Kim’s same old song and dance

U.S. diplomats dealing with their North Korean counterparts in the past have always asked one thing: Let’s include in our meetings some other guys - someone from the military, perhaps? That never happened, at least not at a senior level.

As everyone assumes that, after Kim Jong-il, the military calls the shots in the North, the idea behind the notion is that Washington wants to know what really makes Pyongyang tick. The upcoming visit by Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang is well in line with that and should be viewed as a fact-finding mission rather than a negotiating trip.

Pyongyang doesn’t want to once again don the shackles of the six-party talks, through which it can be held accountable for its actions by its long-time patriarch, Beijing. So it has said it would never return to them.

On the other hand, it has announced that it is pursuing uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons, a big no-no for a Washington terrified of proliferation. And let’s have no illusions: North Korea also has no intention of giving up its nuclear arsenal for the time being. Yet it wants dialogue with Washington, despite statements that leave very little room to negotiate.

So Bosworth is going to Pyongyang - the black hole of the intelligence world - in a bid to keep dialogue going with a rogue state, because the alternative of doing nothing is worse.

The return to the stalled six-party talks isn’t really the immediate issue here. The negotiations will continue in some form, but what both Washington and Seoul are looking for in the ensuing process are signs that the North has made or is willing to make the strategic decision to give up its nuclear ambitions. That won’t come immediately and is the toughest part of this equation. Making Pyongyang see reason is what the current process is all about.

North Korea will continue the negotiations using its old, tried and true tactics. To break that pattern, the other parties involved in the nuclear negotiations have to make the North an offer it can’t refuse, one that includes real benefits for Pyongyang but also maintains a sanctions trap ready to snap shut, making it painful for the North to go the other way. I think the current Obama administration has struck a tone that points toward this direction, as there are no signs that the United States is even considering resuming humanitarian food aid to the North.

It also helps that Seoul is on the same page in that regard, and rice and fertilizer aid to the North have been restricted. This is often an overlooked component of the nuclear negotiations, but from what I have been hearing on the ground it’s a factor that cannot be underestimated.

The food situation in the North has been closely monitored by both Washington and Seoul, and some experts believe that the North is facing another food crisis similar to that of the mid-1990s, when hundreds of thousands of North Koreans perished. They say that this is the result of the tougher aid policy implemented by the Lee Myung-bak administration - which has continued for almost two years - and now we are seeing the accumulated effects, combined with a bad harvest.

Before Seoul took a tougher stance, Pyongyang was entitled to roughly half a million tons of food per year, in addition to crucial fertilizers that enabled the North to grow an additional half-million tons. That is an amount that plays a significant role in a country that has no modern farm system to feed itself.

Rest assured that troops will get fed first under the country’s military-first policy, but when you have a shortage of that kind the North Korean leadership knows it needs help. And that may be one of the main reasons Pyongyang has continued to drop hints that it is willing to talk and that it could return to the negotiating table.

The fact that all the North Korean special envoys were sent to Pyongyang under the Democrats’ watch may be a good sign. But let’s not forget that serious plans to bomb some of the country’s facilities were also devised under the Democrats.

In a perfect scenario with regards to this issue, with Washington and Seoul appearing in sync and another food crisis in the North looming around the corner, any government strategist would rejoice. But Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s latest visit to the North last month was a downer.

The fact that China has stopped releasing trade figures with the North since August isn’t a good sign, and Beijing’s cooperation in the coming months will be more crucial than ever in steering the six-party talks onto a different track.

President’s Obama’s recent fruitless trip to Beijing is another concern, as it displayed that China is perfectly willing to chart its own course on key issues. Luckily, to some degree there is a consensus that an unstable North Korea armed with nuclear weapons would be to no one’s advantage in the region, and Beijing being the host of the six-party talks is a very positive factor because it indicates that China believes that doing so is in its national interest.

Nevertheless, its reluctance to use more of its clout to exert pressure on Pyongyang - especially in the food and fuel aid department - will always weigh down the talks and dilute their effectiveness.

The recent 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was a not-so-subtle reminder for Pyongyang that any economic change, however minute, accompanied by inevitable social shifts could eventually bring down the house of Kim. That is why it wants to revive its economy, but in such a way that information inflow from the outside world would be kept at a minimum. In other words, serious investment by foreign companies or attempts to build up infrastructure by placing foreign personnel in the North - even if those facilities could function one day on their own - are out of the question.

Pyongyang will say yes to grants and the free flow of commodities, but any measures that threaten the regime’s hold on information or introduce the outside world to the North’s citizens would of course be unacceptable to the regime.

The question that arises then is how much and for how long are other countries willing to pay the bill to maintain the regime - or if they are willing to do so at all.

For sure, the resumption of the nuclear talks will be only the beginning of another chapter in the North Korean nuclear saga.

by Brian Lee [africanu@joongang.co.kr]