전체메뉴

[Column: on North Korea (1)] Obama’s Scream, “Gonna Go Back to 9.19”

- Reversed Stances of North Korea and the USA in the last two decades -

June 27, 2016

By Lee, Jung Hoon

What on earth is going on in the relationship between North Korea (the DPRK) and the United States, seemingly fluctuating like a roller-coaster in recent days? Is it on a straight road all the way down to aggravation, or getting any better? The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi openly suggested to the United States that they simultaneously proceed with the denuclearization and the North-US Peace Agreement when he visited the United States this past February. Ever since then, the United States and China are on chorus together singing ‘Let us go back to the six-party talks and the 9.19 Joint-Agreement.’ Could the 9.19 Agreement possibly be reincarnated? Why is North Korea announcing it will soon test ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) which might cause some military conflicts?

Stances (of North Korea and the USA) reversed in ten years

The US intended to handle the North Korean nuclear problem through some similar way to which it had handled that of the Iraqi Hussein administration. The United States, from the 1994 Geneva Agreement till the mid 2000’s, strenuously tried to investigate the North Korean nuclear situation, specifically pointing to its developing locations and insisting to inspect its procedure through IAEA, although North Korea repeated that it did not have any intention and ability for nuclear development; one example was the inspection of Geumchang-ri basement facility, North Korea, in 1999. But the US tenacious trial to find out the North Korean nuclear development was all in vein every time, and the inspection in 1999 proved there was nothing at the facility. In 2002, Rumsfeld US Secretary of Defense insisted that North Korea had nuclear weapons in secret.

Then, the US attitude of ‘suspicion and inspection’ to North Korea completely changed the opposite direction after the mid 2000’s. Although North Korea, through official statements and Rodong Sinmun, repeatedly declares that they have already developed nuclear weapons and hydrogen bombs which are compact-sized, weight-lightened, diversified and refined, and that they have allocated them for actual warfare, (far beyond the stage of ‘suspicion’ on nuclear weapon development), the United States, on-toward the completely opposite direction, continuously and adamantly(?) denies the North’s declaration, repeating that the North will have to take 5-6 more years to develop them all, and there is no such weapons in North Korea yet. The US evaluating attitude on North Korea has changed 180 degrees-opposite direction. What has happened at all?

Pyongyang – Washington, D. C.; what on earth has happened?

In 2005, Beijing captivated the world’s media and press: the six-party talks achieved the 9.19 Joint-Agreement there. The 9.19 Joint-Agreement mainly contains ◁denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula ◁normalization of the North-US relationship ◁economic cooperation of the six and energy support to North Korea ◁negotiation for the peace system ◁principle of promise to promise and action to action, and so on. This Agreement was the historical consent that the six resolve the matters of the nuclear weapon on the Korean Peninsula (a hot-potato spot of the world) and the not-yet (formally) terminated Korean War through ‘communication and negotiation’, not through ‘contest and warfare'.

However, the Joint-Agreement started to creak right from the following week, betraying the expectation among and outside the six. The mood of thawing was supposed to be there between North Korea and the USA, and South Korea and North Korea, but it ran toward the opposite against thawing: The US Ministry of Finance right away started financial sanction against North Korea through BDA Bank. It was the first sign revealing that the United States, in reality, had no intention to proceed with the Joint-Agreement. Sure enough, the discussion of the six on ‘the peace system on the Korean Peninsula’ could not even be started bound by the default of the Agreement and the nuclear problem. The aim of the United States and China (that they clarify the suspicion on the North’s nuclear development and block it in the future) also fell in vein. After all, every single article of the Joint-Agreement went dead due to the diversified actualization of the North’s nuclear weapons, and by now this Agreement has ended in an empty pledge.

Why did this historical 9.19 Joint-Agreement end up being a useless paper tissue? The reason why numerous agreements including this one have become useless is obvious: with no intention to actualize. It was because nations applied the agreements as ‘tactics to disturb the other (or one another)’ without any intention to proceed with. It is not an unusual thing that negotiation or agreement between nations is annulled due to the dual tactics the world powers apply as their power strategy. Whether it is the United State or North Korea, it is not the topic of this column to investigate who annulled the 9.19 Agreement. It can be viewed, looking back, that neither of the two positively expected the possibility of its actualization from the beginning, upon their distrust against each other. Rather, they both are observed to have exhaustively prepared ‘plan B’ strategies providing for the case where the Agreement be annulled or not be proceeded with. Ten years after the 9.19 Agreement by now, the Agreement has absolutely gone bankrupt, and the backstage strategies of the two have completely been exposed to the whole world, still being done so.

‘Plan B’s’ of the Obama administration and North Korea

Why did the United States not have any strong interest in the Agreement in reality, although it did consent the Agreement? It was originally a work of Bush administration, the six-party talks and whose fruit, the 9.19 Joint-Agreement, giving an impetus to China, so as it to press North Korea. Obama administration kept the frame of the 9.19 Agreement and the six-party talks which Bush administration had consented. Yet Obama’s strategy on North Korea was the famous ‘strategy of waiting’. Simply put, the US strategy was ‘time war’. What was the United States desperately waiting during the long, long time war?

The Agreement would have been absolutely advantageous for the United States had North Korea accepted Chinese intervention and interruption, which would have been that North Korea admit denuclearization unilaterally, not linking it with the peace system (the withdrawal of USFK). Yet North Korea adamantly rejected it. And the United States, through time war regardless of the Agreement’s result, was expecting the collapse of North Korea, the US final purpose, which is far different from the US diplomatic rhetoric or formal declaration that it would not formally make use of any tactics for the collapse of North Korea. The United States judged that it would be advantageous to apply the dual strategy -- the negotiation in whose meantime the United States drags time and oppresses North Korea (making use of China) and the long-term strategy of confrontation to collapse the North Korean regime.

John Merrill, former analyst of the US Department of State BIR and head of the North Asian team, said, “Those who were in the initial stage of Obama’s North Korea strategy misjudged that North Korea would eventually vanish. Of course it was a miscalculation, to which I did not agree at that time, either.” Former US Korean ambassador Donald Greg, in his recent memoirs, pointed out, “The longest living example of failure in the history of the US intelligence is North Korea.”

What was the backstage strategy of North Korea against the United States, then? The dual strategy of North Korea was, surprisingly enough, ‘the strategy to openly develop nuclear weapons, the strategy to strengthen its nuclear force’. It was not to proceed with the nuclear development behind anyone’s back such as done in the past. North Korea, after having dropped out of the NPT, changed its State strategy to openly developing nuclear weapons right before the face of the whole world. North Korea, in 2012, specified on its constitution that it is a State that possesses nuclear weapons and formulated its simultaneous development line of economy-nuclear weapons in 2013. Unless North Korea has developed the nuclear technology and the strategic missile (transferring method of nuclear weapons) which it may have possibly proceeded with in secret for a long time, this is the dual strategy audacious enough to bring into a severe State crisis.

While the six-party talks and the 9.19 were creaking, North Korea had continued its dual strategy into the first nuclear test in 2006, the second in 2009, the third in 2013, satellite Gwangmyongsong launch in 2013, SLBM development in 2015 and the hydrogen-bomb test in 2016. There is abundant news flow reporting that a test launching of ICBM is on schedule in near future. The mutual ‘Plan B’ confrontation of the two countries has expanded behind the 9.19 and is still going on.

ICBM of North Korea and the swaying United States

It is the United States, the enemy of North Korea, who mainly judges the truth of the North Korean capacity of nuclear weapons. And the major media and press in the world dictate the US judgment. Now, the United States has fallen into the embarrassing position where it cannot openly reveal information on North Korea as it is. There have already been diverse viewpoints and information revealed on the Northern capability of nuclear weapons in the United States. What is more, North Korea, as if it were testifying, one by one, the US underestimation and information manipulation on its military power, is recently proving in public its missile and the truth of nuclear capacity in a sequence, via actual tests. This procedure is now realistically disarming the US government’s secret control power on the military information of North Korea which the United States has kept so far.

The truth of the North Korean nuclear capacity is far different from the reports of the world’s major media and press such as CNN, BBC, the Washington Post, etc., or the level reported by the specialist cites (run by the US former officials) like Joel S Wit, 38 North, and so forth. The reality is that the capacity is far beyond whether North Korea possesses nuclear weapons or not, or whether to admit the North Korean possession of nuclear weapons or not. The world’s concern is already moving to the matter how are the level and the situation of the nuclear capacity North Korea has been developing. If its level is similar to that of Iran or Pakistan, then the United States still has some more time available left. But, if the level is such on which North Korea is on test of modern cutting-edge nuclear weapons and ICBM, competing with the United States, China and Russia, then it comes a whole different story. If it is true that, as it insists, North Korea has developed diverse nuclear weapons of compact and light-weight, and many different transfer systems, then it means a catastrophe in the history of nuclear weapon development as well as a giant accident which will, in the future, violently shake the current world nuclear order centered on the United States and the NPT.

As the United States confesses itself, its ‘strategy of waiting’ has failed, and the incoming threat of the North Korea toward the mainland United States is now growing as a reality which cannot be hidden even through information control. The United States, no matter who becomes the next president, Clinton or Trump, is now facing a situation where it has to stop the possible re-running of the crisis to defend its mainland first time after the US-the former USSR confrontation. In addition, in case the expansion of nuclear weapons among anti-American countries becomes real, the 21-century world order centering on the US military power may come to have a huge broken hole. This can also be a challenge and a threat to the 21- century G2 order China is now ambitiously pursuing.

The United States, like a dog who missed a hen it had been chasing

The Korean major media and press depend on the information the United States is leaking to the world major media and press, simply reporting just like blind persons fumbling around an elephant’s leg. Readers in Korea are not possibly able to understand the North-the US relationship. The United States, in fact, is also aware that the sanction against North Korea has little actual impact. The United States embarrassingly does not have any proper method to block the North Korean nuclear military empowerment. The United States may hope that the economic sanction works or want to suppress North Korea like Iraq, accusing its nuclear weapons, but the United States has already missed proper time for that. The US ‘strategy of waiting’ has completely failed, and if jostled any further, the United States may have to look at the multiplying nuclear capacity of North Korea with numbed eyes just like a dog who has just missed a hen it had been chasing. What this means is that the United States must start the mutual arm-reduction negotiation upon admitting the Northern nuclear capacity, not the denuclearization negotiation of North Korea any more.

Now the United States is in the position where it truly does want to go back to 9.19. On the contrary, the North Korea is declaring ‘Good bye, 9.19.’ It is the demand that the United States stop the disgusting dual policy of ‘communication and confrontation’ any further. It is the demand that the United States all stop the disturbing agreement tactics (with no actual intention to proceed with) and its North policy behind the stage, and choose one, either communication or confrontation. In other words, this means, if there is to be any further negotiation, the unconditional North-US peace negotiation must be the agenda of ‘the true negotiation’, never a ‘shape-shift 9.19’ out of season at all.

This is the true reason why the United States, holding the now-become-useless paper tissue the 9.19 Agreement together with China, is chorusing, “Now I am Re~~ally gonna go Back to 9.19!”

About the author :

Lee, Jung Hoon was the chair to both the Punishment Struggle Committee of Gwanjoo Massacre Main Culprit and the Struggle Committee for the Nation, Democracy and People of Korea University (Seoul, South Korea) in 1985. After 3 years imprisonment for the occupation of American Culture Center in Seoul, he ran a laborers’ hall in Osan and Soowon, South Korea. He finished the MA program of the Asian-Pacific Studies at London University (London, UK), and served as member of the politburo at the Democrat-Labor Party (South Korea), education member at the United Progressive Party (South Korea), and member of board of directors at the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice High-Tel Information Education Center (South Korea). He is now the chair to Min[people]Plus International Affairs Team, Seoul, South Korea.

Editorial Office news@minplusnews.com

<copyright holder © fieldmedia MinPlus, distributing or reproducing forbidden without permission>