Center for International Policy

The following address was delivered on February 22nd, 2005, to the student body and faculty of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, by Selig S. Harrison, Director of the Asia Program.

The headlines we read about Korea these days have to do mainly with North Korea's nuclear weapons program and what the Bush Administration should do or not do about it. I'm going to deal with this issue in depth. But first I'm going to place it in a broader historical perspective and in the perspective of our relations with Korea as a whole in the decades ahead.

To make sense of what is happening today, we must start with the fact that it's artificial for Korea to be divided. The Korean peninsula has maintained a continuous independent political identity within in the same boundaries since it was unified in the seventh century. To be sure, there was an interlude of civil war in the first four decades of the tenth century. The Mongols ruled over the northwest corner of the country in the thirteenth century and Japan imposed its colonial rule in the first four decades of the twentieth century. But Korean national identify goes back 1,400 years. By contrast, Germany had been unified for less than a century when it was divided at the end of World War II.

Many Americans forget, but the Koreans do not, that the United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea in 1945.We put Syngman Rhee in power in South Korea and the Russians installed Kim Il Sung in the North. Rhee tried to get us to help him conquer North Korea and reunify. We refused. Kim Il Sung also wanted to reunify Korea and he did get the Russians to back an attack on the South. That led, as you know, to the Korean War from 1950-1953. Eight hundred thousand Koreans, 115,000 Chinese and 36,400 Americans lost their lives in that terrible war.

When you go to Pyongyang you are constantly reminded that the scars left by the war were particularly deep in the North. The South suffered greatly, but not as much as the North. The North used relatively little close air support in its operations south of the thirty-eighth parallel. By contrast, the United States inflicted three years of heavy bombing on the North in addition to the Yalu offensive on the ground. This has left a deep-rooted siege mentality that still dominates the North Korean psyche.

Pyongyang was bombed until almost no buildings were left standing, and an entirely new capital had to be built after the war. The North Korean people are of course constantly reminded about all of this on television and in other propaganda. Today, fifty years after the Korean War, there is still no peace treaty and the United States still maintains enough conventional and nuclear forces in and near Korea to destroy the North Korean regime with a preemptive strike. They're particularly afraid of our air superiority. -F-16's, F-4's and the latest in intelligence and command and control capabilities against their obsolete Migs. The reason North Korea keeps forward-deployed conventional forces on the DMZ is to deter a U.S. preemptive strike and to make it too costly.

Until 1991 the United States had tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea. It's now well-established history that the North Koreans started their serious efforts to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles as a direct response to the deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in the South for more than three decades. President George H.W. Bush removed those tactical nuclear weapons from the South in 1991. But the United States still has nuclear weapons close to North Korea in the Pacific capable of hitting them. And of course George Bush the Younger has announced a new U.S. strategic doctrine saying we have the right to stage a preemptive strike against any country that the U.S. regards as a potential threat. Iraq persuaded the North Koreans the Bush is serious. So did his interview with Bob Woodward in the book, Bush at War,, in which the President said he "loathes" Kim Jong Il and would like to "topple" his regime.

In short, North Korea is developing nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the United States, and a definitive nuclear settlement is not likely until North Korea believes that the United States has given up its goal of bringing about regime change through military or other means.

Many observers doubt that North Korea will ever give up its nuclear weapons program. There are indeed generals and other hard liners in Pyongyang who want to continue the effort to develop militarily operational nuclear weapons. But there are also moderates and technocrats. They argue that it would be in the North Korean interest to give up the nuclear option in return for full normalization with the United States and an end to the Bush-regime change policy. In short, there are hawks and doves in Pyongyang.

We hear a lot about the differences within the Bush administration over how to deal with North Korea. We don't hear anything at all about the divisions within the North Korean system about how to deal with the United Stats, but that's key to resolving the present crisis.

I'm not talking about a power struggle. Kim Jong-Il's position is secure. He is needed out in front to legitimize the regime in Pyongyang because he's heir to the mantle of his late revered father, Kim Il Sung. What I'm talking about is a policy struggle. There are two camps in North Korea. On one side, hardliners who favor nuclear weapons and believe it's impossible to reconcile with the United States. On the other, pragmatists who are ready to give up nuclear weapons in return for normalized relations with the United States and large-scale economic assistance. Kim Jong-Il favors the pragmatists. But he's not the absolute ruler his father was, and he can't disregard the hardliners.

There are many things you cannot find out when you go to North Korea. It's a closed society. But one thing I'm certain about after eight visits there since 1972 is that there is an ongoing policy struggle, and that what we do critically affects whether the good guys or the bad guys win out. When you go there over a period of thirty years, you see some of the same North Korean officials over and over again in Pyongyang and later at the U.N. You gradually develop rapport and get beyond the propaganda, especially at the dinner table with the help of alcohol and good food.

I would like to take you back to 1991. Twp critical events occurred in that year. First, Russia and China told the North Koreans that they would have to pay cash for everything from then on. Cash on the barrelhead. No more interest-free loans, no more military aid, and above all, no more free food and oil. Then on September 27th, 1991, as I mentioned earlier, another critical event occurred. President George H.W. Bush withdrew U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea.

What's the connection between these two events?

Well, the end of the Cold War economic aid meant that North Korea faced an economic crisis, and the younger, more pragmatic leaders in the Workers Party decided they had to get U.S., Japanese, and South Korean capital and technology in order to stay solvent. They recognized that the West would ask them to get rid of their nuclear program as a precondition for normal relations. So a big debate ensued in the Workers Party. It went something like this, based on what some of those involved have told me.

The pragmatists in this debate said, "We don't need nuclear weapons, after all, now that the Americans have removed theirs." The hard-liners said, "They've only removed them from Korea, they can still hit us from submarines in the Pacific. And anyway, you're very naïve. Even if we give up nuclear weapons, they'll never help us. They want our collapse and our absorption by South Korea."

This debate came to a head at a meeting of the Workers Party Central Committee on December 24th 1991. Kim Il Sung sided with the pragmatists and a compromise was reached. North Korea would test the Americans to see whether a deal could be made. If the United States would normalize relations and help economically, North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons program.

During the last two years of the first Bush Administration, the pragmatists made preliminary overtures to the United States and got nowhere. At first, they got nowhere with the Clinton Administration. Clinton simply told them to stop their nuclear weapons program or else. As you know, in the spring of 1994, tensions with North Korea almost erupted into a war. I think there would have been a war if Jimmy Carter had not taken matters into his own hands. Carter went to Pyongyang and got Kim Il-Sung to accept a freeze of his nuclear weapons program starting immediately. At that point Clinton was still trying to get U.N. sanctions against North Korea and was planning to step up military pressure. He didn't like what Carter was doing, but Carter announced the freeze on CNN before Clinton could do anything about it. As you know, the U.S. eventually did negotiate a formal nuclear freeze agreement in October, 1994.

The United States got up front what it wanted from that agreement, known as The Agreed Framework. We stopped a plutonium-based nuclear program that would otherwise have produced 30 nuclear weapons a year. North Korea got only promises, most of them unfulfilled except for shipments of oil. We promised in the agreement to move toward normal relations, but Clinton didn't even take the first step toward normalization by ending economic sanctions. Why? U.S. domestic politics. The agreement was signed on October 21, 1994, and a month later the Republicans won big in the Congressional election. They bitterly criticized the agreement and Clinton wanted to save his political capital for other battles. Six years later, in June 2000, Clinton did finally begin to move toward ending sanctions and normalizing relations. But during those six years, the political situation inside North Korea did not stand still. The pro-nuclear hawks in Pyongyang kept telling Kim Jong-Il that he had been conned, that the U.S. was not prepared for friendship, that we only understand force and they should resume making nuclear weapons and missiles. So when Pakistan made its offer of uranium enrichment technology to pay for missiles, they grabbed it.

Kim Jong Il followed a two-track policy to keep both his hawks and his doves happy. The uranium program was a hedge in case we refused to normalize relations. It was also a violation of the 1991 North-South Denuclearization Agreement and of the 1994 agreement. But at the same time, North Korea did continue to honor the operative provisions of the 1994 agreement barring plutonium production. So it's a big oversimplification to say that North Korea can't be trusted again because it cheated. Both sides failed to honor all aspects of the 1994 agreement.

The Clinton Administration knew that North Korea was pursuing uranium enrichment, but they were planning to deal with the problem through quiet diplomacy. They wanted to avoid a confrontation with Pyongyang that would jeopardize the gains made in controlling the plutonium danger under the 1994 freeze agreement. By contrast, President Bush openly expressed his desire for regime change in Pyongyang soon after taking office. So his most influential advisors were looking from the start for an excuse to abrogate the 1994 accord. They were-and are---ideologically opposed to providing material incentives that would help to sustain the Kim Jong-Il regime in exchange for denuclearization.

Given this mind-set, the result was a paralysis of U.S. Korea policy until the summer of 2002.The Bush Administration was increasingly worried during that summer that it was losing control of Korea policy. South Korea under former President Kim Dae Jung was stepping up its rapprochement with the North. Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan went to Pyongyang on September 17th despite strong U.S. objections. At about that time the Administration got some new intelligence about the North Korea uranium enrichment program. They have yet to reveal much about the new intelligence, but they decided to use it as a rationale for abrogating the Agreed Framework. They accused North Korea of operating a secret weapons grade enrichment program. Specifically, the C.I.A. told Congress that North Korea might be able to produce two uranium based nuclear weapons a year by "mid-decade".

Since North Korea had cheated, the Administration said, the Agreed Framework was dead. The United States stopped the oil shipments to North Korea. In December, 2002, Pyongyang predictably retaliated by resuming the reprocessing of plutonium that had been frozen since 1994 and ousting the international inspectors. In other words, we threw the baby out with the bathwater. We brought the present crisis with North Korea on ourselves . Since December, 2002, North Korea has reprocessed some or all of the 8,000 fuel rods that had been frozen since 1994. They also claimed two weeks ago that they have weaponized that reprocessed plutonium.

I have argued in the January issue of Foreign Affairs that the Administration had exaggerated the danger of a weapons-grade uranium program as part of its policy of confrontation and regime change. As I mentioned, they warned of two or more uranium based weapons per year by "mid-decade".

Well, it's 2005, and we've heard nothing since then about those two weapons a year. In fact, the Administration has presented no evidence at all to back up its claim that North Korea has a program in place to enrich uranium to weapons-grade. They're trying to finesse the issue without admitting that they exaggerated. The State Department spokesman issued a formal reply to my Foreign Affairs article on December 10th that carefully omitted the accusation of a military uranium program and referred only to a "uranium enrichment program." No reference to weapons-grade. That's finessing the issue because enrichment as such is not prohibited by the NPT.

Let me briefly summarize what I said in Foreign Affairs. North Korea has indeed explored the option of developing weapons-grade enrichment technology going back ten years. There is indeed credible intelligence that it has attempted to import the components and equipment needed for enrichment. What is in serious doubt is how much actually got to North Korea and especially how much they got from the A.Q. Khan network. On the day that the Khan scandal broke, the Pakistan Government said Khan gave North Korea only "old, discarded centrifuges" to serve as prototypes, plus some blueprints. Did he give them the thousands of centrifuges that would be needed to enrich to weapons-grade? Did he give them the large numbers of sophisticated components and equipment needed to make centrifuges?

We do know that the centrifuges Khan sold to Libya and Iran were made in a Malaysian factory. And we know that the Malaysian factory sent nothing to North Korea. Khan was out to make money, and his biggest deals were with the countries that had big money. So we have to wait until General Musharraf lets us talk to A.Q. Khan. If it turns out that he did not give them thousands of ready-to-use centrifuges, that means that North Korea would have to scour the world for the special grade of steel needed to make centrifuges. Privately, people in the administration say they will eventually put forward what they know, but that they can't tell all they know without "jeopardizing methods and sources," like telephone intercepts and moles inside the A.Q. Khan network. I would welcome an Administration white paper presenting credible evidence of a weapons-grade program. That would help to break the present stalemate in the six-party negotiations, putting North Korea on the defensive. China, South Korea, Japan and Russia have been openly skeptical of the weapons-grade accusation and critical of a U.S. diplomatic strategy that conditions the start of negotiations on resolving this issue.

Putting forward credible evidence would lead to a united diplomatic front in confronting Pyongyang that the Administration has so far been unable to mobilize. Alternatively, if, as I hypothesize, there is not enough evidence to justify accusations of a weapons-grade program, the United States should give priority to getting any plutonium so far reprocessed by North Korea out of the country, while providing for the elimination of any uranium enrichment facilities at a later stage of a step-by-step denuclearization process.

The people who put out the intelligence on North Korea operate according to an ideological, black and white view of the world in which there are good guys and bad guys and with bad guys you have to assume the worst.

Condoleeza Rice defined this approach to intelligence very explicitly in an ABC news interview in October when she was asked to justify misleading Congress about WMD in Iraq. Here's what she said: "a policymaker cannot afford to be wrong on the short side, underestimating the ability of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein." In other words, it's O.K. to be wrong on the high side, overestimating Saddam or Kim Jong Il and starting a preemptive war on the basis of a hypothetical worst case scenario.

This way of thinking of course did not begin with the Bush Administration. Listen to the words of General James Clapper. General Clapper was a sensible director of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis. After he retired he gave an interview to Leon Sigal for his Princeton University Press book, Disarming Strangers, in which Clapper explained how the DIA and CIA had arrived at their estimate in 1994 that North Korea had "one or two" nuclear weapons at that time. Here's what he said: "Personally as opposed to institutionally, I was skeptical that they ever had a bomb. We didn't have smoking gun evidence either way. But you build a case for a range of possibilities. In a case like North Korea, you have to apply the most conservative approach, the worst-case scenario."

My message today is simple. It's reckless to base policy on worst case scenario intelligence driven by ideology. We should take a good hard look at the intelligence we're given on North Korea to make sure we're not conned again by our own government as we were on Iraq or, for that matter, by the North Koreans.

We should take a good hard look at the North Korean claim last week that they have already "manufactured" nuclear weapons. Until they conduct a test, we should reserve judgment on that claim. I think it may very well prove to be a bluff for bargaining purposes to bolster their position in negotiating a settlement. At the same time, we do know that they have the capability to have reprocessed some or all of the 8,000 fuel rods at Yongbyon. This plutonium may not yet be weaponized but it could be transferred to third parties. Our policy should give priority to getting that plutonium under control and out of North Korea.

Here's where we see the dangerous results of worst-case scenario intelligence. Instead of focusing on the clear and present threat posed by the North Korean plutonium program, the Administration has tied our policy in knots by giving priority to a suspected uranium enrichment program about which we know little.

As you know, the United States says that North Korea admitted having a uranium enrichment program when Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly confronted them with our alleged evidence of one in October, 2002. According to the North Korean officials involved, what they said was that they are "entitled" to have such a program.

I questioned them extensively last April and my impression is that their intention was to be ambiguous. Don't forget the context. For two years the Bush administration had conducted policy review after policy review on North Korea, but was unable to come up with a policy. The North Koreans expected Kelly to open a new chapter. Instead, they thought he was overbearing, arrogant and threatening. So they reacted in the way that North Korea will always react when it feels it is being pressured. They felt compelled to talk tough. The generals who have the last word there thought it would be helpful to keep the U.S. guessing. General Ri Chan Bok told me in so many words that the uranium issue is useful because "it strengthens our deterrent to keep you guessing."

The North Korean nuclear problem could eventually be resolved if President Bush would utter two little words-"peaceful coexistence." We have to say explicitly that we are prepared to coexist with them regardless of differences in our systems. If we do that we can negotiate a step-by-step denuclearization agreement that will enable us to find out the truth about the uranium mystery. We can open up North Korea, and liberalize the repressive North Korean system. It's clear that our present policy makes it harder for Kim Jong Il's economic reforms to succeed. There's a lot of talk in the United States and Europe about the human rights situation in North Korea, and much of it is on target. But the way to liberalize North Korea, indeed the only way, is to open it up through normalization. There's a supreme irony here. The people who talk the loudest about the gulags in North Korea-as a reason for opposing a nuclear deal-are actually helping to prolong the repressive system there.

Now let's return to our starting point, the artificiality of the division of Korea, and look at the future of our relations with Korea as a whole. At the moment we are not only on a collision course with North Korea, we are also increasingly alienated psychologically from the people of South Korea. The majority of South Koreans dislike the Bush policy because it runs counter to their aspiration for peaceful reunification. They want a changing regime, not regime change. A sudden externally-induced collapse of the North Korean system, whether achieved by military means or economic pressure, could mean millions of refugees and enormous reconstruction costs. The South Korean establishment has reached a consensus that it makes more sense to accommodate with the North, give it economic aid to help keep it afloat and encourage the processes of economic reform that are now gathering momentum there, so that in ten, twenty, or thirty years the two economic systems will be more alike and a loose confederation can be established to set the stage for eventual reunification.

The June, 2000 Pyongyang summit meeting of Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong-Il set in motion an accommodation that the United States attempted to sabotage. You may have read about the new investment zone that has been built at Kaesong in North Korea near the South Korean border. The infrastructure has been built for 800 South Korean firms using cheap North Korean labor, but so far only 15 companies have gone there. One of the reasons is that the U.S. is invoking left over Cold War export controls that block technology transfers to communist countries, such as high speed computers for textile machinery.

The division of 1945 disrupted the natural economic unity of the peninsula. The largest portion of Korea's arable land went to the South, so only 18 percent of the North's largely mountainous terrain is suitable for agriculture. Pyongyang became dependent from the start on subsidized food and fertilizer and petroleum imports from its former Soviet and Chinese patrons, all of which was cut off at the end of the Cold War. Now the North is getting fertilizer and other aid from the South, but the United States is putting strong pressure on Seoul to stop not only fertilizer, but all forms of economic cooperation until North Korea agrees to a denuclearization agreement on U.S. terms. The U.S. denuclearization proposal put forward last June 24th calls on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program at the outset of the negotiations. Only then will the U.S. discuss specific quid pro quos. North Korea wants a step by step agreement starting with a plutonium freeze and significant U.S. steps towards normalization.

In conclusion, a definitive, fully verifiable resolution of the nuclear issue can only be achieved with an end to the regime change policy, the full normalization of U.S. relations with Pyongyang, including a peace treaty ending the Korean War and U.S. support for North-South economic cooperation. Unless we reverse course, North Korea will eventually learn how to make nuclear bombs small enough to be deliverable on its airplanes and it will learn how to miniaturize missile warheads. South Koreans believe that North Korea wants a nuclear capability to deter the United States, not to attack them. So a nuclear North Korea won't reverse the movement toward North-South accommodation.

We may end up with a nuclear unified Korea hostile to the United States, and that would mean a nuclear Japan, probably blessed by the United States. That in turn would put us on a collision course with China. None of this need happen, but that is where we're headed now.