by
B. C. Koh
[Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Chicago]
posted January 8, 2008
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On January 1, 2008, North Korea published a joint New Year’s editorial in the daily organs of its three most influential organizations—the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), the Korean People’s Army (KPA), and the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League (KISSYL). Designed as a substitute for the late Kim Il Sung’s New Year’s Day messages, the joint editorial made its debut in 1995. Like its predecessor, the editorial sums up the preceding year’s accomplishments and then outlines the goals and tasks for the new year.
The most striking feature of this year’s editorial pertained to its emphasis on the need to implement the agreement signed by the leaders of the two Koreas, Chairman Kim Jong Il of the DPRK National Defense Commission and ROK President Roh Moo Hyun, on October 4, 2007 in Pyongyang at the end of the second inter-Korean summit. Since a new government led by Lee Myung Bak is scheduled to be inaugurated in Seoul on February 25, however, whether and to what extent the North’s message will be heeded by the South remains uncertain.
North Korea’s Joint Editorial
This year’s editorial, published jointly in the Nodong Sinmun (the WPK organ), Choson Inmingun (the KPA organ), and Ch’ongnyon Chonwi (KISSYL organ), was entitled “Glorify the Year Marking the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the DPRK as a Year of Historical Watershed That Will Be Engraved in the History of Our Fatherland.” In recent years, the titles of the joint editorials have featured “songun (military first)” in every other year. Apart from the titles, however, the phrase has appeared more frequently than any other phrases, even surpassing the obligatory obeisance to the two supreme leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. This year was no exception.
Whereas, in January 2007, the North had something to brag about—namely, its first-ever nuclear test, which helped propel the DPRK into the ranks of the world’s exclusive nuclear club—nothing extraordinary had happened in the preceding 12 months that would allow Pyongyang to jump with joy. That did not deter it from proclaiming that “last year, a year of proud victories, the great vitality of our Party’s songun-based revolutionary line was fully vindicated and a great advance was made in building a thriving country.”
The editorial’s list of accomplishments included:
-“Technological restructuring in the mining, chemical and light industries,”
-“Construction of large-scale hydropower stations,”
-“Setting up a self-supporting production system that relies on our own resources and technology,” and
- Increasing the “number of countries establishing good-neighborly and friendly relations with us.”
As the title of the editorial suggested, the North set forth a lofty goal for 2008—namely making so much progress in the various fields that it will go down in the history of the Republic as a year of great transformation on the road to the construction of a “great, prosperous and powerful country (kangsong taeguk)”. For the first time, moreover, the North unveiled the target year for the attainment of this ambitious—and, to outside observers, elusive—goal: 2012, which will mark the 100th anniversary of the late Kim Il Sung’s birth. In North Korean eyes, its acquisition of what it calls the “nuclear deterrent” signals the virtual attainment of half of its goal—that is, a “powerful” country. The North, therefore, needs to step up efforts to realize the other half—that is, a “prosperous” country.
In addition to modernizing and strengthening all the basic industries—power, coal, metal, rail transport, mining, machine, chemical, building-materials, and forestry—, the editorial calls for “substantial” improvement in the people’s standard of living. In its words:
“At present, there is no more urgent…task than solving the problem of food.” This calls for “radically increasing grain output by planting high-yielding varieties on a wide scale and introducing advanced farming technology and methods.” Underscoring the importance of continuing to improve potato farming and bean cultivation, activities in which the KPA participates, the editorial urges “agricultural officials and working people” to “make great efforts to farm by themselves with the attitude of being masters.” During a six-day visit to the North in July 2007, the author learned that even high-ranking officials (with the rank of counselor) worked on farms one day a week.
Editorial’s Focus on the Summit
As noted at the outset, the most noteworthy aspect of this year’s joint editorial has to do with the zeal with which it hails the accomplishments of the second inter-Korean summit and its clarion call for all the organizations and people in all walks of life in the North and the South to make an all-out effort to attain the goals enunciated in the October 4 joint declaration.
As the North sees it, both the summit and the joint declaration helped to usher in a new phase in the quest for national reunification, for they amplified and advanced the signal breakthrough achieved by the first inter-Korean summit in 2000 and the June 15 joint declaration spawned by it. “The present reality,” the editorial declares, “gives us a firm conviction that no force on Earth can check the current of the June 15 reunification era and that when the nation [minjok] united as one launches a vigorous struggle, the cause of national reunification will be realized without fail.”
The editorial adds: “By implementing the October 4 declaration thoroughly, we should shake off the hangovers from the age of confrontation, convert north-south relations into an ‘uri minjok kkiri’ [literally, between members of the same nation or people] relationship not only in name but also in reality, thus making a new history of peace and prosperity.”
The editorial elaborates on the preceding assertion in these words:
“The main agent of the national reunification movement is the Korean nation, and dependence on outside forces will never settle the country’s reunification issue at any time. In any case the dignity and interests of the nation should be placed above everything else, and the issues related to national reunification should be settled solely from the standpoint of national independence and by our nation itself.”
In a veiled warning or perhaps a plea to the incoming conservative government in Seoul, the editorial declares, “Pro-U.S. sycophancy and treachery of turning back the tides toward reunification and hindering the reconciliation and unity of the nation should not be tolerated.” Parroting the expressions adopted in the October 4 joint declaration, the editorial stresses that inter-Korean economic cooperation benefits both parts of Korea, “serving the common interests and prosperity of the north and the south alike.”
How Will the Lee Myung Bak Government Respond?
The initial reaction of the President-elect Lee Myung Bak’s transition committee to the North’s joint New Year’s editorial—that is, the section dealing with inter-Korean relations outlined above—was positive. The tone and content of the joint editorial, in the committee’s view, signal a tacit recognition of Lee Myung Bak as the incoming chief of state in Seoul as well as a plea for cooperation. One may actually ask whether the North has any other option. Given its already heavy dependence on the South and given the high stakes involved in the implementation, even if incomplete, of the multi-faceted agreements embodied in the October 4 joint statement as well as the ensuing supplementary agreements, the North cannot afford to alienate, let alone, antagonize, the incoming Lee administration.
Let us, then, turn to an impressionistic assessment of the direction in which Seoul’s policy toward the North will likely evolve under Lee Myung Bak. Lee has made it clear that his top priority in dealing with North Korea is denuclearization. Once that goal is achieved, however, Lee is willing to help the North to increase its per capita income to 3,000 USD within a decade. The latter is estimated to be in the range of $1,000 to $1,300 today. Lee’s transition team has also unveiled a plan to establish an international cooperation fund for North Korea totaling 40 billion USD. As an international fund, South Korea will be but one of the contributors, and Lee envisions a substantial input from international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank. For these institutions to jump on the bandwagon, however, North Korea will need to join them, which in turn will necessitate, at a bare minimum, its removal from the U.S. government’s blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism.
Lee is also on record as indicating that unlike the Roh government, his government will not hesitate to raise the human rights issue with the North. Whether that will impede inter-Korean economic cooperation remains to be seen. At the moment, however, the denuclearization issue has emerged as critical, for the implementation of the series of agreements hammered out by the Six-Party Talks—namely, the September 2005 Joint Statement, the February 13 Agreement, and the October 3 Agreement on the Second-Phase Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement—appears to have stalled. Under the latest agreement, the North was required to complete the disablement of three nuclear facilities in Yongbyon—(1) the 5 megawatt Experimental Reactor, (2) the Reprocessing Plant [Radiochemical Laboratory], and (3) the Nuclear Fuel Rod Fabrication Facility—and to provide a “complete and correct declaration of all of its nuclear programs” by December 31, 2007.
The North and the Nuclear Declaration
The North failed to meet the deadline. While the delay in the disablement of the Yongbyon facilities is attributable in part to technical problems—notably safety concerns raised by the United States in unloading fuel rods—the North’s failure to submit a “complete and accurate” report on “all of its nuclear programs” is a bone of contention between Pyongyang and Washington. On January 4, the DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement asserting that the “DPRK worked out a report on the nuclear declaration in November last year and notified the U.S. side of its contents.” What is more, the North claimed that it “had a sufficient consultation with the U.S. side after receiving a request from it to have further discussion on the contents of the report.” The North, the statement added, “allowed the U.S. to visit some military facilities in which imported aluminum tubes were used…and offered its samples as requested by the U.S., clarifying with sincerity that the controversial aluminum tubes had nothing to do with uranium enrichment.”
North Korea also asserted that the quid pro quo, or “action for action”, underlying the October 3 agreement had been neglected. “The U.S. has not honored its commitments to cross the DPRK off the list of ‘sponsors of terrorism’ and to stop applying the ‘Trading with the Enemy Act’ against the DPRK.” Noting the slow pace in the provision of heavy fuel oil and its equivalent to the North, the statement added that the “DPRK is compelled to adjust the tempo of the displacement of some facilities on the principle of ‘action for action’.”
The North Korean version of what has happened with regard to the disputed declaration is rejected by the United States. Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. delegate to the Six-Party Talks, “told reporters in early December, after visiting North Korea, that he had not seen a draft of the declaration but that U.S. and North Korean negotiators had had extensive talks about what the U.S. expects to see on the list.”
Summit Agreements and the New Administration
Assuming that the current impasse in the implementation of the October 3 agreement on the second-phase actions will be broken sooner or later, what are the prospects of the Lee government’s honoring the multitudinous commitments on inter-Korean economic cooperation embodied in the October 4 joint declaration? Pyongyang’s insistence that inter-Korean economic cooperation is mutually beneficial does have a grain of truth in it.
Let us examine a few of the projects envisaged in the October 4 agreement.
The proposal to create a “special peace and cooperation zone in the West Sea [Yellow Sea]” was rated by Roh Moo Hyun as the most important part of the agreement. With Haeju as the main harbor in the zone, this project will also entail the creation of a “joint fishing zone” as well as a “special economic zone.” Vessels from both sides will be accorded the right of passage “via direct routes in Haeju.” They will also be allowed to use and exploit the Han River estuary jointly. Since Haeju is an important naval base in the North, this project has the potential to defuse its threat to the South. The same factor, however, points to the difficulty of finding a plan that will be fully acceptable to the North Korean military. The North’s attempt effectively to nullify the controversial Northern Limit Line (NLL) during the military talks that were held in November suggests that the North is also intent on maximizing its advantage.
The agreement to “complete the first-phase construction of the Kaesong Industrial Complex at an early date and embark on the second-stage development project” has the potential to yield economic benefits to both sides. One issue that will arise is how to reconcile the Kaesong project with one Lee Myung Bak has put forth—namely, creating an industrial complex utilizing the same principle of combining North Korean labor with South Korean capital, technology, and management on the South Korean side of the border. Since the existing facilities in Kaesong are most likely to remain in the foreseeable future, however, the agreement to ameliorate the triple bottlenecks in communication, travel, and transportation has a good chance of being implemented. It clearly benefits both sides.
More questionable are the other projects—such as the proposal to repair the Kaesong-Sinuiju railroad and the Kaesong-Pyongyang expressway with South Korean help for their joint use, and the agreement to establish “cooperative complexes for shipbuilding in Anbyon and Nampo.” These projects, while potentially beneficial to both sides, are expected to require astronomical sums of money and resources.
In sum, the key to the question—to what extent will the “road map” sketched by Kim Jong Il and Roh Moo Hyun be followed by Lee Myung Bak—will be whether or not the North faithfully carries out its end of the bargain hammered out in the Six-Party Talks thus far and in the months ahead. The dismal track record of North Korea in implementing international agreements, however, cautions us not to raise our hopes too high.
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