N. Korea tells Asia
meet it needs nukes to deter U.S
North Korea insisted Thursday it needs atomic weaponry to deter
a U.S. nuclear threat, and vowed never to give up its right to launch
rockets as part of what it called a peaceful space program.
Washington's aim is to
"eliminate the political ideology and system our people have opted
for", Foreign Minister Pak Ui-Chun told a regional Asian gathering in
Cambodia.
Pak told fellow
foreign ministers at the ASEAN Regional Forum that it was the U.S. which
scuppered the February 29 deal and was to blame for tensions on the Korean
peninsula.
The United States,
Japan and South Korea held a joint meeting on Thursday which warned that
"any provocation by North Korea... will be met with a resolute and
coordinated response from the international community."
Pyongyang says its
uranium enrichment plant is intended to fuel light water reactors to generate
power. Scientists say the plant could easily be reconfigured to produce
bomb-making material, supplementing its current plutonium program
Pyongyang's atomic
deterrent had helped maintain the regional nuclear balance and reduced the risk
of atomic war, it said.
The paper reiterated
calls for a peace treaty with the United States to replace the armistice which
ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.
Six-party talks, which
envisage a peace treaty and other benefits if the North scraps its atomic
weaponry, have been stalled since December 2008. (AFP)
S.
Korea, U.S. press N. Korea to give up policy of confrontation
PHNOM
PENH, July 12 (Yonhap) -- South Korean and U.S. nuclear envoys discussed North
Korea and reaffirmed they will not ease pressure on Pyongyang's new leadership
until it gives up a policy of confrontation, a senior Seoul diplomat said
Thursday.
Cho
Hyun-dong, deputy South Korean envoy to the six-party talks on ending North
Korea's nuclear program, held talks with his U.S. counterpart Clifford Hart on
Wednesday evening ahead of the ASEAN Regional Forum, an annual venue for talks
on security in Asia,
The
talks between Cho and Hart came a day before South Korean Foreign Minister Kim
Sung-hwan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Japanese Foreign
Minister Koichiro Gemba are scheduled to hold a trilateral meeting on the
sidelines of the forum.
S.
Korea, U.S., Japan move closer to building trilateral alliance
PHNOM
PENH (Yonhap News) -- South Korea, the United States and Japan announced
Thursday the establishment of a three-way security consultative body,
laying the groundwork to build a trilateral alliance in the face of North
Korean aggression.
The
announcement was made after South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba
held a trilateral meeting earlier in the day on the sidelines of the ASEAN
Regional Forum.
Clinton hailed the new organization, named the
Steering Group and to be based in Washington, as an initiative to
"build even deeper connection" among the three nations and across the
Asia-Pacific region to "bring even greater order and structure to our three-way
partnership."
The
launch of the consultative body reflected Washington's plan to reinforce
trilateral policy coordination with Seoul and Tokyo and more efficiently deal
with North Korea's growing threats as well as China's rising military influence
in the region, Seoul officials said
"It
is the first time that South Korea, the U.S. and Japan have formed such
a trilateral consultative body,"
(Yonhap
Interview) U.S. not 'sandwiched' between Korea, Japan: Stephens
Kathleen
Stephens, an iconic figure in recent South Korea-U.S. ties, emphasized
Wednesday that Washington's alliances with Seoul and Tokyo are not a zero-sum
game. Japan's gain does not have to be
Korea's loss, or vice versa, she said.
She
dismissed a view that the U.S. is sandwiched between Japan, apparently seeking
to expand the role of its self-defense forces, and South Korea, which remains
wary of Japan's possible return to military imperialism.
Japan
seems intent on building up its military power, putting South Korea and other
Asian neighbors on alert. Critics accuse
the U.S. of maintaining a lukewarm stance on the matter.
China
in Huge Infrastructure Projects Near N.Korean Border
China
is building a massive highway and rail network in Liaoning and Jilin provinces
near the border with North Korea. Beijing is expected to spend more than US$10
billion on the project by 2015.
Experts
believe the aim is not only to tap into North Korea's mineral resources but to
secure easy access for Chinese troops in case of an emergency in the North.
How
and Why North Korea Could Experience Economic Reform
David
Matthew is pursuing a Master’s degree in Public Policy at Edinburgh University
in the UK with a focus on security, trade, and technology in the Asia-Pacific. 7/12/12
In
a recent interview with the Korean Economic Institute scholar Andrei Lankov
argued that North Korea is not in a position to follow the path of economic
reform witnessed in countries like China due to the onerous presence of South
Korea. As he put it, “In China, reforms are possible because there is no South
China.” But the notion that China was able to undertake economic reforms in a
cultural or geographic vacuum does not seem well-supported by evidence.
What
we do know is that when Deng Xiaoping started instituting economic reforms in
China in 1978, the various countries with high populations of ethnic Chinese in
the region – Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan among others – had per capita
GDPs as high as 15 times that of mainland China. Moreover, there was a sizable
Chinese diaspora around the world numbering as many as 50,000,000 – a number of
whom we might imagine would have been in contact with citizens of the mainland
about outside levels of prosperity and opportunity. All of which is to say that
an economically opened China, where the citizens often still live below the
prosperity of ethnic Chinese elsewhere in the world or even in nearby Asian
nations, is not experiencing the type of dramatic revolution that many like
Lankov forecast for an economically opened North Korea.
The
method of China’s reform could be valuable for the DPRK, not least of all
because China has the organizational capacity to help achieve it in North
Korea. Deng started reforms with what was referred to as the
Household-responsibility system that partially privatized agriculture and
provided people with ownership of plots of land. This increased agricultural
output dramatically and was popular enough to have been adopted by 93 percent
of the agriculture-based production teams by 1983. This has short term
attractiveness in regard to boosting the food supply and making the country
less reliant on foreign food aid, but it is also a good place to start economic
liberalization because rural communities are the least likely to reach a
critical mass of revolution and the most likely to be in the dark about outside
prosperity differences.
Information
Flows and the Nexus of Revolution
Of
course information flows are capable of subverting regimes by virtue of
connecting people both within a state and between states. Additionally,
information can travel faster and farther than ever before in history, and
North Korea does possess some of the physical infrastructure to facilitate such
movement. But while this might be the source of a large existential problem for
the Kim regime, the government has demonstrated before its ability to
circumscribe the amount and type of information that permeates its borders.
There is no reason to suspect that economic liberalization would equally demand
full or even partial openness. China is a clear example of a country that
thrives on market principles but has restricted access to information. The
Great Firewall of China being one example, but the quick scrub job by the
online censors of the Bo Xilai scandal is one too. There are plenty of other
instances where regimes maintain tight control of information in conjunction
with high levels of economic competitiveness and growth, such as Bahrain and
Vietnam.
Even
within the implausible context of everyone in North Korea becoming fully
informed about the disparity in prosperity between themselves and the rest of
the world, it would not necessarily indicate the undoing of the government. On
the contrary, it might be sold to citizens as further evidence not only of the
immoral culture of consumption that drives the West, but also of the past and
continuing efforts of North Korea’s enemies to deprive the country of goods and
resources. As North Korean defector Sohn Jung-hoon noted in a post by Reuters,
“[The] regime won’t stop brainwashing and saying that poverty is because of our
enemies.”
Additionally,
the notion that rebellion would more easily foment, or would be guaranteed to
foment, at the point where North Koreans are fully informed about the
disadvantaged position is disputable. The Arab Spring was a pan-cultural idea
that captivated and moved forward the spirit of an entire geographic region.
While this is assuredly true, the number of countries that witnessed regime
change as a result of popular uprising comprise a tiny margin of the whole. In
very poor Sudan, where per capita GDP is around $3,200, protests have been
minimal and the Arab Spring has been largely absent. This, despite the fact
that the Sudanese are primarily ethnically Arabic like their neighbors in
Egypt, a full magnitude poorer than their neighbors in Egypt, and reasonably
aware of their relative poverty and lack of democratic process. While it is not
necessarily fair to use another part of the world as analogous for the Korean
situation, the landscape in the wake of the Arab Spring does provide some
clarity about the reasons and incentives for outright revolution.
As
it stands now though, many in North Korea are increasingly aware of South
Korea’s wealth and material success. A number of recent reports, mostly
stemming from a recent Intermedia
study, indicate that “a substantial,
consistently measurable portion of the population has direct access to outside
media”. This has come through highly fictionalized accounts of life like South
Korea’s famous dramas, but also through illegal file sharing, news reports and
films. Whether or not citizens in the DPRK take these at face value is
difficult to ascertain, but they do not seem to be pushing the country toward
revolution. B.R. Myers and others have well-documented the cultural superiority
that North Koreans are indoctrinated with by the state. It may be the case that
this sense of cultural superiority can carry the country through a transition
from an autarky to a developmental state.
How
Liberalization Could Look
It
is possible that North Korea could reform its economic engine relatively
quickly. As Orascom figured out when implementing North Korea’s mobile network,
the absence of many technologies and logistics frameworks means that upgrading
the country to a high level of quality is not as difficult as it would be in,
say, the United States or Western Europe where pre-existing redundancies slow
down adoption and change. As China and East Asia’s other developmental states
have shown, rapid economic growth can paper over weaknesses of governance or a
lack of freedoms.
From
a development standpoint, North Korea may well be in a fortuitous geographic
location. Undoubtedly China and South Korea are interested in developing its
economy and stabilizing the country, but it is also neighbors with Russia and
Japan. In other words, it is surrounded by some of the largest exporters of
both raw and manufactured goods in the world, as well as some of the largest
markets.
The
opening of trade financing opportunities and FDI could also see the government
in a position of strength in terms of offering more welfare options for
citizens in exchange for steady control over the population. While some
countries would surely not go along with this set of circumstances unless there
were promises for political reform alongside proposed economic reform, it is
highly unlikely that its potential primary investment and trade partners –
Russia and China in particular – would ask for these same conditions.
With the North Korean population constantly on the
verge of famine due to poor resource allocation and the systemic inefficiency
of the Korean economic model, Pyongyang has almost always relied on aid from
other countries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union this was largely
achieved through regional belligerence. But if March’s incidents were anything
to go by, the current government may not as deft at pulling the levers of
global economic manipulation as the previous one. The next time talks of
providing aid are conducted the United States and others will be even more wary
that Pyongyang will immediately renege on the agreement. If Kim Jong-un cannot
effectively harass and cajole the United States and others into providing aid,
his government may find that it has little other option but to liberalize the
economy.
