THE RISING EAST
North Korea has long history of sabotaging negotiations
By Richard Halloran
In the marathon negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions, China and South Korea, as well as American critics of President Bush, have urged the United States to be "flexible."
Associated Press via U.S. Navy
The trouble is that no one has defined what is meant by "flexible," leaving the impression they think the United States should give North Korea whatever it wants.
The USS Pueblo was captured Jan. 22, 1968, by North Korean patrol boats, which took it into the port at Wonsan. The seizure was one of a number of incidents since 1953 that have led to bitter confrontations between the United States and North Korea.
The North Koreans have said their objective is the withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from South Korea and Japan.
A former U.S. official experienced in negotiating with the North Koreans was asked in a private conversation what the United States could offer that would get them to negotiate seriously toward a compromise. "Nothing," he said.
"Anything we offer them will not be enough."
The chief U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, pointed to the difficulty of negotiating with the North Koreans, saying in Washington some weeks ago that North Korea has "a history of broken and unsuccessful agreements." Even a cursory glance at the record would bear him out.
At issue is whether North Korea will acquire an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia all say they want the Korean Peninsula to be free of those weapons. The United States has 37,000 troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan or at sea within range of North Korean weapons.
Moreover, senior officials of the Bush administration have emphasized that failing to halt North Korea's nuclear aspirations would severely undermine efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear arms.
The United States has insisted on two points over the past 18 months: First, that North Korea agrees to a "complete, verifiable and irreversible" end to its nuclear programs. Second, that North Korean nuclear weapons threaten several nations, and therefore an agreement to abolish them should be multinational.
The North Koreans have asserted, through their Korean Central News Agency, that peace cannot be assured in Northeast Asia "unless U.S. troops are withdrawn from Japan and South Korea." Pyongyang has further demanded that the United States negotiate only with it and not the other four nations.
On this point, Kelly was adamant: "We don't intend to do that." Presumed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry disagreed, telling the New York Times: "You've certainly got to be bilateral."
For the North Koreans to be considered perhaps the world's most difficult negotiators is not new; Americans have experienced those trials for more than 50 years, since the Korean War of 1950-53. Negotiations to end that conflict began in mid-1951 but did not reach a truce until mid-1953.
Between then and now, Americans have negotiated with North Koreans over their seizure of the USS Pueblo in 1968, the ax murders of two American officers in the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea in 1976, and the Agreed Framework that supposedly ended North Korean nuclear plans in 1994 — plus a score of other issues.
Drawing on that experience, Chuck Downs, a former State and Defense Department official, has written a definitive assessment of North Korean tactics.
North Korea, he wrote, does not negotiate "because it seeks an agreement. Its objective is to gain concessions and benefits merely in the process of agreeing to talk."
In his book, "Over the Line: North Korea's Negotiating Strategy," Downs catalogs North Korean tactics: insults and threats, stalling and delaying, alternately portraying itself as strong or as the victim. It has been adept at playing off one nation against another, notably China and Russia, and has sought to do so with the United States and South Korea.
B.C. Koh, a Korean-American political scientist, has written: "The most salient feature of North Korea's tactical behavior is brinkmanship." He said it consists of three phases: "Precipitate a crisis; leave the door open for negotiation; and once negotiation gets under way, do not yield until the last minute."
Philip Yun, a Korean American who negotiated with North Korea 1998-2000, explained that their "incessant bluster" arises from "a huge inferiority complex." He noted that the North Korean economy "is a shambles; there is little food." Further, he wrote: "It touts its million-man army, yet its military might is slowly deteriorating."
A former U.S. ambassador to Seoul, James Lilley, echoed Downs, Koh and Yun on North Korean tactics: "They threaten war, engage in terrorism and infiltration, mobilize their public, call up their reserves, execute counter-revolutionaries, put their oversized military on full alert, and appeal to humanitarianism."
"They are at once," Lilley concluded, "pathetic and pathological."
Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia.
