Center for International Policy

As printed in Bangor Daily News

June 26, 2006

VIEWPOINTS: Korean Confusion

The talk and apparent threatening action from North Korea is troubling - and confusing. The country, according to U.S. officials, is preparing a test launch of a ballistic missile. But, one of the country's top diplomats said this week that while North Korea had the right to develop and test missiles, the situation should be solved through discussions. While the United States is right to reject one-on-one talks to resolve North Korea's nuclear issues, such talks could defuse the current situation.

To understand North Korea's conflicted messages, it is important to know that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's control over foreign and defense policy is deeply divided between pragmatists and the hard-line coalition. The hard-liners argue for a tough posture to prevent the Bush administration from pursuing regime change in Pyongyang. This group views American efforts to freeze North Korean assets as part of a counterfeiting crackdown as "economic warfare" meant to weaken the government, according to Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program of the Center for International Policy in Washington. In December, the U.S. Treasury Department urged banks around the world to be wary of North Korean transactions because there was evidence that the country was counterfeiting U.S. currency. Some accounts have been frozen as a result.

This, says Mr. Harrison, has prompted North Korea to retaliate with the missile threat. The way to resolve this, he wisely suggests, is to engage in direct talks with North Korea on counterfeiting. These talks should also be used to defuse the missile threat and to encourage North Korea to return to the six-party talks that were making progress in reaching an agreement to end the country's nuclear weapons aspirations in exchange for nuclear power and other assistance.

Fortunately, both countries are talking about talking. "Our position is to solve this situation through discussions," Han Song Ryol, North Korea's deputy chief of mission at the United Nations told the South Korean Yonhap news agency.

"We think diplomacy is the right answer and that is what we are pursuing," National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters last week. He was responding to questions about a former defense secretary's call for a pre-emptive strike. Former Defense Secretary William Perry Perry and co-author Ashton B. Carter, in a column reprinted on these pages Saturday-Sunday, said a pre-emptive strike to destroy the North Korean missile was the best option. While Mr. Perry suggests such a strike would only destroy the missile and not North Korean lives, the military and political fallout would be deadly and long lasting.

The one useful suggestion Mr. Perry makes is that the United States should be careful in using its missile defense shield to destroy a North Korean missile, if one is launched. The administration says it is preparing the system for such a possibility even though it is still in its research and development phase. A failed interception attack would negate the system's deterrent value, Mr. Perry wrote.

The United States is in a difficult position, but until it truly knows what North Korea's capabilities are, talking is the best course.