Part II
The first, though least important, is prestige. For any country, possession of nuclear weapons confers a degree of status, showing that it has the scientific, technological and military know-how required to put together the ultimate weapon. This is especially true in North Korea's case, since the country can boast precious few achievements of any kind in recent years, or even decades. Without nukes, or even suspected nukes, North Korea would probably be another Myanmar, routinely condemned for its atrocious human-rights record, but generally isolated and ignored in the region and by the wider world.
The second reason is to use it as a bargaining chip in relations with the United States, South Korea, or Japan - North Korea's principal enemies and adversaries. Those nations' policymakers who favor a negotiated solution to the nuclear issue suggest that Pyongyang will build up a nuclear arsenal, then trade it away for diplomatic and economic concessions. The trouble is, once these concessions have been won, there is no way to guarantee that North Korea has given up its nuclear-weapons program without verification. And even if "verification" takes place, Pyongyang can pursue - indeed, has been pursuing - a covert nuclear program, to which it allegedly admitted in October 2002, this despite having pledged to suspend nuclear activities eight years earlier.
The third and real reason for North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons is the security of the country, and by extension the regime of Kim Jong-il. This has been confirmed by high-level defectors such as former diplomat Ko Yong-hwan, by Kang Myong-do (the son-in-law of former prime minister Kang Song-san), and even by Kim Jong-il's former Japanese sushi chef, Kenji Fujimoto.
In this regard, 1991 must be seen as a turning point. Although Pyongyang had already embarked on its weapons program by that time in order to gain a decisive military edge over its southern neighbor, it must have been alarmed by two major international developments: the US-led Gulf War to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait in January-February of that year, and the collapse of the Soviet Union - for years North Korea's main patron - by the end of the year.
New global environment demands new security
These events, coupled with the fact that its other former patron, China, was busy pressing ahead with "heretical", capitalist economic reforms, sent a strong message to North Korean leaders that the only real defense of the regime lay in possession of nuclear weapons. Neither Russia nor China - which had come to North Korea's assistance in the Korean War (1950-53) - was interested in doing so again.
Certainly, the international climate in the 1990s reinforced this view. The US almost went to war with North Korea over the nuclear issue in the summer of 1994. In addition, in December 1998 the United States and the United Kingdom launched Operation Desert Fox, in which four nights of air strikes targeted Iraq's suspected WMD sites, apparently aimed at triggering a coup to unseat president Saddam Hussein.
Four months later, in March 1999, the US and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies launched Operation Allied Force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in support of the country's ethnic-Albanian population in the province of Kosovo. Seventy-eight days of air strikes followed, resulting in billions of dollars of economic and industrial damage to Yugoslavia, with very little loss to NATO forces. This was followed by the occupation of Kosovo by tens of thousands of NATO troops.
Again, from October to December 2001, the US and its allies went into action, this time against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime, resulting in its overthrow, and replacement by a pro-Western government. While this was retaliation for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the apparent ease with which US forces prevailed - where Soviet forces had fared so poorly in the 1980s - must have alarmed North Korea's leaders.
Less than two years after that, in March 2003, the US invaded Iraq, and deposed Saddam within three weeks, with far fewer losses than predicted by naysayers.
** Lesson: US only attacks countries without nukes
It cannot have been lost on Pyongyang that all of the nations attacked by the US lacked nuclear weapons. Judging by the United States' kid-glove treatment of North Korea in comparison to the punishment meted out on Iraq in early 2003, both Washington and Pyongyang understand this situation clearly.
So giving up nuclear weapons appears out of the question, regardless of negotiations. ** * Kim is smart, very smart.. speaks the language terrorist understand *
According to the late Robert Bartley, of the Wall Street Journal, the 1994 "Agreed Framework" - under which North Korea officially suspended its nuclear-weapons program in return for the provision of two new reactors less suited for weapons production, and the supply of 500,000 tons of US oil per year to compensate for energy losses - was actually the fourth time, of at least six occasions in total, that the US had officially "solved" the problem with North Korea.
Bartley noted that the first time was in 1985, when US president Ronald Reagan persuaded Pyongyang to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). On the second occasion, in 1991, president George H W Bush removed all US tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea, thereby giving less reason for Pyongyang to worry about a US nuclear attack. The third time, in 1993, president Bill Clinton persuaded Pyongyang to submit its nuclear program to international inspection. The fifth "solution", in late 1994, was a formal affirmation of the Jimmy Carter-brokered deal in the summer that led to the nuclear freeze. The sixth solution in 1999 allowed for US inspection of a suspected underground nuclear site at Kumchang-ri, which turned out to be empty.
What is surprising is that from October 2002, Pyongyang suddenly became much more open about its nuclear-weapons program. Whereas previously North Korea had tended to deny that it possessed or was seeking to develop nuclear weapons, its alleged admission to visiting US officials in October that it was operating a secret nuclear program suggested a new brazenness in its approach to relations with the US.
Indeed, BBC Monitoring (the wing of the British Broadcasting Corp that monitors and translates foreign radio and television broadcasts) reported on November 17, 2002, that Radio Pyongyang had for the first time stated that North Korea possessed nuclear weapons. South Korean commentators were more skeptical, however, suggesting that the BBC had mistranslated a broadcast in which Pyongyang had merely stated a right to possess nukes.
Pyongyang goes public on nukes as US plans Iraq war
Either way, the timing of the broadcast was hardly a coincidence. With the United States already laying the diplomatic and military groundwork for an attack on Iraq, North Korea apparently was hoping to demonstrate that the US could not deal with two major crises at the same time.
Further, Pyongyang also appeared to have been warning Washington that it too could brandish its nuclear arsenal, after President George W Bush's February 2002 designation of North Korea as a member of the "axis of evil", along with Iraq and Iran. It was also probably motivated by the revelation in the US media in March 2002 that North Korea was one of seven countries that the US might attack with nuclear weapons, under the
In the meantime, after the lack of progress in the second round of six-way talks, Pyongyang has bought itself at least another four months of breathing space until June. During this time it can press ahead and build up its nuclear arsenal, probably betting on the fact that with US forces tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan - and with presidential elections due this November - there will be “no war in '04” on the Korean Peninsula.