The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (51 page)

China, the main source of North Korea’s energy and food imports, was by all estimates the most important Asian participant in the sanctions discussion. Because China had a veto in the UN Security Council, no sanctions resolution could be adopted without its acquiescence. While reluctant to use the veto, China consistently opposed sanctions against North Korea, saying that negotiations provided the only solution.

At the same time, the Chinese were privately irritated by North Korea’s actions and apprehensive that its policies could lead to a disaster on China’s borders. (This was not the first time Beijing was simultaneously annoyed and worried by North Korean actions. It was also not the last.) A key moment came on May 29, when Clinton, in a reversal of previous administration policy, announced he would grant US most-favored-nation trade status to China without human rights conditions. This made it more attractive and politically acceptable for Chinese leaders to cooperate with the United States on the Korea issue.

In the view of White House national security adviser Anthony Lake, a principal purpose of the sanctions resolution was to press the Chinese to use muscle with the North Koreans in order to head it off. In a similar vein, ROK foreign minister Han told his Chinese counterpart, Qian Qichen, on June 9 in Beijing that there was only one way for China to avoid voting on sanctions in the UN Security Council—and that was to persuade North Korea in advance that it could not count on a Chinese veto, and therefore North Korea would have to defuse the situation on its own.

On June 10, according to accounts conveyed by the Chinese to a variety of American, South Korean, and Japanese diplomats, Chinese diplomats in Pyongyang and Beijing presented the North Koreans with a most unpleasant message: although China continued to oppose sanctions, the strength of international opinion was such that China might not be able to veto them. Therefore, Beijing strongly urged Pyongyang to take action to accommodate international opinion on the nuclear issue in its own interest or face drastic consequences without Chinese protection.
There is some evidence that the North had already decided to move in this direction anyway. Thus, whether Chinese veiled threats caused the North Koreans to change course or merely reinforced their belief that the Chinese—who barely two years before had betrayed them by recognizing South Korea—were not to be trusted is not known.

On the same day as the Chinese intervention, the IAEA board in Vienna sharply criticized North Korea and voted to suspend its technical assistance of about $500,000 yearly to Pyongyang’s nuclear program. In practical effect, this was an international sanction. However, the Chinese ambassador in Vienna, rather than vote against it, merely abstained. In response to the vote, North Korea announced it would withdraw from the IAEA, expel the remaining international inspectors, and refuse to cooperate with “continuity of safeguards.” If carried out, this would have ended the last vestige of international surveillance from the unloaded fuel rods and the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon. This development set off new alarm bells in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, and other world capitals, sharply increasing international concern about Pyongyang’s nuclear intentions.

Even before these developments took place, the North Korean Foreign Ministry began sketching out areas of conciliation and compromise, possibly part of the overall plan already in place to unload the reactor and then move quickly back to negotiations. On June 3, Pyongyang broadcast an unusual statement in the name of its chief negotiator. Kang Sok Ju announced that North Korea was prepared to dismantle its reprocessing plant for manufacturing plutonium in connection with the replacement of its existing facilities by a light-water-reactor project. This went one step beyond a written statement by Kim Il Sung to the
Washington Times
on his April 15 birthday, when he said the reprocessing plant “may not be needed” if the LWRs were supplied. But by early June, the tide in the United States was already moving swiftly toward collision, and analysis calling attention to Kang’s formulation was ignored.

The North Korean concession was further developed by Selig Harrison of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who arrived in Pyongyang the day after Kang’s statement. Harrison, the
Washington Post
correspondent for Northeast Asia in the early 1970s, had been one of the first American correspondents to interview Kim Il Sung. As a scholar since the mid-1970s, Harrison had kept a close eye on Korean developments, revisiting the North in 1987 and 1992 and making many visits to the South. Harrison was known in Washington policy circles for having an unusually positive view of Pyongyang’s willingness to compromise in return for American relationships and concessions, which he believed its leaders badly wanted. Washington conservatives and many officials scoffed, but because Harrison had had a longer acquaintance with policy makers in Pyongyang than almost anyone else, it was difficult to dismiss him.

In his new trip, Harrison concentrated on finding a way to give operational significance to Pyongyang’s willingness to abandon its reprocessing plant. In meetings with Kang and others, he argued that North Korea should freeze further development of the reprocessing plant and all the rest of its nuclear program when binding commitments were received for delivery and financing of the LWRs.

On June 9, when Harrison broached the freeze idea in a meeting with Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader seemed not to have heard of it from his aides, raising the possibility that Kang’s June 3 statement had been approved not by the Great Leader but by Kim Jong Il. In a show of confidence in Kang that would be repeated with Carter, Kim turned to his chief negotiator for an explanation and discussed the possibilities with him for about five minutes in Korean. Then he turned to Harrison and said, “This is a good idea. We can definitely accept it if the United States really makes a firm commitment that we can trust.”

Kim then repeated his denial that North Korea had nuclear weapons or any intention of producing them. “It gives me a headache when people demand to see something we don’t have,” said Kim. “It’s like dogs barking at the moon. What would be the point of making one or two nuclear weapons when you have ten thousand plus delivery systems that we don’t have. We would be a laughingstock. We want nuclear power for electricity, and we have shown this by our offer to convert to light-water reactors.” Harrison left Pyongyang on June 11 believing that a freeze on the North Korean program in return for light-water-reactor commitments could produce the breakthrough that was desperately needed. The deafness to those signals was baffling to some analysts in Washington.

In June 13, when Carter arrived in Seoul en route to the North, Harrison’s optimism was shared by very few in the South Korean capital. The ROK government, while counseling calm, had announced the largest civil defense exercise in many years to mobilize its citizens in case of war. Reacting to the growing atmosphere of crisis, the Seoul stock market dropped by 25 percent in two days, and jittery South Koreans were jamming stores to stockpile rice, dried noodles, and candles. Carter found most members of the ROK government hostile to his mission. Before his arrival, ROK president Kim Young Sam had pronounced the mission to be “ill-timed” and said it could help the North pursue “stalling tactics” on the nuclear issue.

The sense of inexorable drift toward military conflict that had been felt within the high ranks of the US government since the defueling of the Yongbyon reactor in early May was now spreading to an increasingly aroused American public. In June, 46 percent of a nationwide sample of public opinion sponsored by NBC News and the
Wall Street Journal
said North Korea’s nuclear development was the “most serious foreign policy
issue facing the United States today,” outdistancing the next most serious issue, instability in Russia, by more than three to one. At the same time, a nationwide poll for
Time
and CBS News reported that a majority (51 percent) favored military action to destroy North Korea’s nuclear facilities if the DPRK continued to refuse international inspection, and a slimmer majority (48 percent yes, 42 percent no) said it was “worth risking war” to prevent North Korea from manufacturing nuclear weapons.

The predominant opinion of national columnists and commentators was that the United States should take a tough line with Pyongyang. Among the most prestigious voices were those of two former Bush administration officials, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former undersecretary of state Arnold Kanter, the official who had met the North Koreans in New York in early 1992. In the
Washington Post
on June 15, the day Jimmy Carter crossed into North Korea, they advocated a US military strike to destroy the reprocessing plant at Yongbyon unless the DPRK was prepared to permit “continuous, unfettered” international monitoring. “The stakes could hardly be higher. The time for temporizing is over,” Scowcroft and Kanter wrote.

At the Pentagon, Secretary Perry had requested and received a detailed contingency plan for bombing the Yongbyon facilities and was told that the US Air Force had the technical ability to take them out quickly and effectively, without spreading radiation far and wide. Perry’s fear, as before, was that such an air strike “was highly likely to start a general war” on the peninsula. “We were looking for ways of avoiding a general war, not ways of starting a general war,” he explained later.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon argued that if North Korea really meant that sanctions would be an act of war, it was incumbent on the United States to be ready. Consequently, in mid-June Perry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up three options for increasing US forces in and around Korea to heighten readiness further. General Luck estimated, on the basis of the experience in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, that due to the colossal lethality of modern weapons in the urban environments of Korea, as many as 1 million people would be killed in the resumption of full-scale war on the peninsula, including 80,000 to 100,000 Americans; that the out-of-pocket costs to the United States would exceed $100 billion; and that the destruction of property and interruption of business activity would cost more than $1,000 billion ($1 trillion) to the countries involved and their immediate neighbors. The extent of the death and destruction, in the American calculus, would depend to a great degree on the speed with which a counterattack could be mounted by the US reinforcements called for in the war plan.

Option number one as drawn up at the Pentagon was the immediate dispatch to Korea of around two thousand additional troops of the kind
needed for rapid deployment of larger forces later—additional logistics, administrative, and supply elements—and additional counterbattery radars and reconnaissance systems, which had been most urgently requested by General Luck.

Option number two, which Perry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff favored, added squadrons of front-line tactical aircraft, including F-117 Stealth fighter-bombers and long-range bombers, to be based near Korea, available for immediate action; the deployment of several battalions of combat-ready US ground troops, principally to augment artillery forces; and the stationing of a second US aircraft-carrier battle group in the area, to reinforce the powerfully armed carrier group that had already been moved close to Korea. This would involve deployment of more than 10,000 US troops, added to the 37,000 on duty in South Korea. Perry hoped that such a dramatic increase in American forces would combine more serious preparations for war with an element of additional deterrence, highly visible to the North Koreans.

Option number three called for the deployment of additional tens of thousands more army and Marine Corps ground troops and even more combat air power. Even this option did not provide enough US forces to fight a general war on the peninsula—Operations Plan 5027 reportedly called for more than 400,000 reinforcements to do that.

The military concern was that if the flow of additional forces did not start quickly, Pyongyang might block it with an early preemptive strike. On the other hand, once the forces did begin to flow, North Korea might feel compelled to strike quickly to forestall an inexorable American buildup that would frustrate its chances for military success. Such an unstable military situation in an increasingly tense situation with an unpredictable foe was extremely worrisome; however, the US military felt that it had little choice under the circumstances but to begin serious preparations for war.

Perry acknowledged in an interview for this book that it was difficult to calculate how Pyongyang might react. “We saw the deployment on the one hand as being provocative. That was the downside. On the other side, we saw it as demonstrating a seriousness of purpose. . . . We didn’t know enough about the Korean mentality to know how to gauge the negative aspects versus the positive aspects of the signal we were sending. Therefore, I chose in my own thinking to set that signal aside, not knowing how to assess it, and recognizing we could have either of those two possibilities.”

Some senior officers in the US Command in Seoul were extremely concerned about the North Korean military reaction when they heard about the plans for these deployments. “I always got this feeling that the North Koreans studied the desert [Operation Desert Storm against Iraq] more than we did almost,” said a general with access to all the available intelligence. “And they learned one thing: you don’t let the United States
build up its forces and then let them go to war against you. . . . So I always felt that the North Koreans were never going to let us do a large buildup. They would see their window of opportunity closing, and they would come.” Adding to this officer’s apprehension was a chilling fact not well known outside the US Command: at Panmunjom in May, a North Korean colonel told a US officer, “We are not going to let you do a buildup.” He did not say, nor did anyone know, how much of a buildup of American forces might trigger a North Korean preemptive strike.