Introduction

Key Points

Delay in the North Korean Leadership Transfer

New Pressures for Progress in North-South Dialogue

Essential Elements of the October 21 Framework Agreement

Possible Obstacles to Implementation of the Agreement

The Geneva Agreement and U.S.-ROK Relations

Where Do We Go From Here?

About the Study Group

SPECIAL REPORT 10

The North Korean Nuclear Challenge
The Post-Kim Il Sung Phase Begins

Introduction

The situation on the Korean Peninsula reached a possible turning point on July 8, 1994, with the death of North Korea's eighty-two year-old president, Kim Il Sung. The passing of the North's founder and only leader of the Communist State had been predicted for years as an event that could open new possibilities for dramatic change on the Korean Peninsula. Almost four months after Kim's death, however, the nature and extent of changes in Pyongyang's policies remain unclear. Uncertainties persist over the course of North Korea's leadership transition and prospects for North-South relations, as well as the North's willingness to implement the October 21 U.S.-Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) framework agreement. Future periods of heightened confrontation, if not crisis, over the North's nuclear program can not be ruled out. The United States, South Korea, and North Korea's other neighbors face significant challenges in determining policy adjustments that might encourage the new North Korean leadership to take actions to reduce tensions and promote regional stability in Northeast Asia.

Key Points

• The October 21, 1994 U.S.-DPRK framework agreement outlines the steps for dismantling North Korea's plutonium production capability and improving U.S.-DPRK relations. It will be years before the agreement can be fully implemented, and a renewed crisis could occur if any elements in the agreement are not carried out. North Korea's continued adherence to its pledge not to refuel its five megawatt (MW) experimental reactor or reprocess spent fuel rods currently in wet storage, and to freeze construction of its 50 MW and 200 MW graphite reactors, is critical to implementing the agreement and is essential for further progress.
  
  
• It will be important to support the U.S.-DPRK agreement with parallel progress in the North-South Korean dialogue to reduce tensions on the peninsula and to ensure that the relationship between Washington and Seoul remains one of confidence. Progress in U.S.-DPRK relations has raised South Korean fears of losing control over developments on the peninsula and of a weakening of the U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) alliance.
  
  
• Washington must be attentive to South Korean concerns and reassure Seoul of the undiminished commitment of the U.S. to South Korea. This requires not only exceptional governmental measures to coordinate policy, but also efforts to build public support for common policy as the U.S. and South Korea both parties deal with North Korea on nuclear and other issues.
  
  
• South Korea should be actively involved in diplomacy with North Korea, relying on the South's economic, political, and military strengths and searching for appropriate opportunities to reactivate the North-South dialogue. The South will have a major role in supplying North Korea with light-water reactors. At the same time, the United States should take steps to ensure that the degree of progress toward normalization of U.S.-DPRK relations does not outpace the development of North-South relations.
  
  
• There is still little reliable information about how the North Korean political succession is proceeding. Kim Il Sung's death may not have precipitated a period of policy paralysis in North Korea, but it has created considerable uncertainty for outsiders. Doubts remain among foreign observers about whether the elder Kim's son and designated successor, Kim Jong Il, will ultimately consolidate his power. These questions persist despite the younger Kim's stepped-up public appearances following the ceremony marking 100 days of mourning for his father and reports that the elder Kim, before his death, approved a policy of improving U.S.-DPRK relations at the cost of relinquishing the North's nuclear program. Even if Kim Jong Il is finally named as North Korea's state and party leader, the transition has made it more difficult to achieve progress in the North-South dialogue.
  
  
• To encourage North Korea's commitment to implement the October 21 agreement, the United States must maintain close cooperation with South Korea, Japan, China, and others so that the post-Kim Il Sung leadership does not doubt the international consensus in support of the agreement's implementation. Maintenance of an international coalition on these issues is critical to convincing Pyongyang that it cannot succeed in diplomatic maneuvers designed to split off elements of the coalition or to stall in implementing the agreement.

Delay in the North Korean Leadership Transfer

Life goes on as usual in Pyongyang
North Korea's leaders face major political and economic challenges
Will the North choose isolation or integration?
Bitter recriminations between Pyongyang and Seoul
Clinging to a Cold War mentality on the peninsula

There continue to be signs of delay in carrying out the transition to new leadership in the DPRK. Between Kim Il Sung's death in early July and early November North Korea has been without an officially named state president or party general secretary, although reports suggest that Kim Il Sung's son and long-designated successor Kim Jong Il is, indeed, in charge. (As of November 8, 1994, Kim Jong Il was expected to be named to the positions of General Secretary of the Korean Worker's Party (KWP) and/or President.) Kim Jong Il's first public appearance in three months at an October 16 ceremony marking the passing of 100 days of mourning since Kim Il Sung's death--as well as subsequent public appearances--seem designed to confirm that Kim Jong Il is de facto leader. Kim Jong Il is reported to have approved the signing of the U.S.-DPRK joint agreement in his capacity as chairman of the National Defense Commission of the North Korean state.

Life goes on as usual in Pyongyang

Whatever the uncertainties of the formal succession, the public mood in Pyongyang appears calm to recent outside observers. There has been a slowdown in international travel to the North, and the security apparatus appears more cautious in dealing with foreign visitors. But there is neither visible disruption of daily life as the public goes about its routine tasks nor an evident increase in armed security on the streets of Pyongyang. Moreover, the leadership appears to have made special efforts to ensure that there is no breakdown in the availability of goods and services in the capital during this critical period. Circumstances in other parts of the country are largely unknown to the outside world, however, and reports suggest that some North Korean provinces may be experiencing food and energy shortages.

The initial emphasis in both the North Korean media and in official statements to the outside world has been on continuity rather than change. Pyongyang's willingness to resume the third round of negotiations with the United States was expressed as early as August through official policy statements and messages, such as one from Kim Jong Il to former President Jimmy Carter. These communications, as well as the agreement subsequently reached with the United States, have sought to stress that the policies and promises made by Kim Il Sung before his death will be carried out. One important exception, however, has been Pyongyang's statement that the planned summit between North and South Korea, announced at the end of Mr. Carter's visit to Korea in June, will not be rescheduled for the time being.

North Korea's leaders face major political and economic challenges

The apparent calm and sense of policy continuity in Pyongyang, even if an accurate picture of current circumstances, does not change the fact that North Korea and its new leadership must deal with major challenges that could threaten the regime's survival. The central question continues to be the statues of North Korea's succession and the evolution of its leadership in the post-Kim Il Sung era. North Korean officials stationed abroad state that Kim Jong Il is firmly in control, and there is no tangible evidence to date to refute that assertion.

However, Kim Jong Il has been practically invisible as a leader, making few public appearances since the first week of mourning following his father's death. While all aspects of governance have gone forward in the absence of Kim's formal designation as party and/or state leader, it may be significant that during the mourning period, external communications formerly issued in Kim Il Sung's name were put forward under the authority of the Central Committee of the Korean Worker's Party.

An evolution in the status of the North Korean leadership is inevitable as the first-generation gerontocracy is replaced in top positions by younger leaders. Many observers anticipate that this process is likely to be evolutionary rather than sudden, and that performance, not revolutionary credentials, will be the key to Kim Jong Il's generation consolidating political control.

The most pressing domestic challenge facing the new leadership is reinvigorating the economy. Although there have been some reports that this year's harvest was not bad, the internal economy continues to be constrained by energy shortages and transportation bottlenecks. North Korea's economy has contracted for four years in a row--down by as much as 25 percent in 1993 from the 1989 level. The prospects for stimulating growth through promoting foreign trade have been blocked thus far by foreign opposition to the nuclear program and by the North's unpaid external debts--estimated at $10.3 billion at the end of 1993, equal to roughly one-half of the DPRK's annual GNP.

The most serious external challenge facing Pyongyang's new leadership is the need to reestablish an equilibrium in international relations in the post-Cold War era. While South Korea benefited in the late 1980s from its policy of Nordpolitik, which led to normalization of Seoul's relations with Russia, China, and other former socialist countries, North Korea has found itself increasingly isolated. Pyongyang must come to grips with the reality that less confrontational relationships, not only with the United States but also with South Korea and Japan, will be necessary if the North is to improve its international situation and its economy.

Will the North choose isolation or integration?

The leadership transition raises a number of questions that have important implications for U.S. and South Korean negotiations with North Korea. Given current conditions, should we anticipate political paralysis or turmoil in the North? Might we see a gradual economic opening (albeit under tight political control) following the Chinese model of reform? Is it likely that economic opening itself will heighten internal political tensions? Some outside observers forecast a political collapse, pointing to the experience of other countries that were organized around the failed ideology and institutions of Marxist-Leninist socialism. While an economic opening on the Chinese model is not out of the question, Kim Jong Il's claim to his father's mantle rests largely on his role as principal interpreter and defender of the policy of ch'uche, or "self-reliance," which implies constraints on opening North Korea to the outside world. The widely differing possibilities for North Korea's future have forestalled consensus among American, South Korean, and other policymakers who feel that they have some ability to influence Pyongyang's policy options--and no doubt are mirrored by uncertainties among North Korea's leaders themselves.

North Korean sincerity in international negotiations continues to be questioned in many quarters, even following the announcement of the October 21 U.S.-DPRK agreement. The long experience of South Korean negotiators is that Pyongyang insists on framework agreements cast in vague principles which are then skewed in unacceptable ways when the time comes for implementation, thus creating a pretext for North Korean refusal to proceed. Although the October 21 U.S.-DPRK framework agreement is quite specific on key issues, some South Koreans feel that North Korea will nevertheless use such a strategy in implementing this latest agreement.

Others have argued that, tactics aside, North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons program or rejoining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Implementation of the framework agreement will test the hypothesis that the North's possession of nuclear weapons--or at least ambiguity about the status of the program--is seen by Pyongyang as critical leverage in its quest for eventual domination of the Korean peninsula. As a result, these individuals have asserted, the U.S.-DPRK nuclear agreement is a charade; by negotiating, the United States has fallen into the North Korean trap.

Still other observers, however, point to North Korea's willingness to continue the U.S.-DPRK negotiations in Geneva after Kim Il Sung's death, even during the mourning period, as evidence of a North Korean desire--indeed, a need--to strike a deal. These observers of the North Korean scene note that the dynamic and the stakes of U.S.-DPRK agreement--and the international acceptance that a relationship with the United States symbolizes for North Korea--are inevitably different from the dynamics of the North-South talks. While that presumed difference has not made the U.S.-DPRK negotiations an easy process, observers point out that the North's need to improve relations with the United States has been reflected in the fact that Pyongyang ultimately agreed to a deal with Washington that if implemented fully, will result in the elimination of North Korea's overt nuclear weapons program and the establishment of a more normal U.S.-DPRK relationship.

Bitter recriminations between Pyongyang and Seoul

Kim Il Sung's death abruptly ended prospects for an historic presidential summit between Kim and South Korean President Kim Young Sam--announced in Seoul on June 18 following President Carter's return from Pyongyang--that some observers believe would have led to dramatic improvement in North-South relations. Instead, the familiar cycle of negative rhetoric between the two leaderships has intensified in recent months. South Korea did not offer official condolences on the death of Kim Il Sung, highlighting instead his responsibility for initiating the Korean War in 1950 and other atrocities that have sustained the division of the peninsula.

At the same time, the North Korean leadership encouraged South Korean private citizens to defy their government's policy on condolences, provocatively inviting South Koreans to attend Kim Il Sung's funeral in Pyongyang and stepping up anti-South Korean propaganda, including vicious personal attacks on ROK President Kim Young Sam. In the face of these North Korean provocations, the domestic challenge for Kim Young Sam since Kim Il Sung's death has been twofold: to show stalwart leadership and strength on the one hand, but to avoid the appearance of being politically marginalized by progress in U.S.-DPRK negotiations, or of losing needed leverage with which to engage North Korea in the future, on the other hand.

Nonetheless, many observers believe that Kim Young Sam's August 15, 1994 Liberation Day speech did not help to improve the atmosphere between North and South Korea. In that speech, President Kim offered to supply the North with light-water reactors, but he emphasized that all aspects of the nuclear issue--including questions about the past--would have to be resolved before the South would do so. President Kim called on North Korea to "undertake bold reforms including improvement of the human rights situation." In so doing, some observers argued, Kim raised issues that both threaten the regime's survival and challenge North Korean hopes that, by maintaining ambiguity regarding past nuclear activities, Pyongyang can retain an element of deterrence.

Clinging to a Cold War mentality on the peninsula

The zero-sum character of North-South relations (a gain for one being a loss for the other) has not changed since the end of the Cold War, despite favorable developments in international relations surrounding the peninsula. As a result, in the absence of dramatic initiatives such as the now-deferred presidential summit, and despite commitments to resume dialogue, the prospects for progress in North-South relations are not promising. North Korean propaganda has continued to center on dividing the South politically, and indeed South Korean domestic politics have been riven by conflicting policy perspectives on how to deal with the North. Some observers have argued that the South--having outdistanced the North decisively in the economic and political competition on the peninsula and, in alliance with the U.S., able to prevail in a war with the North--should be a magnanimous winner, that it has a special responsibility to make bold, positive moves that might restart North-South talks.

Other observers, however, fearful of the DPRK's strategy to divide the United States and South Korea and cause turmoil and division in the South, worry that progress between the United States and North Korea will undercut South Korea's leverage to encourage Pyongyang to return to the North-South negotiating table. Having previously insisted on strict linkage between progress on these two tracks, the South boldly determined last March to drop the formal linkage lest it be seen as blocking agreement on the nuclear question. At the same time, Washington and Seoul concur that North Korea cannot be allowed to make progress in U.S.-DPRK talks at the expense of North-South relations.

New Pressures for Progress in North-South Dialogue

Unresolved issues between Pyongyang and Seoul
Possible channels for North-South dialogue
The United States and the North Korean Challenge

While no formal preconditions for parallel progress have been reestablished, the need for movement on the North-South front is even more acute now that the United States and North Korea have reached an agreement. This situation will put pressure on Pyongyang to reengage with Seoul if the North expects rapid progress in implementing those aspects of its agreement with the United States regarding overall normalization of relations and the supply of light-water reactors (where the South will be a major player). But that situation also means that Seoul will need to adopt a more proactive policy toward the North, not arbitrarily blocking the light-water reactor project or simply reacting to Pyongyang's offensive propaganda. This will be no easy task inasmuch as--beyond the issues of legitimacy and face--North-South economic, cultural, or political contacts carry very high risks of introducing--in Kim Il Sung's phrase--the "flies and mosquitoes" that could eventually undermine the North's ch'uche system of self-reliant autarky.

A growing number of South Koreans have pressed for engaging the North on the economic front, delinking economic interaction from the nuclear issue. Following a policy review that was initiated in the wake of the October 21 U.S.-DPRK agreement in Geneva, Kim Young Sam announced the lifting of restrictions on direct South Korean business contacts with the North on November 8. Initial investments by South Korean companies will be confined to light industry, and curbs on large-scale infrastructure projects may be lifted pending progress in inter-Korean dialogue. Economic cooperation, it has been argued, is an area where North and South Korea have complementary interests that could be the basis of a process of reconciliation. According to this line of reasoning, controlled economic opening between North and South Korea could build a context for broader cooperation--and tension reduction--in other areas.

Unresolved issues between Pyongyang and Seoul

If a means can be found to reactivate a North-South dialogue, a broad agenda can be pursued. The December 1991 Seoul-Pyongyang Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges and Cooperation (the so-called "Basic Accord") provides a framework for exploring these issues, but the Basic Accord remains to be unimplemented because of a breakdown in North-South dialogue. Although exchanges are particularly sensitive for North Korea, the initiation of direct mail and telephone services, family reunions, and further cultural contacts could be pursued as well as easing the level and tone of propaganda on both sides, as pledged in the Basic Accord. Adoption of confidence-building measures and the phased pullback of certain military forces from areas on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone are important to easing tensions and starting a broader process of military stabilization, conventional arms control, and confidence-building on the peninsula. Replacement of the 1953 Armistice with permanent and reliable peace arrangements is another issue that must be dealt with primarily by North and South Korea, albeit through modalities that are likely to require UN and U.S. participation. Moreover, the U.S.-DPRK framework agreement of October 1994 contains a DPRK pledge to implement the 1991 North-South Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, in which North and South have mutually pledged to forgo the development of nuclear weapons capabilities and to allow mutual inspections of nuclear sites.

The range of issues to be resolved if the process of peacebuilding and reconciliation between the two Koreas is to begin has remained remarkably unchanged over the past decade, with the exception of one important new issue: the South Korean role in supplying light-water reactors to North Korea as part of a settlement of the nuclear issue. Since the provision of light-water reactors to North Korea is the centerpiece of the U.S.-DPRK framework agreement, Pyongyang's earlier objection to a central role for South Korea in providing the reactors could be a potential problem that could stall progress in implementation.

Possible channels for North-South dialogue

If North-South relations are to improve, an appropriate channel of dialogue is necessary for addressing the major issues. A presidential summit does not seem a practical or desirable option at this time for either side, though both have indicated that the principle of a summit meeting is still valid. Although Red Cross talks proposed by the South shortly after Kim Il Sung's death were rejected by the North, such talks might be renewed in the future. Other possible options include the resumption of committee meetings under the 1991 Basic Accord, or preparatory meetings that could lead to resumed North-South talks at the deputy prime minister/party secretary level. Some observers have suggested that, as in the June, 1994 visit to Korea of former President Jimmy Carter, an American intermediary could serve as a catalyst for resumption of North-South talks. How such an intermediary would function, however, is the subject of some controversy.

The United States and the North Korean Challenge

The North Korean nuclear challenge has been an example of the perverse phenomenon of "the power of weak nations" which has confounded U.S. policy makers on more than one occasion in the post-Cold War era. Unlike Haiti, Cuba, and Bosnia, North Korea poses a serious security challenge to U.S. interests out of proportion to its size. The United States is reluctant to bring the full force of its power to bear because of the potential consequences of a military crisis--in the case of Korea, the possibility of precipitating a second Korean War. Thus, the U.S. has found its approaches constrained by the ability of a smaller state to create leverage over issues that are important to a variety of American interests--including the security of a long-time and important American ally--but do not directly threaten U.S. national survival.

The major challenge U.S. policymakers have faced in formulating and implementing a policy to deal with the North Korean nuclear issue has been balancing its nonproliferation objectives with concerns for regional stability. Close coordination of policy has been required both with the nonproliferation community and with American allies and others in the region, but this is complicated by competing priorities. This delicate balancing act will continue to be a central feature of U.S. policy formulation in dealing with North Korea even as the administration presses Pyongyang to implement the terms of the October agreement. That agreement, however, for the first time specifies a practical series of actions that, if fully implemented, will freeze and then eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program in return for the supply of proliferation-resistant light-water reactors, compensation for lost energy production capability until construction of the first light-water reactor is completed, and improved diplomatic relations between North Korea and the United States. The agreement has been officially welcomed by China, Japan, and South Korea, among others, and will require significant financial, technical, and political support from South Korea and Japan to guarantee its implementation. In addition, administration officials point out, this agreement is clearly preferable to the alternatives of heightened military confrontation or unchecked proliferation not only in Northeast Asia, but also possibly in the Middle East.

[Continue]

See the complete list of Institute reports. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policies.