Decoding North Korea's Mixed Signals
Interpreting the actions of states and understanding why governments around the world behave as they do is often a difficult task. With North Korea, the difficulty of the task is compounded by the insular and isolated nature of its ruling regime. Throughout the month of August, North Korea has made increasingly conciliatory gestures toward both the United States and South Korea, signaling its intent to restart diplomatic dialogues halted during the George W. Bush administration. During this same period, North Korea was caught shipping illicit materials to Iran, in contravention of UN Security Council resolution 1874. What explains this seemingly contradictory behavior? The answer lies with North Korea's nuclear program.
Under the current regime led by Kim Jong-il, North Korea has no intention of abandoning, dismantling, or otherwise eliminating its nuclear capability. Instead, North Korea seeks to negotiate arms reductions, the suspension of proliferation activities, and the shutdown of its nuclear facilities. If North Korea succeeds in reframing the primary issues of concern in this way, it will have gained tacit recognition of its membership in the club of de facto nuclear weapons states, joining the likes of Pakistan, India and Israel.
North Korea's typically hostile relations with the United States and South Korea have improved markedly in recent weeks. After receiving a carefully orchestrated and prearranged visit from former President Bill Clinton, North Korea released two American journalists it had held for nearly five months for illegally crossing into North Korean territory from China. The following week, North Korea also released a South Korean worker employed at the Kaesong industrial complex, a jointly run North Korean-South Korean business venture hosted in North Korea; the South Korean worker was being detained for allegedly slandering North Korea's political system. A few days later, North Korean diplomats flew to New Mexico to meet with Gov. Bill Richardson, who characterized the talks as "productive."
Last week, the rapprochement narrative continued as North Korea not only released four South Korean fishermen being held for accidentally crossing into disputed territorial waters claimed by North Korea, but North Korea also sent an official delegation to South Korea for the funeral of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.
While all these tension-easing gestures were taking place, North Korea was surreptitiously shipping rocket launchers, detonators, and rocket-propelled grenades, among other things, to Iran. On August 25th, the United Arab Emirates, a country with strong economic ties to Iran, reported to the UN Security Council that it had seized weapons materials being shipped from North Korea to Iran in violation of resolution 1874, which prohibits all weapons exports from or on behalf of North Korea.
Far from publicly flouting resolution 1874, North Korea seems to have gone to great lengths to ensure the international community did not find out about the weapons trade. The ship was Australian-owned but controlled by a French conglomerate; it flew a Bahamian flag; and the cargo on board was arranged by the Shanghai office of an Italian company. They also mentioned a source which claimed that the cargo manifest listed the weapons as "oil boring machines."
Why would North Korea expend so much energy trying to ease tensions only to simultaneously generate a crisis by proliferating weapons?
Such behavior is not contradictory but actually consistent, when viewed as the coordinated effort of a rogue state attempting to consolidate its infant nuclear capability. North Korea can achieve the best of both worlds - that is, positive relations with the United States and South Korea while possessing nuclear weapons - if it can succeed in reframing the nuclear issue as a negotiation over arms reduction and nonproliferation rather than total denuclearization.
North Korea's recent friendly overtures, then, reflect its genuine desire for discussions; but only if the topic of discussions changes. The current battle being waged between Washington and Pyongyang is over North Korea's return to the Six Party Talks negotiations format. The United States continues to push the Six Party Talks format because it ensures that North Korea's nuclear program will remain the focus of negotiations. North Korea continues to reject the Six-Party Talks format for the very same reason.
Just as North Korea's goodwill gestures throughout the month of August can be explained by its desire to preserve the nuclear weapons it currently possesses, so too can its Iran-bound weapons cargo. The highly covert nature of the attempted weapons transaction intimates that North Korea had no desire for its activities to be discovered. As recently as a couple months ago, when U.S.-North Korea relations were much tenser, North Korea would regularly ship weapons cargo under a North Korean flag; it often made no serious attempt to cover up its proliferation activities.
North Korea's desire to restart talks, albeit with a new topic in mind, is as strong as its need for hard currency.
Pressure is building on both North Korea and the United States to find a resolution to the on-again, off-again nuclear crisis. The international sanctions regime against North Korea is tightening. Even using disguised vessels and inaccurately labeled cargo manifests, North Korea is finding its traditional sources of income increasingly shutoff. At the same time, the United States will continue to face a high risk of North Korea proliferating missile and nuclear technology to unfriendly parts of the globe as long as some kind of nuclear deal remains elusive. For every Iran-bound weapons shipment that is discovered and intercepted, how many are not?
To date, the United States has not deviated from its position that the Six-Party Talks is the only forum in which the United States will hold official talks with North Korea. This position is untenable. The United States should gain the permission of China, Russia, South Korea and Japan to represent them in bilateral discussions with North Korea. This could preserve the spirit of the Six-Party Talks while allowing North Korea to engage in the bilateral dialogue it has always wanted. Although a long-term solution to the nuclear issue may hinge on whether the United States is willing to accept a permanently nuclear North Korea in exchange for arms reductions and nonproliferation guarantees, face to face negotiations provide the only opportunity to find out for certain.
