By ACHARA ASHAYAGACHAT AND THANIDA TANSUBHAPOL
China, Russia share Asean's nuke concerns
PHUKET : Russia and China have joined the US in pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions, following Pyongyang's recent ballistic missile tests.
See no evil: Mrs Clinton and North Korean delegate Pak Kun-gwang ignore each other at the Phuket meeting.
Normally counting themselves as Pyongyang's allies, Russia and China expressed concern about the nuclear missile tests at the Asean Regional Forum yesterday.
The North Korean nuclear issue dominated security issues at talks held to wrap up the week-long meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The ARF urged North Korea to return to the six-party talks to end the regional nuclear threat, but North Korea immediately rejected the call.
The meeting also urged members of the United Nations to implement the UN Security Council's resolution to impose sanctions on North Korea.
The ARF would look at what it could do to promote peace and stability on the Korean peninsula, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said after the meeting.
Asean diplomatic sources said even Russia and China shared international concern about the issue.
But in a compromising note, China said it hoped sanctions against Pyongyang would not affect North Korean people, and that the six-nation talks could resume, the sources said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea faced strong international opposition over its missile testing programme.
"There is no place to go for North Korea as they have no friends left," Mrs Clinton said.
"There is a convergence of views that we are prepared to work with North Korea, but that North Korea has to change its behaviour," she said.
But Ri Hung-sik, who led the North Korean delegation at the meeting, said Pyongyang would not return to the negotiating table until the US changed its anti-North Korea attitude.
The six-party talks comprise China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the US.
Earlier, North Korea downgraded its representative attending the ARF from ambassador-at-large Pak Kun-gwang to Mr Ri, who is director-general of the International Organisations Department. It was the third time Pyongyang had sent a low-level representative to the ARF since 2000.
North Korea's insistence its position should be reflected in the ARF statement forced participants to delay issuing it for two hours.
The ARF members also called for joint efforts to fight terrorists and said the July 17 hotel bombings in Jakarta were a reminder terrorism was still a threat to the region.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said in addressing the terrorism problem, people should avoid singling out any country, race, religion or ethnicity.
"If terrorism is associated with religion, it will create animosity," Mr Anifah said.
The meeting also pledged to promote democracy and human rights in Burma, Mr Kasit said.
Burma is under pressure to release National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners to pave the way for national reconciliation before the country holds general elections next year.
24 July 2009
N.Korean allies join test protest
16 June 2009
Kim Jong-Un meets China President Hu Jintao
THE youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il secretly visited China last week and his hosts were told he had been appointed heir to the ruling family dynasty.
Japan's Asahi newspaper cited unidentified sources close to North Korea, said Kim Jong-Un met Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders of the ruling Communist Party when he flew to Beijing around June 10.
Analysts have said North Korea's nuclear test on May 25 and other belligerent acts may be aimed at a domestic audience, with the elder Kim trying to bolster his position at home to secure the succession of his youngest son.
The 67-year-old leader is believed to have suffered a stroke last year.
An aide to Jong-Un told Chinese officials the younger Kim had been appointed heir and that he held an important post in the ruling Korean Workers' Party, the mass circulation Asahi said.
China's Foreign Ministry declined immediate comment on the report of the visit.
Jong-Un is the Swiss-educated third son of Kim Jong-Il and was born in 1983 or 1984.
Earlier this month South Korean media, quoting informed sources, said Pyongyang had asked the country's main bodies and overseas missions to pledge loyalty to Jong-un.
China is the closest thing North Korea has to an ally and in theory Beijing wields more influence over Pyongyang than any other power, but experts say the relationship is brittle and China actually has limited room for manoeuvre.
Hu apparently asked North Korea not to go ahead with another nuclear test or test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Asahi reported.
Jong-Un was believed to have asked China for emergency energy and food aid, the newspaper said, underscoring the grim economic situation in the impoverished state.
Jong-Un also visited factories in China's export hub of Guangdong province, it added.
The succession has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in North Korea and very little is known about Jong-Un, whose youth could be problem in a society that attaches importance to seniority.
(News.com.au) From correspondents in Tokyo - Reuters
07 June 2009
US Weighs Intercepting North Korean Shipments
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON (NYT)— The Obama administration signaled Sunday that it was seeking a way to interdict, possibly with China’s help, North Korean sea and air shipments suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear technology.
The administration also said it was examining whether there was a legal basis to reverse former President George W. Bush’s decision last year to remove the North from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.
The reference to interdictions — preferably at ports or airfields in countries like China, but possibly involving riskier confrontations on the high seas — was made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She was the highest-ranking official to talk publicly about such a potentially provocative step as a response to North Korea’s second nuclear test, conducted two weeks ago.
While Mrs. Clinton did not specifically mention assistance from China, other administration officials have been pressing Beijing to take such action under Chinese law.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Mrs. Clinton said the United States feared that if the test and other recent actions by North Korea did not lead to “strong action,” there was a risk of “an arms race in Northeast Asia” — an oblique reference to the concern that Japan would reverse its long-held ban against developing nuclear weapons.
So far it is not clear how far the Chinese are willing to go to aid the United States in stopping North Korea’s profitable trade in arms, the isolated country’s most profitable export. But the American focus on interdiction demonstrates a new and potentially far tougher approach to North Korea than both President Clinton and Mr. Bush, in his second term, took as they tried unsuccessfully to reach deals that would ultimately lead North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.
Mr. Obama, aides say, has decided that he will not offer North Korea new incentives to dismantle the nuclear complex at Yongbyon that the North previously promised to abandon.
“I’m tired of buying the same horse twice,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said last week while touring an antimissile site in Alaska that the Bush administration built to demonstrate its preparedness to destroy North Korean missiles headed toward the United States. (So far, the North Koreans have not successfully tested a missile of sufficient range to reach the United States, though there is evidence that they may be preparing for another test of their long-range Taepodong-2 missile.)
In France on Saturday, Mr. Obama referred to the same string of broken deals, telling reporters, “I don’t think there should be an assumption that we will simply continue down a path in which North Korea is constantly destabilizing the region and we just react in the same ways.” He added, “We are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation.”
While Mr. Obama was in the Middle East and Europe last week, several senior officials said the president’s national security team had all but set aside the central assumption that guided American policy toward North Korea over the past 16 years and two presidencies: that the North would be willing to ultimately abandon its small arsenal of nuclear weapons in return for some combination of oil, nuclear power plants, money, food and guarantees that the United States would not topple its government, the world’s last Stalinesque regime.
Now, after examining the still-inconclusive evidence about the results of North Korea’s second nuclear test, the administration has come to different conclusions: that Pyonyang’s top priority is to be recognized as a nuclear state, that it is unwilling to bargain away its weapons and that it sees tests as a way to help sell its nuclear technology.
“This entirely changes the dynamic of how you deal with them,” a senior national security aide said.
While Mr. Obama is willing to reopen the six-party talks that Mr. Bush began — the other participants are Japan, South Korea, Russia and China — he has no intention, aides say, of offering new incentives to get the North to fulfill agreements from 1994, 2005 and 2008; all were recently renounced.
“Clinton bought it once, Bush bought it again, and we’re not going to buy it a third time,” one of Mr. Obama’s chief strategists said last week, referring to the Yongbyon plant, where the North reprocesses spent nuclear fuel into bomb-grade plutonium.
While some officials privately acknowledged that they would still like to roll back what one called North Korea’s “rudimentary” nuclear capacity, a more realistic goal is to stop the country from devising a small weapon deliverable on a short-, medium- or long-range missile.
In conducting any interdictions, the United States could risk open confrontation with North Korea. That prospect — and the likelihood of escalating conflict if the North resisted an inspection — is why China has balked at American proposals for a resolution by the United Nations Security Council that would explicitly allow interceptions at sea. A previous Security Council resolution, passed after the North’s first nuclear test, in 2006, allowed interdictions “consistent with international law.” But that term was never defined, and few of the provisions were enforced.
North Korea has repeatedly said it would regard any interdiction as an act of war, and officials in Washington have been trying to find ways to stop the shipments without a conflict. Late last week, James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, visited Beijing with a delegation of American officials, seeking ideas from China about sanctions, including financial pressure, that might force North Korea to change direction.
“The Chinese face a dilemma that they have always faced,” a senior administration official said. “They don’t want North Korea to become a full nuclear weapons state. But they don’t want to cause the state to collapse.” They have been walking a fine line, the official said, taking a tough position against the North of late, but unwilling to publicly embrace steps that would put China in America’s camp.
To counter the Chinese concern, Mr. Steinberg and his delegation argued to the Chinese that failing to crack down on North Korea would prompt reactions that Beijing would find deeply unsettling, including a greater American military presence in the region and more calls in Japan for that country to develop its own weapons.
Mrs. Clinton seemed to reflect this concern in the interview on Sunday. “We will do everything we can to both interdict it and prevent it and shut off their flow of money,” she said. “If we do not take significant and effective action against the North Koreans now, we’ll spark an arms race in Northeast Asia. I don’t think anybody wants to see that.”
While Mrs. Clinton also said the State Department was examining whether North Korea should be placed back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, she acknowledged that there was a legal process for it. “Obviously we would want to see recent evidence of their support for international terrorism,” she said.
That evidence may be hard to come by. While North Korea has engaged in missile sales, it has not been linked to terrorism activity for many years. And North Korea’s restoration to the list would be largely symbolic, because it already faces numerous economic sanctions.
02 June 2009
Despot dynamics: the dirty secret to survival
By Peter Hartcher
(SMH) -How will we know when the world is finally serious about disciplining Kim Jong-il's regime? Nobody wants a war, but there are three specific non-military steps that the big powers of North Asia could take to sever the regime's most important lifelines and bring it to its knees.
And the dirty secret of the North Korea debate is that nobody in officialdom's polite circles will discuss them openly. We certainly know the ritual signs that nothing serious is going to happen to hold North Korea accountable for its nuclear belligerence - we are seeing them now.
The United Nations Security Council wrings its hands over Kim's latest outrage. Special envoys fly about from one city to another. And experts debate whether to negotiate with Pyongyang or to apply sanctions.
Since 1994 the world has offered Pyongyang carrots and sticks in a giddying alternation of incentives and sanctions. And Kim pushes on relentlessly with his nuclear program regardless.
We'll know when the world has truly had enough of Kim's nuclear brinkmanship. The three steps to seriously disciplining North Korea? One is for Japan to take, another is for South Korea, and third is for China.
Japan would shut down the flow of hard currency that it allows its residents to send to North Korea.
Every year, the 100,000 or so members of Japan's North Korean community, organised through a group called Chosen Soren, send remittance money home.
How much is impossible to know, but in 1994 Japanese police estimated that it was about $US600 million ($739 million) annually. For perspective, a sum of $US600 million would make up a third of North Korea's declared annual shortfall of foreign exchange. The regime makes up the rest by smuggling out drugs, counterfeit US dollars, fake Viagra, weapons and other contraband.
Tokyo has taken a sterner approach to Pyongyang in recent years and has clamped down on bank transfers, but large volumes of cash still cross the Sea of Japan (also known as the East Sea) in the 1000 or so vessels that ply the route in any year.
Second, South Korea would shut down its trade with North Korea.
For Seoul, the $US1.8 billion annual two-way trade with its badly behaved northern neighbour is a trifling amount. North Korea makes up a lousy 0.2 per cent of South Korea's trade and there is nothing that Seoul buys from Pyongyang that it couldn't buy elsewhere.
But for Kim Jong-il, this would represent a third of his country's total trade. It would be a serious loss for the country and a body blow to the regime.
Third, China would cut off its trade with North Korea. This is the big one. Beijing is by far the biggest trading partner and biggest source of foreign exchange to Pyongyang.
And because much of China's export to its communist ally is provided on concessionary terms, this would be tantamount to shutting off its aid to Pyongyang as well. Among other things, China supplies some 90 per cent of North Korea's oil, most at friendship prices.
But rather than reduce its trade and aid to North Korea, China in recent months has actually increased it.
Why? Because the US and South Korea have been cutting aid to the recalcitrant country. China stepped in and more than offset the loss. As long as Kim Jong-il has China, he can probably survive the punishments that the rest of the world might attempt to mete out. So for any discipline to work, it's not enough for Japan or South Korea to act. China must act, too. And the world would need to support it with equivalent sanctions.
Keep in mind that North Korea is already on the economic equivalent of life support. Kim gets much criticism for starving his people to feed his army. And it's true that his people are starving - a third of the population is so desperately short of food that it is suffering from malnutrition, according to the UN World Food Program.
But visitors to the hermit kingdom in the last couple of years report that there isn't even enough to money to supply basics to the army. Close inspection of soldiers around Pyongyang shows that some have no socks and carry painted wooden guns. The country's total economy is estimated to produce between $US20 billion and $US30 billion a year, about the same as Tasmania's but for a country of 22 million.
Concerted action by its big three neighbours could reduce Kim to powerlessness. So why don't they act? For Japan it would be administratively and politically messy. For South Korea it would be politically tough - most South Koreans favour a conciliatory approach to their kinfolk across the demilitarised zone.
For China, keeping Kim's regime alive is a strategic priority. Worse than having Kim Jong-il next door would be not having Kim Jong-il next door.
If Kim's regime were to collapse, China would expect to be mobbed by millions of starving North Koreans. Even more troubling for Beijing is the likelihood Seoul would quickly assume control of Pyongyang. China would lose the buffer state that sits between it and a US treaty ally. That's why the world is not about to get serious about making Kim behave.
Presuming he succeeds in making deliverable nukes, Kim is not mad enough to attack anyone with them. And the world is not going to effectively deter him from trying.
Perhaps the best approach is to recall the wisdom of the Peter Sellers Cold War movie classic, Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.
Peter Hartcher is the Herald's international editor.
25 May 2009
North Korea detonates nuclear bomb
Nuclear test: This black and white satellite image shows the site.
Explosion: A satellite image showing the site of a previous North Korean weapons test (AFP)
By North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy and wires
(ABC Australia) -North Korea's state media has confirmed the communist state has conducted a nuclear weapons test.
It is believed the blast was much stronger than Pyongyang's first test in 2006.
South Korea says weather agency officials detected what they called an artificial earthquake in the communist North this morning.
The government in Seoul immediately accused North Korea of conducting a nuclear weapons test.
Two hours later the secretive communist regime confirmed via its state media that it had detonated a nuclear device, saying the underground test was successful and was part of the country's nuclear deterrent policy.
In response, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called an emergency national security council meeting, while Japan's government said it had set up a crisis task force.
The Stalinist North last staged a nuclear test in October 2006 but it is believed this blast was much bigger.
Location unknown
The brief report by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) gave no details of the location of the test.
However, South Korean officials said a tremor was detected around the north-eastern town of Kilju, near where the first test was conducted in October 2006.
"The Democratic People's Republic of Korea successfully conducted one more underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of the measures to bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defence in every way as requested by its scientists and technicians," the KCNA report said.
A spokesman for Japan's foreign ministry said it would respond to North Korea's nuclear test "in a responsible fashion" at the United Nations.
Meanwhile, a US State Department spokesman said the Obama administration was not able to confirm "at this time" that a nuclear test had been carried out.
Second test threat
The North had threatened a second test in protest at the UN Security Council's decision to censure its April 5 long-range rocket launch.
It announced it was quitting six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and would restart its plutonium-making program.
The communist state said the test had greatly inspired the army and people.
"The successful nuclear test is greatly inspiring the army and people of the DPRK all out in the 150-day campaign, intensifying the drive for effecting a new revolutionary surge to open the gate to a thriving nation," the KCNA report said.
"The test will contribute to defending the sovereignty of the country and the nation and socialism and ensuring peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and the region around it with the might of [the military first policy] Songun."
Tremor
The US Geological Survey said it detected what it called a 4.7-magnitude earthquake in North Korea.
The tremor struck at 9:54am (local time), 375 kilometres north-east of Pyongyang at a depth of just 10 kilometres, it said.
"Both South Korean and US intelligence authorities are analysing and closely monitoring the situation," a presidential spokesman in Seoul said.
The test was staged while South Korea was in mourning for former President Roh Moo-Hyun, who died Saturday after being questioned in a corruption probe.
North Korea carried out what it called a rocket launch on April 5, but the United States, South Korea and Japan said it staged a disguised ballistic missile test.
After the UN Security Council condemned the launch and tightened sanctions, the North vowed to conduct a second nuclear test as well as ballistic missile tests unless the UN apologised.
The United States has been involved in negotiations with the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia aimed at scrapping North Korea's nuclear programme in exchange for energy aid under a landmark six-party agreement signed in 2007.
The negotiations deadlocked over a dispute with North Korea over how to verify disarmament, before taking a sharp turn for the worse with the long-range rocket launch.
