[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
SMART POWER: REMAKING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN NORTH KOREA
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA, THE PACIFIC AND
THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 12, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-5
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
Samoa DAN BURTON, Indiana
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts RON PAUL, Texas
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
DIANE E. WATSON, California MIKE PENCE, Indiana
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York CONNIE MACK, Florida
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
GENE GREEN, Texas MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas TED POE, Texas
BARBARA LEE, California BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM COSTA, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
RON KLEIN, Florida
VACANT
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment
ENI F. H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
DIANE E. WATSON, California BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas DANA ROHRABACHER, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
Lisa Williams, Subcommittee Staff Director
David Richmond, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member
Nien Su, Republican Professional Staff Member
Vili Lei, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Selig S. Harrison, Asia Director, The Center for
International Policy........................................... 10
The Honorable Charles L. Pritchard, President, Korea Economic
Institute (Former Ambassador and Special Envoy for Negotiations
with North Korea).............................................. 40
Victor Cha, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Director of Asian Studies
and D.S. Song-Korea, Foundation Chair in Asian Studies and
Government, Georgetown University.............................. 45
Mr. Bruce Klingner, Senior Research Fellow, Northeast Asia, The
Heritage Foundation............................................ 64
Mr. Scott Snyder, Senior Associate, International Relations, The
Asia Foundation................................................ 77
Mr. Peter Beck, Adjunct Professor, American University........... 89
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, a Representative in Congress
from American Samoa, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Asia, the
Pacific and the Global Environment: Prepared statement......... 7
Mr. Selig S. Harrison: Prepared statement........................ 13
The Honorable Donald A. Manzullo, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Illinois: Prepared statement................. 26
The Honorable Charles L. Pritchard: Prepared statement........... 42
Victor Cha, Ph.D.: Prepared statement............................ 48
Mr. Bruce Klingner: Prepared statement........................... 67
Mr. Scott Snyder: Prepared statement............................. 80
Mr. Peter Beck: Prepared statement............................... 93
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 112
Hearing minutes.................................................. 114
The Honorable Donald A. Manzullo: Article entitled ``Red-
Handed,'' Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005.................... 115
The Honorable Edward R. Royce, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California: Article entitled ``Red-Handed,''
Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005.............................. 118
SMART POWER: REMAKING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN NORTH KOREA
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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific
and the Global Environment,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:05 p.m. in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Eni
F.H. Faleomavaega, (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Faleomavaega. The Subcommittee on Asia, the
Pacific, deg. and the Global Environment hearing will
come to order, and before proceeding any further, because we
have two votes that are pending right now and some of my
colleagues will have to go and vote, I will give the time to my
good friend and chairman of our Terrorism, Nonproliferation and
Trade Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs, my good friend from
California, Mr. Sherman. If you want to make an opening
statement at this time, you are welcome to do so.
Mr. Sherman. I thank you, Chairman Faleomavaega. Thank you
for having this hearing. I think it is about the most important
issue facing us in the Asia-Pacific region. The spread of
nuclear weapons is perhaps the only thing that poses a national
security threat to ordinary Americans and a threat to their
safety and to our way of life.
We should be prioritizing nonproliferation at a higher
level. There is a lot of talk that we are going to reach a deal
with North Korea because we are going to have great diplomats
who have read all the books on how to negotiate. I do not think
that reading a book on how to negotiate or reading 100 of them
is the key. The key is we need more carrots and more sticks.
The carrot that the Bush administration was unwilling to
use is to offer a non-aggression pact. The reason that was
given to me is the United States never does non-aggression
pacts. The other reason is, well, we spent a lot of time
banging the North Koreans over the head to convince them to
stop asking for a non-aggression pact. Clearly what was at work
in addition to just bureaucratic intransigents is a dream of
Dick Cheney somehow overthrowing the Government of North Korea
by force, a dream he did not want to give up. Well, he has
left. I do not think we should dream of a successful new Korean
War. We should instead be offering a non-aggression pact for a
truly CVIP outcome, that is to say, complete, verifiable, and
permanent foregoing of nuclear weapons.
When it comes to sticks, our problem is we do not have
enough and we are not being creative in how to get more. The
key way to put pressure on the North Korean Government is to
get the Chinese Government to put pressure, and the key way to
do that is to at least begin to make Beijing believe that
access to the United States market is contingent upon a greater
level of cooperation on the North Korea issue, and if
necessary, a Chinese Government willing to inform the North
Koreans that continued subsidies from Beijing could be cut off
if they will not move to toward a fair, verifiable and
permanent renunciation of nuclear weapons, and abandonment and
destruction of existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
We have been unwilling to do that in part because we are
unable to link one issue to the other. That seems to be too
complex for the State Department. They do not like to do it in
any sphere because it involves not only thinking about two
things at the same time--our trade relationship with China on
the one hand, our concern with North Korean weapons on the
other--but it involves telling one part of the State Department
that their priority may have to be tied to some other priority
in the State Department.
The other reason we do not do it is because of the total
power of importers. The real money that is made in this
country, the big money, the enormous money is to make something
for pennies in China and sell it for dollars in the United
States, and with that money comes power, the power to prevent
the further accrual of the money, and for that reason it is not
permissible in Washington to talk seriously about hinting to
Beijing that their access to the United States market could be
limited for various reasons, not the least of which is an
insistence on greater pressure on the North Korean Government.
The solution that the establishment has, that the State
Department has to this concern is to parade diplomats in front
of us, telling us that China is very helpful, do not worry
about it, we are just a day or a week or a month away from a
non-nuclear North Korea. I have been hearing that for more than
8 years. It is a lie. It is a lie that gets Congress to stop
asking questions that they do not want to hear.
The fact is that North Korea still has nuclear weapons. The
fact is the problem has not been solved, and the fact is that
China's level of help has been insufficient, and it is about
time that we take a look at ways to get both more carrots and
more sticks and not settle for constantly being told that we
should not worry about the problem.
I yield back.
Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the chairman of our Subcommittee
on Nonproliferation for his opening statement, and I would
welcome his return since I am sure that he will raise some
additional questions with some of the most distinguished
witnesses and guests that the subcommittee has invited to
testify this afternoon.
I will begin with my opening statement, and proceed
accordingly. Without objection, the statements that have been
submitted by our witnesses this afternoon will all be made part
of the record. If there are any additional documents or
materials that each of our witnesses want to submit to be made
part of the record, you are welcome to do so.
Never in our Nation's history have we faced a more pressing
need to remake America at home and abroad, and who knoweth, as
the good book says, whether or not President Obama has been
raised up for such a time as this. What we do know is that,
last November, America voted for change because America
recognizes that these are no ordinary times. These are
extraordinary days, and I commend the Obama administration and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for sending a tremendous
signal of the importance of the Asia-Pacific region to U.S.
interests.
By choosing to visit the Asia-Pacific in her first trip
abroad, Secretary Clinton obviously is renewing America's
stature and leadership in a region of the world the U.S. has
too long neglected, in my humble opinion. I wish Secretary
Clinton God speed, especially as she takes on the challenge of
remaking United States foreign policy in North Korea.
While diplomatic, tough-minded intelligent diplomacy will
be the keystone of our new U.S. foreign policy, in her
statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a
nominee of the Secretary of State, Senator Clinton stated that
we must use, and I quote, ``smart power,'' meaning the full
range of tools at our disposal--diplomatic, economic, military,
political, legal and cultural--picking the right tool or a
combination of tools for each situation.
I agree with this approach believing, like Secretary
Clinton, that we must, and I quote from her statement, ``fire
on all cylinders to provide forward-thinking, sustained
diplomacy in every part of the world.''
In the case of North Korea, in 2003, six governments,
including the United States, North Korea, China, South Korea,
Japan and Russia, began talks aimed at ultimately eliminating
North Korea's nuclear programs. In 2007 and 2008, three
agreements were reached; two by the six parties and one by
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korean
Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Dae Jung.
The agreements constituted a deal to shutdown North Korea's
plutonium production facilities in exchange for United States
concessions, including removing North Korea from the sanctions
provision of the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act, removing
North Korea from the United States list of state sponsors of
terrorism, and the promise of energy assistance to North Korea.
At the end of the Bush administration, North Korea had
completed about 80 percent of the disablement, and the United
States, China, South Korea and Russia sent North Korea about
800,000 tons of the 1 million tons of energy assistance it
promised. Although Japan is withholding its quota of about
200,000 tons of heavy oil due to the lack of progress in
settling the issue of North Korea's kidnapping of Japanese
citizens, the Bush administration did remove North Korea from
the sanctions provisions of the terrorism list. However, North
Korea now says it will only complete disablement when it
receives the remainder of energy assistance.
As Mr. Harrison, our first witness this afternoon, will
testify, this is a very important turning point in United
States-North Korea relations for, as he states, and I quote:
``For the past 18 years, the United States has offered
the normalization of relations with North Korea as a
reward for denuclearization. Now North Korea is asking
us to reverse the sequence to pursue denuclearization
through normalization.''
The purpose of today's hearing is to discuss where we go
from here considering that North Korea is also suggesting that
any final denuclearization agreement with the United States
must consider the future military presence in and around the
Korean Peninsula. Also, North Korea is signaling that future
denuclearization talks deal only with the dismantlement of the
Yongbyon installation rather than with nuclear weapons.
With North Korea's threat of a military confrontation with
South Korea, and its refusal to completely denuclearize, the
timeliness and relevance of today's hearing is underscored by
North Korea's announcement less than 2 weeks ago that it is
nullifying all inter-Korean agreements and reportedly seeking
to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile.
As Secretary Clinton noted this past Tuesday at a press
conference held in the White House, and I quote from her:
``We are hopeful that some of the behavior that we are
seeing coming from North Korea in the past few weeks is
not a precursor of any action that would up the ante or
threaten the stability and peace and security of the
neighbors in the region. North Korea has to understand
that all of the countries in East Asia have made it
clear that its behavior is viewed as unacceptable.''
Given these very serious developments, what tools should
the Obama administration use to improve United States-North
Korean relations? Should greater emphasis be placed on economic
aid, human rights, and separate negotiations with North Korea
over a Korean peace treaty to replace the 1953 armistice
agreement? Is any of this possible given the Bush
administration's failure to focus on North Korea's highly
enriched uranium program or nuclear collaboration with Iran and
Syria? What succession contingencies do we have in place given
the recent health concerns of Kim Jong Il?
However we proceed, let me conclude my opening statement
with two clear convictions. First, the United States-South
Korea alliance stands firm in its commitment to peace and
prosperity on the Korean Peninsula. Secondly, North Korea
should come back to the negotiating table immediately and
reestablish its inter-Korean cooperative projects with South
Korea to continue progress aimed at easing tensions and
fostering mutual dialogue.
I attended recently an Asia-Pacific parliamentary forum
that was attended by several of our Asian countries'
parliamentarians, and a resolution was proposed--calling upon
North Korea to denuclearize the country in terms of its ability
now to develop nuclear weapons. The only point that I raised at
the time of the forum was that we have been trying for years in
the Six-Party Talks to get North Korea to dismantle its
nuclearization program, yet North Korea is already a member of
the nuclear club. North Korea already has between four to six
nuclear weapons, and now North Korea is about to test its
capability in producing an intercontinental ballistic missile.
I just wanted to add that as an observation for our witnesses
that will be testifying this afternoon.
I note also with interest that we have Ambassador Charles
Pritchard who will be testifying here with us, and I understand
you will be leaving later this afternoon to meet with your son,
Major Jack Pritchard, who is currently on tour in Iraq, and
certainly want to wish you, Ambassador Pritchard, and your
family all the best as you are about to meet your son in
Wiesbaden, Germany.
Our first witness that we have this afternoon is no
stranger, I am sure, to all of us for those of you who are
experts in dealing with Asia-related issues, and this is none
other than--I say that it is my honor to have met with him
previously to the meeting--is Mr. Selig Harrison.
Selig Harrison is a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars and currently director of the
Asia program at the Center for International Policy. He has
specialized in South Asia and East Asia for some 58 years as a
journalist and scholar and is the author of five books, and
published countless numbers of articles that relate to our
political or foreign policy relationships with the countries of
South Asia as well as Southeast Asia.
He has visited North Korea about 11 times, most recently in
January of this year, and also visited Iran in June 2007 and
February and June of last year. His articles on Iran following
his visits there in 2007-2008 included ``Iran is America's Best
Hope for stability in the Gulf.'' I think we need to read that
one, Mr. Harrison.
His reputation for giving early warnings on foreign policy
crises was well established during his career as a foreign
correspondent. He made a prediction some 18 months before the
war--the Indo-Pakistan war--and caused some problems there with
many of the editors, wondering how in the world has Mr.
Harrison made such a prediction so accurate, and the editors
were complaining about why were they not informed about this
prediction that Mr. Harrison made before the Indo-Pakistan war
came about.
More than a year before the Russians invaded Afghanistan,
Mr. Harrison again warned of this possibility in one of his
frequent contributions to the influential journal, Foreign
Policy. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he was one
of the earliest to foresee that the Soviet Union would withdraw
its forces and become a leading advocate of a two-track policy
designed to promote a withdrawal through a combination of
military pressure and diplomatic incentives.
One of my predecessors who served previously as chairman of
this subcommittee, my good friend, a former Congressman from
the State of New York, Mr. Stephen Solarz, made this
interesting observation concerning Mr. Harrison, and I quote
this, in February 21, 1989, 1 year after the withdrawal, and
this is what Mr. Solarz said: ``With each passing day his
reputation,'' Mr. Harrison's reputation, ``as a prophet is
enhanced. I am sure it wasn't easy for Mr. Harrison, in the
face of a phalanx of analysts, academicians, and others who
were all saying the opposite, to maintain his position, but he
had the intellectual fortitude and moral strength to stick by
his guns, his analytical guns, and I think he deserves credit
for that.''
And with that, Mr. Harrison, we will welcome your
prediction as what will happen in the Korean Peninsula in the
coming months and for next year.
At this time I would like to turn the time now to Mr.
Harrison for his presentation.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Faleomavaega
follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
STATEMENT OF MR. SELIG S. HARRISON, ASIA DIRECTOR, THE CENTER
FOR INTERNATIONAL POLICY
Mr. Harrison. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is
wonderful to have a chairman who actually reads my CV. As you
said, for the past 18 years the United States has offered the
normalization of relations as the reward for denuclearization.
Now North Korea is asking us to reverse the sequence, to pursue
denuclearization through normalization.
But the issue dominating discussion of North Korea in
Washington is, of course, whether North Korea will ever really
denuclearize. So I decided before going to Pyongyang this time
to frame my discussions there in a way that would help to
clarify this issue. I submitted a detailed proposal to the
North Koreans in advance. Here is what it was.
North Korea would surrender to the IAEA the 68 pounds of
plutonium already declared. The U.S. would conclude the peace
treaty, that you mentioned, ending the Korean War. We would
normalize diplomatic and economic relations with North Korea,
put food and energy aid on a long-term basis, and support
large-scale multilateral credits for rehabilitation of the
North Korean economic infrastructure, and as I said, they
would----
Mr. Faleomavaega. Can we just suspend for a minute? Your
microphone is still not on. Something is wrong with the
electronics here. Can you try the other microphone next to you,
see if that might work? Does it work?
We will need to suspend the hearing.
[Off the record.]
Mr. Harrison. Well, that sounds like something.
Mr. Faleomavaega. My apologies, Mr. Harrison.
Mr. Harrison. Not at all. As I said, I submitted this
proposal to the North Koreans to smoke them out. And the answer
I got was categorical and explicit. I was told that their
declared plutonium has ``already been weaponized,'' but they
said they are ready to rule out the development of additional
nuclear weapons in future negotiations. All four of the
officials I met emphasized two key themes.
First, North Korea wants friendly relations with the United
States and hopes that the Obama administration will initiate
moves toward normalized relations. Vice President Kim Yong Tae
said:
``If the Obama administration takes its first steps
correctly and makes a political decision to change its
DPRK policy, the DPRK and the U.S. can become intimate
friends.''
I asked General Ri Chan Bok of the National Defense
Commission whether United States forces could stay in Korea
when and if relations are normalized. As you know, the
traditional North Korean position has been that the United
States forces have to get out, and here is what he said: ``When
the time comes we can discuss that.''
The second thing emphasized was that North Korea will not
commit itself now as to when it will give up its nuclear
weapons. Here are the words of nuclear negotiator Li Gun: ``We
are not in a position to say when we will abandon nuclear
weapons. That depends on when we believe there is no U.S.
nuclear threat. We must proceed step by step, action for
action.''
Now, all of those I met said that North Korea has already
weaponized the 68 pounds of plutonium acknowledged in its
formal declaration, and that therefore the weapons can't be
inspected since they are military.
Sixty-eight pounds, as you know, is enough for four or five
nuclear weapons, depending on the grade of plutonium, the
specific weapons design and the desired explosive yield. What
this means is that the objective of the Six-Party negotiations
and United States negotiations directly with North Korea, which
I think have to be the heart of our policy, should now be to
cap, to cap the declared North Korean arsenal at four or five
weapons by completing the disabling of the Yongbyon reactor to
which you referred now in progress, and by negotiating the
terms for completely dismantling the reactor which, of course,
has been envisaged in the denuclearization scenario now being
negotiated.
In return for dismantlement, North Korea wants a binding
commitment to complete the two light-water reactors for
electricity promised under the 1994 agreed framework. That is
sure to stir up controversy in Washington, but in Pyongyang it
seems logical to the North Korea, first, because the reactors
were promised; second, because nearly $3 billion has already
been spent on them to the build the infrastructure at Kumho,
and above all, because North Korea suspended its nuclear
weapons program from 1994 until 2002, in return for that
promise.
North Korea suspended its nuclear weapons program from 1994
until 2002 in return for the promise of light-water reactors.
Well, to sum up, North Korea had adopted what to us will be
a much harder line than before, and the question is why. Some
say it is just a bargaining posture to strengthen its position
with a new administration. But I would emphasize two other
factors.
First, Kim Jong Il did have a stroke. I learned from
several well-informed sources that he has a greatly reduced
work schedule. He has turned over day-to-day management of
domestic affairs to his brother-in-law, Chang Song Taek, and
foreign affairs and defense policy is now largely in the hands
of hawks in the National Defense Commission which, of course,
means a tougher nuclear policy.
A second factor of great importance, which is not mentioned
often but I think is very important, is the fundamental change
in the posture of South Korea toward the North under its new
President, Lee Myung Bak. President Lee has dishonored the
North/South Summit Declarations of June 2000 and October 2007.
He says he will ``review them but is not bound by them.'' This
was a disastrous historic mistake.
What Lee Myung Bak has done is to revive North Korean fears
that South Korea, the United States and Japan want regime
change and absorption because, of course, the summit
declarations envisaged co-existence and progress toward
confederation which is, of course, the opposite of a policy of
absorption.
So to make progress in the nuclear negotiations and avoid a
revival of military tensions in the Korean Peninsula it is
necessary for both the United States and South Korea to
reaffirm their categorical, unqualified support of the June
2000 and October 2007 summit declarations. I really think that
is the most important step that is necessary to get this whole
situation back on track. That means supporting co-existence and
eventual confederation and giving up hopes of promoting a
collapse and absorption of the North by the South, and, of
course, all kinds of things are in the air, whether they are
balloons being thrown into North Korea, all sorts of other
things that indicate there are forces who have not given up
those goals.
In conclusion, the bottom line in shaping North Korea
policy is that continued United States engagement with North
Korea looking to normalization will strengthen the pragmatists
in Pyongyang in their continuing struggle with military
hardliners, and we must remember this is not a monolithic
regime. You have two contending points of view and that is the
central fact of life that we face in North Korea.
If we fully normalize relations, we are more likely to get
leaders there who will give up their nuclear weapons than if we
do not engage. In the meantime, if the United States can deal
with major nuclear weapon states like China and Russia in East
Asia, can tolerate a nuclear armed North Korea that may or may
not actually have the nuclear weapons arsenal it says it has,
it may be bluffing. Just in case it has learned to miniaturize
nuclear warheads sufficiently to make long-range missiles, the
new administration, in my view, should couple a resumption of
denuclearization negotiations, Six-Party Talks plus direct
talks with a revival of the promising missile limitation
negotiations that the Clinton administration was about to
conclude when it left office.
I pushed the idea of missile negotiations hard several
times in my initial conversations in Pyongyang. At first Li
Gun, with whom I spent the most time, a total of 6 hours, did
not have instructions on this issue, it was quite clear. But
after overnight consultations he said, ``If we can have nuclear
negotiations, why not missile negotiations?''
So I think the short-term first step of the Obama
administration dealing with North Korea should be to try to put
the resumption of the Clinton period missile negotiations on
the table again, and at a broader level it should work with
South Korea to reaffirm support for the summit declarations of
2000 and 2007 because only through that reaffirmation can a
real policy of rolling back regime change be implemented.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Selig S. Harrison
follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Mr. Harrison. I have some
questions I want to ask. This is a new development since your
meeting with four of the top leaders there in Pyongyang last
month. I just wanted to ask you if you had a chance in sharing
this information with some of the leaders of South Korea.
Mr. Harrison. I am sorry. Have I shared what I found out in
North Korea?
Mr. Faleomavaega. Yes.
Mr. Harrison. What I found out in North Korea?
Mr. Faleomavaega. Yes.
Mr. Harrison. Yes. Yes, I have discussed with some Embassy
people what I found out.
Mr. Faleomavaega. We all know that for 6 years now that
negotiations have taken place in the Six-Party Talks, and in
that period of time it seems to me that was when North Korea
had the capability or now has in its possession four to six
nuclear weapons. I never could understand clearly when they
were tested. I believe it was in October 2006. Does North Korea
definitely have nuclear weapons capability?
Mr. Harrison. I do not think we know. They say they do.
North Korea's great concern is to deter us from what they fear
will be a United States preemptive attack, and they are
particularly concerned about a nuclear attack because, although
we talk about their nuclear capabilities, we have nuclear
weapons in areas near North Korea, even though we say we took
them out of South Korea.
So from the North Korean point of view, their big task is
to deter us from any military adventures in Korea. So their
military wants us to believe that they have nuclear weapons.
They are quite happy to have us think that they might even have
a uranium program, which we could discuss later, which I think
is a greatly exaggerated concern on our part. So the North
Korean armed forces want to keep us thinking that they have a
uranium program, whether they do or not, and I do not think
they do, a weapons program, and they certainly want us to think
that they have a plutonium nuclear weapons capability.
I think we have to base our policy on the presumption that
they do have some level of weapons development. We do not know
what operational military form they are in a position to use
nuclear weapons with, but we do know they have conducted a
test. Whether that test was simply not a very successful test
or was deliberately kept at a low level for various reasons in
connection with miniaturization for warheads, as some people
have said, we do not know.
So I certainly do not pretend to know. I think our policy
has to be based on worst case assumptions. We have all kinds of
capabilities in the vicinity of North Korea that would make
their use of nuclear weapons very self-defeating from their own
point of view because we are right there to retaliate in a big
way.
So I think the short answer to your question is we do not
know. U.S. intelligence accepts the idea that they have a
nuclear weapons capability. What that means, they do not
define, the intelligence community does not define. That is
why, of course, there is so much interest in a possible missile
test which, by the way, I do not see any clear evidence of. I
mean, this alarm about the missile test is not backed up by
very substantial intelligence yet although every day it gets a
little bit more convincing, but certainly the North Koreans in
the past have often tried to make us think they were going to
do something to get our attention, and to make sure that we do
not forget they are there.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Can you give us your sense of insight
about the time when Madeleine Albright was hosted by Kim Jong
Il, and during the Clinton administration? Do you think there
were positives that came out of that dialogue or that meeting
to the point where our Secretary of State was hosted by Kim
Jong Il in North Korea?
Mr. Harrison. Oh, yes. I think that there is no question
that the Clinton administration made tremendous progress with
respect to North Korea. As you know, there was no production of
fissile material from October--from June 1994 until the Bush
administration abrogated the 1994 agreed framework which opened
the way for North Korea to resume its plutonium production. It
gave the hawks in North Korea the opening they wanted. But as
far as the Clinton administration was concerned, they had made
steady progress, and it is a great tragedy, in my view, that
Mr. Clinton did not go to North Korea to finalize some of the
agreements that were then pending, including missile agreement.
Secretary Albright's visit had been very successful. Her
accounts of the visit were very encouraging in terms of her
reaction to Kim Jong Il as somebody you could talk to at a
rational level. Unfortunately, Mr. Clinton has said in his
memoirs that Mr. Arafat had given him the impression that he
was ready for some serious quick action on the Middle East, and
Mr. Clinton concluded that he should give that priority over a
North Korea trip. It was a very difficult time with the Florida
recount going on and the very last days of his administration
approaching.
So to answer your question, yes, the Albright visit was a
high point, and we can get back to that kind of a relationship
with North Korea. We have to start with the U.S. Government
arranging for the DPRK Symphony Orchestra to come to the U.S.
to reciprocate the visit of the New York Philharmonic to North
Korea. The North Koreans mentioned that. They said the next few
months may be difficult but let us do the people to people
stuff.
So, I think if we are serious about getting to
denuclearization we can, starting with small things like the
DPRK Symphony Orchestra's trip to the U.S., other people to
people exchanges, the resumption of direct talks, and the Six-
Party Talks. I think the North Koreans are very much in need of
normalized relations with the United States and Japan, and a
restoration of positive relations with South Korea for economic
reasons. But there are political factors, nationalism, pride,
and the change in the internal balance of forces there, which I
mentioned before, the advent of the hard-line group in the
armed forces to a position of greater influence. These are
holding things up, but I do believe we could get back to a very
positive track with North Korea if that is our objective and if
we are patient.
Mr. Faleomavaega. I have always wondered why we had to have
six countries negotiating with North Korea when my
understanding all North Korea wanted to do was to negotiate
with the United States only. Can you offer any reasons why we
had to have six countries negotiating with one country?
Now we have Japan demanding that this kidnapping issue be
part--which is totally unrelated to the nuclearization threat
or things that relates to the very issue why we are dealing
with Korean.
Mr. Harrison. I do not think the United States should let
the Six-Party process get in the way of progress developed
through bilateral negotiations which, as you said, is the main
ball game because North Korea fears United States preemptive
action, conventional or nuclear, and they feel that we are
still number one despite our many problems, and therefore they
need a relationship with us to legitimize their relationship
with others.
So I think that bilateral negotiations have to be the main
arena, but the Six-Party process is valuable if we do not allow
it to get in the way of our own objectives and Christopher Hill
did not, he went forward with the removal of North Korea from
the terrorist list despite Japan's objections.
So up until now, in the latter days of the Bush
administration when they got religion on this whole thing we
have been pursuing a sensible combination of bilateral and
multilateral negotiations. There are many advantages to keeping
the Six-Party process in train because many of the things we
have to do cost money, and the denuclearization process, to the
extent it can be made multilateral, can be sustained
financially, and without the Six-Party process this would be
much more difficult. So, I think we should keep the Six-Party
process going, recognizing that it is an auxiliary to what has
to be a basically positive U.S. bilateral approach.
Mr. Faleomavaega. You had mentioned that the summit
declarations that were made by President Lee's predecessors, I
think it was Kim Dae Jung and President Mo, you indicated in
your statement that there could have been a better relationship
created by the current administration, South Korea with that of
the Kim Jong Il's regime. Do you think it can be corrected in
any way?
Mr. Harrison. I think if the United States has a clear
sense of its own direction and makes very clear to South Korea
that it is deeply dissatisfied with the repudiation of the two
summit declarations, and would like to see South Korea return
to a policy that declares its support for those declarations, I
think things can get back on track. But you know, President Lee
was in a political campaign and it is understandable that he
wanted to differentiate his position from that of his
predecessor, so he talked about bargaining a little tougher
with North Korea. But he went far beyond that when he became
the President because it is not just a symbolic thing.
The basic issue in the Korean Peninsula is whether there is
going to be a peaceful process of confederation and eventual
long-term unification, or whether South Korea as the more
populous and stronger economy is going to absorb North Korea,
and the dominant feelings in South Korea were during the period
preceding Kim Dae Jung to work for absorption.
When Kim Young Sam became President and Kim Il Song died,
Kim Young Sam's policy was to send subversive intelligence
missions into North Korea to try to destabilize it, and the
judgment of the South Korean intelligence community was that
you could overthrow the North Korea regime because the great
leader was the cement that held everything together.
Kim Dae Jung represented a policy which was that that would
be too expensive, and he sold the business community and the
bureaucratic and the political and military leadership in South
Korea, he created a consensus that for South Korea it would
make much more sense not to do what had happened in Germany,
which would be much too expensive, but to go for a long-term
policy of coexistence, gradually bringing the two systems
closer together, doing everything feasible to avoid a collapse
in North Korea so that such a process could continue, and his
policy was pragmatic, realistic. It was not--the word
``sunshine'' makes it sound like a goody-goody soft policy. It
was a very pragmatic policy rooted essentially in the economic
realities of what absorption would cost South Korea.
So when Kim Dae Jung became the President he reversed the
policies of the Kim Young Sam administration. He replaced the
top people in the intelligence agencies, and he pursued a
policy of coexistence, and the North Koreans considered that.
They were very surprised that this had happened. They never
thought this would happen. They were committed to the idea that
South Korea was committed to absorbing them, and they were in a
permanent confrontational relationship.
Kim Dae Jung and Roo Moo Hyun strengthened the realists,
the pragmatists in North Korea. Lee Myung Bak in one stroke has
undermined everything that was accomplished, and I hope very
seriously that South Korean public opinion will increasingly
compel him to do more than make little speeches about how we
are going to talk to North Korea and be nice to North Korea.
The essence of the matter is repudiating the concept of
absorption and collapse through reaffirmation of the 2000 and
2007 summit declarations.
Mr. Faleomavaega. What was your reading when you, as you
mentioned earlier, in the middle of the Six-Party Talks, North
Korea invites the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to come and
have a concert. Does it sound like they are really trying to
reach out for something?
Oh, and by the way, I think they also want to send an
orchestra to the United States to reciprocate.
Mr. Harrison. Exactly, and they urged that that be done as
soon as possible. Well, you see, there are two camps in North
Korea. This was the main message in my testimony. There are
reasonable pragmatic elements in the leadership who believe
that without opening up to the United States--getting
normalization with the United States, North Korean's economic
survival will be in jeopardy.
There are more traditional types and hardliners who have
argued since all this began in 1991, when they first began
reaching out to us, the hardliners have said you guys are very
naive. The Americans, the Japanese and the Lee Myung Baks of
South Korea will never accept us. They want to overthrow us,
and they are just waiting for the opportunity.
And so now that Kim Jong Il has had a stroke that tension
within the leadership there is even stronger, but there is no
question that there is a very strong view in important sections
of the North Korean leadership that were encouraged and
strengthened during the Clinton period, and undermined during
the Bush period, that they must have an opening to the United
States. It is not just something they want. They need it to
make the regime stable, to get multilateral loans so they can
rebuild their infrastructure. This is their number one
priority.
But the armed forces say, Look, you are very naive. These
guys have nuclear weapons all over the Pacific very near us.
They have cruise missiles; they have all kinds of things. How
do we know what they might have hidden in South Korea? And so
the armed forces who are basically in the dominant position
there, they need Kim Jong Il because he is the link with Kim Il
Song, but the armed forces ever since the death of Kim Il Song
had been the most powerful force in North Korea, they dictate
the security policy of North Korea.
Kim Jong Il is a survivor. He wants to stay on top. He is
number one. He manipulates all the different forces and
factions in North Korea very, very cleverly, but he has to have
the consent of the armed forces for his policies and that
consent requires acceptance of their assessment that they must
have a deterrent, they must deter the United States, either
make us believe they have nuclear weapons or have them.
Mr. Faleomavaega. So I sense from your testimony, Mr.
Harrison, no matter what negotiations go on everything seems to
be based on Kim Jong Il's good health or lack of good health.
In terms of what is ever going to happen to the future of North
Korea, it is going to be based on whether Kim Jong Il is going
to live long enough.
Mr. Harrison. That is not my view at all.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Can you elaborate? You have mentioned
about his health as a factor, a basic factor.
Mr. Harrison. I certainly believe that Kim Jong Il's death
would not mean a collapse of North Korea, and if the United
States has been pursuing up until that time and continues to
pursue serious efforts to normalize relationships, that will
strengthen the pragmatic elements in North Korea who will
continue to be there even if Kim Jong Il should die.
North Korea's stability does not depend on Kim Jong Il.
They have the National Defense Commission, a group of generals
who would have to hang together or hang separately, as Ben
Franklin said, and so the incentive to stay together would be
very strong. It is possible that things will fragment,
instability will develop, but basically North Korea is not a
highly--just one edifice that is going to fall down. The nine
provinces of North Korea, the communist parties of each of
those provinces are very strong, and you have a great deal of
decentralization that has taken place in recent years.
So I did not mean to give the impression that the death of
Kim Jong Il, which by the way there is no reason to anticipate,
he recovered from his stroke, and he is functioning. He has met
the Chinese. He just does not have the day-to-day input and he
can be--his influence over the hardliners is not as great, but
I certainly do not think that scenarios of a collapse should
be--I think the scenarios of a collapse in North Korea are not
realistic.
We do not know what will happen over time. We do not know
how long if he were to die the leadership would stay together,
but there is a structure there now and there is a
decentralization that has already occurred, and I think we have
to think in terms of dealing with a North Korea that is going
to be there as long ahead as we can see.
To the extent that we support elements who want to promote
a collapse, and threaten the North Koreans by leaking stories
about military scenarios, about what we are going to do the
minute there is a slightest change in North Korea, we just feed
all the destructive hard-line forces in North Korea.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Harrison, I had about 200 other
questions I wanted to ask, but I want to welcome personally my
good friend, the senior ranking member of our subcommittee, the
gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Manzullo, if he has an opening
statement he would like to make, and also welcome our good
friend from California, member of the subcommittee, Mr.
Rohrabacher, and Mr. Ed Royce also from California.
Mr. Manzullo.
Mr. Manzullo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I would ask leave to
place my opening statement in the record.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Manzullo
follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Manzullo. And also an article by Mitchell Reiss and
Robert Gallucci from Foreign Affairs made a part of the record
also.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Without objection.
Mr. Manzullo. I am sorry I was late. I was over in the
Financial Services Committee trying to solve the world's
financial problems. Now we come over here.
Let me ask you a question. If you do not feel comfortable
answering it, please tell me and I will not hold it against
you, is that fair enough?
Mr. Harrison. Sure.
Mr. Manzullo. Some have said that Kim Jong Il had made
agreements and concessions with the Bush administration through
the tremendous efforts of Chris Hill working toward
denuclearization. Some have said that sensing President Obama's
popularity in the polls, and the fact that there would be a
complete change in the Presidency in parties and perhaps
philosophy, that Kim Jong Il pulled back from cooperating with
the Bush administration hoping to get ``a better deal'' with
the Obama administration. Again, this is not by way of
criticism of the Obama administration. Would you care to
comment on that observation?
Mr. Harrison. Well, I think that what happened in the last
days of the Christopher Hill negotiations was that the North
Koreans had made considerable concessions leading to the
disabling of the Yongbyon reactor, but we were pushing a line
of trying to get verification access that the North Koreans
felt had not been agreed upon, which is true, was not in the
scenario that had been agreed upon when these negotiations set
forth. Verification was to come in the third phase, and in my
conversations there they discussed the terms for getting to
verification.
So, I think that, sure, they certainly were all aware that
a new administration was about to begin, but I think that in
terms of the objective realities of those negotiations they did
not violate any undertakings by not agreeing to our
verification demands. They felt that those demands were not
required of them in terms of what had been agreed upon as to
the procedures, and that is true. They had not been.
So, I do not know whether I am answering you clearly or
not. I guess my answer would be that it was kind of a mix of
things. They were in no way obliged to go forward with
verification, and they did not.
Mr. Manzullo. My understanding is that verification, some
type of verification besides ``I won't do it again'' or ``trust
me'' was tied to North Korea being removed from the state
sponsors of terrorism list, and that in fact did occur. They
were removed from the list much to the voices of many people in
opposition in this country.
Mr. Harrison. I think that is a very perceptive question.
It gets to the heart of what was a very complicated situation
in the last phases of the Bush administration. Diplomacy,
diplomats like to keep ambiguity, and there was ambiguity on
both of the issues you are referring to. We did not commit, in
all the documents prior to this last phase of negotiations, as
to when we would take them off the terrorist list, and they did
not commit as to when they would get into verification. It was
not required until the third phase under the original scenario.
So what happened was Chris Hill; I think he made two
judgments. I think he did a very effective job with the brief
he had and the situation he faced in the bureaucracy in
Washington. I think he did an admirable job of moving things
along.
First, I think he concluded that the position that the
Clinton administration had adopted, taking them off the
terrorist list was justified in terms of their behavior since
their terrorism ended a long time ago, and he tried to use it
to get them to do something they were not committed to doing;
namely, verification before the third phase because he had
people in Washington telling him you have got to get them to
agree to verification because otherwise it is going to look
like we have just done a--we have been patsies.
Well, he did his best. He did something that I think was a
step forward in the whole process anyway. I mean, getting them
off the terrorist list has kept the game open because that has
given the pragmatists in Pyongyang something to hang on to.
They got something out of negotiating.
So, there is an argument in Pyongyang, they got politics
too, you know, there is an argument in Pyongyang for keeping
the process going because we took them off the terrorist list,
and at the same time the pragmatists did not win the argument
that some verification compromise should be made in return for
that, just what Hill wanted, of course, because Kim Jong Il had
had a stroke, and the day-to-day control of all this had
shifted during the months when this was going on. The stroke
was in August.
And one very interesting thing, you know, Hill was trying
to carry this thing forward and he got--he wanted to go to
Pyongyang in the critical stage of this, and the hardliners did
not want him to come, and the pragmatists worked out a
compromise which was, okay, he will not come as a state guest.
We will put him in the Potonggang Hotel which is one of the
hotels in Pyongyang, and he will not be a state guest but he
can stay in the hotel at his expense, U.S. Government's
expense, and come over to see us and talk to us. That was the
internal compromise in North Korea. So he went there and did
not get what he had hoped he would get.
I have given you a long answer but you have raised a very
tricky question and a very raw nerve in the whole process, and
I am not quite sure what Chris Hill would have said if he were
sitting here, but that is the way I perceive it.
Mr. Faleomavaega. The gentleman from California, Mr.
Rohrabacher.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. I am sorry I was a
little late in getting here. We did have votes on the floor,
and Mr. Harrison, I think that we have a different way of
looking at the world. From listening to your testimony today,
it seems you are telling us that peace and progress in the
world will come through accommodation with evil and tyrants and
gangsters and murders and all the other scum of this world that
prey upon decent people. Accommodations with them is going to
make it a better world?
Would not what you are proposing today would have left the
Soviet Union in power had we just simply decided that we are
going to have an accommodation rather than seeking change
within the Soviet system? Correct me if I am wrong, that is my
interpretation of what you are telling us.
Mr. Harrison. I did not say anything, Congressman
Rohrabacher, about a better world, and I do not like the North
Korean regime anymore than you do.
My testimony, if your voting schedule permitted you to hear
it----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes.
Mr. Harrison [continuing]. Was that we should be capping
their nuclear program rather than allowing it to grow beyond
the four or five that the Bush administration's unrealistic
policies had given us because we do not want North Korea to
have nuclear weapons, precisely because we know that it is a
regime that we have not made our peace with yet.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I guess what I was referring----
Mr. Harrison. So I do not think I said anything about
nirvana developing from negotiations----
Mr. Rohrabacher. I think I was referring to your statement
that in order to deal with them that they are going to have to
be assured that we do not want to change their government, that
we do not want to have a regime change in North Korea; that we
are not going to have progress as long as they have that fear.
I believe the United States Government should put
dictatorships in fear that they will be replaced by democratic
government. I think that is part of our obligation as free
people is to back up the people of North Korea and Burma and
other type of dictatorships. Instead we have--have we not
subsidized North Korea these last 10 years in terms of fuel and
food? Without that, perhaps they would have collapsed on their
own.
Mr. Harrison. North Korea has changed a lot in the last 10
years. I have been going there since 1972. And when I went
there in 1972, the first of my 11 visits, it was a very
monolithic dictatorship. Now you have a great deal of
marketization. You have people trying to make a buck. You have
access of information coming in from China and from South Korea
in spite of the efforts of the regime to keep it from
happening.
The argument between us is not over our objective. We share
the same values. I want to see this regime in North Korea
evolve into something gradually closer to our concept of the
way a society should operate, just as I would like to see
China, and China has moved in that direction. I mean, dealing
with China, I am sure you would have said the same thing back
in the seventies when some of us were talking about----
Mr. Rohrabacher. I hate to tell you this, but when I take a
look at the liberalization in China, I do say the same things
about China today, which is still the world's worst human
rights abuse.
Mr. Harrison. Well, the difference between China--you have
what I think, I mean, you talk in tough terms, sir, but I think
you are taking a very unrealistic view of things. You do not
change societies, countries of 1 billion people overnight. The
process is China has changed enormously since 1972 in the
direction that is desirable in terms of our values, and I think
North Korea will evolve in the direction of greater human
rights and more open economy, more and more congruent with that
of South Korea, more and more open to foreign influences to the
extent that we helped open it up and let the winds of freedom
blow in, and they are not going to blow in with a bunch of
balloons from South Korea, or with tough rhetoric. The winds of
freedom will get into North Korea to the extent that we engage
them and gradually open them up as we have been doing, as we
did very successfully during the Clinton administration. I do
not mean that on a partisan level.
So, I think the argument is kind of circular. We do want
the same end result, that I can assure you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, then we do have a disagreement.
Mr. Harrison. If your end result is----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
Mr. Harrison. If your end result has to be that everything
in North Korea collapses, and you have millions and millions of
refugees going into South Korea and Japan in order to have the
change----
Mr. Rohrabacher. One last question. Do you think it was a
good thing that the communist government in Germany, in East
Germany, collapsed? Was that a good thing? And why should we
not be trying to do for the people of Korea who deserve to be
unified, deserve to live their lives in a modicum of decency
and freedom, why should we not wish the same for them as we did
for the people of Germany?
Mr. Harrison. I think that the geopolitical factors that
were at play then and the way in which Germany changed are very
different from the ones in Korea.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay, thank you, sir.
Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the gentleman from California. He
and I also have some basic disagreements, but we always agree
to disagree. But my good friend from California and I visited
Pakistan at one time, and I had to hold a 45-revolver and he
had a shotgun for fear that somebody would come and kill us,
but Dana, thanks for your questions. But it is always good to
have this. This is why we have a democracy like this.
I might also note for the record that my good friend from
Illinois participated in celebrating the 200th anniversary of
the birth of one of our greatest Presidents today, and that is
good old Abe Lincoln. I wish he were here to solve some of the
problems we are faced with now.
Mr. Harrison, I know we have been really digging into a lot
of the questions, and if you were to put a sense of priority
about the nuclearization issue, where would you put North Korea
with that to Pakistan?
Mr. Harrison. Where would I put North Korea?
Mr. Faleomavaega. Here is the problem that I have.
Mr. Harrison. You mean in terms of the importance? Well, of
course, Pakistan--you mean of denuclearization?
Mr. Faleomavaega. Yes. Here is my problem. We are all going
after North Korea. We must denuclearize North Korea. How come
we are not doing the same for Pakistan?
Mr. Harrison. Well, of course, that is the point. I
referred to Russia and China because they were neighboring
countries that have nuclear weapons. I think it is difficult to
talk about this without making reference to the fact that the
United States is a nuclear weapons power, and we are not
prepared to give up our nuclear weapons, and that is a big
obstacle because all the hardliners in North Korea and in Iran
can say, Why are we called upon to give up our nuclear weapons
when they are not even willing to sit down with Russia and
start a serious problem of global arms reductions?
So, I think that your point is well taken. They say, the
North Koreans say, What is about us that is different from
Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel? Why are you so hung up
on us? And I think that all these years after the Cold War we
have to ask ourselves the question why are we so hung up on
North Korea.
I think it is a country to be pitied rather than feared. It
has got tremendous problems. For historical, cultural reasons,
and because of the fact that it was left at the end of the Cold
War as an orphan of the Cold War with no more subsidies from
Russia and China has to reach out to the other countries for
support, it does not pursue its relations with us in the way
that we would like it to do. But I think that it is a country
that we need not fear, and that we should be able to engage
with without being hung up on the nuclear issue that does not
impede our relations with many other countries.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Here is my problem, Mr. Harrison, and
maybe you could help me. When India exploded is first nuclear
bomb in 1974, the first thing that the prime minister of India
did was to go to the United Nations, pleaded the case and say,
Look, we can explode a bomb, too, but we are really serious
about nonproliferation. So it is hypocritical for some to say
that it is okay for some countries to have nuclear weapons in
their possession, but it is not okay for the rest of the world
to also have nuclear weapons. So India made its case pleading
especially to the five nuclear powers who currently still have
nuclear weapons, stating they are willing to dismantle or to do
anything that will ban altogether nuclear weapons from the face
of the earth. Since 1974, India has pleaded its case before the
United Nations: When are we ever going to be serious about
nonproliferation?
So it is any wonder that you have countries like Iran, for
fear that it might be destroyed by Israel, or North Korea for
fear it might be destroyed by the U.S. stationed in South
Korea, or any other country that wishes to defend itself from
annihilation raising the ante or the parity or the equity of
the whole idea of the argument? Are we not somewhat being
hypocritical, the industrialized countries who do have
possession of nuclear weapons telling the rest of the world you
cannot do it? Does this not minimize North Korea or Iran or any
other country for attempting to have nuclear weapons, and will
it be then totally justifiable for the rest of the world
community to say you cannot do this or we will destroy you?
What is wrong with making that argument?
Mr. Harrison. Well, you are quite right. I agree with what
you are saying. The word ``hypocrisy'' though is not the issue.
It is hypocritical, but the point is that it is very
unrealistic. If we are serious about trying to prevent a
nuclear armed North Korea, and a nuclear armed Iran, which I
think are very desirable objectives, we have to be realistic
about what motivates them, and what motivates them first and
foremost is their feeling that we are applying a double
standard, and this is the political reality, not a matter of
hypocrisy or anything else, it is a political reality.
I have had endless arguments with nonproliferation seminars
and people saying, oh, we could take all our nuclear weapons
away and they would still have theirs. I think that is very
unrealistic, and in fact serious arms control dialogue starting
with Russia, bringing in all the other nuclear powers, would
have a definite impact over time in North Korea and Iran, and
really the North Koreans always accompany everything they say
with speeches of this kind, and they end up by saying, well, we
have got to have a nuclear agreement in the Pacific area in
which you participate.
Now, I do not think they really mean that. I do not think
that they really expect us to give up our nuclear capabilities
in the Pacific, but they always say it, and there is no
question that political cover for the realists in North Korea
would be much greater if we were to listen to what you are
saying.
Mr. Faleomavaega. You would think then that the urgings and
the pleadings would be heard of someone like the President of
Kazakhstan who voluntarily dismantled the nuclear weapons that
the Soviet Union had left in his country--by the way after 500
detonations of nuclear weapons in Kazakhstan exposed some 1.5
million Kazaks to nuclear radioactivity--not a pleasant story
when I visited Kazakhstan to see what happened to this country.
The point I just wanted to make is do you think it really
is unrealistic to make an effort to dismantle nuclear weapons
altogether? You do not think that is realistic?
Mr. Harrison. Well, no. I think that many people, George
Schultz, Henry Kissinger, lots of people, Sam Nunn, have been
working lately to move toward a gradual process beginning with
United States/Russian reductions down to 1,000, and then moving
very slowly bringing in everybody else. You cannot expect the
existing nuclear powers to give up their nuclear capabilities
until they see that everybody is going to play ball, so it
obviously would be a very slow process.
But what is really unrealistic is to think that we can get
away with a double standard and have our own nuclear weapons
and not have others.
Mr. Faleomavaega. So we should continue the double standard
then because of the realities that we are faced with in this
world?
Mr. Harrison. No, I do not think we should continue the
double standard at all. I think we should have a global policy
of gradual nuclear arms reductions in which we make clear that
we are prepared to go to zero, and there is a very
significant----
Mr. Faleomavaega. Trust but verify.
Mr. Harrison. What?
Mr. Faleomavaega. Trust but verify.
Mr. Harrison. Yes, and bring together a nonproliferation
and nuclear disarmament. There is a very significant movement
now, it is called ``Global Zero,'' and you may know about it,
Mr. Bruce Blair of the World Security Institute is organizing
it. Many other people are very interested in global nuclear
disarmament. It is not a soft issue. It is a hard issue because
it is one of the most dangerous one in the world.
Mr. Faleomavaega. The gentleman from California, Mr. Royce.
Mr. Royce. Mr. Harrison, do you support Radio Free Asia and
their broadcasts designed to change the nature of North Korea?
What are your thoughts?
Mr. Harrison. You know, I have not--I am not aware. I do
not really know what the programming of Radio Free Asia is. I
am certainly not against a radio capability, but I would want
to know what they are saying, what they are doing with it,
which I do not know, before I would really----
Mr. Royce. It may be problematic because they are actually
telling people what is going on inside North Korea. For
example, the gulags, and I do not know your view of that.
Mr. Harrison. I am sorry?
Mr. Royce. I call them gulags but the camps in North Korea.
Mr. Harrison. Right. Well, as I was saying to Congressman
Rohrabacher, I think that getting rid of the gulags is why we
have to engage with North Korea. You are not going to get rid
of the gulags with balloons sent up from South Korea or
broadcasts over Radio Free Asia. You are going to get rid of
the gulags if you open up North Korea through a sustained
process of political and economic engagement, and arms control.
Mr. Royce. Yes, if you can get the North Koreans to open
up. If you cannot get the North Koreans to open up--and this is
reminiscent of a conversation I had with a former North Korean,
I think he was secretary general for international affairs for
the party of North Korea, Hwang Jang-yop. He presented the
argument, that in his time--and of course he served with both
Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, was sort of fashioning propaganda
for the regime--the strategy was to extract from the West many
concessions. Hopefully $1 billion a year. The concept behind
the attitude and the pose that they would strike on the world
stage was intended to get that aid that the regime could use to
prop itself up. In a sense the economic system that the regime
was wedded to was not conducive for the long-term continuance
of the state.
So the state found another methodology. Just to go through
some of the concepts--counterfeiting U.S. currency; basically
gun-running or selling missile parts. To take a present-day
example, putting up a nuclear reactor in the Middle East; drugs
as a means of getting illicit hard currency into the country;
and with all of this a concept of trying to extract in the
middle of any negotiations. I was going to ask you; you talk of
strengthening the ``pragmatists'' in North Korea. Let me ask
you about those winds of change that you saw in North Korea.
Could you explain those to me a little bit?
Mr. Harrison. I too have had conversation with Hwang Jang-
yop, about four or five of them, when he was in North Korea and
after he has come to South Korea. I think that what you have
said is not--I take exception to some of what you said but not
all. Certainly it is true that the regime wants to survive, and
therefore they want to get what they can get to survive from
us, from others. But at the same time in order to survive they
recognize that they need a lot of things. They need to change a
lot of the way they do things, so that is why we have had
economic reform, fits and starts, going forward, going back,
and so he is riding a tiger. Kim Jong Il is riding a tiger; the
leadership is riding a tiger. They want to keep the perks they
have and the generals are all involved in economic
conglomerates. One general controlling the gold exports, and
another the zinc exports, and no questions that the leadership
has--the elite has perks it wants to preserve.
But their dilemma is that they have to make changes to keep
the place going. When there is a famine they had to permit
private markets to develop, and they did, and the ones who
wanted to see things move in that direction used the famine to
let that process start.
Mr. Royce. Well, but let me a question here.
Mr. Harrison. You cannot be a little bit pregnant, so there
gradually is a marketization process. So anyway a complicated
situation.
Mr. Royce. But if we go back to Hwang Jang-yop, I think he
gave me the number of 1.9 million. That is the number of people
who starved in North Korea or he believed starved officially in
North Korea because they were not wedded to the idea that they
had to use it to feed that part of the population. As he
explained to me, the aid was to go to the party to keep it in
power. And one of the things that reminded me of it, just now I
thought of this.
Years ago I read a book by Jean-Francois Revel, How
Democracies Perish. He talked about Lenin's new economic policy
and Stalin's reforms, and how the real intention there was to
bring in capital from Europe, from the U.K., from the West. Not
with the intention of changing the regime, but with the
intention of getting their hands on the hard currency while
they built up the Red Army. And of course that is certainly--
ever since we discovered the situation in Syria, on the banks
of the Euphrates that there was sort of a carbon copy of the
plutonium reactor; in the middle of negotiations North Korea
was developing that offensive capability for another state. It
really turns a lot of our thoughts to what might be done in
terms of those proliferation networks, and especially with the
tentacles really that they have on the criminal activity, the
way in which they proliferate missiles, drugs and so forth,
that gives them the network to do things like what they did.
We do have initiatives to stop that kind of contraband,
that illicit activity on the high seas, which then constricts
the hard currency. It limits their ability to fund, according
to some defectors that I have talked to who worked in the
military operations, limits their ability to fund their missile
productions, their nuclear weapons product. Because when they
run out of the hard currency, I mean, when they seize--Banco
Delta Asia, when those accounts were seized, not just there but
when China shut down the accounts everything had to come a
grinding halt inside the country.
So I am just explaining the other part of this negotiation.
I think when President Lee Myung Bak tries to establish a two-
way street to negotiations and you say, Well, that is
``disastrous'' to try to do that. We have a great deal of
experience with the one-way street going back many, many years.
So I just raise these questions for your consideration.
I have been on this committee since 1993. And I remember
the framework agreement. I had high hopes. I have been to North
Korea. I have been to South Korea many times in hopes that
things would change. But the more I look at it the more I think
that what this former secretary general for internal affairs
told me might just be right.
Mr. Harrison. I greatly appreciate these very thoughtful
comments and I will certainly think about what you have said. I
also--you know, when I met--I had written about my
conversations with Hwang Jang-yop in my book, Korean End Game,
and one of his points he made to me was that he thinks Kim Jong
Il, he does not like Kim Jong Il because he found him a very
manipulative man, and he did not get along with him. But he did
say very clearly that Kim Jong Il recognizes the need for
reform of the system, economic system in particular, in North
Korea, but he is afraid to go too fast because he is sitting on
a political volcano and Kim Jong Il is afraid where this may
lead. So he is riding a tiger and he is trying to open the
system up without losing power, and I think that was a very
clear analysis by Hwang Jang-yop, and it is borne out by my
impressions.
You know, I have gone there now 11 times since 1972. You
have been there. Each time there are a lot of things you cannot
do, but there are some things you can do and you gradually
build up various kinds of contacts, and there is no question
the place has changed a great deal, and is changing. You know,
in the days of cell phones and all the technology that has
changed, and the fact that you have got a Chinese underground
smuggling.
Mr. Royce. Right.
Mr. Harrison. And you have----
Mr. Royce. I understand. I just did not see that change in
the countryside.
Mr. Harrison. All that stuff is coming in and the place is
changing.
Mr. Royce. But the change I saw was the amount of hard
currency they now have to develop their ICBM program, to
develop their nuclear program. And I notice that that has not
changed, and the assertion made by former defectors that that
has always been the plan leads us then with a certain
conundrum.
You say that you pushed the idea of renewed missile
negotiations hard with the North Koreans. As I recall the
negotiation, the North Koreans were asking for $1 billion
annually to curtail its missile proliferation. Do you believe
this is why we have seen missile activity from the North
Koreans?
Mr. Harrison. Well, they were trying to replace the--they
wanted to have the income they would lose from the missile
exports that you correctly call attention to, they wanted to
have that lost income covered in some way, and various people
like James Goodby, you may know of, the former State Department
top arms control negotiator, has worked with Senator Lugar and
others to try to develop at that time of these negotiations,
develop programs for constructively diverting----
Mr. Royce. Yes.
Mr. Harrison [continuing]. Their capabilities to civilian
uses, but you know, certainly what you said about hard
currency, I would have to see it in writing, but there is
certainly a lot to what you say, so I do not wish to suggest a
one-dimensional approach on my part.
Mr. Royce. I understand, and let me say that----
Mr. Harrison. Let me tell you the place has changed a great
deal and is changing a great deal. That is what we are working
for, and that is what we have to keep our eye on.
Mr. Royce. That is true, but the change that could be made
if, for example, the Kaesong Industrial Park. If the money from
Kaesong went not to the party, if it went instead to the
workers, that might indeed begin to walk down a road of change.
But instead we have this interesting arrangement very
reminiscent of what happened, you know, in Russia in the
thirties where the money is paid to the state. The money is
paid to the government. It goes right to the party's account,
and they then decide the pittance they will pay the workers.
So getting change in that kind of an arrangement is much
more problematic and that is why I think at times there has to
be pressure brought to bear when it becomes too much of a one-
way street. Hence the requirement, in my mind, that you
actually get verification. Your concept there we give them $1
billion, they do not proliferate. If we could verify that, it
would be one thing. But since they have violated all the prior
agreements, at least in my memory, they proliferate anyway in
the middle of negotiations, the upshot could be they have $1
billion for their new ICBM program, and we think we have got an
agreement that they are going to not proliferate anymore while
they do exactly what they did with respect to Syria. Hence my
concern on this perspective.
Mr. Harrison. There was no fissile material to make four to
five to six nuclear weapons at the end of the agreed framework
period. It worked.
Mr. Royce. Plutonium, on plutonium. The question is
enriched uranium, and you know the debate on that because----
Mr. Harrison. Are you changing the subject? That is the----
Mr. Royce. No, that is not changing the subject. That is
ignoring a very important part of this subject which might be
this: Maybe they are willing to give up the old reactor that is
in plain view because we have found so much traces of enriched
uranium on documents that they have actually got an enriched
uranium program going simultaneously. Why else, why else would
the Pakistani nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, be in consultation,
be sending centrifuges to North Korea unless the concept was
let us develop the kind of uranium enrichment program that will
give us an alternative weapon besides the plutonium weapon.
That is really what concerns us, is the fact that we do not
have this ability to verify and they have a dual-track program
apparently. Hence they might be willing to negotiate this for
$1 billion, and put this into a program where they could
develop an arsenal, miniaturize it, do the ICBMs, and suddenly
we have compounded the problem.
Mr. Harrison. If you ever have a chance to read it, I hope
you will read the piece I did in Foreign Affairs in early 2005,
I think everything I said in that piece about the exaggerated
intelligence, about this uranium program has been fully
vindicated, and I do not accept--I do not know how much time
the chairman wants to give me and to take on this issue, but
just to be very brief I do think that the----
Mr. Faleomavaega. We have two more panels coming up, Mr.
Harrison.
Mr. Harrison. I know that. I am well known to believe that
the assumption of any kind of weapons grade uranium program is
not at all substantiated, and was basically used as an excuse
to abrogate the agreed framework in December 2002 which has had
disastrous consequences in allowing them to restart their
plutonium program.
Mr. Royce. Well, in 2007, the intelligence community told
the Senate Armed Services Committee that there was ``mid-
confidence level'' that North Korea still had an active HEU
program. This provided ammunition for critics, I think, of the
Bush administration, feeding a narrative that the Bush
administration hyped the intelligence. But in the last days of
the administration, National Security Advisor Steve Hadley
revived the allegations on HEU. Now, this is our intelligence
community. And they report ``increasing concerns that North
Korea has an ongoing covert uranium enrichment program.''
I did a lot of work on A.Q. Khan, and the part--you know,
because I happened to chair that International Terrorism and
Nonproliferation Committee. The aspect of Khan's engagement
with North Korea, the trips up there by the Pakistanis and the
number of trips, the exchange of information for missiles, the
centrifuges. All of this convinces me at least that, yes,
indeed they were in the process of trying to develop this. I
must say what benefit of the doubt I was willing to give the
North Koreans kind of evaporated at the point when the Syrian
reactor turned out to be something they were doing under the
nose of the international community. It seems to really verify
the fact that dishonesty is part of the negotiation strategy on
that side of the table. That is my perspective.
Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the gentlemen from California for
his questions, and Mr. Harrison, I want to thank you. Dana, did
you have anymore questions? Okay.
Thank you again for coming to testify before the
subcommittee, and we look forward continuing our dialogue and
see where we need to go from there. Thank you again, Mr.
Harrison.
I am going to be a little flexible this afternoon by rather
than dividing this into two panels, let us have all our next
witnesses up here on the witness table. Ambassador Pritchard,
Dr. Victor Cha, Mr. Bruce Klingner, Mr. Scott Snyder and Mr.
Peter Beck, are all our witnesses here. We may be short of
microphones here. Can we get another microphone there? We only
have four microphones. Can we get another microphone?
All right, we certainly want to welcome our distinguished
witnesses this afternoon, and thank you so much for taking your
time from your busy schedules to come and testify before the
subcommittee.
Ambassador Pritchard is the President of the Korea Economic
Institute here in Washington, DC, and also he was the visiting
fellow of the Brookings Institution. Ambassador Pritchard
served as Ambassador and Special Envoy for negotiations with
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the United
States, representative to the Korean Peninsula Energy
Development Organization during the administration of George W.
Bush.
Previously he served also as special assistant to the
President for the National Security Affairs and Senior Director
of the Asian Affairs under President Clinton. He also has
accompanied Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to North
Korea for the meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Ambassador Pritchard holds a degree from Mercer University
in Georgia and also a master's in International Studies from
the University of Hawaii. Well, okay. And also a retired
colonel in the U.S. Army, 28 years of service.
Also with us is Dr. Victor Cha. Dr. Victor Cha received his
doctorate from Columbia University as well as his bachelor;
received his master's from Oxford University. I assume he has a
British accent by now. He is the director of Asian Studies and
holds the D.S. Song-Korea Foundation chair in the Department of
Government and School of Foreign Service here at Georgetown
University. He left the White House in May 2007 and served
since 2004 as Director of Asian Affairs at the National
Security Council, and was also responsible primarily for the
Pacific region as well as Pacific Island nations.
Professor Cha has also received an award for his latest
work or book that he authored. It is called Alignment Despite
Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle.
Professor Cha is a former John M. Olin National Security Fellow
at Harvard University, two-time Fulbright Scholar, and Hoover
National Fellow at Stanford University.
Mr. Bruce Klingner joined the Heritage Foundation in 2007
when the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons
programs were re-energized by the Beijing Agreement.
Mr. Klingner served for 20 years as a U.S. Intelligence
Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency--did I say that
correctly? And the Defense Intelligence Agency. In 1994, he was
the selected as the Chief of the Korean Branch where he
provided analytical reports on military developments during the
nuclear crisis with North Korea.
There is a whole bunch of stuff here. Graduate of
Middlebury College in Vermont; active in the Korean martial
arts. Sure hate to meet you in the dark alleys--attained a
black belt status in tae kwon do and hapkido--wow. How about
hikido?
Mr. Peter Beck, Mr. Peter Beck teaches at American
University here in Washington, DC and also Ewha University in
Seoul, Korea, puts out a monthly column for Weekly Chosun and
The Korean Herald. Previously, he was the executive director of
the U.S. Committee on Human Rights in North Korea; has written
over 100 academic and short articles in four languages. I
assume English, of course, Korean, and it has got to be Chinese
as well, graduate of the University of California at Berkeley,
and UC San Diego's Graduate School of International Relations.
Mr. Scott Snyder, welcome, is the Director of the newly-
established Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at The Asia
Foundation, and a Senior Associate at The Asia Foundation and
Pacific Forum CSIS. He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow at the
Korean Studies and Director of the Independent Task Force on
Policy Towards the Korean Peninsula at the Council on Foreign
Relations. He is based here in Washington, DC; lived in Seoul,
Korea, as Korea Representative of The Asia Foundation, all
kinds of goodies you have got here, Mr. Snyder.
Received his undergraduate studies from Rice University, a
master's in regional studies at Harvard, and a recipient of the
Pantech Visiting Fellow at Stanford University.
Gentlemen, welcome. After saying all of that, we will be
very well informed by your testimonies this afternoon.
Gentlemen, I know you have been sitting there for quite awhile.
Forgive us for having to ask so many questions of Mr. Harrison,
but I am sure you will correct some of the observations and
some of the comments that he had made earlier.
I think Ambassador Pritchard has a plane to catch. Who else
has a plane to catch? Great. Ambassador Pritchard, why don't we
not deg.start off with you. As I said earlier,
without objections all your statements will be made part of the
record, fully.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHARLES L. PRITCHARD, PRESIDENT,
KOREA ECONOMIC INSTITUTE (FORMER AMBASSADOR AND SPECIAL ENVOY
FOR NEGOTIATIONS WITH NORTH KOREA)
Mr. Pritchard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to
discuss with your subcommittee an important foreign policy
issue facing our Nation and our new administration. I commend
the committee for holding this hearing and asking the witnesses
today to address the issue of smart power because that is
exactly what is required of the administration in formulating
its policy toward North Korea. With your permission and to stay
within the time allotted, I will present a summary of my
prepared statement.
North Korea presents a special challenge, one that has
evolved and has become more dangerous over the past several
years. Secretary Clinton and President Obama have indicated
that they continue to value the Six-Party process and will
enhance cooperation and coordination with our allies, South
Korea and Japan. That is a good start.
But let me suggest while the Six-Party process is focused
on capping future plutonium production, it has failed to
adequately address proliferation concerns. In World At Risk:
The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD
Proliferation and Terrorism, the commission concluded that
unless the world community acts decisively and with great
urgency it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass
destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the
world by the end of 2013.
Proliferation should be one of our most important concerns.
Unfortunately, the Six-Party process, unless modified to
accommodate all our WMD concerns, has put us on a slow
incremental path that ultimately does not guarantee the
denuclearization of North Korea. Phase III, as you know, is the
dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear facilities at Pyongyang.
While dismantlement may be part of the ultimate and
irreversible solution, it does not really get us any closer to
our goal of actual denuclearization and it does not
substantially improve the reality that disablement under Phase
II has already capped North Korea's plutonium production
capability.
Do we really want North Korea to continue thinking of
itself as a nuclear weapon state as we negotiate for the
dismantlement of the facilities that are already shutdown and
disabled? It will make the final decision by North Korea to
give up its fissile material and weapons that much harder. I
see no substantive reason to enter into a Phase III negotiation
over dismantlement. It will most likely turn out to be an
unnecessary waste of several years of negotiations. Both sides
should move directly to what we both actually want--removal of
fissile material and nuclear weapons from the DPRK in exchange
for normalization.
Now, that may not sound very palatable at first offering,
but North Korea has been clear with United States negotiators
and directly with me last April, Pyongyang does not intend to
discuss let alone give up its nuclear weapons in Phase III. It
intends to hold onto them as long as possible. It is in our
interest to move boldly toward the end game as quickly as
possible by agreeing to move directly to discussions over
normalization. Issues that previously were put off for the sake
of momentum must now be captured as part of the normalization
agenda.
That means we should have no hesitancy in discussing our
concerns about Pyongyang's human rights shortcomings.
Nonproliferation treaty exceptions for Pyongyang should cease,
and we should insist on a normal and active role for IAEA
inspectors.
What I am suggesting is a more robust bilateral discussion
between Washington and Pyongyang while remaining in the overall
framework of the Six-Party process. This places a leadership
responsibility on the United States that I believe is best
accomplished by the appointment of a senior envoy who would
navigate the complexities and interests of the many agencies
that contribute to the development of a cohesive United States
policy toward North Korea.
Because there is actual value in the Six-Party process, the
envoy would have the concurrent requirement to assist the
Secretary of State in coordinating the common goals and
objectives of the other members of the Six-Party process,
particularly those of Seoul and Tokyo.
The North Korea problem requires we understand our allies'
concerns and be able to create a synergistic effect to maximize
the probability for success. The promise of the Six-Party
process has not yet been fulfilled. We cannot hope to succeed
in our goal of denuclearization of North Korea without the full
support of our close allies. An important challenge the United
States will face in the coming months will be to assist and,
where necessary, to insist that dialogue and relations between
North and South Korea improve as dialogue and relations between
the United States and North Korea improve. It is not productive
nor reasonable for inter-Korean relations to deteriorate as
United States-North Korea relations improve.
The same is true for Japan-North Korea relations. Tokyo is
looking carefully at the new U.S. administration and will want
to know that we continue to value Japan's participation in the
Six-Party process. Specifically, Tokyo needs reassurance that
the Obama administration fully understands the emotional,
political sensitivity of the abduction issue in the light of
the removal of North Korea from the list of state sponsors of
terrorism last October.
One of the casualties of focusing exclusively on capping of
North Korea's plutonium program has been the absence of a
discussion about Pyongyang's maturing missile program. That has
not taken place since November 2000. Cessation of Pyongyang's
indigenous missile development along with their assistance to
other countries must be part of our overall policy approach to
North Korea.
The challenges are great, the outcome is uncertain, but the
requirement that we use smart power to the fullest is
unquestioned. Failure to denuclearization North Korea is not an
option.
I look forward to your questions, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pritchard
follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Ambassador. Professor Cha.
STATEMENT OF VICTOR CHA, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DIRECTOR
OF ASIAN STUDIES AND D.S. SONG-KOREA, FOUNDATION CHAIR IN ASIAN
STUDIES AND GOVERNMENT, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Mr. Cha. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today. I wanted to offer my
personal thoughts on North Korea based on my experience working
this issue for the White House on the National Security
Council, and also as our deputy head of delegation to the Six-
Party Talks, and also based on my research on the country as an
author and academic. I will focus my remarks on next steps
where we go with North Korea in Six-Party Talks and I will
present a summary of my prepared statement to you.
I think the United States would be best served by following
the basic outlines of the policy that characterized the second
term of the Bush administration with some notable exceptions.
President Obama will inherit a Six-Party process that has
effectively mobilized key regional players, most importantly,
China, and has achieved a working disablement of the main
nuclear facility at Yongbyon.
President Obama's very capable Asian team will need to
implement the verification protocol for the North Nuclear
Declaration as early as possible to ensure that plutonium
facilities at Yongbyon are constantly monitored and degraded.
The administration should also consider widening the aperture
to achieve disablement of other elements of the North's nuclear
program at Yongbyon even as it negotiates a tough position on
verification.
The third phase or dismantlement negotiation will be even
more difficult than the prior two negotiated agreements, the
September 2005 agreement and the February 2007 agreement. A key
priority will be to address the ambiguities left by the earlier
agreements on North Korea's proliferation activities and its
uranium-based nuclear activities.
In addition to pursuing this Six-Party track, I believe the
Obama administration needs to consider a paradigm shift of
sorts in its overall policy toward the DPRK. This consists of
three components.
First, it must find a way to integrate a discussion on
North Korea's ballistic missile program in the Six-Party
process. Press reports show North Korea is plowing full steam
ahead with its missile activities even as it negotiates a
disablement of its nuclear program. This might be added as
another working group in the Six-Party process in addition to
the five that already exists. It is clear that Pyongyang will
not give up its missiles for free so the United States must tie
the missile negotiations to incentives in the normalization and
energy working group processes.
Second, the administration needs to consider a separate
trilateral dialogue among the United States, South Korea and
China. The North Korean leader's time in office is limited
given his rather serious health problems. While the United
States and South Korea have restarted discussions on how to
respond to a sudden collapse scenario north of the 38th
parallel, they also need to begin a quiet discussion with
China. The purpose of such a discussion would be to create some
transparency about the relative priorities and likely first
actions by the three parties in response to signs of political
instability in the North.
Presumably we would be interested in securing nuclear
weapons and materials. South Korea would be interested in
restoring domestic stability. China would be interested in
securing its borders against the massive influx of refugees.
Coordination in advance helps to minimize misperceptions and
miscalculation in a crisis.
Third, the Obama administration should not make a
presidential meeting or anything of that nature with the North
Koreans, the banner of its policy as it did during the
campaign. This is not in the interest of the United States or
South Korea. Some may argue that an early meeting by the
President or Vice President might be a good way to accelerate
the negotiation process. In my own opinion, nothing could be
further from the truth. The President of the United States is
not a negotiator nor should he be treated as one.
Only after the denuclearization process is near completion
should a presidential meeting even be considered. Hardliners in
Pyongyang will view the new Obama Presidency as weak since
electoral victories do not resonate with dictators. They will
also see it as inexperienced and completely overwhelmed by two
wars and a financial crisis. To offer a high-level meeting
amidst this very difficult situation would not only look
amateurish, it would confirm the hardliners' views of American
weakness and inexperience.
There is no denying, however, that if we want to move the
denuclearization process more quickly we do need to reach
higher into the Kim Jong leadership beyond the foreign ministry
officials that they have been trotting out for the last 16
years.
In the course of the Six-Party Talks, when the North Korea
were slow to make decisions, we often challenged them to bring
people from the Dear Leader's Office or from their National
Defense Commission to their delegation in Beijing to make
quicker decision, and we pointed to our own interagency team of
State, the White House and the Pentagon. This is why President
Obama needs to move forward with the appointment of a senior
envoy for Six-Party Talks. The Congress has long sought a
senior coordinator on North Korea policy from the Bush
administration. Such an appointment, whether from the White
House or State Department, would compel Pyongyang to bring
forth members of its National Defense Commission and other key
agencies to negotiate in earnest for a final solution,
otherwise the same foreign ministry officials from Pyongyang
will show up at Six-Party Talks to stall and to stonewall the
negotiations.
Sending the new American President to North Korea is not
the answer, but challenging North Korea to bring people to the
Six-Party Talks who can make real decision is.
In sum, the new administration should not be wide-eyed
optimists about North Korea. Instead, they should design a
strategy that systematically tests North Korea but also
demonstrates U.S. political commitment to the negotiation
process. If Pyongyang is serious, then the Six-Party partners
can press the negotiation harder, trying to move to the final
phase of nuclear dismantlement. However, if Pyongyang balks,
then it will be clear to all where the blame sits for the
breakdown of the agreement. This, in turn, would make it easier
to build or lead a multilateral coalition for a tougher course
of action as needed.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cha
follows:]
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Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you Professor Cha. Mr. Klingner.
STATEMENT OF MR. BRUCE KLINGNER, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW,
NORTHEAST ASIA, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Mr. Klingner. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee for asking me to
testify today. It is indeed a great honor to appear before you.
With your permission, I will summarize some of the key points
from my prepared statement in my oral remarks.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Please proceed.
Mr. Klingner. Thank you, sir.
The views expressed in this testimony are my own and should
not be construed as representing any official position of The
Heritage Foundation.
In the dawn of a new year and a new U.S. administration, we
can again be hopeful of a diplomatic solution to the North
Korean nuclear problem, but of all the foreign policy
challenges that Barack Obama inherited, North Korea may prove
to be the most intractable. Neither the confrontational
approach of the first 6 years of the Bush administration nor
the largely unconditional engagement strategy of the final 2
Bush years achieved success.
But a U.S. policy that integrates a comprehensive
diplomatic approach with accompanying pressure may prove
successful, particularly if closely coordinated with our
allies--South Korea and Japan. Still, prudence demands that we
remember the broken promises and shattered dreams that litter
the Korean landscape. North Korea has already sent an early
shot across the Obama administration's bow by raising
outrageous new demands for fulfilling its previously agreed
upon denuclearization commitments.
And Pyongyang's vitriolic attacks, military threats, and
near severing of relations when South Korea and Japan merely
requested conditionality and reciprocity bodes ill for those of
us hoping North Korea will accept future requirements during
the Six-Party Talks. Pyongyang is clearly signaling that it
will not adopt a more accommodating stance despite the change
in U.S. administrations.
Although there will be a perception of a major shift in
U.S. policy, President Obama will largely maintain the policy
of the final 2 years of the Bush administration. Although
President Obama may be more willing to engage in senior-level
diplomatic engagement, it is questionable whether such tactical
changes will achieve verifiable North Korean denuclearization.
After all, during the past 2 years the Bush administration
engaged in the kind of direct bilateral diplomacy with
Pyongyang that President Obama now advocates. Yet there has
been continued North Korea intransigence, noncompliance and
brinkmanship.
And turning to verification, creating a sufficiently
rigorous verification system is critically important as the
best defense against North Korea violating yet another
international nuclear agreement. U.S. national technical means,
including imagery satellites, are useful, but they are no
substitute for on-site inspections. It is now clear that the
Bush administration, in return for maintaining a sense of
progress, was willing to abandon key verification requirements
such as short-notice challenge inspections of non-declared
facilities. The United States simply cannot allow North Korea
to play a nationwide nuclear version of Whack-A-Mole or Three
Card Monty.
Washington's premature removal of North Korea from the
terrorist list angered key allies Japan and South Korea, who
now see the United States as unwilling to consider their
security concerns. In particular, Tokyo felt betrayed by
President Bush breaking his personal pledge that the United
States would keep North Korea on the terrorist list until
progress was achieved on the abduction issue. Tokyo has now
lost considerable leverage in its attempts to get North Korea
to live up to its commitment to reopen the kidnapping
investigations, and of course the abduction issue is already
part of the Six-Party Talks as one of the working groups.
The verification agreement also undermined South Korean
President Lee Myung Bak's attempts to impose conditionality,
reciprocity, and transparency on Seoul's previously
unrestricted economic largess to North Korea.
As President Obama attempts the difficult task of making
real progress in North Korean denuclearization, he should look
to history for guidance, and history clearly advises that he
should avoid several current recommendations. Specifically, he
should not double down on a losing hand. The limited action-
for-action strategy of the Six-Party Talks has failed, so some
advocate broadening the scope of benefits to offer North Korea
on an even larger deal.
Secondly, provide concessions to strengthen so-called North
Korean engagers. North Korea intransigence has been depicted as
a short-term manifestation of a hard-line faction, with Kim
Jong Il having fallen under the influence of North Korean
neoconservatives. Based on my service in the United States
intelligence community, I believe that that concept has been
overplayed and in actuality is largely a North Korean
negotiating tactic.
Third, use creative ambiguity to maintain ``progress'' in
negotiations. U.S. negotiators have repeatedly acquiesced to
North Korean demands for vague text rather than clearly
delineating requirements and timelines.
And fourth, sacrifice U.S. allies on the alter of
denuclearization.
Now, what should be done? President Obama and Congress
should emphasize that the United States seeks to use diplomacy
to achieve North Korean denuclearization, but not at the cost
of abandoned principles or dangerously insufficient compliance.
Specifically, the U.S. should affirm the U.S. objective is the
complete and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea and
unequivocally state that Washington will not accept North Korea
as a nuclear weapon state, as Secretary Clinton did during her
confirmation testimony.
Two, use all the instruments of national power. It has a
new label now of ``smart power,'' but it is a concept that has
been around before and previously was know as using all the
instruments of national power. The U.S. military even had an
acronym of DIME, D-I-M-E, diplomatic, informational, military,
and economic, in the sense of a coordinated integrated
strategy. The United States and its allies should also
simultaneously use outside pressure to influence North Korea's
negotiating behavior.
Third, insist that North Korea fulfill its existing
requirements.
Fourth, realizing that talking is not progress. The U.S.
should resolve issues rather than repeatedly lowering the bar
simply to maintain the negotiating process.
Fifth, insist on a rigorous and intrusive verification
mechanism.
Six, define red lines and their consequences. The Bush
administration's failure to impose costs on North Korea for
proliferating nuclear technology to Syria undermined U.S.
credibility and sent a dangerous signal to other potential
proliferators.
And seven, establish deadlines with repercussions for
failing to meet them. North Korea must not be allowed to drag
out the Six-Party Talks indefinitely in order to achieve de
facto international acceptance as a nuclear weapon state.
In conclusion, it is not a question of whether the United
States should engage North Korea, rather it is a matter of how
to do so. Engagement is a means rather than an ends, and it is
also important to control the ways in which it is applied.
While the United States should continue to strive for
diplomatic solution to the North Korea nuclear problem, the
Obama administration should also accept that there may not be a
magical combination of inducements that ensures North Korea
abandons its nuclear weapons.
Therefore, the United States should quietly even now begin
contingency planning, in conjunction with our Asian allies, in
the event of a failure of the Six-Party Talks to achieve full
North Korean denuclearization.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I
look forward to your questions, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Klingner
follows:]
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Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Mr. Klingner. Mr. Snyder.
STATEMENT OF MR. SCOTT SNYDER, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS, THE ASIA FOUNDATION
Mr. Snyder. I also want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to testify before this subcommittee, and my remarks
will also be based on my testimony that I have submitted.
I think the North Korean challenge has in fact grown more
difficult with the transition to a new administration. The
North Koreans have sought to make permanent a new status quo in
which North Korean's nuclear weapon status is recognized by the
international community while leading analysts are increasingly
skeptical that North Korea can be convinced to give up its
nuclear weapons. This is a dangerous dynamic which must be
corrected by a policy that shows continuing efforts to address
denuclearization in the context of a comprehensive approach to
North Korea, not simply by pursuing the denuclearization only
approach that has characterized the administration's early
statements on the North Korea issue.
A comprehensive approach, I would agree with Mr. Pritchard,
will require effective coordination across the government to
lead interagency coordination, promote coordination with allies
and other stakeholders, and negotiate with North Korean
counterparts, and so we do need a point person, I think, for
the Obama administration who has the capacity to carry-out
these functions following a similar approach to that which the
administration is using in the Middle East and in Afghanistan
and Pakistan.
Past administrations have attempted over the course of the
past two decades to present two paths to North Korea: To
dramatize the need for the North Korea to make a strategic
choice with the idea that either rewards will be forthcoming if
North Korea chooses the right road or that isolation and
sanctions will be imposed if North Korea chooses the wrong
road.
But this model has failed to mobilize sufficient will on
the part of the United States and other parties to backup the
assertion that North Korea has reached a decision point and has
place the onus on North Korea to decide while allowing North
Korea to harbor false hope that such a choice might be deferred
or avoided.
At this stage I think a better approach would be to seek
affirmation from other members of the Six-Party Talks that the
principles embodied in the Six-Party Joint Statement of
September 2005 now represent the only viable outcome acceptable
to all the parties in the region, and that there will be only
one road available by which to move toward that objective, via
the consensus that is embodied in the Six-Party framework.
I think that this is the path that Secretary Clinton
rightly affirmed in testimony at her confirmation hearing, a
path that will employ bilateral talks in tandem with the Six-
Party process. Via these channels North Korea should no longer
be presented with an opportunity to make a strategic choice but
rather with a situation in which the strategic choice is
recognized as a fait accompli, and the common task is to
implement the consensus that all the parties have already
agreed upon.
Simultaneously the United States should be in coordination
with allies and partners in Northeast Asia to foreclose any
perceived North Korean alternative paths that might allow
Pyongyang to sidestep negotiations or to arrive at the
conclusion that there is a viable path for the North to survive
as a nuclear weapon state.
These coordination measures will be necessary to underscore
to Pyongyang that there is no only one path available that will
assure North Korea's viability in the long run.
As long as North Korea's public commitments to the
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as outlined in the
Six-Party Joint Statement remains in place the administration
should affirm its commitments to achieving normal diplomatic
relations with a denuclearized North Korea in accordance with
the principles embodied in the joint statement.
In my statement I also discuss several other elements of
the smart power approach to North Korea. One, which is
emphasized in this one-road approach, is related to aligning
U.S. alliances and partnerships, but there are three other
elements that I would like to also highlight.
One is our strategy related to international development as
focus on North Korea has prioritized the provision of
humanitarian aid but it has not allowed the opportunity to
promote development assistance, and I think the net result of
that approach has been anything but smart. It has promoted
North Korean dependency on international welfare rather than
encouraging them to learn how to work for themselves, and so I
think we need to find ways of tying certain forms of
development assistance to the denuclearization process as a way
to open up North Korea.
Secondly, I think in the area of public diplomacy we should
be much more actively promoting exchanges and training with
North Koreans without regards to what is happening in the
negotiation process. It is important to provide opportunities
for the North Korean technical specialists to come and
experience other systems. I think that they will take back that
experience and that approach is necessary in order for North
Korea to be able to build the capacity to support change if
indeed the regime comes to a point where it decides it would
like to move in the direction of change.
Then lastly, I want to highlight the promotion of North
Korea's economic integration into Northeast Asia and I think
that one way of doing that is for the DPRK and the World Bank
to begin discussions about the requirements for membership in
the World Bank. Those requirements require a certain level of
conditionality which is going to be very difficult for the
North Koreans to accept. It will take time for that process to
play itself out, but that discussion in and of itself, I think,
can be an important lever for encouraging North Korean reform.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Snyder
follows:]
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Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Mr. Snyder. Mr. Beck.
STATEMENT OF MR. PETER BECK, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, AMERICAN
UNIVERSITY
Mr. Beck. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate this
opportunity to get to participate in this effort to try and
find a more effective strategy for dealing with North Korea.
I would like to start by presenting you with seven
propositions that I think help define where we currently stand
with North Korea and constrain our policy options. The first
is--I am personally agnostic when it comes to whether the North
is really prepared to completely give up its nuclear programs,
materials and weapons. I believe anyone who tells you with
conviction what the North is or is not prepared to do is
telling you more about their own world view than about
Pyongyang's intentions.
As time goes by and as North Korea's nuclear arsenal grows,
I grow increasingly pessimistic, but that does not mean that we
should stop trying to engage the North, alas any nuclear deal
with the North would indeed to be to borrow from Samuel
Johnson's adage about remarriage, the triumph of hope over
experience.
Second, one thing I am reasonably certain of is that, and
there are a few things that we can be certain of when it comes
to the North, is that they will undertake one or more
provocative acts in the coming weeks and months. The rumor de
jour is a long-range missile launch. A second nuclear test
cannot be ruled out either. Given how poorly the previous
missile and nuclear test went it is difficult to say which
system in the North is more desperate to test.
As a Californian, I do not stay up at night worrying about
North Korean bombs raining down on my family and friends. A
military skirmish with the South cannot be ruled out but I
think it is less likely if for no other reason than it would
highlight and give us further confirmation of the North's
military inadequacies.
Third, I think we must assume that Kim Jong Il has made a
full recovery from his probable health problems last summer.
Since he will soon be 67 or 68, depending on who you ask, and
he is still not the picture of perfect health, we must be
prepared for a serious disruption in any negotiations that we
undertake, particularly given the underwhelming nature of his
three sons and not, coincidentally, the lack of a clear
succession plan. As long as he is reasonably healthy, I find
assertions about a divide between hardliners and softliners in
the North to be highly speculative at best, and at worst,
disingenuous.
The notion of factions in a one-man totalitarian system is
almost absurd. This is not to say that the military has not
played a more prominent role of late, but I think this is most
likely by design. The North is probably playing a game of good
cop/bad cop.
Fourth, having made several visits over the past 5 years to
the China/North Korea border where I have spoken with dozens of
Chinese and North Koreans, the North is not on the precipitous
of famine. There are two reasons for this. The North has had a
decent harvest this past year, and China is covering much of
the shortfall along with the world food program. That is not to
say that there is sufficient food or that there are not pockets
of hunger but wide-scale famine is not in the cards unless
Mother Nature strikes hard.
That means that the modest humanitarian assistance that the
United States is currently providing, 500,000 metric tons of
grain, is unlikely to provide much in the way of leverage over
the North. The U.S. and the rest of the world have sought to
maintain the Ronald Reagan principle of a hungry child knows no
politics, but the reality is that the northern good behavior
almost always precedes increased assistance.
Fifth, while the human rights situation is as abysmal as
Congress Royce just described, it must invariably take a back
seat to our national security interests. The nuclear
negotiations are too complex and difficult for the issue to
become a focal point, but that is not to say that this issue
should merely be given lip service by our diplomats. I was
encouraged by this committee's efforts to re-authorize the
North Korean Human Rights Act last fall. It took awhile but we
finally put our money where our mouths are when it comes to
making it easier for North Koreans to resettle in the United
States.
Increasing Korean language radio broadcast to the North is
also a most worthy endeavor. The folks working at Voice of
America and Radio Free Asia are impressive. I have listened to
their broadcasts. I have evaluated those broadcasts. They are
effective, and I have talked to North Korean defectors who have
listened to them. They do have an impact.
My biggest hope is that the funds will be more
expeditiously allocated than they were in the original act and
I hope that a full-time human rights envoy will be appointed
instead of a part-timer residing in New York. I think two can
play the good cop/bad cop game.
My sixth proposition is that Japan will continue to be part
of the problem in our engagement efforts rather than part of
the solution. Despite being one of our most important allies,
by allowing the abduction of a handful of citizens decades ago
to dominate all policy considerations when it comes to the
North Tokyo has become irrelevant at the Six-Party Talks. Most
importantly, Japan took the biggest carrot the world had to
offer the North, billions of dollars in development assistance
in lieu of reparations for its colonial rule off the table.
Pyongyang is either unwilling or unable to provide Tokyo with
the evidence it demands. Removing North Korea from the list of
state sponsors of terror did not weaken our negotiating
position with the North as it was essentially a symbolic
gesture, but it did lead to a sense of betrayal in Japan.
My final proposition arguably describe the biggest
constraint on our North Korea policy options. There are
virtually no conditions under with Beijing will curtail much
less cut off its assistance to North Korea. The Bush
administration liked to insist that the reason North Korea came
back to the negotiating table in late 2006 was because China
had gotten tough at the North by backing the U.N.'s sanctions
resolution. While Beijing was clearly not happy, the bottom
line was that China never implemented the resolution nor was
there any interruption in economic assistance from China.
For China, stability on its northeastern border is far more
important than denuclearization. Even in the face of a global
economic crisis, Beijing appears willing to spend several
billion dollars a year to prop up the North.
These seven propositions leave us in an undeniably
difficult but not impossible place. I would like to suggest a
smart power strategy for negotiations with the North. It may
very well be that in the end the North will try to play it both
ways--continue to negotiate for goodies while never fully
giving up its nuclear power. After all, that is what they have
really been doing for the last 17 year. We may have to live
with the fact that the talks are little more than crisis
management mechanism, but managing a crisis is far better than
ignoring it, and remarriages happen all the time. I am the
product of three of them.
At the core of smart power is leveraging our alliances. The
one country I have left out of my discussion so far is the one
government we can closely coordinate a potentially more
effective policy with them and that is Seoul. Ironically, even
though South Koreans have opted for a more conservative
President and legislature and Americans the opposite, the
prospects for effective coordination have never been better.
That is because based on the world views President Obama and
Lee Myung Bak have espoused to date and the foreign policy
teams that they have put together both are pragmatic moderates.
President Lee is a businessman, not an idealogue. I have
met with him and his foreign policy team countless times.
Liberals in Seoul and Selig Harrison blame them for the North's
increasing bellicose policy toward the South, but really all
President Lee and his team have done is recalibrate an
unconditional engagement policy that has yielded Seoul little
in return. A strong majority of the Korean public, to the
extent that they even care about North Korea, continue to favor
a more balanced policy toward Pyongyang. In fact, Seoul's
approach is no different than the Obama administration's is
likely to be.
Given the lack of a major shift in South Korean policy, why
has Pyongyang become so bellicose? For the simple reason that
the North potentially has much to gain and little to lose.
Despite all the North's rhetoric, the joint industrial complex
in Kaeseong expanded its output by more than 20 percent last
year, and South Korean NGOs have maintained their projects with
the North. Like Obama, Lee refuses to let his antagonists get
him worked up and has repeatedly stated that he will wait until
the North comes around.
What does the North have to gain? Really, the North has
lost nothing. What do they have to gain? Besides trying to
drive a wedge between us and Seoul, the North seeks a return to
the era of ``No strings attached'' largess. The North only see
Seoul as a cash register, not as a nuclear negotiating partner.
Moreover, they also know that if they cut a deal with
Washington, Seoul will have little choice but to pay for it.
A second component of smart power is trying to engage our
adversaries in negotiations, both multilaterally and
bilaterally. Bilateral negotiations will likely prove to be the
key to a breakthrough, but maintaining the Six-Party Talks and
reinvigorating trilateral coordination between Washington,
Seoul and Tokyo will also be vital. Even if we are essentially
on the same page with the South, there are still fears that the
Obama administration could get out in front.
Before talks resume, it is imperative that the Secretary of
State select a capable negotiator that has experience with the
North. We simply do not have time for a new envoy to get to
know his counterparts and learn how to effectively negotiate. I
can think of at least six former government officials that
would fit the bill, one of them is sitting at this table right
now.
However, given the daunting nature of the job, it may not
be easy to find a taker. The North has no peers when it comes
to insults and brinkmanship. Moreover, the heavy diplomatic
lifting has only just begun. Based on the eight-stage
negotiating formula that I worked on for the International
Crisis Group a few years ago, we are only at the beginning of
Phase III.
I would like to close by sharing with you my favor Korean
proverb, which can serve us not only in dealing with North
Korea, but also in the broader economic challenges that we
currently face, and that you will be voting on soon, ``Even
when the sky comes crashing down, there is a hole through which
we can pass.'' Please help the Obama administration find that
hole. Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Beck
follows:]
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Mr. Faleomavaega. Can you say that in Korean?
Mr. Beck. [Speaking Korean.]
Mr. Faleomavaega. [Speaking Korean.]
Well, now that Secretary of State Clinton is fully weighted
now with all the tools that she needs before she goes to her
trip in Asia. I want to thank all of you gentlemen. I think
your statements were most eloquent and very insightful in terms
of the issue that this committee is considering and looking and
reviewing, and I certainly want to thank you for your
testimonies. I am going to withhold my questions for now and
turn to my faithful compadres here, to our ranking member, Mr.
Manzullo, any questions?
Mr. Manzullo. I had a chance to look at most of the
testimony. I just want to make a couple of comments.
First of all, Professor Beck, when I went to American
University, I was the recipient of the studies of the Lord
Lyndsey of Berker, who had just established the School of Asian
Studies at American University, and William Yandolette who
would have been Nixon's secretary of state had he won that
election in 1960, and it was a very interesting time in
American history.
I had never realized that I would be in the position to be
on that very committee studying some of those issues we had
studied back then, but let me just throw something out to you.
We have five scholars here, and we have press from all over the
world, and most of them followed me when I brought Chris Hill
out to Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois. I have gotten to
know Ambassador Hill quite well, and the tremendous work that
he put into the Six-Party Talks, moving incrementally, and
under quite a bit of criticism from Americans on both sides of
the political spectrum, which is the way things work when you
have free and open press.
Let me throw this out and anybody wants to handle it, you
can do it. If you were in North Korea in a position of
authority and understood the English language quite well, and
listened to this distinguished panel and the comments made,
what would you do if you were in charge of the next round of
talks? Who would like to take a stab at that? Ambassador
Pritchard is terrorized that he might be made the next
Ambassador there, so if you do not want to handle it, that is
possible, Ambassador. Yes?
Mr. Faleomavaega. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Manzullo. Yes. Yes.
Mr. Faleomavaega. I would suggest that you be the leading
envoy representing President Obama on both sides.
Mr. Manzullo. Yes.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Okay.
Mr. Manzullo. Who wants to take--who wants to be on the
spot?
Mr. Klingner. To paraphrase an old phrase, that analysts
and fools go where angels fear to tread, I will jump in, sir.
If I were advising Kim Jong Il, so thinking as a North
Korean, what I would advise Kim Jong Il is that as much as he
wants to ratchet up tension, as much as he wants to use his
usual playbook of forcing either the South Korean or a United
States leader to jump to his tune, that instead North Korea
could be far more effective if they did not engage in
brinkmanship right now. If they reached out to the U.S. and
even adopted conciliatory approaches and offered concessions to
the United States. That would invigorate engagers in the U.S.
who would say this clearly shows that the problem has always
been with the Bush administration. The problem did not lay at
all with the North Koreans, and that this would lead the Obama
administration to adopt a softer or more engaging or more
conciliatory, whatever words you want to use, approach to North
Korea than if North Korea is bombastic and threatening as they
look like they are going to be.
So if North Korea was more conciliatory, I think they would
precipitate greater engagement not only in the Six-Party Talks,
but perhaps in parallel lanes in the road of other
negotiations--missiles or whatever. So I think a North Korean
advisor could advise that but I do not think that is what Kim
Jong Il will tend to do.
Mr. Pritchard. If I may, the North Koreans do follow these
hearings. They will look them up and they will read the
testimony, so they will have the benefit of the discussion here
today. But the one thing that they will go away with is a sense
that this panel and your questions are leading to the path has
been a little bit too narrow, and we certainly here have
recommended opening that up, including more issues, whether it
is missiles, proliferation, the question of HEU has to be
brought up.
So if you were sitting in Pyongyang, you would be re-
calculating what you needed to do when the next American
delegation came because it will not be where things left off,
at least I do not think so. So they are going to have to think
a little bit more broadly on how to handle all of these issues.
Mr. Cha. I think that--I mean, I probably have this kind
of--I have had the most recent experience of actually
negotiating with the North Koreans in Six-Party Talks, and I
have to say if I were them right now I would feel as though my
long-term objective is well on the way to being achieved, which
is to be accepted as a nuclear weapon state and to try to
achieve as much of a working relationship with the rest of the
world, including the United States, as I could, and I think we
really hit a very important point in the verification
negotiations in December 2008, because that would be the point
at which the North really would have to show its cards. There
are a lot of card-playing analogies, show its cards about
whether it was serious about denuclearization, and I think it
disappointed everybody, all the parties at the Six-Party Talks
when they came in December 2008 and clearly were not ready to
talk about verification.
Mr. Snyder. I think that the North Koreans probably believe
that their crisis escalation approach is working. I think they
feel that they can keep this process going without facing a
situation where they are going to have to make a real choice,
and so I imagine that basically what Kim Jong Il and his
advisors are looking for are the divisions that they can
exploit. That is the reason why in my testimony I suggested
really that we needed to focus on mobilizing a coalition,
providing a way out but blocking the fire escape.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Beck, did you want to comment?
Mr. Beck. I am ready for another question.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Dana?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to raise an issue that I think is of utmost
importance for us to look at rather than ignore. It is a very
easy issue to ignore because it is only dealing with perhaps a
small number of people, and the scope of the actual issue at
hand seems to be tiny, but I believe that sometimes there are
issues like this that can be of great importance because they
relate directly to let us say the moral status or the moral
situation at the heart of what is going on at the challenge,
the heart of the challenge that people face. So let me just get
right to it.
Mr. Beck, you mentioned in passing how the Japanese
Government has made such an issue over these kidnapped victims,
their citizens who have been kidnapped by the Koreans and the
North Koreans will not let them come back. Nobody else seems to
think that is an important issue.
Let me state for the record right now that I admire the
Japanese for the fact that they will not simply ignore that 12
of their citizens were kidnapped by this brutal gangster regime
in North Korea, and that the North Koreans will now not give
them back, and that they are willing to take a stand on that. I
think that speaks very well of the Japanese, and I think it
speaks very poorly of other people in this world who would
simply gloss that over and say that does not matter.
Well, it does matter. It matters because if we have a
regime in North Korea which is basically headed by gangsters
who would go and kidnap people from other countries, and then
not give them back once they are trying to say, you know, we
want to have a better relationship but we are not going to give
back these people that we kidnapped, well, then that says we
should not necessarily be treating them as a legitimate
government. We should not be treating them as decent people or
try to make deals. How can you make a deal with a regime in
North Korea that refuses to even release 12 or 15 kidnapped
victims from Japan? How can we trust them with the lives of
hundred--not hundreds, but thousands, even tens of thousands
and millions of people, in which an agreement with Korea would
affect our security and certainly the security of South Korea
and Japan, how can we trust them if they will not even give
those people back?
Now, that is number one and I would like to just throw that
out to the panel, but make sure that this is clear. Our last
witness, I respect him, he is obviously an expert, but he just
exemplified that theory about trying to--just try to be nice.
It is smart power--that is what we are talking about here--if
smart power means just being nice and trying to get along and
be cuddly, and warm and cuddly to the dictators and gangsters
of this world, thinking that that is going to make us safer,
they will fail, and quite usually--usually, I might add, the
policy behind a warm and cuddly relationship with dictators
usually there is some U.S. corporations that are benefitting
behind that, I might add. Usually what you have got are
corporate interests who are making a profit off dealing in a
monopoly relationship with those decisions with that dictator,
but I do not know about that in terms of the Korean situation.
But I do know that the North Korean Government is still run by
people who would not agree to give back kidnapped victims.
Should that not be part of our consciousness when we are trying
to make a deal with them?
Mr. Beck. I certainly think it is important, but I think we
have to establish priorities, and if we stick to this moral
principle that until they completely come clean on this issue,
and that prevents us from making progress on the nuclear issue,
then we are undermining our own national security. The nuclear
problem, you know, the first 6 years of----
Mr. Rohrabacher. But how can you trust them to be honest
with us on a nuclear issue when they will not even be honest
with us for 12 kidnapped victims?
Mr. Beck. You know, we could go into detail, but they
actually did start the process of coming clean on this issue,
and it was actually the Japanese that slept under the rug the
evidence about Yokota Megumi that the remains that they
received--we do not know whose remains they are. The Japanese
Government reached its conclusion that they are not hers, but
they are cremated remains. You cannot conduct a DNA test on
cremated remains, yet they maintain that they are not her
remains, and this fiction has been put onto the Japanese
public.
The North Koreans feel burned. They feel like they gave
back remains, and let family----
Mr. Rohrabacher. I have got to tell you something. When I
see the nature of the Japanese Government and the amount of
freedom they have in Japan as compared to the oppression and
brutality of what is going on in North Korea, I am not going to
give the benefit of the doubt to the North Koreans, that they
are the ones who are in the right side of that argument, and it
is the Japanese who are burning these sincere North Koreans who
are trying to solve an issue.
I have seen so much duplicity, and you always find this
among gangsters and dictators. They are duplicitous. You cannot
trust their word on things like this or anything else because
they are willing to murder their own people. This regime that
we are talking about in North Korea they are willing to starve
their own people. The average height of the North Korean is two
inches shorter than the people in South Korea because they have
been squandering all the money that should be going to food for
their people on weapons to give themselves power and leverage
over other human beings.
I think when you take moral stands, even when it is related
to 12 people who have been kidnapped, that that moral stand
will help guide you in big decisions that will be important
like the nuclear weapons thing you are talking about. Cannot
make a stand on one, you certainly cannot make a stand on the
other.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the gentleman from California.
This is why we have a democracy. Everybody is entitled to their
opinion.
Mr. Royce.
Mr. Royce. Well, it is not always democracy, Mr. Chairman.
There was not one in the Soviet system but Andrei Sakharov, one
of the dissenters there, spoke along the same lines that Mr.
Rohrabacher just spoke. He said, you know, the way in which a
country mistreats its own people--in terms of concentration
camps is what he was talking about--might tell you a lot about
the way that country will treat its neighbors, and hence that
takes us to some of the concerns here. I know that it is not
popular to put that into the calculus in terms of how North
Korea is going to react.
I wanted to ask Mr. Klingner. Specifically, I wanted to
raise a couple of points because, one, there were 100 items
related to uranium enrichment that North Korea was buying. Many
of those came, as I reported earlier, from A.Q. Khan, who we
investigated.
Khan himself described the transfer of those centrifuges to
North Korea. That presents a certain problem. A.Q. Khan says he
gave them the centrifuges. We know how many trips A.Q. Khan
sent north from Pakistan to North Korea. A year ago the
Director of National Intelligence McConnell testified that,
while North Korea ``denies a program for uranium enrichment and
they deny their proliferation activities, we believe North
Korea continued to engage in both.''
And then you have got the very real problem that the
aluminum tube samples that they gave to prove to us that they
were not involved in highly enriched uranium business had HEU
traces all over it. So also the 18,000 pages of Yongbyon
operating records were covered with what? Highly enriched
uranium. That is a problem.
So, Mr. Klingner, you have a background in intelligence.
Give me your thoughts on that, if you would.
Mr. Klingner. Yes, sir, thank you. I think people have been
dismissive of the small amount of information that has leaked
out to the public domain about the highly enriched uranium
program that North Korea was pursuing, and then say they are
not convinced by that evidence that North Korea was or is
continuing to pursue such a program. It is presumptuous for any
of us outside of government now to assume that what has been
reported in a few newspapers is the totality of the information
that the United States intelligence community has on North
Korea's pursuit of an HEU program.
The DNI has said that, prior to the confrontation in 2002,
all 16 components of the intelligence community had assessed
with a high level of confidence that North Korea was pursuing
an HEU program. After the confrontation, when we obviously let
them know we knew of this pursuit, the intelligence community
continued to have a medium-level of confidence. That did not
mean the U.S. intelligence community was lowering its
assessment, it was merely that after North Korea was confronted
with it there was less level of confidence that they were
continuing to do so, either because they realized they had been
caught and perhaps were stopping it, or more likely they now
knew we were on to them and they were able to prevent
continuing acquisition of intelligence.
As you pointed out, in addition to the various tidbits that
have leaked out, there are others. There is the 20 tons of
aluminum tubes that the Germans and others intercepted. There
was not only Prime Minister Musharraf who said that A.Q. Khan
or Pakistan had provided centrifuges, but also Prime Minister
Bhutto said that in the early nineties she transported computer
disks with information on uranium-based nuclear weapons
program.
So these are the tidbits that have leaked out, and I assume
that the information, some of which I saw when I was still in
service, you know, is of a far greater totality. So we do not
know how far along the program is but I think they clearly were
pursuing it, which is a violation of four international
agreements for them to denuclearize, so it is certainly
something of grave concern to the United States and its allies,
and I think as part of the verification regime that we need to
have, that we not only must focus on plutonium but we also must
focus on the HEU program as well as the proliferation
activities that occurred clearly with Syria and perhaps with
others.
More recently there was a North Korean fight from Burma to
Iran that was stopped----
Mr. Royce. Intercepted by the Indians.
Mr. Klingner. I am sorry?
Mr. Royce. Intercepted by the Indian Government.
Mr. Klingner. Yes, sir, and the U.S. invoked the
proliferation security initiative to do so, and the PSI only
pertains to WMD or missile.
Mr. Royce. Right.
Mr. Klingner. So clearly even late last year the U.S.
Government believes North Korea is attempting to proliferate
something to Iran.
Mr. Royce. Well, I would like to go to another argument.
Mr. Harrison had pointed to his 2005 Foreign Affairs article on
North Korea's HEU program. There is a rebuttal to that in
Foreign Affairs magazine written by Mitchell Reiss and Robert
Gallucci. It is a bipartisan article rebutting the claims, and
I would just like to--we will put it in the record. But I would
just like to focus on the point on A.Q. Khan. They say,
``A.Q. Khan, who ran a black market nuclear supply ring
for Pakistan, has confessed to providing North Korea
with centrifuge prototypes and blueprints which enabled
North Korea to begin its centrifuge enrichment program.
North Korea's decision to begin acquiring materials in
larger quantities for uranium enrichment facility with
several thousand centrifuges suggests that its R&D
level enrichment endeavors have been successful.
Likewise, its procurement of equipment suitable for use
in uranium, hexoflorid feed and withdrawal system also
points to planning for uranium enrichment facility.''
This was back in 2005.
Now we have subsequently got the hard evidence. They argued
at the time,
``To focus solely on the more visible plutonium program
would mean turning a blind eye to a parallel program
that has the potential to provide North Korea with a
covert steady supply of fissile material for the
fabrication of nuclear weapons or export to terrorist
groups. To start a new relationship, North Korea must
foreswear its nuclear ambitions and the Six-Party Talks
offer the best opportunity for resolving this issue
through peaceful multilateral diplomacy.''
It is that underlying problem of constant proliferation,
constant duplicity, as I said, going back to the 1994 framework
agreement. Those of us who have been on this committee and have
in the past given the benefit of the doubt to North Korea have
over time witnessed only one strategy--a street that goes only
one way. And bringing up again this question about the way a
society treats its own citizens. When you begin to liquidate
people, and they allowed 1.9 million to starve, but hundreds of
thousands have been worked to death in those camps. I have
never seen photographs like the ones of some of the children in
North Korea that exist in those camps other than the ones my
father took with his brother's camera when they liberated the
camp at Dachau. That is exactly how people looked--not two
inches shorter--six inches shorter. I have been in North Korea.
They are a half-foot shorter because of malnutrition. Fifty
percent of those kids have malnutrition to the point where it
is affecting their physical ability to really function as an
adult, and you see that and you see the starvation, and you
realize that people who are sent to those camps are sent there
to be worked to death. In this day and age the international
community should, frankly, find the time and effort to
broadcast into North Korea the kind of information we broadcast
into the former Soviet East Bloc, and let people know fully
what is actually going on in that society. As one of those
North Korean politburo members said, ``If you are not listening
to those broadcasts, you are like a frog in a well'' because
you don't actually know what is happening in the rest of the
world.
Our goal should be to have the people inside North Korea,
besides the head of state, understand what is going on in their
country, and understand what is going on in the rest of the
globe, and bring the pressure to bear to get some kind of
change. You know, we wish the people well, but transferring
another $1 billion to this government so it can send people
into camps like that, I do not know where that is going to go.
My fear is that the hard currency is going to be used instead
to develop ICBMS to miniaturize these nuclear weapons, and they
certainly are going to use their network out there that they
proliferate with abandon given what they have done in Syria.
Mr. Chairman, that is my view, but I appreciate the
opportunity to talk to the witness.
Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the gentleman for his questions
and his thoughts on this issue.
I think in fairness to Secretary Clinton I thought I would
get portions of her statement that were made before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in defining what ``smart power''
means because we seem to have a difference of interpretation
here from my friend Mr. Rohrabacher. I just want to quote a
portion of the statement:
``The President-elect and I believe that foreign
policy must be based on a marriage of principles and
pragmatism, not rigid ideology. On facts and evidence,
not emotion or prejudice. Our security, our vitality
and our ability to lead in today's world oblige us to
recognize like overwhelming fact of our
interdependence. I believe that American leadership has
been wanting but is still wanted. We must use what has
been called `smart power' meaning the full range of
tools in our disposal, diplomatic, economic, military,
political, legal and cultural, picking the right tool
or combination of tools for each situation. With smart
power diplomacy must be the vanguard of foreign
policy.''
I just wanted to make clear because I purposefully used
that phrase ``smart power'' as the basic topic of our
discussion this afternoon.
Ambassador Pritchard, I know you have been sitting there
quite patiently. You recommended that there should be a
continuation of the Six-Party Talks. My question is how long
are we going to continue talking? There has got to be some
point--we have already done this for 6 years now, and I suppose
for the hawks in Pyongyang they love talking for the next 30
years as long as they continue getting what they want and
nothing from us. So could you comment on this?
Mr. Pritchard. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that we
have not been talking for 6 years. We have probably been
talking for about 2 years out of the last 8, and part of my
testimony, as I mentioned, that I am not anxious to see us
continue talking for the sake of talking, and my concern, as I
mentioned, is this Phase III as a continuation of these
discussions and negotiations that really does not get us where
we need to go, and that, as you point out, potentially years
more of negotiations.
So what I have offered up is a suggest that we just skip
that and move directly to the end game of negotiations and
determine whether or not North Korea is willing to give up
their fissile material, their nuclear weapons. Are we willing
to provide that degree of normalization that they are seeking?
And can we do that in a very prompt matter of time?
I do not put a timeline on that, but I certainly do not
want to see this drag out for another 4 years.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Would it be predictable that--I ask
Professor Cha--would it be predictable for me to say now that
as far as denuclearization issue is concerned it is a
stalemate, it will not happen?
Mr. Cha. Much as I would hope that I could disagree with
you, I cannot. I think that many of the things that Mr.
Harrison was talking about in his earlier testimony about non-
aggression pact, normalization, if people go back and read the
2005 joint statement, we have put a lot of those things in
there. In fact, there is a statement--if you go back to the
2005 joint statement, it says that the United States will not
attack North Korea with nuclear or conventional weapons.
I remember when we sent that language back to Washington
from Beijing overnight to get approval I did not think it was
going to get approved. It came back the next morning approved,
and I think many of us were quite surprised, including the
Russian delegation, and the Russian delegation actually asked
for a separate meeting with the North Koreans to say to them
the Americans are serious because we tried to get this language
from them during the Cold War and could never get it from them.
So, I think that they have many of the statements that they
want from us. They have the--as laid out in the joint
statement--the prospect of normal political relations. They
have the promise of energy and economic assistance. They even
have the vision of a Northeast Asian peace and security regime
in which they would live after they gave up their nuclear
weapons.
But in spite of putting all those things on the table they
do not appear to be very interested in doing more than simply
disabling portions of their program and not moving forward to
the final end game--the fissile material and the full
dismantlement of those programs.
So, you know, I think that we will be stalemated for
awhile. I do not think that means that we should give up on
negotiation because what it does do is it enables us to keep
people on the ground in North Korea at these facilities, to
keep them disabled and slowly degrade them, and that is
important. We need to be able to do that. We do not want them
to restart some of these programs.
If I could make one point on human rights as well. I think
Congressman Royce is absolutely right, that when you have a
regime that treats its people the way that North Korea does, it
is very difficult to trust them, and I think one of the
mistakes of the policy in the Bush administration was we tended
to separate the human rights discussion from the
denuclearization discussion because people were concerned if
you upset the North Koreans on human rights you are not going
to make progress on denuclearization.
I think the fact of the matter is I would take very small
steps by the North Koreans on denuclearization if they were
also making big steps on human rights. That is a lot more
credible than big steps on denuclearization with no change in
the human rights policy. So, I think those two things actually
come together a lot more than we did in the past.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Klingner?
Mr. Klingner. I think if 20 years from now we are still
discussing the size and shape of the table, as we seem to be
doing now, then U.S. diplomacy will have failed. I think we do
need to set deadlines and timelines and a roadmap toward
achieving denuclearization. The actual denuclearization may
take some time, but I think we do need to have a more clearly
defined blueprint and strategy for getting there.
If North Korea is allowed to continue to drag out talks and
continue to have agreements which are vaguely worded enough
that there are very large loopholes so they do not have to
comply, then they will have achieved their objective of
achieving de facto, of not de jure recognition as a nuclear
weapons state.
So, I think that we should continue to seek a diplomatic
resolution to the North Korean nuclear problem. That is one of
the aspects of smart power. But also I do not think we should
abandon other avenues of trying to influence our negotiating
opponent, including continuing law enforcement efforts. I do
not think we should abdicate enforcing U.S. and international
law against counterfeiting, drug running, and other illegal
activities by the North. That should not be negotiable. Just as
I do not think humanitarian assistance should be linked to
to deg.progress in the denuclearization. I do not
think enforcing our laws and international laws should be
linked to denuclearization. It is something that we should do
anyway.
Also, I think we should begin implementing U.N. Resolution
1695 and 1718, which the United Nations Security Council passed
but which has largely been held in abeyance for over 2 years.
North Korea has been in violation of two U.N. Security Council
resolutions for 2 years. I think we should begin implementing
that, so along with that pressure you also have diplomacy.
The Chinese military strategist San Tzu said never surround
your enemy totally because they will just fight all the
fiercer. In this way the avenue of exit is the Six-Party Talks.
You pressure them but you also say we are willing to meet with
you, we will not insult you, we will not threaten you, but we
are opening negotiations but we will not allow those to go on
indefinitely.
We can pick a deadline. I could say after the Obama
administration has got all its officials in place and its North
Korea policy all set, we could say, why not give a year? There
is nothing magical about a year, but why don't we not
deg.say, a year after the Obama administration has said we are
ready to engage, why not evaluate at the end of that year?
It is not a binary decision in which we call diplomacy to a
halt on the 366th day, but I think after a year we would have a
very good sense of whether we feel North Korea has changed its
tactics, its strategy, its approach with the new U.S.
administration.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Snyder, since you like smart power so
much, what would be your recommendation to Secretary Clinton on
her upcoming trip to Asia, especially in dealing with the North
Korean situation?
Mr. Snyder. Well, what I have been trying to emphasize
today, which is really I think my core recommendation is that
we need to--the United States----
Mr. Faleomavaega. No, I think you made a very good point.
We ought not to continue having North Korea to be totally
dependent on foreign assistance programs, becoming a welfare
state, and then continue without becoming independently self-
sufficient if you want to put it in those terms. So, how can
the world community or the United States for that matter, give
that kind of assistance?
Mr. Snyder. Well, with regard to the negotiations, I think
that it is important for the United States to work with our
allies and partners to mobilize support, active support to
block North Korea from continuing to move in this direction.
What I also tried to do, I think, and recommend is a kind
of de-linking of some of the issues that we have not been able
to move forward on in the area of development and in the area
of economic integration from the negotiation process in a very
selective way. And so, you know, bringing North Koreans out to
learn about specific technical processes should not be
underestimated.
In the previous administration we played a tit-for-tat
game. If they imposed restrictions on United States access
inside North Korea, the U.S. Government did the same. But I
think that we should unconditionally be trying to support
engagement of North Koreans understanding of what is happening
in the outside world quite apart from a nuclear strategy.
Mr. Faleomavaega. I do not speak for my colleagues but I
have been always a strong, strong supporter of Foreign
President Kim Dae Jung's sunshine policy, the idea that some
way or somehow the two Koreas work things out together. I am
one of the two members that have visited Kaesong Industrial
Complex, and I come away very, very impressed about the fact
that a seed has been planted. Of course, the money goes to the
government, but at least giving some 40,000 North Koreans an
opportunity to work for, whatever is opening the door to some
sense of commerce to be established between the two Koreas.
Now I know that some of my colleagues do not agree with
that policy, the sunshine policy, but I certainly for one
believe in that. Mr. Beck, I note with interest your mention of
Japan's non-help providing the 200,000 tons of heavy oil--that
was because of the kidnapping situation. Help me, how did we
ever come about in saying that with North Korea we need to have
five other countries to negotiate with, but with Iraq, full
speed ahead?
There seems to be some ideological play here, at least, and
correct me if I am wrong on this, Ambassador Pritchard. On the
one hand we practice unilateralism, and then on the other hand
we practice multilateralism. Was there any possibility that
maybe we could have handled the situation differently with Iraq
than we did with North Korea of having Six-Party Talks? Could
we have done the same thing in bringing Iran and Jordan and
Egypt and the other countries in the Middle East who do have a
direct interest of what we were about to do with Iraq before we
went ahead preemptively and attacked Saddam Hussein who, by the
way, never attacked us on 9/11?
But let me ask Mr. Beck. As I try to figure what really--
what national interest, what really--real important interests
that Japan has toward this whole thing dealing with North
Korea. Of course, the security--Russia, PRC, because China is
next to North Korea; South Korea obviously because of our
security alliance with South Korea. So as you mentioned in your
statement that Japan has become somewhat irrelevant because
what it is demanding from North Korea is not in anyway related
to the question of the denuclearization efforts that we are
supposed to be making as part of our foreign policy here.
Mr. Beck. I have talked to numerous Japanese officials who
in private have told me that they share my views that privately
that they feel that they have been hamstrung by the issue. The
problem is public opinion----
Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Beck, I am informed that Ambassador
Pritchard has to catch a flight, and please convey to your son
my best regards. Tomorrow, I am going to be seeing my soldiers
in Kuwait, and I know the feeling, Ambassador, and I think all
of us here have relatives, brothers and sisters, wives,
husbands, who have been involved in this terrible conflict that
we have been involved in with Iraq, and God speed to you, Mr.
Ambassador, if you have to catch a flight.
Mr. Pritchard. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate the opportunity to speak here, and thank you for
allowing me to leave.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Please. Mr. Beck.
Mr. Beck. I was just going to say, I have spoken with many
Japanese officials who are privately very frustrated with the
position that they have been placed in because they would like
to be relevant to the Six-Party Talks and do feel that 120
million Japanese citizens takes light presence over 12 people.
Principles are great, but the reality is we have to deal with
Nazi regimes unless we want to potentially undermine our own
national security.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Well, I could add that 200,000 Asian
women who were abducted and raped and forced into prostitution
during World War II by Japanese soldiers, that is not a very
pretty picture to recite or to explain what happened
historically. I did not mean to----
Mr. Beck. No, no, you are quite right. The Japanese are not
morally pure either when it come to this issue. They have their
own past that they still have not confronted, I think, in a
responsible manner.
But I, like you, I have also visited the Kaesong complex a
couple of times and was very impressed. It is very frustrating
because you really cannot talk to anyone there that is actually
working there. I have tried and I get shooed away every time.
But I too was very impressed with the prospects for
cooperation. But the fact is the North Koreans are, I think,
seriously contemplating scraping Kaesong.
We can debate whether they are just bluffing but they have
sent military officials to Kaesong and I have talked to South
Korean officials that say--you know, I ask them, do you think
the North Koreans are bluffing? No, we do not. Even a person
working in the Kaesong complex said they are not bluffing. This
is a dilemma for them to accept South Korean companies, 90 some
South Korean companies, have hundreds of South Koreans,
thousands of South Koreans working there. They like the money
but they do not like having the exposure that their people,
even in limited numbers are getting to this complex, and we
like to say that the Chinese have the most leverage with North
Korea, and that is what really constrains our policy, and even
the neocons realize that they could not go it alone. They could
more or less on Iraq, but they really could not go it alone on
North Korea, and particularly without China's support. Any get-
tough measures just are not going to work with North Korea, and
in the meantime we are risking more, so we really do not have
any choice but to negotiate, and unfortunately I mistakenly
thought that the South had developed leverage over the North
with Kaesong, with the tourism, with all the trade. South Korea
is North Korea's second leading trade partner. The North
Koreans seem perfectly willing to turn their backs not only on
South Korea but potentially even China, and when you have a
regime that is willing to starve its own people, and do what is
not in the best interest of its country, it makes it very hard
to negotiate with them. No question. But again, I do not
think--it is still our least bad option and I do not think we
have any other choice but to continue trying.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Have we done any studies, Professor, Cha,
on the potential value of the minerals, all that is there in
North Korea? I am told that it is pretty substantial. I do not
know about oil and gas, but other things that are of value
there as far as North Korea is concerned. Do you know anything
about that?
Mr. Cha. I do not know if there are any official studies.
There may be some private U.S. companies that have looked it.
One group that we know has looked at it very carefully has been
China because the Chinese have been working very hard to keep
their fingers in and their interest, economic interests in
the----
Mr. Faleomavaega. Like they have done in Africa and almost
every other place in the world.
Mr. Cha. Yes. So I think that they certainly have been
quite interested in that.
If I could answer your earlier question about Six-Party. I
think one of the reasons that the Bush administration became
interested in the concept of a multilateral dialogue on North
Korea was that there was a realization that while the North
Korean nuclear problem was an American problem, it was also a
regional problem, and that there was a need for other parties
to play a role both in terms of incentives as well as
disincentives, and the two key countries that had the levers in
many ways both in terms of incentives and disincentives were
the Chinese and the South Koreans, and I think for that reason
it was very important to try this multilateral process and try
to mobilize regionally support in getting the North--persuading
the North Koreans to take the right path.
With regard to Japan, while I certainly understand the
concerns that many people have about Japan being hamstrung by
the abductions issue, we also have to remember that for the
Japanese people the whole question of whether citizens were
abducted was a rumor that was out there for decades that,
frankly, most of the Japanese public did not take seriously.
Then to have this movement where the Japanese Prime
Minister goes to North Korea and the North Korean leader admits
that they undertook these actions, I think, was really a shock,
a heartfelt shock by many Japanese, and I think for that reason
there was an emotional reaction that has colored the total
political landscape in Japan.
I think that there is a separate Japan-North Korea Working
Group within the Six-Party process, and there has been an
effort to try to move Japan-DPRK relations forward both through
that formal process as well as through informal contacts, but
the North Koreans really do not want to do anything on this
abduction issue and that, of course, makes it politically very
difficult for the Japanese Government to move.
Mr. Faleomavaega. Well, gentlemen, there seems to be a
consensus from your statements that the first thing the Obama
administration needs to do is to appoint an envoy of George
Mitchell's caliber, maybe to be part of the delegation in
conducting the negotiations. Perhaps that could be our offered
recommendations or suggestions to Secretary Clinton. Whether
she does it before or after the return from her trip, we will
see what happens. But I have a couple other questions but I
think we have taken so much of your time already, and look
forward to calling you back again when we see what might happen
not only in North Korea, but maybe other areas in Asia.
Thank you very much for your coming. The hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Donald A. Manzullo,
a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Edward R. Royce, a
Representative in Congress from the State of California
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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