonproliferation treaty, and that they need to come back into
compliance, I would find it very difficult for countries like
China, Russia, France, or others to disagree with that very
basic fact, and that does give you a strong multilateral
position from which to then proceed.
The Chairman. Let me ask an entirely different question.
What if the United States were to try to encourage South Korea,
even China--and it is counterintuitive that they would come
along at all with this--but what if we say, we believe in
freedom for people in North Korea? We think they ought to have
the ability to emigrate to other countries. Now, the Chinese
have spent a lot of time making sure that if anybody ever did
that they were harassed until they got back or what-have-you,
so we have some understanding of their antipathy to that idea.
The South Koreans usually would appear to be still very
resistant, if not the whole idea that sinks both of us to have
too much of this going on sort of pell-mell--although we have
had some testimony in one of our hearings on the part of some
South Koreans that they have accepted people from the North--
but by and large very few of them relatively--but what if we in
the United States said, we are prepared to accept people from
North Korea, freedom-loving people everywhere. The Czechs might
take in some North Koreans.
When we were dealing with the cold war over on the European
side, clearly this idea that people could escape, could find
another life, was very important. We have had that view with
regard to Cubans who have come, been sponsored by churches in
Indiana, quite apart from Florida, or people in the South, so
that there was at least some outlet for this.
It seems to me that right now we are in a situation in
which all the parties understand that North Koreans are
starving, that they are in horrible predicaments, but they
simply are unprepared, really, to deal with a massive exodus,
or even with a small one.
Now, perhaps the North Koreans would see any such
invitations as almost as provocative as economic sanctions
being imposed upon the country. I do not know. That is why I am
asking you. I wonder why, in terms of policy, we have not
proceeded more in terms of the idea of escape, emigration, a
better life, people out of there, given their predicament, as
opposed to always treating them inside the cage with the World
Food Programme or whoever else it is, to the extent that we
could minister unto people who were in bad shape, while noting
that several hundred thousand were dying in the process, even
while we are at it. We are sympathetic, but not enough to
really relieve the stress.
Does anybody have a feel about that situation?
Ambassador Lilley. I think, Mr. Chairman, that that
situation is evolving. The real obstacle to handling it the way
you suggested is the Chinese, their agreement of 1986 with the
North Koreans to turn all refugees back, and they have done
this maybe 30 percent of the time, but they have refused NGOs.
They have refused the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees a presence in Manchuria. The Chinese want to handle it
as a bilateral matter with North Korea.
What I am hearing now is indications of how brutal the
negotiations are between the Chinese and the North Koreans. The
North Koreans walk in and say for instance, we want 1 million
tons of grain, we want 700,000 tons of oil for this next year.
We want assurances of this. The Chinese say, well, how about
100,000 tons of grain and 100,000 tons of oil. No. The North
Koreans then say, in effect, and this has to be confirmed, how
would you like 3 million refugees in Manchuria? The Chinese
have to reconsider.
There is an element of blackmail in here, but if you do
this to the Chinese enough times, it seems to me that they
might begin to adjust their position on this refugee issue.
They have done this in Vietnam when they took the Vietnam
refugees in china. The proposal setting up a first asylum area
in Mongolia has been raised in a different context, but these
ideas may again pick up currency as you deal with the very
difficult situation the Chinese are facing in Manchuria, where
they are having these difficult economic problems in the area
opposite North Korea.
So I sense that maybe there is something to be done here,
and I think it may be evolving in a positive direction.
The Chairman. Dr. Cha.
Dr. Cha. Yes, there is clearly a reluctance in both South
Korea and China to deal with this problem. The Chinese only
send back to South Korea and to third countries those attempted
defections that are caught on television or on tape, or on the
radio. All the rest do not make it.
The notion of the United States accepting North Korean
refugees, I think, would set an incredible precedent for both
South Korea and China and Japan for that matter with regard to
how to deal with this very terrible problem. The role of the
UNHCR in China on an issue like North Korean refugees--and
again, I do not know how possible this is, but I would agree
with Ambassador Lilley that the North Koreans are leveraging
this refugee threat to try to gain more out of China, and I
think the Chinese are losing patience with that, and the
Chinese refusal to allow the UNHCR to come in and look at this
particular issue may be weakening over time, particularly if
the boundaries of what the UNHCR is allowed to assess and
evaluate are limited, but I do agree that I think patience on
Beijing's part with regard to this problem and the North Korean
traditional use of leverage threatening these refugees to get
what they want from China, their patience is growing thin.
The Chairman. Well, as Ambassador Lilley has said, a threat
of 3 million people going into China, that is a massive number
of people. I presume there would be 3 million who are prepared
to do that. I do not know how the North Koreans look at this.
But just to pick up your point, because in a hearing we do
not have to make policy. We just visit with each other and we
try to discover the territory. But let us just say for argument
that the United States dramatically announced that we are
prepared to accept 100,000 North Koreans, and we would like to
get on with it, because we believe, as a matter of fact, being
a peace-loving country, that whatever expenses may be involved
in our transporting and beginning to support through all of our
compassionate groups in the United States 100,000 people they
would amount to much less than preparation for nuclear war, or
whatever else is required to be credible in this particular
area.
Now, I say this in the context that clearly there is
disagreement among people, back to the Clinton days in 1994,
but I can remember, as a Member of the Senate, in a small group
listening to Secretary Perry describing plan C--I cannot
remember what A and B were, but C involved sending several
hundred thousand Americans to South Korea to rescue the country
before the North overcame it.
Now, you can say well, that is fatuous. The North never,
never would have shot all those guns. They would have sent the
people across while Seoul was in chaos. They would never have
proceeded on down. I hope that is right, and maybe that is, but
I remember a sense of dismay as we practically discussed
practically where the logistic support for all of these people
is.
By this point, you have some facilities in Japan, nothing
left in the Philippines, a little bit in Singapore. Physically,
even if you want to do this, if you want to save South Korea on
the ground, physically, how do you do it? The expense of doing
this is enormous.
Now, we could say, well, that is never going to be
replicated again. The military option is off the table. But the
fact is, it is never off the table. Our credibility in the area
comes from the fact that many people believe the United States
has been a protective force. Not uniquely, everybody else is
building up forces, but still they counted upon us, as opposed
to abandoning the area, and it is a given here, and that is
expensive as it stands, and it will be more expensive, as a
matter of fact, if things become more tense.
If, instead of sending two dozen bombers out into the area
to counter the buzzing of our aircraft, which was some distance
in North Korea, well, let us say the North Koreans next week
try to out another aircraft, or whatever else may be? I am just
hypothetically saying, why do we not take a look and see, as a
matter of fact, if there is another approach.
We announced, as you have all noticed at the inaugural for
the new President, our new food program, or renewed it at that
time, in part because we thought this would be good for our
relations with South Korea, leaving aside people that were to
be fed. Obviously they would be helped by the process.
But at the same time, the rest of the world has either
reneged or gotten out of the program. When we had Mr. Morris
from the World Food Programme, he testified that we used to be
feeding 6 million people more or less. We would be doing well
to get 3 million fed, because others are opting out of the
process, even while we are forthcoming.
Again, I am just trying to figure out the disconnect in all
of this, or at least, if we are talking about leverage,
examples, relative expense, and humanitarian efforts, it seems
to me to offer some possibilities, and I just would testify
from the standpoint of the cold war, or even the Cuban
business, that emigration meant a lot to people. It changed the
dynamics of the situation.
Dr. Gill. Just one comment. The opportunity that would
become evident to people inside North Korea of this offer could
then lead to a real, an even greater surge of people trying to
get out of North Korea, which on the one hand, you know, could
have its benefits, of course, because it would hopefully
undermine the regime and maybe bring it to a more cooperative
position.
On the other hand, from China's point of view, is that a
good thing, if we are prepared to take in 100,000 and that
spurs 400,000 to come across the border, that is something
China may not want to support.
The Chairman. How about if South Korea stepped up and said,
well, we will take half of them.
Dr. Gill. Yes. Well, that would be I think--some measures
like that would have to be considered, because obviously if it
were 300,000 persons estimated now as refugees in China's Jilin
Province, then clearly the demand, if you will, will be much,
much higher if that kind of an opportunity were put on the
table to go to South Korea or to the United States or
elsewhere.
One country we have not talked about here yet in
questioning whether this is a good idea or not is North Korea.
I doubt that North Korea would be particularly in favor of
this, and may well take action, maybe very violent action to
make sure it does not happen.
The Chairman. To stop people from getting out.
Dr. Gill. Or they would do sort of like Haiti did and send
us their least desirable persons.
The Chairman. Oh, I expect all of the above.
Dr. Gill. But on the other hand, I like the idea, because I
think it would send an important signal. It would be, I think--
China would recognize it in some way as a benefit, as a kind of
recognition of the problem they are facing, and a willingness
for us to reach out our hand and try to help them alleviate a
problem they are trying to tackle.
The Chairman. Yes, but ultimately, part of our goal is to
see the unification of all the Koreans. The South Koreans have
always said, but not yet. We are not Western Germany vis-a-vis
the East. We just cannot afford this. These people are very,
very poor, very, very desperate, and we are still pulling
things together and so forth, and fair enough, but at some
point unification means sort of commingling of all these needs,
and if that is hopefully where we are headed, which I hope is
the case for the sake of the Koreans that are involved, in the
North especially, this is sort of a way of edging into the
situation.
What I see now is a stiff-arming of all of this down to the
most minimal migration of North Koreans into South Korea, with
the thought that somehow this is not the time, not the place,
even a feeling that even if unification is in the by and by, to
be hoped for, the expense of this, the inconvenience of it and
what-have-you is not now.
So you push back even from the South Korean side, creating
enormous suffering for people in the North and there is great
sympathy for them, and then a criticism of us for provoking
them so that there might be conflict in the process, and I am
trying to think of ways to begin unraveling all of this dilemma
that is, after all, a part of history of 50 or 60 years ago,
but now there are different dimensions, a more prosperous
South, and for that matter an interested group in Japan might
want to be a part of this picture.
If we are talking about multilateral cooperation, why, this
may be a way in which we try to get a united way.
Dr. Cha. Yes, I would agree. I think all the countries in
the region have a very difficult time with this issue, and they
kind of wish it was not there.
At the same time, though, I think if the United States were
to do something like this and take the lead on it, it would be
very difficult for any country in the region, including China,
to actively oppose it or to speak negatively of it, and I think
it would actually force a lot of countries in the region to get
on the bandwagon and, in particular, as you said, try to
minimize the negative externalities in particular for China,
because they may experience the surge after this 100,000 is
accepted by the United States.
With regard to this question of what is the real down side
of this, as you mentioned in your initial comments, the down
side is, of course, that the North Koreans might perceive this
in a strategic way, as an attempt to completely unravel the
regime, and for that reason, as Bates said, they might lash
out.
I think they would certainly perceive it that way, but
whether they would actually lash out as a result of this
particular humanitarian gesture to me is highly--it is a highly
questionable or debatable proposition, because as we all know,
the notion of North Korea lashing out really is a last gasp
attempt, where they know it is a self-conscious act of suicide,
and whether they would do it in response to a purely
humanitarian gesture of this nature, I think it is a very
debatable proposition.
The Chairman. Having argued all this, let me just say that
we then have, of course, the problem of our own government, our
own policies. In part because of 9/11, the whole immigration
situation has become extremely difficult, so each of you who
are involved as you are in colleges and universities know the
extraordinary problems that everybody has now, going to the
immigration office, as I hope you do at your places--you know,
we have 5,000 students at Purdue who are international
students, and a great number of them from countries which have
great political difficulties now, and so we are at that
particular point in which we have to work this out.
Likewise, Vicente Fox in Mexico, when he came to power,
hoped that there would be a difference in the Mexican-American
relationship, closer at home, and there has not been, a great
disappointment there, which continues. There are profound
problems in terms of our own politics, and so even though I am
hypothetically talking about our doing this, I have no basis
whatever to believe that anybody in our government is on the
threshold of such a maneuver.
On the other hand, what I think I hear, and what our
members around here are concerned about, is that this is, we
believe, a very urgent, dangerous predicament. Whether it is
elevated to crisis, or whether you can spin it out, remains to
be seen. Historically, if we are wrong, why, we will be
culpable for having had very bad judgment, and that is the
problem, if we have some responsibility.
We are not alone in this, in this committee, or in the
Senate as a whole. We have an administration, we have other
people, but I think this is a very serious security problem for
our country and for many others, so this is why you try to
think outside the box occasionally and see really where we
might head.
But you have all been doing that for a long time, and I
appreciate your testimony. The full papers are excellent, and a
real contribution, as well as your patience in musing with me
about hypothetical situations this afternoon, and I know we
will be closely in touch with you. This will not be our last
discussion of the issue, because we have had, as I started my
opening comment, at least five occasions during barely 60 days
or so of our work as a committee to hold hearings about a
serious facet of North Korea, or South Korea, or something on
the peninsula.
That is not by chance. It is both because we have a
responsibility, and because it is extremely interesting, I
think, to our members, so we thank you for being a resource,
and the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:32 p.m., the committee adjourned, to
reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.]
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