By Janet Kim
Experts were quick to throw water on the hype surrounding Kim Jong Il’s Tuesday decision that North Korea would rejoin the six-party talks over its nuclear weapons program. A panel of University specialists argued about what role the United States should play in the North Korea crisis that erupted after the totalitarian power’s apparent nuclear test on Oct. 9.
Panel speakers Xiyu Yang, Daniel Sneider, and Donald Macintyre discuss the current state of affairs in North Korea.
“The talks have always been an escape valve for the North Koreans,” said Daniel Sneider, the associate director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). “They could always opt to return to the six party talks when pressure mounted from China or South Korea, without particular cost to their own government. They lose nothing by coming back to the table, but we don’t know if they’re interested in more serious negotiations.”
The Chinese government played a crucial part in pressuring North Korea to return to international negotiations after more than a year-long hiatus. In addition to being the host for the six-party talks, China is North Korea’s largest trading partner and wields considerable economic and military influence over North Korea. Tuesday’s announcement that North Korea would be returning to the multilateral talks was made by China.
“China has been pretty clear about displeasure with the test, and probably has been twisting Kim Jong Il’s arm a little bit,” said Donald Macintyre, Time Magazine’s Seoul bureau chief from 2001 to 2006.
China, which has traditionally been a close ally of North Korea, has been cooperating closely with the United States in attempting to resolve the situation. In a groundbreaking move, China voted for United Nations Security Council resolutions in July and October that imposed sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear testing.
“These are the first times that China has supported sanctions targeting North Korea,” said Xiyu Yang, a career diplomat in the Chinese government, “but China supported the sanctions because it wanted the sanctions to be important in future diplomacy.”
Yang was a counselor in the Department of Asian Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, as well as the inaugural Director of the Chinese Ministry’s Office for Korean Peninsula Issues.
Yang emphasized the limited role China could play in resolving the conflict.
“Can we pull North Korea back to the table?” he asked. “I say yes, because North Korea has always wanted the resumption of the talks. But the more critical point is whether the talks can make a progress, and that answer lies in Pyongyang’s desires, not in what China does.”
Sneider, who once covered North Korea for the San Jose Mercury News, called Tuesday’s announcement an “important moment in China-U.S. relations.”
“Not that there aren’t differences — different sets of interests — but in my memory, this is the first time that China and the U.S. have worked together to solve a security problem. The outcome of this process is going to have a huge impact on our relations down the road,” he said.
Sneider criticized American policy with regard to the North.
“This administration likes to talk about how great the six-party talks are, that it spreads responsibility and isolates North Koreans,” he said. “All of that has some truth to it, but the real truth is that it’s not a very good format for engaging the North Koreans. The Agreed Framework negotiations involved thousands of hours of direct talks between American and Korean officials. A crisis of this scope can’t be resolved through a few hours of talk in Beijing.”
The former Chinese official criticized the Bush administration’s unwillingness to engage in direct bilateral talks with North Korea.
“China has always encouraged bilateral talks,” said Yang, “but in this administration, the policy has become no bilateral talks at all.”
But Macintyre argued that the Bush administration’s unwillingness to engage in bilateral talks was not entirely unreasonable.
“I think the U.S.’s issue is that, if North Korea gets into bilateral negotiations with the U.S., North Korea will lose interest in the six-party talks, so the U.S. will be forced to make concessions or risk having North Korea walk out of the talks,” he said.
“It’s important to remember that in the last few weeks since the nuclear test, the Republicans have been blaming Clinton for his deals in the 1990s that let the North Koreans keep their program, and Democrats have been blaming Bush for not talking with the North Koreans. There are two sides to this, and there’s definitely a downside to bilateral negotiations for the United States.”
Macintyre, who has traveled six times into highly-restrictive North Korea, also reiterated the need for an effective resolution of the conflict, because any sanctions imposed upon North Korea would likely affect the average impoverished North Korean citizen.
“The talks do not help the situation of the average North Korean who is still living in a country where food is short,” he said. “There are a great number of malnourished North Koreans, particularly children, whose living conditions remain terrible. As the talks go on, none of these issues are being addressed, and North Koreans continue to grow stunted, undereducated and underfed.”
Janet Kim is a staff writer for the Stanford Daily.
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