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Scott Snyder is the Asia Foundation=s newly-appointed Representative in Korea and author of a newly-published book entitled Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1999). The views expressed here are his personal views, and may not represent those of The Asia Foundation. The Asia Foundation is a U.S.-based non-profit organization that seeks to strengthen economic and political institutions and regional relationships across Asia. Questions or comments may be directed to Mr. Snyder at the Asia Foundation, Korea office, KPO Box 738 Seoul 110-607, Korea, tel: 822-732-2044, fax: 822-739-6022, or e-mail: SnyderSA@aol.com.

The Perry Policy Review: A Needed Corrective to U.S. Policy

The state of U.S. policy toward North Korea has improved considerably compared to the situation 18 short months ago, when the U.S. Congress required the Clinton administration to conduct a review of U.S. policy toward the Korean peninsula as a condition for continued funding of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO). The appointment of former Defense Secretary William Perry to conduct that policy review in November of 1998 and the subsequent year-long consultation and policy formulation process he led through October of 1999 have proved to be a significant corrective, driven by Congressional demands, to a Clinton administration Korea policy that was on the verge of careening off course toward renewed crisis and a possible military confrontation. The conduct of the policy review itself and the new ideas that have been appliedCi.e., special envoy to communicate with North Korea=s top leaders, Abigger carrots and bigger sticks,@ the need for close and effective policy coordination with allies, and the need for a Acomprehensive approach@Cnow represent consensus views, many of which have the support if not the original authorship of Congressional policy strategists.

The Perry Review itself also spawned a host of parallel non-governmental efforts during 1998 that mobilized senior political and policy analysts to carefully weigh a wide range of policy options toward North Korea, including a Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on policy toward the Korean peninsula, a ATeam B@ report from a National Defense University group led by former Undersecretary of Defense Richard Armitage, and a steady stream of Congressional hearings and presentations of opinion from senior policy experts. The similarities in conclusions drawn as part of these efforts demonstrate a core consensus on aspects of policy toward North Korea driven not by bi-partisanship but by the essential lack of responsible alternatives available to any policy maker with direct responsibility for implementing policy toward North Korea. Compounding the problem is that the issue of how to deal with North Korea is a political loser: neglect breeds crisis and accusations of failure to manage an issue that may impinge directly on U.S. security interests, while direct negotiations or deal-making requires concessions that will inevitably be criticized as rewards to an undeserving regime. The unfortunate realityCconfirmed by the extensive scrutiny given during the past 1 2 years to a range of U.S. policy options currently availableCis that any responsible approach to North Korea will involve both a frustrating and protracted negotiation process with a conservative and isolated regime as well as recognition of the possibility of a breakdown in negotiations and willingness/preparedness to face the prospect of renewed crisis.

The primary contribution of the Perry policy review process has been the alignment of policies among the United States, Japan, and South Korea in favor of working with the North Korean leadership to engage in mutual threat reduction in return for the creation of a more benign international environment necessary for North Korea=s regime survival. This policy coordination effort is itself unprecedented and has potentially significant implications for the shape of future security relations in Northeast Asia (i.e.; building U.S.-Japan-ROK security coordination as the core of a new regional security environment), but it may be unsustainable either if the urgency of the North Korean threat subsides or if North Korea were to somehow find a way to exploit differences in priority among the United States, South Korea, and Japan to take advantage of continued domestic political differences in each country over how to deal with North Korea. Another result of the policy review process has been to underscore both the practical limits and essentially unsatisfactory nature of the options available and the difficulties of achieving a political consensus on how to deal with North Korea in the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

The true test of success or failure of the Perry process in the long term will depend on whether the following positive developments are sustainable: a) continued strengthened alliance coordination among the United States, Japan, and South Korea to prepare along the two-pronged path of engagement or confrontation, b) the ability of the administration to move from the design phase represented by the Perry Review process to overseeing an implementation process while maintaining bipartisan political support, c) an ongoing and regularized engagement with North Korean leaders at higher levels that gives North Korea a stake in and benefits from an engagement process so that leaders in Pyongyang recognize that they have so much to lose that they can not afford to walk away.

Other issues not addressed directly by the Perry report that are likely to emerge in due time as central issues to be negotiated with North Korea are how to effectively promote North Korea=s economic and political cooperation with its neighbors and the initiation and implementation of a process that will effectively address both remaining WMD issues (including chemical and biological weapons) and conventional arms control issues, including the demilitarization of the DMZ.

Although it is necessary to be realistic about the ability of any external party to influence Pyongyang=s opaque process of policy formation, the relative influence of external actors and policies toward North Korea clearly has increased during the past decade from a very low level. This trend has critical significance for policy toward North Korea, because it means that the focus of policy debate increasingly should not be over whether to provide external assistance (i.e., food assistance, economic sanctions lifting, international trade opportunities, KEDO, regional economic cooperation projects, etc.) but rather over how to provide assistance and in what forms.

The critical objective of the United States and the international community is how to increase the pace of positive change in North Korea, while the objective of Pyongyang=s leadership, focused on regime survival, is to control the pace of change in ways that do not threaten their political control. In my view, there is a single criterion by which all assistance can and should be judged: does that assistance increase the pace of change in ways that facilitate North Korea=s integration with the international community or does that assistance reinforce policies or give new life to systems in North Korea that have already failed? This benchmark has critical implications for how food assistance is provided, how one thinks about issues such as sanctions lifting or implementation of the KEDO project, and which actors inside North Korea are best suited to serve as counterparts to external parties.

The Primary Accomplishment of the Perry Review:

Creating An Effective Mechanism for U.S.-Japan-ROK Policy Coordination

The most important contribution that Secretary Perry has made aside from serving as a focal point for internal coordination of U.S. policy toward the Korean peninsula has been to effectively strengthen alliance coordination with Japan and South Korea. The strengthening of ties between Japan and South Korea, an accomplishment made possible by the improvements in Japan-ROK relations following President Kim Dae Jung=s state visit to Tokyo in October of 1998, has been supported by the development of a trilateral consultation process among the three countries. It has led to a Aregionalized@ or trilateral approach on the specific issue of coordinating policy toward North Korea through the establishment in April of 1999 in Hawaii of the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG), as well as the historic trilateral summit meeting among President Clinton, Prime Minister Obuchi, and President Kim Dae Jung on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in September of 1999.

A coordinated policy approach toward North Korea is important for several reasons. First, it manages the differences in priority on specific issues that may exist internally between the United States and Japan or the United States and South Korea, effectively curbing the impulse for more emotional reactions to perceived North Korean provocations. Second, it reduces the ability of the negotiating counterpart (North Korea) to exploit differences in the policy stances of allies. Third, it underscores the importance of containing North Korea=s destabilizing behavior while expanding the base of resources available as part of an engagement strategy with North Korea. Fourth, it diminishes the possibility that precipitous unilateral action against North Korea by any single party in the coordination process will lead to the spread of broader conflict in Northeast Asia, a scenario that would have severe effects on the American alliance relationships with Japan and South Korea that have supported regional stability up to now. The key ongoing challenges to be addressed as part of implementation of the Perry process include the following:

a) Integrating South Korean Interests With Trilateral Policy Coordination Efforts

The first challenge has been the recurring question of whether South Korea will be abandoned by improvements or breakthroughs in the U.S. relationship with North Korea. With the release of the Perry report, the announcement that the United States will ease sanctions toward North Korea, and the prospect of a high-level visit by a North Korean official to Pyongyang following Secretary Perry=s invitation during his own visit to Pyongyang in May of 1999, this long-standing question has resurfaced among some South Korean observers. South Korean fears of abandonment had earlier been expressed most strongly in the context of the U.S. decision to negotiate directly with North Korea over nuclear issues in Geneva in 1993 and 1994. These concerns were reflected both in the Agreed Framework provision requiring North-South dialogue as part of the implementation process as well as in the creation of an international organization, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), including South Korean officials both as part of the staff and on the board of directors. They have also been reflected in South Korean worries that U.S. sanctions lifting will allow American business to secure their own economic interests in North Korea to the detriment of South Korean interests, this despite a manifest lack of American private sector interest in North Korea=s uncompetitive investment environment.

Under President Kim Dae Jung=s leadership as part of his engagement policy toward North Korea, however, the South Korean worries about abandonment seem to have been turned on their head. Kim Dae Jung has urged in a May 5, 1999, CNN interview that the United States and Japan normalize their respective relationships with North Korea as part of a removal of the influence of the Cold War on the Korean peninsula. The logic of DJ=s statement is that normalization of Japan-DPRK or U.S.-DPRK relations is politically and practically impossible without an accompanying improvement in relations between North and South Korea. In other words, spurring progress in North Korea=s relations with Japan and the United States ultimately may be the Aback door@ to support the progress in North-South dialogue necessary to sustain DJ=s ASunshine Policy.@ And the fact that improvements in the U.S.-DPRK relationship are inextricably related to a normalized relationship between North and South Korea has been at the core of U.S. policy from the beginning of the U.S. opening with North Korea through the Amodest initiative@ of Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Gaston Sigur in 1987. However, it is unlikely that South Korean voices fearing abandonment by the United States will be fully reassured until North Korea returns in good faith to the task of implementing the 1992 Basic Agreement (Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Exchange).

The West Sea incident of June of 1999, in which North and South Korean navies traded blows in a disputed area near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), has also served notice to Pyongyang of the deterioration of North Korea=s military capabilities relative to that of the South. There are lines that Pyongyang can no longer cross with relative impunity as a result of enhanced efforts to deter North Korean military aggression. By forcefully implementing the principle of no toleration for North Korean military incursions put forth during his inauguration address, President Kim Dae Jung was able to use deterrence as a vehicle for enhancing his policy of engagement with North Korea.

b) Integrating Japan=s Interests With Trilateral Policy Consultation Efforts

The second challenge is whether it is sustainable for Japan=s policies to be coordinated effectively with U.S. and South Korean overtures toward North Korea. The progress that has been made toward renewing Japan-DPRK normalization talks in the aftermath of the Murayama-Nonaka delegation to North Korea, far from constituting an example of the failures of policy coordination, is further evidence of the early success of the policy coordination effort.

The challenge and necessity of policy coordination between the United States and Japan toward North Korea as part of the Perry process has been illustrated in two respects. First, a primary result of the Perry process, itself stimulated in part by the crisis emanating from North Korean missile development efforts, was the recognition that Japanese concerns about North Korean missiles and alleged abductees in North Korea would have to be satisfied for Japan to remain as a reliable partner in KEDO and other multilateral policy coordination efforts toward North Korea. One result has been the addition of Japanese concerns on the abduction issue to the list of criteria that must be satisfied before the United States government will be willing to remove North Korea from the list of countries who sponsor terrorism. The integration of Japan=s concerns as part of the U.S. agenda with North Korea has underscored the importance of renewed dialogue between North Korea and Japan.

c) Trilateral Coordination, Contingency Planning, and AComprehensive Deterrence@

Secretary Perry=s initiation of an enhanced U.S.-Japan-South Korea policy coordination process toward North Korea has also enhanced cooperative efforts among the same parties to limit illicit or destabilizing North Korean behavior through the extension of Acomprehensive deterrence@ including coordinated responses among the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Secretary Perry has justified renewed engagement with North Korea despite opposition in some quarters of Congress on the basis of the assumption that it is necessary to work with allies in Japan and South Korea. Likewise, the recent easing of Japan=s policy toward North Korea has been justified on the basis of the need to pursue policy in concert with the United States and South Korea. And South Korean President Kim Dae Jung has exhorted the United States and Japan to improve their relationships with North Korea in line with the Sunshine Policy during periods when the policy has continued to be under attack at home.

As part of the extension of Acomprehensive deterrence@ against destabilizing North Korean behavior, U.S.-ROK military readiness and technological depth has been strengthened from the time of the 1994 crisis. That crisis resulted in the strengthening of U.S.-Japan coordination in the form of the revised U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines that were finally ratified by the Japanese Diet in June of 1999 as well as the signing of a new Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement, which outlines concrete commitments by Japan=s Self-Defense Forces to provide logistical and equipment support to U.S. forces in the event of a military contingency in the region. North Korean threats have also served as a catalyst for the development of U.S.-Japan-ROK defense consultations from 1997 that have supported the rapid improvement of Japan-ROK defense exchanges in the late 1990s. These quiet consultations have proceeded to the point where plans exist on paper for managing a coordinated response to North Korean contingencies, including the emergency removal of Japanese citizens from the Korean peninsula in time of war and handling of North Korean incursions that cross over from Korean to Japanese territorial waters.

In the aftermath of the 1998 Taep=odong rocket launch, Japan has taken concrete measures to enhance deterrence against North Korea. Most notable has been the effort by Japanese Diet members to limit technological and financial transfers to North Korea in the wake of the discovery that many technological components of North Korea=s missile and submarine programs have been bought off-the-shelf from Japanese vendors. Following an inspection of a North Korean submarine by Japanese Diet members in the summer of 1999, it was revealed that as many as one-quarter of the components for these submarines were made in Japan. They were most likely bought and transferred to North Korea illicitly through members of the Chosen Soren, a pro-North Korean organization of Koreans in Japan. This small group of Japanese Diet members has actively sought ways to enhance Japan=s deterrence against such technology transfers in recent months, including the possible crackdown on Chosen Soren financial activities or transfers to North Korea.

d) Perry Process and Coordination With China

A final aspect of the enhanced deterrence of North Korean illicit or destabilizing activities goes beyond the United States, Japan, and South Korea to include diplomatic coordination with others affected by these activities, including China and other affected members of the international community. To the extent that North Korea=s activities have jeopardized Chinese strategic interests, China has become a Asilent partner@ with the United States and others to pursue its primary objective of maintaining stability on the Korean peninsula; however, the long-term divergence of U.S. and Chinese respective interests on the Korean peninsula raises questions about how far China will be willing to go if efforts to stabilize the Korean peninsula are perceived as primarily or overwhelmingly American-led or otherwise detrimental to PRC security interests, particularly in the event of a serious downturn in the U.S.-PRC relationship.

In the short-term, however, there is a remarkable coincidence of interests between the PRC and the United States in favor of maintaining stability on the Korean peninsula. The Athree nos@ of U.S.-China policy toward North Korea are no nukes, no war, and no collapse of North Korea. Efforts to achieve these shared objectives have allowed a certain level of quiet Chinese cooperation with the United States. For instance, working level U.S.-PRC consultations continued despite tensions in U.S.-China relations felt most intensely in the aftermath of the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May of 1999 as part of the Kosovo conflict.

In addition, to the extent that North Korea attempts to overcome its diplomatic isolation through improved relations with the EU, Australia, the Philippines, and Canada, among others, the leadership in Pyongyang is reminded that prospects for overcoming diplomatic isolation are limited without an accompanying demonstration of good-faith efforts to make progress in limiting its nuclear and missile programs.

Conclusion: The Path Ahead

The Perry Review process itself has laid the groundwork for a more effective U.S. policy toward North Korea, but it remains to be seen whether either North Korea or domestic politics in the United States will give the administration significant room to successfully implement its policy proposals or whether political imperatives will drive the United States and North Korea in very different directions. The Perry process provides a limited opening for potential progress in improving U.S.-DPRK relations and in providing a more positive environment for improved inter-Korean and improved Japan-North Korean relationships. However, there are worries that the initiative may fall victim to bad timing in two respects. First, the window of opportunity for actual progress with North Korea is rapidly closing as the political campaign competition begins in the United States. It is likely that this domestic distraction would lead to renewed inattention to policy implementation with North Korea, resulting in further setbacks. At best, the current opening may prove to be most valuable for preventing or delaying a renewed cycle of destabilization between the United States and North Korea rather than in delivering any diplomatic breakthroughs.

Second, to the extent that the North Korean economic situation itself has now begun to stabilize with an accompanying increase in political confidence by a new leadership, it may be more difficult to negotiate with North Korea than might have been otherwise the case. At the same time, the situation is demonstrably different from the one that existed prior to 1990, when North Korea could afford to walk away from the negotiating table and used the negotiation process primarily for propaganda purposes. To this extent, regardless of how frustrating and slow-moving the process may be, it should continue, with sober expectations for precisely how easy it will be to create a foundation leading to even more potentially intractable issues, such as conventional arms reductions and the end of inter-Korean military confrontation.

As one example, North Korea=s pledge not to pursue further missile tests has been seen as an essential prerequisite for allowing the Perry policy of enhanced engagement with North Korea to go forward; however, the negotiation of a hard-and-fast pledge by North Korea to give up its negotiating leverage at the beginning of the process is highly unlikely. The Berlin statement is properly understood as analogous to the first ever U.S.-DPRK joint press statement emanating from the first round of U.S.-DPRK talks over North Korea=s nuclear program in June 5-11, 1993; i.e., it marks a starting point for further negotiations that might eventually lead to a broader deal involving North Korea=s suspension of its missile program in return for political concessions and economic support, but hardly represents a breakthrough. In fact, it almost restores the status quo ante that existed in the immediate aftermath of the Geneva Agreed Framework in early 1995, at which time a much larger sanctions-lifting effort by the United States had been implied by the agreement but was not forthcoming as a result of political concerns on the part of the Clinton administration in the aftermath of the 1995 Republican takeover of Congress. The Berlin agreement has simply put a temporary brake on a possible second Taep=o-Dong launch, leaving open the door to additional negotiations.

The administration=s decision of last fall to move forward with economic sanctions-lifting unilaterally based on the rather ambiguous North Korean pledge embodied in the joint statement may also be compared with the Bush administration decision to unilaterally withdraw forward deployed air and land based nuclear weapons in September of 1991. In that case, the effect of a global decision inadvertently had a positive effect on North Korean cooperation in the nuclear field, leading the North to declare its willingness to join the IAEA and opening the door for a single high-level political meeting between then Korean Worker=s Party International Secretary Kim Young Sun and Arnold Kanter, undersecretary of state for political affairs. However, in the absence of a political strategy for engaging North Korea, that opportunity was lost and a destabilizing cycle of tension escalation renewed itself within months in the form of North Korean confrontation with the International Atomic Energy Agency in the context of a politicized atmosphere surrounding U.S. and ROK presidential campaigns in late 1992. This time, the administration took the political risk of targeting a unilateral concession to North Korea in an attempt to jumpstart the negotiating process, but the risks of political opposition to this move paled in comparison to the costs of failing to prevent a subsequent North Korean Taep=odong test.

Although these two analogies with past periods in the cycle of U.S.-DPRK negotiations both represent hopeful beginnings to process of engagement and negotiation between the United States and North Korea, they also reflect the very real likelihood of breakdown and even backsliding in the negotiation process. The dangers of distraction that accompanied the near-simultaneous election cycles in the United States and South Korea during 1992 constitute a sobering warning for the coming months, as Seoul faces the election of a new National Assembly on April 13 and the U.S. primary and presidential elections take center stage on the American agenda. Indeed, the U.S.-DPRK negotiation of 1992Cin the absence of a U.S. political strategy of engagement with North KoreaCdid not prevent North Korea from inducing a crisis with its March 12, 1993 announcement that it would withdraw from the NPT; nor did the U.S.-DPRK joint statement of June 11, 1993 did prevent the deterioration of the IAEA=s capacity to monitor North Korea=s nuclear program in late 1993 and it failed to prevent North Korea from removing fuel rods from its experimental 5Mwe reactor in June of 1994. Likewise, the Berlin agreement is only as good as the immediate forward momentum that accompanies it, and possible renewed escalation of crisisCeither orchestrated as a tactic for spurring the negotiation process or as a result of temporary setbacks or miscalculationCis unfortunately a significant part of the past U.S.-DPRK negotiating experience.

The fundamental irony is that North Korea also has reached a point where its options have also narrowed to the single option of engagement with the outside world, despite Pyongyang=s protracted search for alternatives to the kinds of engagement with the international community that will require real changes in their own system. The Perry process, in which South Korea, Japan, and the United States all pursue engagement in tandem, is the best way to test North Korean intentions and frame hard choices for Pyongyang=s leadership under the current circumstances. Gradually, the realities of North Korea=s increased dependence for regime survival on external inputs are being revealed. This reality is well-known to the North Korean diplomat who privately expressed to me his vision for improved U.S.-North Korean relations as a process through which two parties both in danger of drowning have to Asave each other.@

North Korea=s systemic failure and dependence on external inputs must be increasingly apparent to anyone sitting in Pyongyang who has witnessed the breakdown in the government=s public distribution system and accompanying rise in farmer=s markets that has occurred as a result of the food crisis during the past few years; this is why there appears to be such harsh competition for control among branches of the North Korean bureaucracy over relationships with groups that can provide external inputs, and the food crisis has been a primary catalyst for deviations in practice that contradict socialist theory or official policy; however, these Aadjustments@ have neither been acknowledged nor endorsed by the leadership. (Taking into account the past behavior of the North Korean leadership, one might assume that there will be no announcement of a change in North Korean policy; rather, such a policy change will simply occur without acknowledgement or other comment.) Signs of system failure surely can be seen everywhere in Pyongyang, but the political structure and the power of the central leadership still remains in place, so the average North Korean has no choice but to cling to the center of power as a matter of individual survival, risk fleeing to an uncertain fate in China or possibly South Korea, or die.

North Korea=s system itself is caught in an enormous contradiction between its longstanding revolutionary nationalist and socialist ideological aspirations and the North Korean reality of a highly traditional, dynastic, and Afeudalistic@ system, in the words of the highest-ranking defector Hwang Jang Yop. North Korea=s past approaches to the outside world have been highly consistent even if it is often self-defeating, but these days North Korean approaches to the outside world are increasingly tempered by a mix of dependency, desperation, paranoia, and pragmatism borne of the reality of North Korea=s essential weakness and isolation.

The primary achievement of the Perry Review process is that it provides the opportunity to manage and possibly avoid a renewed crisis with North Korea, but it does not guarantee that crisis will indeed be avoided. The next, equally difficult task is to test whether there is sufficient political will in Pyongyang to overcome long-standing differences with South Korea, the United States, Japan, and others by pursuing concrete tension-reduction measures that can bring lasting peace to the Korean peninsula, accompanied by the arduous process of moving to a normalized relationship between a Anormalized@ North Korea and the rest of the world.