Posted on 01/08/2003 7:40:51 AM PST by AmericanInTokyo
Title: North Korea Denounces U.S. After Talks Offer
9:15 a.m. 8 January Eastern Time Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Kim Yeon-hee
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea (news - web sites) accused the United States Wednesday of increasing the danger of war on the Korean peninsula, just hours after Washington changed tack and signaled a willingness to talk about their nuclear standoff.
The reclusive communist state's KCNA news agency made no mention of the U.S. offer, nor of the U.N. watchdog's deadline for it to readmit nuclear inspectors within weeks, but decried Washington's "racket of a nuclear threat."
The U.S administration, which had previously insisted North Korea roll back recent steps to revive its nuclear weapons plans before any talks, announced its new position Tuesday after holding talks in Washington with South Korea (news - web sites) and Japan.
But it insisted that it would not allow North Korea's nuclear program to become a bargaining chip. Pyongyang has threatened war in the event of U.S. economic sanctions over the issue.
"The 'nuclear issue' that renders the situation on the Korean peninsula strained is a product of the U.S. strategy to dominate the world whereby it is working hard to bring a holocaust of a nuclear war to the Korean nation, calling for a pre-emptive nuclear strike after deploying lots of nuclear weapons in and around South Korea," KCNA said. Meanwhile, in further diplomatic efforts to end the crisis, a South Korean presidential envoy, Yim Sung-joon, was due at the White House Wednesday while U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, who led Tuesday's talks with South Korean and Japanese officials, was to visit Asia at the end of the week.
"The United States is willing to talk to North Korea about how it will meet its obligations to the international community," the three countries said in a joint statement.
"However, the U.S. delegation stressed that the United States will not provide quid pro quos to North Korea to live up to its existing obligations."
The United States has branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran and believes it to be building nuclear weapons but has ruled out a military attack.
North Korea's riposte is that Washington is the world's biggest producer and seller of weapons of mass destruction. South Koreans have been less worried about a perceived North Korean threat than some of their Western allies because they have lived with Pyongyang's bombastic rhetoric for half a century.
SEOUL'S IRAQ FEARS
"What is more serious to us is a war over Iraq because of what it will do to oil prices," said Chung Doo-sun, a fund manager with CJ Investment Trust Management. "War in Iraq is an uncontrollable risk to us. In whatever direction the North Korean issue is developing, we know it will not lead to a war."
North and South Korea are technically still at war because the truce that ended their 1950-53 conflict never led to a peace treaty, but both look forward to eventual reunification of a country which dates back some 5,000 years.
"People do not think that there is going to be a war in the Korean peninsula," a Unification Ministry official told Reuters.
"People want to solve this issue through dialogue or other peaceful tactics, not through military force."
South Korea's benchmark stock index stayed steady in the morning, partly on the U.S. comments on North Korea, but slipped in the afternoon. The South Korean won was slightly lower but North Korea was not a factor, dealers said.
KCNA reported that more than 100,000 residents of the North's capital, Pyongyang, massed Tuesday to show support for Kim Jong-il's leadership on the 55th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK -- the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
A banner in the square, which is named after Kim Il-sung, Kim's late father and the state's founder, summed up sentiment. "Let's make a great victory this year... the 55th anniversary of DPRK establishment on the back of a god-like leader."
SWIPE AT TOKYO
North Korea denounced Japan, meanwhile, for meddling in its business.
"The nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula arose because of the United States and it has nothing to do with Japan," the South's Yonhap news agency quoted Pyongyang Radio as saying.
"Japan has the effrontery to intervene in the nuclear matter and complicate the issue. It is none of their business."
Yonhap said South Korean president-elect Roh Moo-hyun would meet two Japanese delegations next week to discuss the crisis.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tuesday that Pyongyang had "only a matter of weeks" to readmit the IAEA inspectors it expelled last week. Their ejection prompted the new crisis. Earlier, the reclusive North had intensified its rhetoric, demanding Washington open talks and saying any sanctions over its nuclear program would "mean a war, and the war knows no mercy."
President Bush (news - web sites) had hinted at the U.S. change in position Monday, saying "we'll have dialogue," without setting any conditions.
PRECONDITION DROPPED
His aides said later North Korea must first dismantle its nuclear weapon programs, a precondition they acknowledged on Tuesday they had dropped. "This is a step forward from what we have been saying and doing," one senior U.S. official said.
Tensions flared in late December when Pyongyang expelled the inspectors and vowed to fire up a reactor idle since a 1994 pact with Washington that froze its nuclear program in exchange for oil supplies from the West. The U.S. decision marked a partial step in the direction of South Korea, which has argued for dialogue with the North.
In media leaks over the weekend, South Korea dropped hints it wanted the United States to give North Korea security assurances and a promise to resume energy supplies in return for Pyongyang dismantling its nuclear programs.
Washington is seeking to play down the threat from North Korea, which some analysts believe may already possess one or two nuclear weapons, as it prepares for possible war with Iraq.
It accuses Baghdad of seeking weapons of mass destruction but believes it has not yet acquired nuclear weapons.
I have uncomfortable news for you.
They're Back.
Well, I still disagree. NK's shrill response has invalidated any claims to "we won't invade," and has furthermore shifted the blame for anything we do, to North Korean intransigence.
I've seen enough of how W (and Powell with him) operate to believe that they expected this response when they made the previous offers.
It's a game of good cop, bad cop.
Now you may argue that we would have had to face China. I'm not sure Russia was involved in that one, you may be correct. Do you think a nuclear Korea is going to be better for us to face than Russia? Eventually you have to face the music.
By 2020 we face the likelihood of a North Korea with hundreds of intercontinental nuclear missiles. I think that leaves enough of my arguement in tact for serious consideration.
You have said it better than I could have ever said it. Bravo. I don't know how many times I see this in a business context and watch the stupid Americans get rolled in the alleyway by the machiavellian Asian.
We will never learn to handle cultures so differently from own in adversarial settings (it is not just the 'communism' of North Korea, it is also their 'korean-ness' and 'asian-ness') because we will project upon them our own subjective biases and naive Judeo Christian suppositions that they will conform to logical, shared Western mores and appeals.
It does not resonate with them.
We were supposed to learn that in 1953, and the 60 years of belligerence and troublemaking from them since.
We have to give it up and deal with Koreans as if we were ourselves Koreans.
We will learn, though. At what price?
That's the thing: we are working with a Western culture. This business is aimed not the North Koreans, but at the Europeans, Russians and Japanese (both of which are essentially Western). We want those folks to support us, and to help put pressure on NK.
The North Koreans are just plain nuts -- there's no negotiating with them in any case: they're not acting according to "Eastern culture," and haven't been for decades.
Given their psychotic culture, I'm not even sure that they understand "raw, overwhelming power, applied brutally," in the sense that it'd dissuade them from doing something stupid.
You're hopeless.
If North Korea builds a number of nukes, they will provide the technology to every terrorist state on the planet. Get ready...
I say, you indeed need a year stint in the JSA on the Military Demarcation Line, and sit through some of the joint duty officer meetings with the North over provocations and armistice violations or pull a five hour KP duty along the fence.
You might well change your tune mighty quickly there, friend.
I like you, but you seem somewhat naive and theoretical for my liking when dealing with this particular adversary.
We were facing China: the last three years of the war were were spent fighting ChiComs. At the time, China was still a Soviet client state -- their big break didn't come until about 1956.
An unambiguous victory probably wouldn't have been possible unless Mao's government was overthrown. Had we driven the Chinese out of NK, the DMZ would have moved north to the Yalu river, with us facing off against China, which I think would have been a much less stable situation. In that sense, NK served as a nice buffer between militant ChiComs and the US forces.
IIRC, Mao's strategy was centered on trying to lure us into an invasion of China, whereupon they'd fall on our flanks and destroy us. (I believe the break came partly as a result of the USSR's unwillingness to support Mao's plan.)
a) Arabian sea seizure but allowing DPRK export shipment of scud missiles to pass on to final destination, with a slap on the wrist of 'don't do that any more'
b) 'we won't invade. we want to talk' revision of strategy rather than keeping silent and keeping them guessing (why do we Americans have to blabber so much and overexplain everything to the Asian across the table who plays the skillful 'silent' game). What ever happened to strategic silence or subtle threats?
and finally, open and frequent international media discussion no doubt read by the North Koreans (albeit discounted by Rumsfeld), that the US cannot engage in two major global wars at the same time. (add to this, of course, anti-Americanism in South Korea and the election of Roh)
The North may also have its hands on intelligence gained through the Robert Hansen sellout that knows our vulnerabilities, IMHO
Accepting a draw in Korea emboldened the Chinese to assist North Vietnam. I don't need to list the full implications of this fiasco, but once again, we didn't use our full potential to force capitulation.
When it comes to war you pluck the other guy's eyes out. You do everything it takes to neuter the enemy. Today Hanoi should be one big dirt clump where humanity used to exist, if that's what it took to end the war. We should have taken out the leadership, the sub-leadership and even the dog catchers (and eaters) if that's what it took to defend the south. Once you commit, you take it to the enemy and end it.
We tried to be humane while the enemy skinned us alive. We lost 55,000 people because Johnson and McNamara didn't have the ba--s to do the task they took on.
We're still paying for these lapses in judgement and execution today.
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