What to expect from Clinton's "Summit"

And, Kim Jong Il Gets What He Wants... (Which is ? Scroll to the way bottom)

While former President Clinton goes to North Korea (as an unoffical guest, which is quite convenient for the U.S.), Kim Jong Il finally gets his one-on-one encounter with a (former, Democratic) U.S. president -- before he dies. It made all the headlines here in the U.K. as well, however I couldn't find an equivalent of the one they had at over at the Economist. I nabbed the picture below from "North Korea: Pictures from an exhibition" : The Economist.

At any rate, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il finally got the attention he so craved. While reading one of the U.K. dailies today, I came across this one part, which I thought was quite funny. These are insults that have been traded between the U.S. and the North Korean regime at one point or another:

Kim Jong-il may have been all smiles and handshakes with Bill, but just a few days ago his regime was in something of a slanging match with the other Clinton.

On a recent visit to New Delhi, Hillary, the Secretary of State, bemoaned the North Korean leadership's "constant demand for attention," before adding: "Maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers."

The North Koreans' response was firm. "We cannot but regard Mrs Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community," a spokesperson said. "Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes like a pensioner going shopping."

The name-calling between Washington and Pyongyang is not new. George W Bush branded Kim Jong-il "a spoiled child at a dinner table". The North Koreans called Bush a "tyrannical imbecile" lacking "even an iota of elementary reason". And in 1968, North Korea's Major-General Pak Chung Kuk called Lyndon Johnson a "living corpse" ("Two U.S. journalists freed from Korean gulag" : The Independent).

At any rate, there was a lot of press coverage, but with expectations suddenly raised between North Korea and the U.S., although I feel I am a quite an optimist by nature, I cannot be more than a tad pessimistic about what may lay ahead. This "summit" has all the elements that the Koizumi-Kim summit had in 2002 when Koizumi suddenly and unexpectedly arrived in North Korea for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il for the release of Japanese abductees. Of course, none at the time and nobody more so than former Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi could have anticipated how adversely the Japanese public would consume the news that their citizens had indeed been abducted.

Personally, I believe what will drive North Korea-U.S. relations as well as with the other four parties from the six party framework, is how each party comes to accept the fact that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons. This stands in stark and direct conflict with the fact that the United States will never accept North Korea as a legitimate nuclear power along the lines that the U.S. has with India -- and rightly so.

But, I do believe the U.S. would be content to see a steady-state where North Korea has nuclear weapons, but doesn't share/sell nuclear weapons or technology to other countries or non-state actors. Of course, this would hinge on North Korea not testing nuclear weapons (you can see this as the U.S. -- I'm thinking Department of Defense here, which has a different definition as to what constitutes a nuclear test than the U.S. State Department). And, of course, this action by the U.S. would in and of itself be a security guarantee for North Korea -- while not directly in the form of an alliance, the U.S. will do everything in its power to make sure a state with nuclear weapons does not collapse (think Pakistan).

But, pessimissm aside, I have a feeling that come one year -- and provided Kim Jong Il doesn't die, not much will have changed from how things were perhaps a couple years ago. If North Korea returns to a posture where it looks like it is going to negotiate, then South Korea can again start trading with North Korea and, well, unfortunately Japan looks like the odd man out (I'm quite concerned about what would happen if Japan's interests were not considered by the U.S., leading to Japan re-arming. Japan has quite a few greivances with all her neighbors: Kuril Islands/lack of peace treaty (Russia), Liancourt Rocks (Korea), No Peace Treaty (North Korea), and the Senkaku Islands (China/Republic of China(Taiwan)). I'm probably missing some others as well.

Anyways, I'm thinking that at best we can expect a return to the status quo and see what type of vocabulary each country uses to come up with a tacit acceptance of North Korea's nuclear weapons program as no country will go to war with North Korea to get rid of it.

(So, Kim Jong Il gets a de-facto security guarantee from the United States with the potential for much more).

North Korea Update: Relentless Scolding (잔소리) and the State of the Six Party Talks

While this is a blog that pays attention to both North and South Korea, I haven't made it much of a habit of following, tracking, and commenting on each individual bit of news as it comes out. And, I don't intend to unless there is something at least somewhat meaningful going on, such as the summit in Washington a couple months ago. At any rate none of the "stories" that have been coming out have really been all that important.

Since the missle tests on July 4th, North Korea has allegedly launched "Distributed Denial-Of-Service" or Attacks over the Internet on South Korean and U.S. governmental websites. South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) have blamed North Korea, more specifically:

"It told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing Friday that a North Korean military research centre called 'Number 110' seems to have orchestrated the attacks, according to Yonhap news agency" (South Korea downgrades cyber attack alert AFP).

This is a complete non-issue as it pales in comparison to the attacks that take place on sites that refute South Korea's territorial claims on Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo, Takeshima, 독도, 獨島, 竹島) or a site refusing to give equal weight to the name East Sea as to that given to the Sea of Japan. Usually, these attacks come from regular, angry South Korean "netizens" -- by the way, I've always found netizens to be such a Korean-English word as whenever I hear it, it just reminds me of the English I would read in Korean newspapers. So, basically, the sophistication of these attacks is really no higher than hitting the refersh button over and over and over again. Cyberattacks from North Korea? C'mon now. It'll take much more than that for the United States to take North Korea seriously and give them one-on-one talks (By the way, whatever happened to Obama's pledge for one-on-one talks with any dictator?)

"Ruling out any direct talks with North Korea on nuclear disarmament negotiations, the US today said Pyongyang can only be engaged multilaterally through the six-party mechanism" ("US rules out any direct talks with North Korea" : Business Standard).

For, you see, I think North Korea does not very much like these six-party talks as it's basically like a situation when say I'm just interested in what just one particular person has to say, but there are these other people who have something to say to you as well (잔소리/Scolding from so many parties). On the other hand, from China's perspective, each round of its successful hosting shows that China has matured as a responsible power that understands the dangers of North Korean nuclear weapons proliferation and just hosting it shows off the country's power as it shows how China has brought North Korea to the negotiating table. It's mere hosting is seen as a success for China.

For the United States, it's a way to deflect responsibility or rather, a way to ensure that the United States is not the sole party responsible to denuclearize North Korea. Japan's foreign policy with respect to North Korea is held hostage to its very loud and powerful ultraconservative wing of the LDP as the forum has been the main and only one for Japan to express discontent at North Korea for not talking more about hostages (Even as recently, a group of South Korean fisherman have been taken into North Korean custody and a South Korean worker at Gaeseong still remains in North Korean custody). Yet, South Korea too, shows how it's a responsible party by placing sanctions on North Korea at least on a nominal basis and even having recently joined the PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative).

Then, only after having to hear all these things that these people (countries) have to say about your behavior and only then, can you finally get to hear what the United States (the only person you're interested in) has to say.

So, you can see the reasoning behind why:

"North Korea has said the purpose of the six-nation talks was to 'disarm and incapacitate' it"("North Korea Asserts New Willingness to Talk" : New York Times).

On a personal note, I'm surprised that North Korea hasn't done more to garner more U.S. attention and lets hope that this august will be a quiet august.

America the Dangerous?

On a more serious note, I noticed a couple articles in the news that makes me want to explain the other side … the view of the United States as a “normal” nation where the behavior of the nation isn’t explained by how America wants to expand “democracy” or rid “tyranny.”

This is a view I picked up living in Korea and I also hinted before at how shocked I was at the level of Anti-Americanism seen in Korea. How could it be that so many people of the same shared heritage (and, of course, of the same 족(族)) could hate America ? The country gives so many opportunities to so many different countries and is so goddamn beautiful (미국, 美國). On a side note here: One of my favorite lines in Korean, “아름다운 미국을 어떻게 싫어 할 수 있어 ” or “How could you hate Beautiful America?”

There’s a double meaning here and another opportunity to poke fun at Japanese. The Chinese characters used to represent the United States in Chinese and Korean literally mean “Beautiful Country/Nation (美國).” In Japanese, it isn’t (米國). In both, Korean and Japanese (not sure in Chinese), but anyways, the characters for “beautiful(美)” and “rice(米)” are homonyms. So if the Chinese characters that the Japanese language uses were to be pronounced in Korean, it would still be the same (미국 whether it’s美國 or米國). And, if the Japanese language were to call America “Beautiful Country” rather than “Rice Country” as Chinese and Korean do, then everybody in Japan would still be able to understand. Those island savages…

Anyways, to the meat of the post: America is also basically a giant island nation bordered by two much smaller countries to the north and south and an ocean to the east and a “vast ocean (太平洋)” to the west. So, basically the United States has no natural competitors (well, minus a Brazil one day) and dominates an entire hemisphere (half a planet) to herself. And as the Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party advocates and has advocated since the birth of this nation, the United States can always hide behind the two oceans with the most powerful navy in the world (Unfortunately, I believe this is why Japan fought a war with the U.S., for the control of the ocean. Consider that Japan has gotten everything the island nation wanted during World War II except for that).

Since the United States controls the oceans and has the most powerful navy in the world and has a string of allies in East Asia, it gives the country one huge advantage: very far-flung borders.
So, the effective border between the United States, and say, North Korea, is the DMZ and the East Sea (Sea of Japan) (For China, it’s even worse. The effective border between the U.S. and China is Japan down to South Korea down to Taiwan – So, that’s why Taiwan is so important to China/U.S.). The United States can attack North Korea from South Korea or Japan or even off the waters near North Korea in the East Sea or (Sea of Japan) without fear of reprisal. North Korea has to launch unreliable missiles over thousands of miles just to hit a Hawaii or Alaska.

But, now, let’s take a look at it from the South Korean perspective:

If you are living in Seoul, particularly Sinchon (신촌), then there’s a good chance a war between the U.S. and North Korea (for a second imagine, that it’s only between the U.S. and North Korea and while the U.S. and South Korea may be allies in name or nominal allies, it’s not in the South Korean or for that matter in any nation’s interest to see her capital destroyed) would not be seen as such a good thing. The reason I mention Sinchon in particular is that there was a study that said a North Korean attack on South Korea would lead to 99% of the people in Sinchon dying in the first fifteen minutes (Of course, I can’t cite the exact study, but hey this is a blog). So, actually, if you’re studying at Yonsei or Ehwa Universities, then there’s a good chance you might be done for. The point is that while a North Korean missile must travel thousands of miles before it can actually hit U.S. territory, the economic and political capital of South Korea is just fifteen minutes away from North Korea.

This can lead to some serious misunderstanding between the United States and South Korea. While the U.S. may think it to be perfectly rational to simply consider an airstrike on a North Korean nuclear facility, South Korea would think it to be utterly crazy. I mean from South Korea’s perspective, how on earth could somebody consider launching a war that would immediately destroy Seoul (half of all Koreans in South Korea live in Seoul and neighboring Gyeonggi province). So, before certain Korean-Americans and other commentators in America are quick to judge South Korea as a disloyal and ungrateful nation, it would also be natural and quite fair to expect that the United States understand and consider South Korea's concerns or else the United States would be the disloyal and arrogrant nation. Anyways, while North Korea has been in the news a lot recently (well up until Iran stole the limelight and the Obama Administration is tackling a real concern -- health care), the United States definitely did respond to North Korean threats by:

1. Upgrading Missile Defenses in Hawaii, which while it may sound ludicrous, it also serves a domestic propaganda function -- President Obama is “taking action” (Ahh, I miss President George W. Bush; well not really, but at least some of his phrases. I am a registered Republican by the way).
2. And, while none of the major newspapers in the United States seems to have covered it, the United States conducted a missile test too. Well, China, South Korea, and, of course, North Korea’s state run news agencies did (American newspapers aren’t state run right?) Basically, while the U.S. president wants Americans to know things are being taken care of (Hawaii), the U.S. wants North Korea to know that "Hey we got hundreds of these missiles that work and isthey are very, very accurate -- to within 6 m? -- and can carry three nuclear weapons at once."

“The Minuteman 3 was fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base during a six-hour
window that started at 3:01 a.m., carrying three unarmed re-entry vehicles that
hit their targets near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, some 4,200
miles (6,720 kilometers) away, the Air Force said” (Xinhua).

Anyways, it's not the type of thing I believed a "good" country like the United States would ever do and maybe it's just coincidental. After all, the United States loves to bomb things. Before the United States gave up possession of Dokdo/Takeshima(독도(獨島)/たけしま(竹島)) and Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, the United States used both as bombing ranges (A link for this will be provided one day). Anyways, America at the same time actually does believe she is a force for good.

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak is "taking action" as well as South Korea is building up a missile defense system of her own. South Korea is buying a lot of weapons from the United States:

"South Korea plans to acquire 40 new surface-to-air missiles within the
month for its Aegis destroyer, a military source said Sunday" (Yonhap).

Anyways, that's South Korea's view.that is how the United States can be seen as a "normal" nation that takes behavior not based upon what is right or wrong, but what on her interests. Interestingly, and what I believe will and has been a recurring theme in American (and World) History is that the United States and, moreover, Americans genuinely believe that what is in America's best interest is also good for the world. They call it naivete in Europe. I call it optimism and a product of the Enlightenment.