KOREAS: U.S. Sees South Korean Aid as Possible Step to Easing Tension

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 12 1996 (IPS) - South Korea’s announcement Tuesday that it will contribute three million dollars for food aid to North Korea is being greeted here as a potentially key step towards easing tensions along the world’s most heavily-armed border.

The announcement, which follows a special appeal by the United Nations for 43 million dollars in food aid for Pyongyang, anticipates pledges expected shortly from both Japan and the United States for six million dollars each in assistance.

While all three countries insist the aid will be provided as a purely humanitarian gesture, U.S. officials say it could represent the kind of opening they’ve been waiting for since Washington and Seoul proposed four-party peace talks with Pyongyang and Beijing in April.

“This is specifically geared to the humanitarian situation, but we also hope it will lead the North to think positively about the four-party talks,” said one senior State Department official.

The need for the food aid is becoming increasingly urgent, according to reports from North Korea. Relief workers quoted in the Washington Post this week described the growing crisis as a “stealth famine” in which food rations are being cut sharply and families outside Pyongyang are being forced to forage for wild grass and roots.

Those reports may have convinced Seoul of the seriousness of the situation. “South Korea is facing up to the fact that there is a real problem,” according to one U.S. official.

Since the first whisperings of a food crisis last fall, Washington has encouraged South Korea to respond with help. But Seoul, which was angered when Pyongyang behaved ungratefully after South Korea shipped aid early last year, has reacted with scepticism.

Washington wanted Tokyo and Seoul to provide aid when the U.N. issued its first appeal last November. Unable to get the two countries to join in, however, the U.S. announced a “symbolic,” two-million-dollar contribution in February.

The Clinton administration had already entered a process of detente with Pyongyang arising from an Oct 1994 bilateral accord under which North Korea agreed to freeze and then dismantle its nuclear energy programme, which Washington had earlier charged was being used to develop nuclear weapons.

North Korea has scrupulously abided by that agreement, according to U.S. officials who have begun raising other issues with Pyongyang, especially its missile exports and the recovery of remains of U.S. soldier from the Korean War. Had the U.S. refused North Korean appeals for humanitarian aid, they say, Washington’s hopes of de- nuclearising Pyongyang – its top priority — could have been set back.

But the result has been the appearance that Washington and Seoul were acting out of sync — a perception that both angered Republican lawmakers and worried Clinton’s political aides whose attention turned months ago to the president’s reelection campaign.

Indeed, Clinton’s certain Republican foe in the November elections, Sen. Robert Dole, has repeatedly accused Clinton of “coddling” Pyongyang and ignoring Seoul. He has demanded that Washington freeze its relationship with North Korea until Pyongyang sits down with South Korea for serious peace talks.

Adding to the delicacy of the situation are actions by the North Koreans themselves and the possibility that the country may be headed for complete collapse.

In April, Pyongyang moved armed troops inside the demilitarised zone created at the end of the Korean War between North and South Korea. This contributed to the long-held image of the country as an unpredictable “rogue state” which may yet be preparing for war against the South.

That — and the subsequent defection of an North Korean air force pilot — also bolstered the impression that Pyongyang could suddenly fall apart, a prospect that sends shivers down the backs of policymakers here, as well as in Seoul and Tokyo, and even in Beijing which has already taken measures to curb growing numbers of North Koreans from entering China.

Robert Manning, an Asia expert in the administration of former President George Bush, says Seoul and Washington are “schizophrenic” in their dealings with North Korea.

Washington, he says, sees Pyongyang as both a rogue state and as a partner in nuclear non-proliferation. Seoul wants to “squeeze” Pyongyang for its past transgressions, but fears that a sudden collapse could destabilise the entire peninsula.

“Nobody wants a war, (and) everybody wants a soft landing,” according to Manning, who says that Washington and Seoul must overcome their respective schizophrenia and lay out a “roadmap” by which the two countries would describe what they are prepared to do in return for specific actions by the North.

But much now depends on Pyongyang, and U.S. officials admit they don’t know how the North Koreans will respond. “We don’t know what the dynamic is within the country’s leadership,” one senior official conceded flatly.

So far, North Korea has said only that it is studying the U.S.-South Korean proposal for four-party peace talks, and Washington is pressing Pyongyang for the opportunity to at least brief senior officials on what such talks may entail.

Envoys from both the North and South reportedly met secretly in Beijing, but U.S. officials say there is no indication that the talks yielded any breakthrough at all, and U.S. officials admit that their hopes for a favourable response from Pyongyang may be wishful thinking.

“Just because they’re in real difficulty doesn’t mean they’ll be more flexible,” notes one.