- guardian.co.uk, Sunday December 1 2002 03.47 GMT
It took the United States government some time after the confession to work out its own position; its A-team of strategic thinkers was tied up on Iraq issues. When it did react, the effect was to push the South Korean president onto the diplomatic sidelines and demote Japan back to poodle ally status.
On November 4, political leaders from China, Japan and South Korea used the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the three Northeast Asian countries (ASEAN plus 3) to urge that the nuclear programme be dismantled. This followed the Mexico Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, at which President George Bush persuaded Premier Zhu Rongji of China and President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea to join him in publicly calling for dismantling.
Out of the frame Despite the confession, lame duck President Kim planned to continue his 'sunshine policy' of accommodating North Korean interests. Washington made it clear that it was to be put on hold. This stung Kim into a public statement in Seattle criticising US policy. The Americans ignored this, knowing that he would shortly be replaced after elections in December, probably by a more hardline pro-US president - Lee Hoi-chang.
Treatment for Japan was even rougher. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had surprised and upset Washington by appearing to take an accommodating and conciliatory line with the North Koreans. This was despite the US's listing of that regime as part of an 'axis of evil'. In his landmark visit to Pyongyang in September, the first ever by a Japanese prime minister, Koizumi apologised for the harshness of Japanese colonisation of Korea from 1915 to 1945. He offered a multi-billion dollar aid package as part of a normalisation process. In Mexico, at the APEC summit, he was persuaded by Bush to make any aid conditional on the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear programme. This he duly did in October at the start of normalisation negotiations.
Although President Jiang Zemin of China was persuaded to call for the Korean peninsula to be a nuclear free zone, he said nothing about how he thought this should be achieved. It is doubtful if he has any idea about how it can be done. But he refused to agree with Washington that the North Korean confession justified a repudiation of the 1994 Agreed Framework. This is the agreement in which the North Korean government committed itself to give up nuclear ambitions. In return, South Korea, Japan and the US agreed to build two light water power stations, with America supplying fuel oil free of charge until those stations come on stream.
The US has been responsible for serious delays in the construction of the power stations. Ground breaking only took place a few weeks ago. The failure to build them expeditiously has of course left North Koreans dependent on the US for oil; some believe that this was intentional. Now Washington has persuaded its allies to cut off that oil after this month's shipment, economic collapse is more likely to follow. The South Koreans, the Japanese and the Chinese do not want this.
China cannot be slapped down
While Washington has sidelined South Korea and Japan and insisted that it now take the lead in dealing with North Korea, it cannot sideline China. During a high level visit to Beijing by officials from Pyongyang in the week after the confession, Chinese leaders went out of their way to very publicly praise the North's efforts at reform. This was despite North Korea's appointment of a controversial Chinese businessman - now under arrest in China - to head a new Hong Kong-style free trade area on the Chinese border.
China publicly supports the North's economic reform programme, as well as the view that the Korean peninsula should be a nuclear free zone. This is aimed at the thirty nine thousand US forces in South Korea as much as at the North. Yet the Chinese government still does not have a meaningful policy on North Korea.
When pressed, Chinese diplomats and analysts say their policy is to maintain the status quo. While they support the gradual and partial economic reforms the North has embarked on, they want these to be carried out Chinese style - without simultaneous political changes that would threaten the communist party's monopoly.
China fears an east European-style collapse. So does the North Korean leadership, especially a Romanian-style revolution in which the leaders of the old regime were summarily executed. As a result, although they make little economic effort to support the regime, Chinese leaders do back it politically.
One of the main forms of support - pushing refugees from North Korea, whom they describe as economic migrants, back over the border to face certain persecution and sometimes violent deaths - is based on self-interest. The Chinese believe that if they accepted the refugees as such and housed and fed them, then there would be a flood of North Koreans, leading eventually to the collapse of the Pyongyang regime. It is easier for refugees to cross the Tumen River from North Korea into China than it is for them to penetrate the heavily mined Demilitarised Zone between North and South.
Fear of regime change
What do the Chinese believe a collapse of the North Korean regime would look like? Two possibilities are mentioned. The first would be a coup by hardliners appalled at the personal excesses of Chairman Kim Jong-il and family, or the forced enrolment of that family into the hardline group. This would be highly dangerous and lead to political instability on the peninsula. If their backs are pushed to the wall, with nothing left to lose, the hardliners could turn threats into actual violence against South Korea and US military personnel.
The second scenario would feature a coup by more liberal officers who would demand and get reunification with the South. This would have a bigger impact on the South Korean economy than did the reunification of Germany on West Germany. There would be severe and negative effects on regional economies. This in turn would compromise the reform and opening process in China and limit the options for Japan in its attempts to bring its economy up to twentieth century standards.
Neither scenario is attractive to China, which has valued having a communist buffer state between it and US-occupied South Korea. This is why the Chinese leaders' policy has been to maintain the status quo. They may not, however, get the option. Events have overtaken them. They are not in a position to provide fuel oil to North Korea or build the nuclear power plants.
Even if they could now support the North Korean regime, economically and technically, they would not want to as it would ruin their policy of maintaining friendly relations with the US and alienate their Japanese and South Korean neighbours.
China's hope
Food aid has been dwindling and so has the shipment of fertiliser from South Korea. Infrastructure is crumbling. The North Korean regime knows that it cannot continue to ensure that its citizens have enough to eat or warm housing to see them through the harsh winter. The confessions of recent weeks are intended to show the world that they have a strong last hand to play, and they hope the west will increase the size of the pot being played for. They may not win. But they might, and this is what the Chinese hope for.
Beijing wants the North Korean regime to work with the west to ensure that it has the food and fuel to keep its citizens alive in return for resolving the abductee issue and the termination of the nuclear weapons programme. Those with better food and housing would then be convinced by the regime's propaganda that their leaders can and do look after them, despite the hostility of the international community. Chinese leaders will be using their influence in Pyongyang to bring about this outcome. They have an important role to play and cannot be ignored.
Professor David Wall is an Associate Fellow of Chatham House's Asia Programme and Chairman of its China Discussion Group.
About The World Today essay
This article will appear in the December 2002 issue of The World Today, published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House. An essay from The World Today appears online in Observer Worldview each month.
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