Category: DPRK Government

No indicators of North Korea releasing two American hostages

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North Korea is holding two U.S. citizens as “prisoners of war,” regime officials have told Americans lobbying for their release, as the months drag on with no word about the pair.

During this period of Kim Jong Un’s military launching a stream of increasingly longer-range and more reliable missiles and conducted its fifth nuclear test, there has been no word on Otto Warmbier, a business student at the University of Virginia, and Kim Dong-chul, a South Korean-born naturalized American citizen, since they were separately sentenced to years of hard labor in North Korean prisons in March and April respectively.

“I am certain that North Koreans will keep Otto Warmbier and Kim Dong-chul until after the U.S. election,” said Sue Mi Terry, a former North Korea analyst for the CIA who is now at Bower Group Asia, a consultancy.

“American prisoners are one of the few bargaining chips North Koreans has,” she said, and there is “zero incentive” for the North Koreans to release these Americans at this point. “Why waste it now with the Obama administration when there appears to be little progress that can be made in terms of either returning to talks or easing of the sanctions in place?”

In recent years, the regime has made a habit of detaining U.S. citizens and using them as bargaining chips. This has followed a familiar pattern: arrest and harsh sentence, then release after a high-profile American flies to Pyongyang to get them out.

These visits are portrayed in North Korea’s media as signs of the isolated state’s strength–a weak Washington coming begging to Pyongyang.

Because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea, the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang represents American interests there. Swedish diplomats have not been granted access to Warmbier since March 2, John Kirby, spokesman for the State Department, said.  Kirby declined to comment on whether the Swedish diplomats had seen Kim Dong-chul since his arrest and conviction.

[Washington Post]

Americans and North Koreans quietly meet in Track 2 talks

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Officially, the United States and North Korea barely speak to each other, their communications often limited to public exchanges of insults.

But out of the limelight, and sometimes in secret, a small corps of former U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials, often working with academic specialists, meet regularly with high-ranking North Koreans. If it’s not quite diplomacy, it sometimes gets pretty close.

“The North Koreans understand that we’re in no way representing the United States government. So sometimes, we can raise things that the U.S. government isn’t able to,” said Leon V. Sigal, a former State Department policy official and long a key player in what are commonly called Track 2 talks. These North Korean discussions are often seen as a key part of Washington-Pyongyang relations.

John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, said that with communication between North Korea and the U.S. almost non-existent, Track 2 talks have become a placeholder for government-to-government discussions. Informal talks are “a way for the North Koreans to send indirect messages,” he said, and try out ideas they may be hesitant to suggest in official channels.

What has emerged recently from Track 2 discussions? “Even now, as bad as things are, it’s clear” that North Korea is ready to talk, Sigal said. A series of slow, reciprocal steps by both sides — “they would suspend certain activities, the U.S. would take certain steps” — could lead back to official negotiations.

“Most people in Washington have an assumption that the North Koreans are bad guys — which is true enough — but also that you can’t deal with them. I say that assumption is fundamentally wrong,” Sigal said. “I think you have to be talking to them. And that’s the purpose of Track 2.”

[AP]

North Korea: Who’s provoking who?

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The chorus of condemnation over North Korea’s nuclear test carried calls for strong action from China — but Beijing continues to back its reclusive neighbor.

Many in Beijing see American steps to neutralize the North Korea nuclear issue as a “cover” for pushing ahead with another objective: containing China. The planned deployment of an American missile-defense shield — THAAD to South Korea has served to fan those fears.

Academics and the Chinese general public appear split over what comes next, largely because there are two competing views when it comes to the risks. “One view is that destabilization and regime collapse in North Korea and chaos along the border with China is the main danger to China’s security, the other view is that the escalating nuclear program of North Korea and the prospect of nuclear war is an even bigger danger to China,” Zhang Liangui, a regional expert at China’s Central Party School, explained.

It doesn’t help matters that Beijing views U.S. and South Korean actions — like joint military exercises — as exacerbating the issue by ramping up North Korea’s fears of attack. Meanwhile the US is raising the stakes. Two American B-1B bombers flew over the Korean peninsula this week in a show of force intended to demonstrate U.S. resolve against North Korean aggression.

Many in China view the North Korea issue as a dispute exclusively between Pyongyang and the U.S., according to Zhang. “For China to exert too much pressure on North Korea is tantamount to helping the U.S.,” Zhang explained. “But after the recent fifth nuke test, this point of view is losing ground.”

“Washington and Seoul take the view that the North’s provocations require more military exercises, whereas Beijng is of the view that it’s the military exercises that are encouraging [North Korea] to accelerate its nuclear program,” explained Timothy Stafford, a research fellow at PacificForum-CSIS.

That was reflected in a recent editorial in China’s official People’s Daily newspaper, which called the U.S. a troublemaker with no right to lecture about taking responsibility for keeping North Korea in check. The United States is doing less and less for the public good in international affairs, “but its vigor for trouble-making has not diminished an iota,” the newspaper said in the commentary.

[NBC]

After rains and severe flooding, North Korea makes rare public appeal for relief

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North Korea usually projects itself to the world as a fully functioning worker’s paradise. Yet severe flooding in the country’s northeast has resulted in a rare admission that all is not so well.

According to a report published Sunday by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) — North Korea’s official state media — the country’s northeast has been affected by the “heaviest downpour” since 1945, with “tens of thousands” of buildings destroyed and people left homeless and “suffering from great hardship.”

Figures released by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirmed the natural disaster. So far, 133 people have been killed, 395 people are missing and 140,000 people are in “urgent need of assistance.”

The KCNA report stated how the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) had sent a public appeal to party members and service personnel of the Korean People’s Army to pool their efforts toward recovery operations to help those in the worst-hit regions. According to the report, the WPK even redirected a nationwide 200-day mass mobilization campaign aimed at boosting the economy toward helping flood victims.

Chris Staines, the head of a Red Cross delegation to North Korea, said he witnessed how the floods had “destroyed everything in their path” during a government-led trip to North Hamgyong province between September 6-9. Shelter will be a major concern in the coming months, Staines said in a statement. “Thousands of homes will need to be rebuilt before winter sets in and by the end of October overnight temperatures can plummet to sub-zero,” he added.

[CNN]

North Korea, far from crazy, is actually quite rational

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Is North Korea irrational? Or does it just pretend to be?

Political scientists have repeatedly investigated this question and, time and again, emerged with the same answer: North Korea’s behavior, far from crazy, is all too rational.

Its belligerence, they conclude, appears calculated to maintain a weak, isolated government that would otherwise succumb to the forces of history. Its provocations introduce tremendous danger, but stave off what Pyongyang sees as the even greater threats of invasion or collapse.

When political scientists call a state “rational”, they are not saying its leaders always make the best or most moral choices, or that those leaders are paragons of mental fitness. Rather, they are saying the state behaves according to its perceived self-interests, first of which is self-preservation.

North Korea’s actions abroad and at home, while abhorrent, appear well within its rational self-interest, according to a 2003 study by David C. Kang, a political scientist now at the University of Southern California. At home and abroad, he found, North Korean leaders shrewdly determined their interests and acted on them.

Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor who served as the Asian affairs director on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, has repeatedly argued that North Korea’s leadership is rational. Savage cruelty and cold calculation are not mutually exclusive, after all–and often go hand in hand.

North Korea’s seemingly unhinged behavior [is based on its creation] of permanently imminent war, issuing flamboyant threats to attack, staging provocations and sometimes deadly attacks. Its nuclear and missile tests, though erratic and often failed, stirred up one crisis after another. This militarization kept the North Korean leadership internally stable. It also kept the country’s enemies at bay.

And over time, the government’s reputation for irrationality has become an asset as well. Scholars ascribe this behavior to the “madman theory”–a strategy, coined by no less a proponent than Richard M. Nixon, in which leaders cultivate an image of belligerence and unpredictability to force adversaries to tread more carefully.

[New York Times]

North Korea’s nuclear “desperation theory”

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North Korea’s nuclear program, some analysts believe, is designed to halt an American invasion by first striking nearby United States military bases and South Korean ports, then by threatening a missile launch against the United States mainland. While North Korea does not yet have this ability, analysts believe it will within the next decade.

This is the culmination of North Korea’s rationality, in something known as desperation theory. Under this theory, when states face two terrible choices, they will pick the least bad option.

In North Korea’s case, that means creating the conditions for a war it would most likely lose. And it could mean preparing a last-ditch effort to survive that war by launching multiple nuclear strikes, chancing a nuclear retaliation for the slim chance to survive.

North Korea’s leaders tolerate this danger because, in their calculus, they have no other choice.

The rest of us share in that risk–vanishingly small, but nonzero–whether we want to or not.

[New York Times]

Why China refuses to block North Korea’s nuclear ambitions

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China’s latest diplomatic crisis began with an earthquake in a region not known for seismic activity [caused by North Korea’s nuclear test.]. And China analysts don’t expect Beijing to do much. Concerned about the implications of a North Korean collapse, China shows little appetite for confrontation.

“The reason North Korea dared to conduct this nuclear test is because it knew the Chinese are very much handcuffed,” said Tong Zhao, an associate at Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.

China is the only lifeline for leader Kim Jong Un. The bigger neighbor accounts for 90% of North Korea’s trade, much of it along the Yalu River, which serves as a border between the two countries.

Leaders worry that economic upheaval in the totalitarian nation could flood northeastern China with millions of refugees, Zhao said. But they fear much more the loss of a buffer between China and U.S.-backed South Korea, with its nearly 30,000 American troops.

China already is incensed at a July agreement between Seoul and the U.S. to deploy a missile defense system, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, to protect the South from any Pyongyang attacks. Beijing sees the equipment as a threat to its own national security.

The tensions threaten efforts at any unified strategy toward North Korea. And they likely handed the unpredictable, 32-year-old Kim a greater opportunity to flout international sanctions. Many doubt China will approve stronger sanctions.

“For China, North Korea is a necessary evil,” said Zhang Baohui, the director of the Center for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “China has to maintain the survival of the North Korean regime. That’s its fundamental quagmire.”

“From China’s point of view, North Korea’s real weapon of destruction is chaos,” said Euan Graham, former charge d’affairs at the British embassy in Pyongyang and current international security program director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Australia. “The fear of chaos runs so deep in the Chinese psyche that it’s this overriding fear [that dominates] rather than one of a freelancing and uncontrollable ally.”

So far, Beijing has agreed only to push for multi-country talks that stalled seven years ago.

Beijing now kicks the ball to the U.S. and South Korea. States Zhang, the Hong Kong professor, “China has accepted the reality of a nuclear North Korea.”

[LA Times]

Few expect China to punish North Korea for latest nuclear test

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North Korea’s biggest nuclear test, conducted last week less than 50 miles from the Chinese border, sent tremors through homes and schools in China’s northeast. But hours later, there was no mention of the test on China’s state-run evening television news, watched by hundreds of millions of viewers.

Although North Korea remains nearly 100 percent dependent on China for oil and food, Chinese analysts say that Beijing will not modify its allegiance to North Korea or pressure the country to curtail its drive for a full-fledged nuclear arsenal, as the United States keeps requesting.

China sees living with a Communist-ruled nuclear-armed state on its border as preferable to the chaos of its collapse, says Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. The Chinese leadership is confident that North Korea would not turn its weapons on China, and that China would be able to control its neighbor by providing enough oil to keep its economy afloat.

The alternative is a strategic nightmare for Beijing: a collapsed North Korean regime, millions of refugees piling into China, and a unified Korean Peninsula under an American defense treaty.

The Obama administration’s decision to deploy an advanced missile defense system THAAD in South Korea also gives President Xi Jinping of China less incentive to cooperate with Washington on a North Korea strategy that could aim, for example, to freeze the North’s nuclear capacity, the analysts said. THAAD has effectively killed any chance of China cooperating with the United States, they said. Beijing interprets the THAAD deployment as another American effort to contain China.

“China is strongly opposed to North Korea’s nuclear weapons but at the same time opposes the defense system in South Korea,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an assistant professor of international relations at Renmin University. It was not clear which situation the Chinese leadership was most agitated about, he said.

The longstanding fear that punitive economic action would destabilize North Korea makes it unlikely that Beijing would cooperate with the United States on more stringent sanctions at the United Nations, according to Chinese analysts.

So despite what Chinese analysts describe as the government’s distaste for Kim Jong Un and his unpredictable behavior, China’s basic calculus on North Korea remains firm. Mr. Xi would continue to ensure that North Korea remained stable.

[New York Times]

What does North Korea want?

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Friday’s nuclear test has erased any doubt that North Korea is serious about its nuclear program. But aside from fear-mongering and posturing — just what does North Korea hope to achieve?

Rather than a bargaining chip used to gain more foreign aid or access to the world stage, it appears that the country’s nuclear weapons program boils down to a matter of dignity and national pride.

First off, the latest nuclear test was timed to coincide with North Korea’s National Day on September 9. In the statement from North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Institute announcing the operation, it said it would continue to develop its weapons for “safeguarding its dignity and right to existence and genuine peace.”

It blamed the “racket of threat and sanctions against the DPRK kicked up by the US-led hostile forces… to find fault with the sovereign state’s exercise of the right to self-defense.”

Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the East Asia Nonproliferation Program (EANP) stated: “For years, we have mocked their nuclear and missile capabilities and 2016 seems to really be about demonstrating what they have and what they can do.”

“Clearly [North Korea doesn’t] care about what we think,” Christopher Hill, the former US ambassador to South Korea told CNN. “They don’t care about our admonitions. They don’t care about joining the international community… they certainly don’t care about the UN Security Council resolutions.”

Hill says there needs to be something more to bring about any change with Kim’s regime. “I think we need to sit down with the Chinese… and say, ‘Together we need to solve this,'” he said.

[CNN]

Is China impotent when it comes to North Korea’s actions?

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North Korea’s latest nuclear test will pile the pressure on China — the country’s economic benefactor and only real ally — to rein in Kim Jong Un’s regime.

But, even if it were willing, Beijing increasingly appears unable to influence its unruly neighbor.

“It won’t cut off economic ties completely; that would make China vulnerable to North Korea threats… and a potential collapse,” says Tong Zhao, an associate at the Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.

Relations between Pyongyang and Beijing have been frosty since Kim Jong Un succeeded his late father as dictator, promptly purging several key government figures — such as his uncle Jang Song Thaek — with strong ties to China.

Kim has never visited China as leader, nor has he met President Xi Jinping, despite reportedly lobbying to do so for several years.

Concerning the North Korean nuclear test back in January, Mike Chinoy, former CNN international correspondent and the author of “Meltdown: The inside story of the North Korean nuclear crisis,” had called it a “real slap in the face” for China.

In March, China joined the international community in placing the toughest ever sanctions on the country. Speaking on Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying declined to say if China would support new, tougher sanctions.

[CNN]