North Korea: Toward an opening to a wider world
 
Philip Bowring IHT
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
DAVOS, Switzerland As clouds continue gathering over the Middle East, those over East Asia are parting. It now seems possible that the current crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear moves will not merely be resolved but could finally lead to the opening of the North to a wider world. Optimism has been dashed before - by the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994, by the narrow failure to achieve a breakthrough with the United States in the last days of the Clinton administration, and by the North's reluctance to build on the summit of the two Kims in 2000. But there is a growing consensus among the North's neighbors that Kim Jong Il's agenda can be summed up in the phrase "change without regime change."
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No North Koreans showed up at Davos, but there have been opportunities for exchanges here between key players and intermediaries, including the chief Clinton era U.S. contact, Bill Richardson, now governor of New Mexico, the United Nations special envoy and a frequent visitor to Pyongyang, Maurice Strong, and Japan's deputy foreign minister, Ichiro Fujisaki. Even Mongolia's prime minister, Nambar Enkhbayar, has been involved in the efforts to move Pyongyang, along with emissaries from Russia and Australia.
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Slowly the effort has been bearing fruit. Pyongyang is to entertain an envoy from the South to discuss the nuclear issue, which in the past it has been prepared to discuss only with the United States. Indeed, its willingness to receive various envoys, rather than sit tight on its obsession with dealing directly with Washington, is a sign of a change of tactics.
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At the same time there is now a likelihood of talks at a technical level with the United States that should lead to more substantive discussions. The United Nations is pressing for new commitments to humanitarian aid that would help underpin the progress.
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This is of course nuclear blackmail. But if, as the neighbors clearly believe, Kim Jong Il is intent not just on aid to ward off hunger but also on major (by his standards) economic opening as part of a package deal, the price is worth paying. That is especially so for the South, which wants Chinese-style opening, from which it will be the primary beneficiary, without regime change.
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Indeed, Seoul is believed to be readying aid and investment on a much bigger scale than in the past, should it be possible to resolve the nuclear question and achieve a Pyongyang-Washington agreement. Time is more on the side of the South. Although delays would allow the North to again be producing plutonium, Kim's pressing need is for funds to underpin the economic changes - a more rational and decentralized pricing and wage system - introduced last year.
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Needless to say, a beggar state is no position to start a war. The gap between Washington and Pyongyang is not as wide as it might seem. The nuclear issue revolves not so much around whether the North already has a couple of crude weapons; that would be a blow for those focusing on nonproliferation but is of no great consequence to the South. The key question is whether it now will not acquire the plutonium to build more.
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The North insists that it is willing to go back to the 1994 accord and to give access to inspectors if it gets what it thinks it is entitled to under that accord. The United States meanwhile has reaffirmed that it has no intention of attacking the North to resolve the nuclear issue.
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It should be possible slowly to move both sides toward something between the U.S. informal commitment and the nonaggression treaty sought by Pyongyang, perhaps through some parallel statements and a timetable for normalization of relations.
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It is possible that hard-liners in Pyongyang will prevail and block Kim. Some resent the 1994 accord, fear economic opening and remain so distrustful of the South and the United States that they see nuclear weapons as their only sure means of defense.
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But the sensible reaction of other actors, including the United States and Japan as well as quasi-friends China and Russia, to the North's nuclear moves should help erode its distrust and paranoia stemming from years of isolation and fear of its own weakness. These are the main obstacles to moving Kim from clever tactical brinkmanship to a strategy for re-entry into the East Asian world.

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