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By The Korea Policy Institute | July 1, 2020 Jang-hie Lee, Professor at the Law School at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, has formerly served as legal advisor to the Korean Red Cross, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade, and the Ministry of Unification. As a legal scholar, Lee’s work focuses on international human rights law, international organization law, and the law of armed conflicts. On May 28, 2020, Korea Policy Institute (KPI) Executive Board Members spoke with Lee about the United Nations Command (UNC)—a misappropriated relic of a United Nations mandate passed weeks after the official start of the Korean War on June 25, 1950. Initially envisioned as a “unified command” under US leadership, the United States unilaterally changed the “unified command” designation to “United Nations Command” and began operating with the unauthorized use of the United Nations flag and United Nations insignia. Professor Lee speaks of the UNC’s illegality, its efforts to disrupt inter-Korean cooperation, and calls for its dissolution. [KPI] Professor Lee, could you begin by discussing whether the United Nations (UN) considers the United Nations Command (UNC) to be a part of the UN? Is the UNC subject to any UN controls and, if not, what is the legal basis for the UNC’s authority? [Jang-hie Lee] The UNC’s legal basis rests upon a July 7, 1950 United Nations Security Council Resolution 84 (S/1588), which called to create a unified command under the United States. The UN did not have the intention to create a UNC in July 1950, and a proposal to establish a UNC had never been considered. And, the role of a unified command is different from that of the UN Command. The unified command has the authority to direct forces that participated in the Korean War, and is obligated to submit reports to the United Nations. So, in early July 1950, only the unified command had been established, and the unified command did not have the authority to create an agency. The first time the title United Nations Command had been used was July 24, 1950 in Tokyo. The US replaced the unified command with United Nations Command without consulting the Security Council. As former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has noted, the UNC is not an agency under the UN, not a subsidiary agency under the UN, nor a subordinate agency under the UN. The UN has never received reporting or considered a budget for the UNC. [KPI] Given its illegitimacy, has the UNC ever been challenged by the international community? [Jang-hie Lee] Yes, several times. In 1975, the countries that belonged to the communist bloc put forth a resolution for the dissolution of the UNC in the UN General Assembly, and it received a majority vote and passed. Also, around the same time, Western member nations discussed the dissolution of the UNC, but under the condition that the armistice agreement first be replaced with a peace treaty. North Korea has also officially raised the question to the UN, asking about the relationship between the UNC and the UN in 1995. Then UN Secretary-General Ghali responded to North Korea by saying that the UNC is not under UN controls. More recently in 2018, the Deputy Secretary-General of the UN offered a similar response when posed with a similar question. [KPI] Why did the socialist countries call for dissolution in 1975 rather than raising questions about its illegitimacy? Given its origins, why didn’t they say its existence had no basis? [Jang-hie Lee] The Security Council enabled and empowered the US to create the UNC, and did not stop the UNC from appointing a commander-in-chief and using the UN flag alongside sending states’ flags.  Since the Security Council implicitly gave permission to the US, the General Assembly recommended that the Security Council adopt a resolution to dissolve it. That was the logic behind the socialist bloc calling for dissolution. [KPI] The UNC is said to have initiated its own revitalization campaign. Could you speak about the forces driving this effort and why revitalization is being pursued? [Jang-hie Lee] The UNC hopes to rejuvenate because it feels an existential threat. Currently, one US general wears three hats to command the United States Forces Korea (USFK), the Combined Forces Command (CFC) of the US and ROK armies, and the UNC. And, the UNC claims to have three functions. First, endowed by the UN to the unified command, was to deter North Korean forces during and after the Korean War. Second, to manage and maintain the armistice agreement signed in 1953. Third, as noted in General Assembly Resolution 376(V) that passed on October 7, 1950, is to assist Korea’s move towards democracy and reunification. Since the 1990s, with the Cold War nearly coming to an end, there is no longer a need to deter North Korea or a socialist bloc from South Korea. The third role has not been cited much by the UNC. What remains of its functions is the maintenance of the armistice regime, which includes oversight authority of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Also, the transfer of wartime operational control (OpCon) away from the UNC and USFK to South Korea may happen soon. On July 14, 1950, during the Korean War, Syngman Rhee gave wartime as well as peacetime operational control to the UNC. At that time, command control was not directly handed to the UNC, but it was through a joint command of USFK and ROK forces. Peacetime operational control has already been transferred to South Korea in 1994, and OpCon discussions are active. That is why the UNC feels it has to reestablish its presence on the Korean peninsula, and that is why it has been pursuing a revitalization campaign. If wartime operational command is transferred, there is no reason for its presence and they have no influence on the peninsula. The US through the USFK has been aligning itself as “good cop” while positioning UNC as “bad cop”. And, that’s possible because the same person serves as UNC Commander, USFK Commander, and Commander of the Combined Forces’ Command. The UN, then, gets all the bad publicity and the US looks better comparatively. [KPI] What forces are driving the discussion around a revitalization campaign? Are other countries that are participating in the UNC involved or is the impetus coming from elsewhere? [Jang-hie Lee] The US is at the helm of these conversations since they would like to maintain control over the UNC. The other UN member states with troops stationed in South Korea are not interested. UNC forces are actually non-combatant military personnel—a sort of honor guard. They are appointed by the US command, and there are actually only about 100 individuals. Currently, the UNC is a shell of a unit that maintains operational control authority over the military. However, actually, the military control is the Combined Forces Command of the ROK and the US forces. With discussions concerning the transfer of wartime operational control authority to South Korea ongoing, and the very real possibility of losing wartime operational command, the UNC feels their military influence will be reduced or lost along with the transfer. So, they are trying to block or postpone the wartime operational command transfer and, while doing so, they are saying that the UNC still has a role to play on the Korean peninsula. This is why the UNC has been trying to block inter-Korean cooperation or projects that improve inter-Korean relations. Also, with increasing tension between the US and China over the South China Sea, and US efforts to limit China’s influence in the area, losing wartime operational command control on the Korean peninsula becomes more of an issue. The US is concerned that they won’t be able to deter China. What is also not very well known is that the UNC has several rear bases housed in Japan. In 1954, the UNC headquarters was actually in Tokyo, Japan and had been transferred to the U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan, Seoul in 1957. In 1952, Japan and the UNC entered a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), meaning that at anytime the UNC is in operation, they may use Japan’s roads, railroads, logistics teams, and even the Japanese self-defense army at will. In these regards, the UNC has nothing to do with Korea specifically and more to do with Korea’s geopolitical position in the region. [KPI] Could you discuss how and why the UNC has opposed recent South Korean government efforts to promote inter-Korean cooperation? [Jang-hie Lee] The South Korean government is very uncomfortable with the UNC’s interference with inter-Korean cooperation projects. At best, it creates bad optics for the government. But, they tolerate the UNC’s actions as they stir public opinion. There are three examples I would like to share about when the UNC interfered with inter-Korean cooperation. The first involves the UNC delaying the inter-Korean railroad project, which had been outlined in the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration. South and North Korea decided on dates to conduct field surveys in the lead-up to a ground-breaking ceremony that would inaugurate construction re-linking rail lines that had been severed during the Korean War. With the authority to prohibit access to the DMZ and passage of the Military Demarcation Line, the UNC blocked equipment from entering the survey sites and delayed the process for quite a long time. They eventually granted access and a ground-breaking ceremony took place on December 26, 2019, but the preliminary field surveys were severely delayed. The South Korean media reported on this quite extensively. Another example is when German officials came to South Korea on a diplomatic visit and wanted to visit the DMZ. The Minister of Unification took these international guests himself to the DMZ only to be denied entry by the UNC as they can ban access for non-military-related purposes. A last example I would like to share has been widely covered by the media. In February of 2019, North and South Korea had planned a New Year sunrise-watching ceremony on Mount Kumgang. The UNC prohibited accompanying journalists from bringing video cameras and recording equipment into the area in an attempt to restrict media coverage of the event. The media heavily critiqued this interference and many people questioned the UNC’s intentions. And, the South Korean government did not try to limit that media coverage. Though they are not explicitly encouraging it, I believe the government values this reportage as it stirs public opinions towards certain directions. [KPI] How might the North and South Korean governments respond to changes in the UNC, especially its dissolution?Does the South Korean government encourage or support changes to the workings of the UNC? [Jang-hie Lee] North Korea wants the UNC to disband. Period. In 2019, North Korea officially demanded dissolution. South Korea has not, but the South Korean government has been making quite a bit of mention about citizens’ desires for the transfer of wartime operational control back to South Korea. While they don’t explicitly express it, the South Korean government’s attitude suggests that they agree with popular opinion and would like to go in the same direction. They are very cautious about engaging with this issue. There are also a number of peoples’ campaigns and politicians demanding the dissolution of the UNC. I belong to one such organization called the UNC Issue Campaign. Our campaign oftentimes sends a questionnaire to the Ministry of National Defense asking when the UNC will be dissolved. The Ministry of Defense always provides pre-set default answer, returning often to the theme of not foreseeing dissolution anytime soon and not planning to expressly ask for it. However, there is always this difference in tone with the South Korean government’s actions and it’s important to read between the lines. [KPI] As a legal scholar, what approach would be most promising to open up the needed political space for advancing peace on the Korean peninsula? [Jang-hie Lee] Ultimately, it would be the dissolution of the UNC. Then, after that, it would be to work towards a peace agreement. More immediately, as the UNC Issue Campaign I am involved is pursuing, we should prohibit the illegal use of the UN flag. There are regulations that determine how and under what circumstance a UN flag may be used. While the unified command had been authorized to use the UN flag, the UNC of course has not. Right now, however, there are bases in Korea flying the UN flag and the US uses the UN flag wherever US forces go. The UNC Issue Campaign feels this needs to be the first step. For peace on the Korean peninsula, we don’t think the UNC has to be immediately dissolved. The UNC, as one of the signatories of the armistice agreement, would first have to transfer power invested in it to the South Korean government in order for Korea to reach a peace agreement or a peace treaty. Then, the South Korean government would legally become a party of the armistice, which would help clear the legal hurdles involved in negotiating a peace treaty. But, the ultimate goal from a legal perspective would be to dissolve the UNC. #KoreaPeace #KoreanWar #UNC #UnitedNationsCommand

On June 22, 2020, in a historic first, the membership of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) unanimously passed a resolution calling for an end to the Korean War. As the nation’s largest Asian American Studies organization, AAAS emerged indirectly out of the Third World Liberation Front movement that opposed U.S. interventionist war in Vietnam and called for the transformation of education to reflect the perspectives of Third World peoples. The passage of this resolution was over two years in the making. Whereas AAAS protocols require a minimum of 8 sponsors and 50 member signatures for resolutions to be proposed, the Resolution Calling for a Decolonizing Peace and a Formal End to the Korean War had 12 sponsors and 81 signers. Initiated by activist-scholars, this resolution is tied to a three-year 2020-23 Teaching Initiative to End the Korean War and a public open-access syllabus that will be housed on the Korea Policy Institute website. For more information on the Teaching Initiative, please contact endingkoreanwar@gmail.com. AAAS resolution calling for a decolonizing peace and a formal end to the Korean War Whereas progressive Koreans within the diaspora, including in the United States, have long organized for a peaceful resolution to the Korean War and, alongside many Asian and Pacific Islander peoples, have waged grassroots struggles against U.S. war and militarism; Whereas the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) seeks to advance a critique of U.S. war and empire; foster scholarship, innovative pedagogy, and public awareness about the far-reaching impact of U.S. militarism and racial violence in Asia and the Pacific; and support people’s anti-imperialist struggles for liberation and self-determination; Whereas the root of the current conflict on the Korean peninsula is the unresolved Korean War, an asymmetrical war of U.S. aggression precipitated by the 1945 U.S. decision to divide Korea at the 38th parallel without consulting the Korean people and undermining the Korean people’s long struggle against Japanese colonial rule and historic efforts to realize democratic self-governance; Whereas the United States, the primary Korean War belligerent and the world’s greatest nuclear proliferator and detonator, has refused to sign onto a permanent peaceful settlement, despite the temporary July 1953 armistice recommendation that the major signatories–the United States, North Korea, and China–negotiate peace terms within three months’ time, in contrast to North Korea’s numerous requests to end the Korean War; Whereas without a peace agreement, war can resume at any time in Korea, which stands to destroy the lives of 80 million people on the peninsula in addition to many other Asian and Pacific Islander peoples, and in this era of a nuclear-armed North Korea to inflict catastrophe within the United States and on a planetary scale; Whereas the ongoing state of war and division in Korea has exacted a massive human toll by keeping millions of families separated, including roughly 100,000 Korean Americans, by authorizing an exploitative system of international adoption, by subjecting the peoples of Korea and the region to the constant threat of nuclear war, and by perpetuating an arms race that diverts resources from human needs and justifies the proliferation of garrison states; Whereas U.S. military empire in Asia and the Pacific exploits the pretext of a menacing North Korea and the sub-imperial complicity of regional client-states, as in the South Korean deployment of over 300,000 soldiers to fight alongside U.S. forces in the U.S. war in Vietnam and in the strategic incorporation of sites like Diego Garcia, Guam, the Marshall Islands, Hawai‘i, and Okinawa into its “forward-deployed” posture against North Korea; Whereas the Korean War, as a structure of permanent war, exacts an imperial toll, justifying monstrous trillion-dollar “defense” budgets–in 2015, 54% of the federal discretionary budget–enabling the United States to wage endless wars and maintain troops abroad, the contamination, resource exploitation, and seizure of Indigenous lands, and the militarization of poor, non-white peoples within its army, correlating to unemployment, austerity programs that deny access to decent education, healthcare, and housing, and the militarization of the police; Whereas the Korean War, the longest-running U.S. conflict, enabled the United States to consolidate its global military-imperial dominance, inaugurating the U.S. military-industrial complex and justifying its base expansion, while continually justifying U.S. power projection in the region, its encirclement of China, and the ever-expanding U.S. military budget; Whereas contrary to U.S. government and corporate media claims, U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea continue, rehearsing the collapse, invasion, and occupation of–as well as nuclear first strikes against–North Korea, according to the Pentagon’s operation plans; Whereas the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula must be understood as imposing a commensurate obligation on the United States, given its history of repeatedly threatening North Korea with nuclear decimation and in violation of the 1953 Armistice deploying nuclear warheads to South Korea from 1958 to 1991, thereby requiring the elimination of all nuclear threats to the peninsula; Whereas only a genuine peace agreement among the main parties to the Korean War, reflective of the Korean people’s struggle for decolonization, self-determination, liberation, and reunification, can reduce the risk of nuclear and conventional war in Korea; Whereas the leaders of North and South Korea at the historic summit at Panmunjom on April 27, 2018 “solemnly declared before the 80 million Korean people and the whole world that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun,” and pledged to work together for independent unification, and in September 2018, signed an historic military agreement to cease all hostile acts and have taken concrete steps to transform the so-called demilitarized zone (DMZ) into an actual peace zone; Whereas, since the historic 2018 summit between North Korea and the United States, diplomacy has stalled, escalating threats of war, intensifying the possibility that the Korean War’s seventieth year could give rise to the end of North Korea’s self-imposed moratorium on nuclear weapons testing and resumption of full-scale U.S.-South Korea war exercises; Be it resolved, on the Korean War’s seventieth year, that AAAS: Supports the Korean people who have long fought for peace and the self-determined unification of the Korean peninsula and considers ending the Korean War a necessary step in the decolonization of South Korea; Enacts solidarity with the peoples of Asia, the Pacific, and North America who have long waged anti-militarism struggles against the projection of U.S. war power in and militarized expropriation of their homelands; Calls on the United States to abolish its seven-decade policy of hostility and sweeping sanctions that isolate North Korea and aim to inflict widespread humanitarian catastrophe on its people, formally end the Korean War, and replace the 1953 Armistice Agreement with a permanent peace agreement; Demands that the United States stop all military exercises that deploy or introduce its strategic assets on the Korean peninsula, abolish its nuclear umbrella over South Korea, Asia, and the Pacific, and meet its own obligations to create a nuclear-free world; Initiates critical reflection on and collective action regarding the complicity of U.S. universities within the military-industrial complex and our role as socially engaged scholars to analyze the structural moorings of our own conditions of possibility; and Encourages students and scholars to engage in a three-year research and teaching initiative, starting Fall 2020, that emphasizes critical approaches to and collective inquiry about the Korean War, with a focus on the racial, sexual, colonial, and sub-imperial violence of U.S. war power as well as peoples’ struggles for decolonization. Sponsors: Minju Bae (Temple/NYU), Crystal Baik (UC Riverside), Patrick Chung (University of Maryland), Christine Hong (UC Santa Cruz), Alfred Flores (Harvey Mudd), Elaine Kim (UC Berkeley), Joo Ok Kim (University of Kansas), Deann Borshay Liem (Mu Films), Monica Kim (NYU), Jeff Santa Ana (Stony Brook University), Ji-Yeon Yuh (Northwestern), Naoko Shibusawa (Brown University) Signers: Jane Komori (UC Santa Cruz) Jinah Kim (California State University, Northridge) Audrey Wu Clark (United States Naval Academy) Daniel Kim (Brown University) Ida Yalzadeh (Brown University) Rachel Kuo (NYU) Laura Kang (UC Irvine) Sarita See (UC Riverside) Andrew Leong (UC Berkeley) Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi (UCLA) Trung PQ Nguyen (UC Santa Cruz) Davorn Sisavath (California State University, Fresno) Nishant Upadhyay (University of Colorado Boulder) Na-Rae Kim (University of Connecticut) Simeon Man (UC San Diego) Susie Woo (California State University, Fullerton) A. Naomi Paik (UIUC) Michelle N. Huang (Northwestern University) Lili Kim (Hampshire College) Christopher Fan (UC Irvine) Josen Masangkay Diaz (University of San Diego) Heejoo Park (UC Riverside) C. Aujean Lee (University of Oklahoma) Vin Nguyen (University of Waterloo) Yumi Lee (Villanova University) Mark Tseng-Putterman (Brown University) Vivian Truong (University of Michigan) Ka-eul Yoo (UC Santa Cruz) James Matthew McMaster (UW Madison) Cynthia Wu (Indiana University) Yuki Obayashi (UC Santa Cruz) Miliann Kang (University of Massachusetts Amherst) Christen Sasaki (UC San Diego) Terry K. Park (University of Maryland) Salonee Bhaman (Yale University) Cynthia Gao (NYU) Mary Yu Danico (Cal Poly Pomona) Joseph Ong (UCLA) Clara Han (Johns Hopkins University) Jane Kuoch (UCLA) Minh-Ha T. Pham (Pratt Institute) S. Heijin Lee (NYU) Anita Mannur (Miami University Ohio) Edith Chen (Cal State University, Northridge) Nadia Young-na Kim (Loyola Marymount University) Rebecca Jo Kinney (Bowling Green State University) David Roh (University of Utah) W. Anne Joh (Garrett Theological Seminary) Gina Masequesmay (Cal State University, Northridge) Todd Henry (UC San Diego) Grade Kweon (UNC Chapel Hill) Kimberly McKee (Grand Valley State University) Nitasha Sharma (Northwestern University) Beth Lew-Williams (Princeton University) Elizabeth W. Son (Northwestern University) Allan Lumba (Virginia Tech) Chad Shomura (University of Colorado Denver) Sudipa Topdar (Illinois State University) Robert G. Lee (Brown University) Sunny Yang (University of Houston) Elena Shih (Brown University) Richard Kim (UC Davis) Aimee Bahng (Pomona College) Karen Umemoto (UCLA) Genevieve Clutario (Wellesley College) JoAnna Poblete (Claremont Graduate University) Jean-Paul deGuzman (The Windward School and UCLA) Marie Myung-Ok Lee (Columbia University) Takuya Maedda (Brown University) Sarah Park Dahlen (St. Catherine University) Long Le-Khac (Loyola University Chicago) Jeremy Tai (McGill University) Jennifer Kelly (UC Santa Cruz) Laurel Mei-Singh (University of Hawai‘i Mānoa) Ji-Yeon Jo (UNC Chapel Hill) Nayoung Aimee Kwon (Duke University) Hiroaki Matsusaka (UCLA) Jennifer Jihye Chun (UCLA) Kira Donnell (SF State) Wei Ming Dariotis (SF State) Eric Mar (SF State)

Summary The possibility that North Korean ships may be smuggling weapons of mass destruction is a matter of intense concern in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. The few reported incidents of North Korean ships involved in WMD transport are ambiguous; some ships have been engaged in legal weapons trade and some carried “dual-use” goods suitable for use in non-military applications, like agriculture. Ownership of the North Korean merchant fleet is largely private and highly fragmented; most of its ships are small, old, and in poor repair, and are often subject to rigorous scrutiny in foreign ports. The inability of the government to effectively regulate the low-cost, sub-standard shipping industry creates the risk and incentives to smuggle goods, including WMD. Anti-proliferation efforts should abandon the divisive and unsuccessful Proliferation Security Initiative and concentrate on negotiating North Korea’s entry into international arms control treaties, maintain stringent port controls, and negotiate technical assistance to reduce the vulnerability of the North Korean shipping industry. An ongoing staple of security concern in the Asia Pacific region is the fear that the sea freight of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) will be used for illicit activities—from smuggling of drug and counterfeit currency to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In 2003, for instance, one North Korean defector testified to the U.S. Congress that North Korea obtained 90 percent of its missile components from Japan using cargo ships that sailed between Wonsan and Niigata. The U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) provided one response to these fears by seeking to create partnerships in the region to monitor and control the shipping of WMD; its de facto primary target was North Korean shipping.1 Another, in the wake of North Korea’s October 2006 nuclear test, was United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718, which among other things prohibited the transfer of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, ballistic missiles, and components of WMD to and from North Korea.2 North Korea’s major international freight capacity is in the shipping sector. North Korean shipping companies, like all other enterprises, lost state subsidies beginning in the early 1990s and adopted profit maximization as the primary goal of business activities.3 The push factor was government pressure on companies to make money. The pull factor was individuals’ need for income for their families. Combined with opportunities for travel denied to most North Koreans, loosening of government surveillance, and inadequate and undeveloped governmental regulatory capacity, it would not be surprising if smuggling occurred. Structural frailties in the North Korean shipping sector contribute to an environment in which owners, managers, and individual crew members are vulnerable to criminal exploitation and hence the potential for smuggling of all sorts of goods—from lumber to WMD. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, there is little evidence to suggest that the North Korean government systematically transports WMD through its own merchant fleet or engages in smuggling by sea (or air). Also perhaps surprisingly, given the conventional perception of North Korea as a monolithic society in which all activity is controlled by the state, the North Korean shipping industry is fragmented and privatized as well as being, less surprisingly, nationalist in its ownership, flagging, and crewing patterns. Again, perhaps surprising is that the North Korean shipping industry operates as a conventional participant in global shipping markets and international shipping regimes. In the shipping industry, rather than being isolated from world trading regimes, North Korea is a globalized player, albeit a relatively small one. How Do We Know Anything About North Korean Ships? It is relatively straightforward to obtain data about North Korean shipping because of the characteristics of the global shipping industry that lend themselves to transparency. Countervailing tendencies to opacity, also present in global shipping regimes, are more or less absent in the case of North Korean shipping. Tendencies to transparency. Comprehensive data on merchant ships is collected and collated in international commercial shipping databases, the most reputable of which is the Lloyds Shipping Register.4 These are accessible to researchers on payment of a subscription. Data on individual ships, companies, and owners are also available from a variety of open-source databases. These databases allow for a large degree of cross-checking and cross-matching of data.5 Open-source information on ships is also available via the public reporting mechanisms of international port control conventions and procedures.6 Because of the reporting systems demanded by international laws, conventions, norms, and safety rules, ships that enter foreign ports undergo regular safety inspections.7 Regional port control authorities, particularly the Tokyo and Paris MOU secretariats (Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control), collate and publish data drawn from these inspections online, providing a useful source of data on all ships that call into Asian and European ports.8 Tendencies to opacity. North Korean shipping also operates, however, as part of a global shipping industry that helps ship owners who, for commercial or other reasons, prefer to avoid transparency. It is not unusual, for instance, for ships to be owned in one country and flagged and registered in another. Ship owners may also be separate, and sometimes based in a different country from the business entity that manages and operates the ship. In other cases, the same entity may be both owner and operator. It is also common for names of ships to be changed on a regular basis. International shipping registers can therefore become quickly out of date as ships change owners, managers, names, and flags. A further problem with the shipping registers is that they are not systematically synchronized with each other. Global shipping is a competitive industry, and commercial considerations also promote tendencies to nondisclosure. The data. All data on North Korean shipping, unless otherwise noted, were obtained from the Lloyd’s Register of Ships (LRS), accessed in July and August 2008. Also consulted were the Equasis database and two key regional port control bodies, the Tokyo and Paris MOU secretariats. Figures from the different databases are occasionally incompatible—for instance, some ships are reported in one database and not in another. This is inevitable for any research on global shipping given, among other things, the different time periods at which data are entered. Ships routinely go in and out of service and sometimes sink. Use of the LRS database for all quantitative analysis, however, ensures consistency of analytical categories. Why the Concern about North Korean Shipping? While there are few reports of North Korean ships involved in WMD transshipment, the concern is that if any ships are involved in illicit activity, the state must have directed and managed that activity. The North Korean shipping sector undoubtedly has the potential to transport controversial or contraband cargo. The merchant fleet is old, small, and in poor condition. This, combined with lax regulation and pressure to make money, provides an enabling environment for owners, managers, and crew to seek profit wherever they can. A disincentive for the use of North Korean merchant shipping to transport WMD, however, is the fact that the international port regimes to which all shipping must adhere make rigorous inspection of North Korean merchant ships likely, including in the ports of allies such as Vietnam, China, and Russia. North Korea’s Merchant Fleet: Small, Unsafe, and Out of Date The DPRK merchant fleet in August 2008 amounted to just 242 vessels. The total dead-weight tonnage (the conventional measure of cargo-carrying capacity) of the entire fleet is 1,105,246 tons. This fleet makes up a tiny portion of global shipping, just over 1 percent.9 General cargo carriers comprise the majority of the North Korean fleet at 129 ships or 53 percent. The next biggest category is that of fishing vessels, with 34 ships or 14 percent of the total. Figure 1 shows the numbers of ships by category of vessel. North Korean ships are regularly inspected when they visit foreign ports and equally regularly reported to port control regimes for safety breaches and non-compliance with maritime regulations. The fleet is aging—the average ship was built 29 years ago and is unlikely to have seen anything other than the most basic investment under North Korean ownership. As figure 2 shows, 92 percent of the merchant fleet was built before 1990. North Korean ships have relatively small cargo-carrying capacities, as figure 3 shows. A massive 70 percent can carry cargoes of only 5,000 tons or less. No ship can carry more than 30,000 tons. These capacities contrast starkly with the 250,000-tonnages that are now common in global shipping.10 There is no database of conditions onboard ships, but proxy indicators of health and safety can be found in the port control regional monitoring databases. The Tokyo port control records, for example, show that between 1 January and 18 February 2006 there were 44 inspections of North Korean ships in Asian ports. All inspections found deficiencies; in seven cases, the deficiencies were so serious that the ship was detained until they could be remedied. These detentions took place in a number of different ports including Moji, Japan; Haiphong, Vietnam; Nakhodka, Russia; Yantai, China; and Hong Kong. Reports of poor conditions on North Korean vessels come from throughout Asia, including the ports of allies. It is clearly not the case, for example, that Japanese port controls, tightened for political reasons, skewed data artificially by holding North Korean ships to higher standards than other merchant shipping. 11 North Korean shipping is perhaps best understood as typical of that found in other low-income countries that have found a niche in the bottom tier of what has sometimes been called the two-tier structure of today’s globalized maritime industry. The top tier comprises shipping largely from developed states, which is relatively tightly regulated, and where crews work in decent conditions and earn high wages. Shipping in the bottom tier is comprised largely of low-cost carriers, mainly bulk-trade vessels, which are flagged in countries whose registries exist to create revenue for the flagged state, that is, the flag-of-convenience countries. Pay and living conditions are poor but provide seafarers from poor countries with the opportunity to earn hard currency.12 It would not be surprising if badly paid crews, working in substandard conditions sometimes grasped available opportunities to benefit from ancillary petty, or less petty, illicit trade. Ownership and Management In the North Korean shipping industry management overwhelmingly coincides with ownership, with only 13 ships registered as splitting ownership and management functions. This is not unexpected, given that main function of global shipping management companies is the hiring of crew cheaply from all over the world.13 Fragmentation of ownership. The fact that the North Korean shipping industry is extremely fragmented in terms of ownership goes counter to the conventional image of a monolithic North Korea. In August 2008, Lloyd’s Register showed that there were 125 North Korean ship owners. Two-thirds of them (82 of 125) owned only one ship. Another 22 owned only two ships, and eight owned three. This left 13 shipping owners owning four ships or more; of these, only three owned more than 10 ships each. Figure 4 illustrates the extreme fragmentation of North Korean ship ownership. A privatized industry. Even more surprising, perhaps, is the fact that North Korea’s shipping fleet is overwhelmingly non-government-owned. According to Lloyd’s Register, the government directly owns just one ship and has a beneficial ownership in five more. Direct ownership is of the 1973-built, 12,000-ton general cargo ship, the Chon Song. Of the five in which the government possesses a beneficial interest, two are owned by the South Hamgyong provincial government—the 2,500-ton general cargo ship, the Paek Han San, built in 2003, and the 500-ton fishing vessel, the Sin Pung, built in 1960. The three remaining cargo ships in which the government has a beneficial interest are the 14,000-ton general cargo ship, the Tae Dong, built in 1983; the 10,000-ton container ship, the Kum Rung 7, built in 1972; and the 3,000-ton aggregates carrier, the Kum Rung 5, built in 1991. The Tae Dong is registered as owned and managed by the Korea Taedong Shipping Co., which is in turn registered as a subsidiary of the North Korean government. The Kum Rung 7 and the Kum Rung 5 are both registered as owned and managed by the Korea Rungra 888 Trading Co., which is also registered as a subsidiary of the North Korean government. Lloyd’s Register shows that the North Korean government has an additional 40 subsidiary companies, but none of these as of August 2008 owned ships (suggesting a prior government disinvestment in the shipping sector). Private ownership of North Korean ships is not a new phenomenon. In 1999, a Singapore court noted that North Korean ship owners should not be considered as controlled or owned by the North Korean government just because they were domiciled in that country.14 In the same judgment, the court noted the provision of North Korean law that specifically allowed ships to be owned by nongovernmental cooperative associations. The country’s 1998 constitution specifically allowed nonstate entities to own property. The July 2002 economic reforms, that were a consequence of de facto privatization beginning in the 1990s and de jure cause of privatization from 2002 onward, extended and promoted nonstate entrepreneurship. It is logical to assume that those enterprises best able to exploit foreign trade opportunities—that is, the shipping industry—would have taken advantage of the 2002 economic reform legislation. The National Dimension – Flagging North Korean Ships Merchant shipping has for the most part chosen to fly the home flag. This is unusual for the global ship-ping industry, in which over 64 percent of shipping (measured by tonnage or cargo-carrying capacity) is registered in countries other than that where the ship has a national connection through, for instance, ownership or management.15 As of August 2008, of the 242 DPRK-owned merchant ships, 223 (92 percent) were flagged at home (see figure 5).16 The flag state of eight of the remaining 19 ships was not recorded by the Lloyd’s Register. If these eight ships were also flying the North Korean flag—which is very possible—this would mean that an overwhelming proportion of North Korean ships, some 231 of 242, were flying the home flag. Irrespective of the unknowns, however, what these figures indicate is that most of the country’s ship owners have not chosen to take advantage of the anonymity that flying another flag might allow them. Foreign Partnerships. As of 2008, North Korean ships and ship owners had relatively few institutionalized foreign partnerships. Those that existed involved ships that were flagged abroad. The 11 known foreign flag states for DPRK ships were Sierra Leone (3); Mongolia (2); Panama (2); with Belize, China, Georgia and, perhaps rather unexpectedly, South Korea flagging one ship each. Only one ship owned and flagged in North Korea, the Lady Belinda, had a partnership agreement with a foreign manager, in this case located in Greece. Global Entrepreneurs. Shipping is by definition a globalized industry, and the North Korean shipping industry is a full participant in five different ways. First, North Korean ship owners buy and sell ships on the international market. Second, they insure their ships abroad (for instance, in London). Third, North Korean managers and crew call at ports around the world (except the United States, whose ports are closed to North Korean ships). Fourth, crew and managers meet with counterparts from other countries both in home ports and abroad. Fifth, North Korean shipping officials have contact with shipping operators from other countries through the development of the DPRK as a flag-of-convenience registry. Although North Korea is still building ships, its capacity is small and the industry’s existing ships have necessarily been purchased from others around the world. North Korean ships are more likely to have been built in Japan than at home. The country is also buying ships built elsewhere. One shipping company owns a ship built in China as recently as 2005. North Korea’s three “new build” acquisitions of 2008 were built at home, but were small—10,000 tons on average. Figure 5 indicates the range of countries where North Korean ships were built. Most of North Korea’s sea trade remains in Asia; it includes oil shipped from Russia’s Asian ports and a regular goods trade with China and Vietnam. Sea movements are not confined to Asia; regular port calls are recorded in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The DPRK is situated on the edge of a busy network of sea lanes in Northeast Asia. Its ships use the trade routes between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, through which over half of the world’s merchant marine regularly sails—the same trade routes as its prosperous trading neighbors, including Japan, South Korea, and China. Owners and crew have regular contact with international traders, in ports of call and in home ports. The DPRK has eight international ports; Nampo on the west coast and Chongjin on the east are by far the most important. Nampo is important for long-distance shipping; its ships travel to South Korea, China, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Chongjin and Wonsan are bases for trade with Russia and (before it instituted sanctions) Japan. Chongjin takes a 24 percent share of the DPRK’s foreign trade and is home to a resident Chinese consul, whose main function is to serve the Chinese traders operating in the northeast of the country.17 Nampo, whose share of North Korean foreign trade is around 30 percent, is a bustling port in which crew congregate from all over the world (including sometimes from United States ships delivering food grain). Both Chongjin and Nampo have seamen’s clubs, catering to foreign crews but also to North Koreans who need to meet with foreigners engaged in the shipping trade. Finally, North Korea offers a flag-of-convenience shipping registry. The largest flag-of-convenience shipping registries are located in Panama and Liberia, although many countries offer flag-state facilities to foreign ships.18 The flag-state industry is not confined to poor states. The United Kingdom and Germany, for example, have set up less closely regulated “second” registries in an effort to attract international ship registrations.19 According to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, ships are understood to be flying flags of convenience “where beneficial ownership and control of a vessel is found to lie elsewhere than in the country of the flags the vessel is flying.”20 The Federation also categorizes a state as a flag-of-convenience state on health and safety grounds. This is because flag-of-convenience states do not always enforce minimum ship safety standards, may overlook poor working and living conditions, including long hours and low pay, and do not ensure health and welfare support. In total, 291 merchant ships were listed in Lloyd’s Register as being flagged in North Korea. Of these, 223 were DPRK-owned, 67 were foreign-owned, and one had unknown ownership. Figure 6 shows the ownership location of the foreign-owned ships flagged by the DPRK. Interestingly, two U.S. ships are among those flagged in the DPRK. DPRK revenues from its international flagging operations are not known, but Mongolia, for instance, generates around $200,000 a year from its 260 flagged ships, and it would not be unreasonable to suggest that North Korea might earn a similar sum. Flagging of foreign ships is not therefore a major source of income for the DPRK. Foreign owned ships flagged in North Korea face fewer regulatory constraints than ships flagged in most other countries, but they are likely to be inspected during most port calls because of the DPRK’s international standing as a high risk country in terms of maritime safety standards. These ships therefore risk additional costs because of delay from detentions by port authorities. The reasons that foreign ships fly the North Korean flag need further research, but it would be reasonable to speculate that they are either economic or historical or a mixture of the two. For an old ship soon to be taken out of commission, it may cost more to transfer the flag than to retain it. Similarly, an owner or manager with a past or present business relationship with a North Korean owner (or manager) may choose to retain the flag. These suggestions are speculative, but the disadvantages of flying the DPRK flag are manifest, and there is no evidence that it has become an attractive flag of convenience in the international shipping market. WMD Incidents Involving North Korean Shipping Over the years, the U.S. and Japanese governments in particular have expressed concerns about DPRK government shipments of WMD and their components. Informing these concerns are statements from North Korean defectors and intelligence reports. Somewhat surprisingly, in the light of the global visibility of such claims through reporting in the international media, it is difficult to find hard data on the alleged incidents, and indeed it is hard to find references to more than a tiny number of incidents—the same examples tend to be iterated in all accounts of North Korean WMD proliferation. Table 1 lists the incidents reported in the international press as involving North Korean ships and the transportation of WMD for which there are significant data. In the cases for which ship data are known, the ships were old (built in 1974, 1980, and 1981), small, general-purpose cargo carriers. The owners were Korea Dae-hung Shipping, Korea Kangsong Shipping, and Sohae Sonbak. Korea Kangsong has the largest fleet in the country at 14 ships, but it shows few signs of prosperity, with an average ship age of 32 years and an average cargo-carrying capacity of less than 1,500 tons. Sohae Sonbak has 11 ships, the third highest number in North Korea, and its fleet has a combined cargo- carrying capacity of 223,000 tons, about a quarter of the country’s total. Its ships have an average size of 13,000 tons and an average age of 28 years. Korea Daehung Shipping has five ships with an average age of 27 years. The ship most regularly mentioned in the international media as a possible conduit of illicit goods is the passenger ferry Man Gyong Bong 92, owned and managed by the Daizin Shipping Company, headquartered in Pyongyang. Until Japan stopped North Korean ships entering its ports in 2006, the Man Gyong Bong 92 provided a regular passenger and goods service between the two countries. No instance of smuggled goods was ever identified by the Japanese authorities, despite rigorous port inspections. The repeated allegations of the ship’s involvement in smuggling WMD components, emerging mainly from defectors and unnamed U.S. and Japanese intelligence sources, seemed to be based on an assumption that all commercial and financial transactions with Japan, from the purchase of secondhand bicycles to the transfer of remittances from North Koreans in Japan to relatives in the DPRK, could be used to sustain indirectly North Korean WMD programs. Other recent incidents involved “dual use” goods for which a link to WMD is possible but not certain. Sodium cyanide is a good example of a dual-use product. Sodium cyanide has legitimate applications in mining and agriculture, both of which are important industries in the country and both of which are dependent on imported chemicals, but it can also be used in the manufacture of the nerve gas tabun. In 2004, a South Korean business exported 107 metric tons of the chemical to Dandong, China, knowing that it would be re-exported to North Korea. The businessman involved received a jail term of one and a half years as sodium cyanide is classified by the South Korean government as a strategic material. Foreign-owned ships have also been suspected of smuggling WMD components to and from North Korea. One such incident was the April 2003 seizure of the French ship Ville de Virgo by German police who had discovered that the ship was carrying 214 aluminum tubes with false end-user certificates and whose destination was North Korea.21 The tubes could have been used as gas-centrifuge components for enriching uranium for nuclear weapons (or as parts for bicycle frames or aircraft). The ship was forced to stop at the Egyptian port of Alexandria where, with the cooperation of the Egyptian government, the tubes were unloaded and returned to Hamburg. In recent years, perhaps the most notorious incident involving DPRK shipping was the arrest of the crew of the Pong Su in 2003, after the capture of heroin and drug smugglers who had landed off Melbourne, Australia, from the North Korean ship.22 The crew testified that the North Korean ship had been hired by a Malaysian drug syndicate that had told the ship owner and crew that the purpose of the voyage was to transport secondhand cars. In 2006, the court ruled that the four North Korean crew charged with trafficking in heroin were innocent and set them free, after they had served three years in prison. Even the most well-known incidents involving North Korean ships in alleged smuggling do not demonstrate deliberate malfeasance. There are, however, potentially major rewards for profit-seeking shipping operators. Absent domestic regulatory capacity, and with economic incentives propelling owners and crew to seek every possible trade opportunity, the conditions are ripe for all sorts of freelance activity, legal and illegal. North Korean Shipping and WMD Proliferation There is little hard evidence that the government of North Korea is involved in the illicit shipping of WMD or components of WMD. DPRK shipping incidents involved either legally traded weapons or chemicals with both military and civilian applications. The government has other ways to transport WMD besides using its own ships. State-to-state trade, for example with Iran or Pakistan, can be a carried out using aircraft or ships belonging to allies. The DPRK government has no record of selling WMD to terrorist groups, and there are no serious allegations from any source, let alone evidence, that it is doing so now. The very high likelihood of inspection during port calls abroad acts as a disincentive for the use of DPRK-owned and -flagged ships for transport of illicit cargo. North Korean shipping is, however, vulnerable to criminal exploitation by owners, managers, and individual crew members because of the structure of the shipping industry. Working conditions on the ships are poor, official wages for North Korean sailors are likely minimal, and opportunities and incentives for transporting illicit cargo are probably plentiful. There are many small shipping operators, and businesses are now expected to make profits rather than relying on the state for income; profit maximization has become the primary goal for ship owners and crew. The North Korean government is much less able to exert regulatory control than it was before the 1990s, thus allowing more opportunity for illicit trading activities. These are arguably more likely to involve smuggling of civilian goods, including possibly narcotics, than weapons of mass destruction. Policy Implications Current U.S. policy regarding the threat of weapons proliferation by North Korean shipping is almost entirely focused on the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). This is a U.S.-led effort, begun in 2003, that focuses on interdictions at sea of ships carrying WMD. The PSI was developed outside existing multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, although the U.S. government has encouraged states to join the initiative—arguing in 2008 that 92 countries supported the initiative. The PSI is controversial legally and in terms of its effectiveness.23 The legality of interdicting ships in international waters is ambiguous. Key states, including North Korea’s neighbors, South Korea and China, have refused to sign up, weakening the PSI’s effectiveness in targeting North Korean shipping. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has identified numerous shortcomings in the implementation of the PSI, including the absence of budgets, procedures, and a written strategy.24 The PSI has been expensive, inefficient, and arguably unsuccessful, and has caused unnecessary dissension among partners who might otherwise have collaborated on counter-proliferation efforts. Its funding should be reallocated to support nonproliferation objectives that could be negotiated within the framework of the ongoing Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program. Efforts should focus on mitigating the structural weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the DPRK’s shipping industry and preventing potential criminal activities by ship owners, managers, and crews. Stringent port controls should be maintained, perhaps in combination with technical assistance to North Korea to improve its maritime practices. In the medium to long term, the DPRK will need to redevelop its economy so that, among other things, the government will no longer need to raise money by offering a flag of convenience. Economic development would also make it less necessary for ship owners, managers, and crews to earn hard currency from smuggling. Economic redevelopment will, of course, depend on foreign capital investment—and this will in turn depend upon the resolution of political tensions in Northeast Asia. Not all transportation of WMD is against international law. Putting a halt to legal WMD transportation is a difficult matter and would be most likely to occur subsequent to entry of the DPRK into international nonproliferation conventions. The signing up of the DPRK to relevant international conventions is in turn only likely subsequent to or as part of a political settlement to the current security crises on the Korean Peninsula. Hazel Smith is a member of the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. Dr. Smith is currently Chair in Resilience and Security at Cranfield University, UK and Director of the Resilience Centre in the Department of Applied Science, Security and Resilience. Dr. Smith worked on the DPRK for nearly two decades, where she has been a regular visitor since 1990. She worked for nearly two years in North Korea (between 1998 and 2001) for the UN World Food Programme, UNICEF and the United Nations Development Programme, and continues to work for IOs, governments, NGOs, business, and the international media as an advisor on North Korea. Dr. Smith has published extensively on North Korea including the UNICEF Situation Analysis of Children and Women in the DPRK, and her recent work includes a report on DPRK shipping for the Japanese foreign ministry and a DPRK context analysis for development programming for the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency. She is the author of Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in North Korea (2005), and Reconstituting Korean Security (2007). Dr. Smith has been interviewed by international media including the BBC, KBS, Voice of America, NPR, CNN, CBS, ABC, and PBS, and was invited to testify at the UK House of Commons on Korean security (2006). The Korea Policy Institute thanks Sarah Park for her work on this article and the East-West Center for granting permission to republish it. Endnotes

To the White House officials who prepared the first draft of the June 16 Washington communiqué issued by Presidents Obama and Lee, the words seemed like routine rhetoric. “The alliance,” said the communiqué, “aims to establish a durable peace on the Korean peninsula leading to peaceful reunification on the principles of free democracy and a market economy.” However, this was not routine rhetoric. The phrase “free democracy and a market economy” was a direct and potentially disastrous assault on the fundamental principle of the coexistence of differing systems, leading to reunification through confederation that was enshrined in the June 2000 and October 2007 North-South Presidential summit declarations. To North Korea, this reversal meant that the goal of Washington and Seoul is once again the absorption of North Korea by South Korea. So it was not surprising that a government mouthpiece in Pyongyang, Tongil Sinbo, bitterly attacked the communiqué as signaling “reunification through absorption” as the goal of Washington and Seoul. “This was definitely a change in our position,” commented a State Department official concerned with Korea. “Our previous position was what George Bush told the National Assembly in 1992, which is the U.S. people favor ‘peaceful unification on terms acceptable to the Korean people,’ and this formulation does sound like absorption,” the official said. I asked where in the U.S. government the change had come from, or whether it came from the ROK side. He replied, “Ask the NSC.” This was a reference to the National Security Council, where Deputy Chairman Denis McDonough has been supervising Korea policy since the Obama Administration took office. McDonough has no previous Korea-related experience prior to joining the Administration. Even before the summit, Lee Myung Bak had made a big mistake when he casually announced after his election that he was not committed to the two North-South summit declarations and would “review” them. To my surprise, few in the South have appeared to recognize that this reversal would strengthen the hardline forces in North Korea and endanger the reduction of North-South tensions made possible by the two summits. Vice-Chairman Kim Yong Tae of the Supreme People’s Assembly communicated to me in Pyongyang in January, “This has changed everything, and now we are back to where we were 15 or 20 years ago, back to the days of the military dictators in the South, back to regime change.” “Free democracy” means to North Korea that South Korea, with its population of 48.3 million in 2009, would dominate North Korea, with its population of 23.4 million, if Korea-wide elections were held in a reunified peninsula based on “the principles of free democracy.” Kim Dae-jung’s basic premise in his confederation plan, which made possible peace with North Korea, was that North Korea and South Korea would have co-equal representation in a confederal setup, and that North Korea would keep its system while growing economic contacts would bring the two systems closer together. Significantly, on September 11, 1989, Roh Tae Woo paved the way for Kim with his proposal for a Korean Commonwealth. The new plan explicitly accepted the principle of equal representation in a projected transitional, twenty-member council of ministers and a one-hundred-member council of representatives. “The council of ministers,” Roh told the National Assembly, “would be co-chaired by the prime ministers of North Korea and South Korea, and would be comprised of ten minister-level officials from each side. ” Roh also said, “Under the council standing committees could be created to deal with humanitarian, political, diplomatic, economic, military, social, and cultural affairs.” He envisioned the council of ministers of North Korea and South Korea would discuss and adjust all pending North-South issues and national problems. Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994 rekindled the hopes of hardliners in Seoul and Washington for a collapse of North Korea. Kim Young Sam’s pronouncements made clear that he envisaged a collapse followed by South Korea’s absorption of North Korea. In his August 15, 1995, Independence Day address at Chonan, he declared that a reunified Korea would be “another ROK.” Referring to the “miracle of the Han River,” he said, “As an extension of all this, we should now create a new ROK—a reunified Fatherland enjoying democracy and prosperity.” Angered by what he considered excessive U.S. concessions in its 1994 negotiations with Pyongyang on the nuclear issue, Kim told the New York Times on October 7, 1994, that the North Korean regime “is on the verge of an economic and political crisis that could sweep it from power,” and US. compromises on the nuclear issue “might prolong its life.” In his book Betrayal, Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz wrote, “He expected the collapse during his Administration.” Gertz reproduced the text of a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul to the Secretary of State echoing this assessment and reporting that Kim had “launched covert actions to facilitate a collapse.” Does South Korea want to go back to the days of Kim Young Sam and Park Chung Hee and face renewed military tension with North Korea? To reverse the present dangerous trend toward a revival of cold war confrontation, Lee Myung Bak should be pressed to reaffirm the two North-South summit declarations, avoid a repetition of the “free democracy” language of the Washington declaration and categorically repudiate the goal of absorption. The views presented in this column are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh. Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the former director of the Century Foundation¹s Project on the United States and the Future of Korea. Specializing in South Asia and East Asia for fifty years as a journalist and scholar, he has visited North Korea over ten times and on two occasions, met with the late Kim Il Sung. He is the author of six books on Asian affairs and U.S. relations with Asia, including Korean Endgame: A Strategy For Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, published by Princeton University Press in May 2002. Dr. Harrison serves as an advisory board member of the Korea Policy Institute (KPI).

Despite missiles, hostages, bomb tests, and cyberattacks, North Korea’s Dear Leader is quite consistent, says the region’s top expert, Mike Chinoy. It’s U.S. policy that’s been erratic. Having visited North Korea 14 times, let me caution against reading too much into yesterday’s report that the secretive nation’s leader, Kim Jong Il, may be dying of pancreatic cancer. The news came out of the notoriously unreliable South Korean media, citing sources from that country’s conservative-leaning intelligence agency which has often had its own political agenda—including destabilizing North Korea. The same goes for the similarly sourced, and equally unverifiable, media claims last week blaming Pyongyang for a wave of cyberattacks aimed at American and South Korean targets. As one Bush official recently told Congress, North Korea wants agreements with the U.S. that are “election-proof… agreements that will outlast a change of presidencies.” Nonetheless, Kim Jong Il did look gaunt and haggard when he made a rare public appearance on Wednesday, and the continuing rumors, speculation, and uncertainty—about his health, political stability in North Korea, and the intentions of the Pyongyang regime—serve to highlight the growing dangers of the current crisis on the Korean peninsula. The North recently tested several missiles and a nuclear bomb, two American journalists remain detained in Pyongyang, negotiations are stalled, the Obama administration is pushing for sanctions, and there seems, for now, to be no prospect of a thaw in relations. How did a president who campaigned in part on a pledge to engage American adversaries, including the North Koreans, end up embroiled in a much more serious confrontation with Pyongyang—and pushing a much tougher policy—than the administration of George W. Bush? And why has the North repeatedly rebuffed Obama’s conciliatory overtures? It’s easy to blame North Korea—to depict Kim Jong Il as an ailing madman presiding over an out-of-control rogue state. In fact, however, there is a clear logic to Pyongyang’s behavior. It’s a response to what the North views as nearly a decade of American inconsistency, flip-flops and unfulfilled commitments. That has led a North Korean regime anxious about its own survival to conclude that having nukes is a better guarantee of security than any negotiated denuclearization deal with the United States. It wasn’t always like this. When George W. Bush took office, the North was in negotiation mode. Its Yongbyon nuclear reactor had been frozen under the 1994 Agreed Framework deal reached with the Clinton administration. Madeleine Albright had visited Pyongyang in October 2000. Kim Jong Il had even invited Bill Clinton to the North Korean capital for a summit. The disputed 2000 election prevented that meeting from happening, and George W. Bush quickly discarded Clinton’s engagement policy. Instead, he added the North to the “Axis of Evil,” publicly declared that he “loathed” Kim Jong Il, scuttled the Agreed Framework, and adopted a series of sanctions. Against the backdrop of the invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration’s talk of “regime change,” the North in response restarted Yongbyon, produced enough plutonium for a half-dozen bombs, and, in October 2006, staged a nuclear test. Following the test, the administration reversed course. The president allowed envoy Christopher Hill to negotiate a deal under which the North, in return for fuel oil and other aid, again shut down Yongbyon, admitted international inspectors, and began disabling the facility. Last year, in a series of unprecedented steps, Pyongyang turned over more than 18,000 pages of operating records from Yongbyon, provided a declaration with new details of its plutonium program, and pledged future cooperation to resolve unanswered questions about its uranium-enrichment efforts and its proliferation activities. As part of the deal, Hill told the North it would be removed from the U.S. list of “state sponsors of terror.” However, contrary to Hill’s assurances, hardliners in Washington demanded that Pyongyang accept an intrusive set of procedures to verify its nuclear capabilities before delisting could occur. The North Koreans accused the U.S. of moving the goal posts, and they reacted by restarting operations at Yongbyon. Hoping to salvage a deteriorating situation, Hill flew to Pyongyang last October and reached a verbal understanding on verification that enabled Bush to proceed with delisting. In December, however, under renewed pressure from hardliners in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo, the administration again demanded the North accept an intrusive verification regime. When Pyongyang refused, the U.S. threatened to halt promised shipments of fuel. Negotiations collapsed. Its personality cult, rigid conformity and fire-breathing rhetoric notwithstanding, North Korea is not a monolith. It has moderates willing to entertain the idea of trading nukes and missiles for American concessions, and hardliners, especially in the military, adamantly opposed to such steps. The Bush administration’s flip-flops during its last six months in office appear to have been the final straw, convincing Pyongyang that the U.S. was reneging on its commitments, and strengthening those who believed Washington could never be a reliable partner. Instead, the hardliners argued that the North’s security could only be ensured by an enhanced nuclear “deterrent,” not agreements easily undermined by America’s constantly shifting political currents. As Georgetown University’s Victor Cha, who served as an Asia expert in the Bush administration’s National Security Council and had been Christopher Hill’s deputy in the later stages of the six-party talks, put it in recent congressional testimony, the North wanted agreements with the U.S. that were “election-proof… agreements that will outlast a change of presidencies.” Kim Jong Il’s illness and concerns about the succession, which arose around the same time, likely fueled the anxiety in the ruling elite about Washington’s intentions and the regime’s survival, giving more ammunition to those advocating a harder line. Pyongyang’s long-range-missile test in April, nuclear test in May, increasingly belligerent rhetoric, and continuing rejection of U.S. overtures for talks have been the result. Where does this leave the Obama administration? While insisting the door for negotiations remains open, the U.S. has made intensified sanctions the heart of its North Korea policy. The problem is that while sanctions will certainly hurt, there is no evidence they will produce a change in the North’s behavior. Instead, they are only solidifying the view in Pyongyang that Washington’s intentions are so “hostile” there is little point in talking, which may explain why the administration’s efforts to send special envoy Stephen Bosworth have been rebuffed. Short of North Korea’s collapse or a dramatic change in regime, however, talks offer the only realistic prospect—however uncertain—of rolling back Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile program. But unless it sees a U.S. willingness to address its concerns, the North is unlikely to come back to the table. If Obama hopes to denuclearize North Korea, he will have to persuade Pyongyang that negotiations, not more bombs, will provide the best guarantee of its security. After the last eight years, that will be a difficult task. Mike Chinoy is a senior fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy and the author of Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis. He was a foreign correspondent for CNN for 24 years, serving as bureau chief in Beijing and Hong Kong and as senior Asia correspondent. For further information and readers’ comments click here.

The Korea Policy Institute is pleased to support the launch of the new Still Present Pasts website and virtual exhibit. Along with a collective of Korean American artists, a filmmaker, and a historian, KPI Advisory Board Member Ramsay Liem produced the website and virtual exhibition that explores Korean American memories and legacies of the Korean War. For more information, please visit http://stillpresentpasts.org.

North Korea is often accused of dishonoring the commitments it makes in negotiations. However, in North Korean eyes, it is the U.S. that has failed to live up to its promises. This is the main reason why military hard-liners have been able to take control of North Korean foreign policy in the past six months and justify an increasingly provocative series of nuclear and missile tests in internal policy debates. Kim Jong-il’s failing health and his reduced work schedule have made it easier for the hard-liners to consolidate control. Their strength is rooted in a cavalier U.S. disregard of its commitments that has vindicated their opposition to the 1994 Agreed Framework and the 2007 six-party denuclearization agreement. For nearly eight years, from June 1994, to December 2002, the moderates in North Korea led by First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju prevailed, and North Korea suspended its nuclear weapons program over the bitter protests of the hard-liners. In return, North Korea was promised two light water reactors as a token of U.S. readiness for normal relations. The reactors were never built, however, despite large South Korean and Japanese financial outlays. The Bush Administration not only abrogated the Agreed Framework, but dissolved the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) and bludgeoned South Korea into approval in order to leave no doubt that the U.S. had repudiated its commitment. Despite this, the moderates were able to get Kim Jong-il to support the six-party process with help from China and to disable the Yongbyon reactor. In return, the six parties pledge of 600,000 tons of oil. Although Japan, angered by the U.S. decision to remove North Korea from its List of Terrorist States, refused to provide its share, 200,000 tons, and the moderates were once again discredited. This is a very dangerous moment in our relations with North Korea, the most dangerous since June 1994, when Jimmy Carter went to Pyongyang with the grudging consent of the Clinton Administration. Carter negotiated an agreement with Kim Il-sung that headed off a war and paved the way for the Agreed Framework. Now, we are in urgent need of another high-level emissary, but the Obama Administration is not even prepared to give its grudging consent to Al Gore. Gore has expressed interest in negotiating the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two imprisoned U.S. journalists and employees of Current TV, which he founded, and in the process pave the way for a reduction of tensions. Gore met Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on May 11 and asked for the cooperation of the Obama administration in facilitating a mission to Pyongyang and in empowering him to succeed in such a mission by exploring with him ways in which the present stalemate in relations between North Korea and the U.S. can be broken. She said she would “consider” his request, but the Administration has subsequently delayed action. The Administration’s position is that the case of the two imprisoned journalists is a “humanitarian” matter and must be kept separate from the political and security issues between the two countries. In a News Hour interview with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on June 10, Margaret Warner asked Rice how the latest U.N. sanctions resolution would “complicate efforts to win the release of the two American journalists.” Rice turned the question around, declaring that the issue of the two journalists “cannot be allowed to complicate our efforts to hold North Korea accountable” for its nuclear and missile tests. This is an unrealistic position. It shows a callous disregard for the welfare of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. It ignores the danger of a war resulting from the Administration’s naive attempts to pressure North Korea into abandonment of its nuclear and missile programs. Past experience with North Korea has repeatedly shown that pressure invariably provokes a retaliatory response that makes matters worse. The Administration should instead actively pursue the release of the two women through intervention in their behalf by a high-level unofficial emissary empowered to signal U.S. readiness for tradeoffs leading to the reduction of tensions, such as the provision of the 200,000 tons of oil that had been promised and not delivered to North Korea since the six-party talks broke off last fall. Looking ahead, the goal of the U.S. should be to cap the North Korean nuclear arsenal at its existing level and to move toward normalized relations as the necessary precondition for progress toward eventual denuclearization. The prospects for capping the arsenal at its present level have improved as result of Pyongyang’s June 13 announcement admitting that it has an R&D program for uranium enrichment. Since this program is in its early stages, and Pyongyang is not yet actually enriching uranium, there is time for the U.S. to negotiate inspection safeguards limiting enrichment to the levels necessary for civilian uses. Until now, North Korea’s denial of an R&D program has kept the uranium issue off the negotiating table and kept alive unfounded suspicions that it is capable of making weapons-grade uranium. Progress towards denuclearization would require U.S. steps to assure North Korea that it will not be the victim of a nuclear attack. In Article Three, Section One of the Agreed Framework, the U.S. pledged that it “will provide formal assurances against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the U.S.” simultaneous with complete denuclearization. Pyongyang is likely to insist on a reaffirmation of this pledge. Realistically, if the U.S. is unwilling to give up the option of using nuclear weapons against North Korea, it will be necessary to live with a nuclear-armed North Korea while maintaining adequate U.S. deterrent forces in the Pacific. In my view, in the event of another war with North Korea resulting from efforts to enforce the U.N. sanctions, it is Japan that North Korea would attack, not South Korea. Some of the hard-line generals in the National Defense Commission, I learned on my January visit to Pyongyang, were outraged at Kim Jong-il’s apology to Prime Minister Koizumi in 2002 and have alarmed moderates in the regime with their swaggering confidence that North Korea could win a war with Japan. Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the former director of the Century Foundation¹s Project on the United States and the Future of Korea. Specializing in South Asia and East Asia for fifty years as a journalist and scholar, he has visited North Korea over ten times and on two occasions, met with the late Kim Il Sung. He is the author of six books on Asian affairs and U.S. relations with Asia, including Korean Endgame: A Strategy For Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, published by Princeton University Press in May 2002. Dr. Harrison serves as an advisory board member of the Korea Policy Institute (KPI).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Christine Ahn, 310-482-9333June 18, 2009christine.ahn@kpolicy.org Christine Hong, 510-658-3275 chong@berkeley.edu SAN FRANCISCO, June 18—On Tuesday, June 23, 2009, 6:30 pm at Grace Cathedral, 1100 California Street in San Francisco, two leading international scholars on North Korea human rights and security will break down current events in North Korea and offer policy recommendations for improving human rights for North Koreans and a peaceful resolution to the military standoff. This timely forum is co-organized by the Korea Policy Institute (KPI) and Grace Cathedral. One of the organizers of the event, Christine Ahn, a KPI fellow, says, “In these tense times with President Obama taking a hawkish approach in the wake of North Korea’s second nuclear test and with the freedom of two American reporters at stake, the speakers show us that there are constructive approaches for achieving peace and human rights on the Korean peninsula.” The two international North Korea experts are from South Korea and the United Kingdom. Dr. Suh Bohyuk, former senior researcher at the South Korea National Human Rights Commission, is currently Research Professor at Ewha University. Dr. Hazel Smith is Professor of Resilience and Security at Cranfield University and author of numerous books on North Korea, including Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance, and Social Change in North Korea. Dr. Christine Hong, KPI fellow and Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will moderate the forum. “Human rights do not take place in a vacuum,” says Dr. Suh. “They are tied to other issues such as development, peace, humanitarianism, and reconciliation.” Departing from those who advocate that human rights problems must be resolved before any talk of negotiating peace, Dr. Suh proposes that “peace be included in the category of human rights, and the security situation be considered in any strategy to improve human rights.” Focusing on the relationship between food and nuclear weapons, Dr. Smith will address why its nuclear program makes sense to North Korea. According to Dr. Smith, North Korea is “walking a tightrope in using nuclear tests to try to persuade the United States back to the sorts of negotiations that took place between 2006 and 2008.” Dr. Smith will also cover North Korea’s relations with China and the limited options available to achieving the goals of peace, prosperity and improved human rights. “In the end, it is only if the United States as the key protagonist reengages the DPRK through proactive diplomatic negotiations that we are likely to see significant moves towards peace and stability for Korea’s people.” Dr. Suh will also be in Los Angeles to present his research. The LA Forum will occur on Friday, June 26. The reception will be at 6:00 with the talk at 7:00. The location will be the Nanum Cultural Center, 3471 W. 8th St., Los Angeles, CA 90005. For more information, visit the Korea Policy Institute at http://www.kpolicy.org or Grace Cathedral at http://www.GraceCathedral.org. Click here for the San Francisco event flyer (pdf).

More from the Forum Presentation of Dr. Hazel Smith, Author and Professor of Resilience and Security, Cranfield University.

KPI Fellow Christine Ahn introduces the Engaging North Korea Forum Dr. Bo-hyuk Suh, Research Professor, Ewha University, and former senior researcher at the South Korea National Human Rights Commission, makes the argument that peace be included in the category of human rights, and that the security situation with North Korea be considered in any strategy to improve human rights. View the video and transcript. Dr. Hazel Smith, Author and Professor of Resilience and Security, Cranfield University, discusses the relation of food and nuclear weapons in the North Korean situation, the roles of China and the U.S. and the need for American proactive diplomacy. View the video and transcript.

More from the Forum Presentation of Dr. Bo-hyuk Suh, Research Professor, Ewha University, and former senior researcher at the South Korea National Human Rights Commission. Improving Human Rights in North Korea: The Interdependence of Peace and Human Rights Bo-Hyuk Suh | September 7, 2009 Dr. Bo-Hyuk Suh is a former senior researcher at the South Korea National Human Rights Commission, is currently Research Professor at the Center for Peace Studies at Ewha University. The paper below was presented at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, CA on June 23, 2009 at a panel on human rights in North Korea sponsored by the Korea Policy Institute. Human rights discourse has a long history; and we have seen rising interest in the post-Cold War era. But discussion about human rights does not take place in a vacuum: it is tied to other issues such as development, peace, humanitarianism, and reconciliation. Problems of international concern have arisen due to diversity in values and priorities among nations. The situation in North Korea is one such case, and we have witnessed different approaches to different issues, particularly human rights issues and peace. There has been much unproductive dispute over which problem has to be resolved first: some say that human rights problems must be resolved before there can be talk of negotiating peace, while others say that an end to the Korean War must be the foundation for addressing other matters including human rights. To overcome this impasse, this paper proposes that peace be included in the category of human rights, and the security situation be considered in any strategy to improve human rights. Then we can find new directions in the discussion of human rights in North Korea. This paper explores ways to improve human rights in North Korea through consideration of the current situation on the Korean peninsula and the interrelation between human rights in North Korea and peace on the Korean peninsula. Let’s start by looking at peace from the perspective of human rights. Peace: A human right or a pre-condition for human rights? The charter of the United Nations indicates that peace and human rights are in complementary relation to one another and that one cannot be sacrificed for the other. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) state that human rights are the basis of peace. The Tehran Proclamation of 1968 “[r]ecogniz[es] … that peace and justice are indispensable to the full realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It is thus conceivable that peace is not a kind of right but an essential condition for human rights. However, there is a growing awareness that peace is a kind of right. On February 27, 1976, the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution and announced that “Everyone has the right to live in conditions of international peace and security.” The United Nations General Assembly approved the ‘Declaration on the Preparation of Societies for Life in Peace’ on December 15 of the following year. According to article 23, paragraph 1 of the ‘African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights’, which has been adopted by each state in Africa, it was the first regional human rights institution that recognized the right to peace. Eventually, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the ‘Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace’ in 1984. The declaration states that defusing the threat of war, especially nuclear war, interrupting the use of force, and settling international disputes through peaceful methods are required to realize the right to peace. The right to peace could be defined as the right to live in a secure and nonviolent world, and also the right to live a life free of war. The right to peace can be understood to include the repudiation of wars of aggression, the repudiation of the right to collective self-defense, the elimination of armaments, the elimination of activities against peace by a nation (arms exports), the elimination of activities contrary to a peaceful existence (conscription system), the protection of the people’s fundamental human rights, and so on. To enjoy the right to peace, it is required to establish a just society by striking at the root causes of conflicts as well as by minimizing conflicts and their influences. The right to peace includes collective commitments from individuals to their nations and to the international society. There are also passive and active requirements necessary for peace. The passive requirement is that the principle of respect for human rights be the foundation for peace. Peace-making should be established on the basis of human rights and peacekeeping and peace-building also need to be based on human rights.1 The active requirement comports all the efforts for achieving and maintaining peace at the national, regional, and international levels. The right to peace and the right to human security have a lot in common. Human security starts with the observation that the existing nation-oriented security paradigm based on military power can’t contribute to positive peace. Human security is not for the citizens of one particular nation but for every individual in human society, and the goal of human security is not the conservation of the nation but an improvement in the quality of life of human beings. The main concern is not a power struggle or one-sided military action but multilateral efforts to curb violence, protect human rights, and provide social and environmental resources necessary to a dignified human life. Therefore, human security naturally is greatly concerned with human rights. The right to peace and security is very important because threats to human security stand in the way of protecting all kinds of rights. However, while we might all be able to immediately agree upon some components of the right to peace, there are others upon which international society has yet to come to consensus. Specifically, some have said that it would be difficult to count the right to peace among the international human rights because the meaning of the right to peace itself is not clear enough to be designated as a right under current international law.2 That is, the right to peace has contents and categories which are incomplete and evolving, and which have to take shape over time. The right to peace is one of the third generation of rights known as solidarity rights as well as development rights. Of course, the fact that efforts to clarify the right to peace are still in process cannot be used as an excuse for reducing or delaying efforts to improve every aspect of human rights.3 Also, it is not right to identify the right to peace with absolute pacifism because the right to peace allows the just use of violence in particular cases such as humanitarian crises.4 Human rights in North Korea and peace on the Korean peninsula: Mutually interdependent universal values It is clear that the North Korea nuclear crisis is directly connected to peace on the Korean peninsula. However, this problem, which is not only a military one but also tied to the reconstruction of the North Korean economy and to inter-Korean economic cooperation, has been treated too shallowly. The complexity of the North Korea nuclear crisis can be grasped if we consider the official position announced by North Korea with regard to its nuclear program. North Korea stated its basic position as “defusing threats to independence and the right to live” and offered three conditions for nuclear negotiations, namely U.S. recognition of North Korea’s sovereignty, assurance of nonaggression, and removal of obstacles to economic development.5 Also, North Korea included economic content such as provisions for economic cooperation and supplies of electricity and food, and proposed a so-called “package deal framework” and “simultaneous action order” for the comprehensive resolution of nuclear issues.6 The negotiation strategy of North Korea reveals that it uses weapons of mass destruction as a diplomatic strategy, within the context of a lack of economic resources. After the advent of the Obama administration in 2009, North Korea has purposively chosen to foster an atmosphere of crisis. There was the launch of the rocket on April 5, its second nuclear test on May 25, and subsequent missile launches. To be sure, these actions are part of North Korea’s crisis diplomacy, but we must indeed understand them for what they are on face value: as moves to increase military power. On January 17, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said toward the Obama administration, “normalization of relations and the nuclear problem are different matters.” North Korea also asserted “the reason we made nuclear weapons was not to normalize relations with U.S. or to attain economic aid but to protect ourselves from the U.S. nuclear threat,” and gave notice of the nuclear test. Regarding North Korea’s actions, international society is pushing ahead with multilateral and unilateral sanctions. Prior to that, international society declared the rocket launch, which North Korea asserted as a peaceful use of space, as a military provocation. North Korea regarded international criticism as threats toward them and went ahead with the nuclear test, insisting that it was a self-defense measure. What we need to focus on is that these power contests between nations violate North Korean people’s and Korean people’s rights to live peacefully. Meanwhile, the global community regards the situation of human rights in North Korea as poor. Human rights are universal, total, interdependent, and interrelated. Therefore, an approach limited to specific areas not only is against the basic character of human rights but is also of questionable effectiveness. International society needs to balance its efforts to improve human rights in North Korea. Thus far, the international community has mainly criticized them, and sometimes used humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip. It is true that civil and political rights in North Korea are poor and it is necessary to continue monitoring this situation. But it is necessary to distinguish criticism from political pressure. A pressure-oriented approach could generate a backlash from a North Korean government that considers such an approach as a political offensive aimed at bringing about the collapse of the North Korean government, and could hamper efforts to improve human rights by reinforcing the North Korean government’s control over people and breaking off diplomatic exchanges and contacts. We should note that efforts to improve human rights could result in violations of human rights that we didn’t intend. The right to survival in North Korea is in the same shape. North Korea has been going through a food shortage of over one million tons annually even after the “Arduous March,” the term people in North Korea use to refer to the worst period of the famine in the mid- to late 1990s. “Good Friends,” a South Korean organization addressing human rights in North Korea, reported that (1) People in North Korea who are safe from food storage are 10% of total population, 2 million, in August 2008; (2) some ten million people, which represents over half the total population, often have difficulty in getting even one full meal a day; and (3) over 3 million suffer from serious malnutrition and are at risk of starvation. In spite of this situation, humanitarian aid is decreasing and is being used as a political tool. Discontinuing or decreasing humanitarian aid aggravates the North Korean people’s right to live, as well as stymies collaboration opportunities between North Korea and the international community. Humanitarian aid should be given and be distinguished from nonhumanitarian aid. The problem of enhancing transparency has to be addressed in the process of providing humanitarian aid and should not be used as a reason for cutting off aid. Improvement strategy of human rights in North Korea: A phase-in approach We can see the mutual interdependence between peace on the Korean peninsula and human rights in North Korea theoretically and practically from the above discussion. The nuclear problem and human rights in North Korea are not separate matters that must be prioritized; rather they exist in complementary relation to one another and need to be resolved comprehensively. We need to examine the foundation and direction of any approach to human rights in North Korea. Considering the complexity and sensitivity of human rights issues in North Korea, we should approach them by taking the situation and external environment in North Korea into consideration. The foundation for approaching human rights in North Korea includes (1) the observance of principles, (2) the practical improvement of human rights, (3) the cooperative improvement of human rights, and (4) harmony between human rights and peace. The ways and paths toward the improvement of human rights in North Korea will depend on various actors’ understanding of human rights, their circumstances, and their capacity.7 The roadmap shown below presupposes some facts. First, there is the matter of the “issue hierarchy” between North Korea and the other primary nations concerned. North Korea aims to ensure the security of its government as its priority foreign policy goal and puts great emphasis on solving the food shortage and the rebuilding of its economy. The members of the six-party talks, including South Korea, U.S., China, and so on, pursue a denuclearized Korean peninsula as the first goal, and overall have granted human rights in North Korea relatively little significance. If we approach it from a different angle, according to Vitit Muntarbhorn, the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights, “No assessment of the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea would be complete unless its interrelationship with international human rights standards, democracy, peace, human security, demilitarization/disarmament and sustainable development is also taken into account.”8 Second, within a comprehensive view of human rights, human rights in North Korea covers various fields, but it is an undeniable fact that the guarantee of a minimum level of the people’s basic human rights is an overriding concern. The minimum level of the people’s basic human rights means the right to live and the right to security.9 Third, if promoting human rights is the common goal of all nations, when the international community is concerned about particular nation’s human rights, it should be accompanied with efforts for the actual improvement of human rights in that nation. Also, it is necessary for South Korea to approach “human rights on the Korean peninsula” in the context of its pursuit of unification with the North and lead the improvement of human rights in Asia. On this roadmap for the improvement of human rights in North Korea, we can approach it on four levels: (1) the category of comprehensive human rights, (2) the correlation between human rights and other rights, (3) the assignment of each actor’s role, and (4) the continuation of the North Korean government. The roadmap pursues the improvement of human rights in North Korea by a phase-in comprehensive approach. A phase-in approach is required because human rights in North Korea are relatively poor and related with other issues, and a comprehensive approach is needed because human rights in North Korea covers a wide range and there are many related actors. The steps to the improvement of human rights in North Korea start from the current situation and continue to the stage of formation of conditions — the stage of performance — the stage of completion, and every step has goals, variables, and roles for the actors. There are two more points to understand the roadmap for the improvement of human rights in North Korea. Every step is made up of goals and variables. Also, the improvement strategy of each step is the main action plan and also is gradually promoted. For example, if the strategy in step I is still effective in step?, then a new strategy for step II can be added. The reversal toward the previous step will not happen in this situation. Roadmap for the improvement of human rights in North Korea Task Step Goal Role of Actors Variable North Korea International Community South Korea Step I Recovery of the right to survival Peace settlement Increasing food production Transparency in distribution Establishment of human rights legislation Humanitarian aid Monitoring of human rights situations Protection of North Korean defectors Humanitarian aid Resolution of humanitarian issues Protection of North Korean defectors Humanitarian situation Military tensions Step II Establishment of human rights infrastructure Conversion of the International Covenants on Human Rights into domestic legislation and signing on to it Institutionalization of human rights education Development aid Human rights dialogue Technical cooperation Increasing economic cooperation Beginning arms reduction in South and North Korea Building peace regime Step III Protection of civil and political rights Stop violating CPR Conversion of military budget into civil one Support civil society (personal and information exchanges, education, etc.) Accelerating reformation and opening Step IV Implementation of the International Covenants on Human Rights Real protection of CPR Separation of the three powers Establishment of national human rights institution Support for implementation of democratization Democratization Peace is a requirement for the general realization of human rights as well as a human right in itself. Ongoing military tensions such as the armistice on the Korean peninsula, U.S. security threats toward North Korea, and North Korea’s nuclear development are challenges to peace and could make improvement of human rights in North Korea difficult. Therefore, it is meaningless to discuss peace on the Korean peninsula without the improvement of human rights and to discuss human rights in North Korea without peace on the Korean peninsula. Mutual interdependence of peace and human rights on the Korean peninsula is expected to deepen further.

On Monday, the Korean peninsula averted a cataclysmic showdown that could have escalated into full-blown war. The United Nations Security Council wasn’t able to conclude a statement that would defuse tensions, with countries lining up along Cold War divisions. Seconds before I appeared on Al-Jazeera International Sunday night, the producer informed me that South Korea, despite pleas from both Russia and China to cancel the live fire artillery drills, had in fact started the exercises. Having been to North Korea several times, and knowing how their worldview centers on the right to defend their sovereignty, I feared the worst. But by the time I returned home, the South Korean military drills were over. It lasted 94 minutes. North Korea, which had promised to retaliate with even more force than the November 23 shelling of Yeonpyeong island, decided that the South’s aggression was “not worth reacting” to. According to the North’s Korean Central News Agency, “The world should properly know who is the true champion of peace and who is the real provocateur of a war.” Peace Parlay Without a doubt, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s trip to Pyongyang was crucial to cooling the tensions. Richardson has experience dealing with Pyongyang. In 1996 he went to secure the release of an American civilian who had illegally crossed the Yalu River into North Korea. But as the former energy secretary in the Clinton administration and governor of the state that houses the Los Alamos National Lab, Richardson knows energy, especially policy governing nuclear energy. At the eleventh hour, Richardson was able to secure a deal with Pyongyang in which they agreed to allow UN inspectors to monitor its nuclear program and an offer to sell 12,000 plutonium fuel rods to South Korea. North Korean officials are also considering Richardson’s recommendation to establish a hotline between North Korea and South Korea as well as a tri-lateral commission consisting of North Korea, South Korea, and the United States to address military disputes. In addition to Richardson’s swift diplomacy, several other factors may have played a role in de-escalating the crisis. One, according to independent journalist Tim Shorrock, may have been the strong caution expressed in a December 16 press conference by U.S. General James Cartwright, the number two ranking officer at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Cartwright explained that North Korea, in response to South Korea’s live artillery drill, could react and fire back on the islands, which “would start potentially a chain reaction of firing and counter-firing. What you don’t want to have happen out of that is for the escalation to be—for us to lose control of the escalation.” According to an email from Shorrock, Cartwright “seemed to be saying very diplomatically that South Korea should back off.” An important Bloomberg story about the Northern Limit Line (NLL), which received very little play in the media, is key to understanding the root cause of the current crisis over the disputed waters in the West Sea. This area has been the site of multiple deadly naval clashes, which occurred in 1999, 2002, 2009, last March and November. The cycle of violence nearly ended on October 4, 2007 when then-South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il pledged to hold talks to “discuss ways of designating a joint fishing area in the West Sea to avoid accidental clashes and turning it into a peace area.” According to Henry Em, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at New York University, “The 2007 agreement was thrown out as part of the new government’s strategy of getting tough with North Korea… [which] has been met with North Korea’s get-tough policy toward South Korea, with tragic and dangerous consequences.” A Disputed Boundary North Korea felt justified in retaliating against the South Korean shelling on November 23 because the nearly 4,000 shots the South Korean military fired within a four-hour period emanated from waters Pyongyang considers to be North Korean territory. Although Yeonpyeong Island, and four other nearby islands, were designated as South Korean under the 1953 armistice agreement, the waters surrounding them were not. In 1953, to restrain then-South Korean leader Syngman Rhee from continuing to attack the North, the United States unilaterally drew the NLL, which follows the coast of North Korea approximately 3 miles off-shore. Not only is the NLL illegitimate because North Korea never agreed to it, international maritime convention considers 12 miles to be the boundary of any country’s waters. Yeonpyeong Island, from which South Korea conducted live artillery drills on November 23 and earlier this week, lies within 12 nautical miles of North Korea’s coastline. North Korea’s insistence that the South was conducting live artillery drills within its territorial boundaries is therefore not without basis. But it’s not just the North Koreans who think the NLL isn’t legal. On December 17, two Bloomberg reporters discovered secret telegrams sent by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger in 1975 stating that the Northern Limit Line is “clearly contrary to international law.” The confidential February 1975 telegram from Kissinger reads, “As we have noted before (Ref B) Northern Patrol Limit Line does not have international legal status. NPLL was unilaterally established and not accepted by NK. Furthermore, insofar as it purports unilaterally to divide international waters, it is clearly contrary to international law and USG law of the sea position. Armistice provides two sides must respect each other’s “contiguous waters”, which negotiating history indicates would mean as maximum 12 miles.” The Bloomberg reporters also quote a December 19, 1973 cable to Washington from Ambassador Francis Underhill who wrote, “The ROK and the U.S. might appear in the eyes of a significant number of other countries to be in the wrong” if an incident occurred in disputed areas. According to Mark J. Valencia, a maritime lawyer with the National Bureau of Asian Research, “If it ever went to arbitration, the decision would likely move the line further south.” According to The New York Times, “Park In-kook, the South Korean ambassador, noted that the line had been established in 1953 and that North Korea had accepted it under a 1992 agreement, diplomats said.” Park may be referring to the North-South Joint Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Cooperation and Exchange, which did not specifically mention the Northern Limit Line, and in fact neither side has implemented it. The clearest expression of agreement between North and South Korea addressing the disputed West Sea waters was set forth by North and South Korean leaders in their 2007 summit meeting. In that meeting both sides agreed to establish a “peace zone” in the West Sea. Unfortunately, as soon as President Lee Myung Bak took office in 2008, he backed away from the agreements made in the 2000 and 2007 North – South summit meetings in favor of a more hard-line approach to the North. Resolving the Stalemate Since it’s unlikely that Lee Myung Bak will revive the 2007 agreement between North and South Korea, veteran Korea expert Selig Harrison proposed a solution in a New York Times op-ed last week: “The solution could be quite straightforward: the United States should redraw the disputed sea boundary, called the Northern Limit Line, moving it slightly to the south.” It’s that easy. And Harrison asserts that this is possible because “President Obama has the authority to redraw the line” as the United States is still the head of the United Nations Command for Korea. After consulting with Seoul and Pyongyang, the United States should get to work to not only redraw the line but also seriously move toward peace talks. This could be the first priority of the trilateral commission, if it were established. As I remained fixed to my computer watching for developments and following twitter feeds over the weekend, I couldn’t help but feel both anxious and enraged. This ongoing game of brinkmanship played by our world leaders could have had horrific consequences. As I watched footage of elderly Koreans forced out of their homes and into bunkers, I imagined how traumatic it must have been, especially for the survivors of the Korean War. Tragically, Koreans on the peninsula and in the Diaspora must not only live with the painful memories of the Korean War, which claimed millions of lives and separated millions of families. We must also live with the hard truth that the Korean War is still not over 60 years later and the country remains divided. And all for what purpose and whose objectives? Certainly not for the security of the lives of ordinary Koreans, north and south. Christine Ahn is a Korea Policy Institute Fellow, a columnist with Foreign Policy in Focus, and a member of the National Campaign to End the Korean War.