U.S.-NORTH KOREA: U.S. Moving Forward with Aid Package

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 1996 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton is sending his national security adviser to South Korea and Japan with word that Washington is going ahead with plans to provide two million dollars in emergency food aid to North Korea.

The trip follows an inconclusive meeting in Hawaii last week between senior diplomats from Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo. Washington had wanted to get Seoul’s support for the food aid at that meeting, but South Korea has insisted that reports of malnutrition and possible starvation in the North are exaggerated.

Lake’s principal destination will be Tokyo where he will meet with Japanese officials to prepare for Clinton’s visit to Japan later this spring. But Washington is worried about reports of possible starvation in North Korea, and Lake will be pressing that position with his hosts in both Seoul and Tokyo, U.S. officials say.

Washington drew up the aid plan before the trilateral meeting in Honolulu in response to continuing warnings, notably by the World Food Programme (WFP), that parts of North Korea could face a major famine as soon as mid-March as a result of widespread flooding last summer.

The aid plan is consistent with Washington’s view that North Korea should be engaged — rather than isolated — by the international community. That view is 180 degrees opposed to Washington’s traditional policy towards a Stalinist state with which it fought a war less than 50 years ago.

Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Warren Christopher omitted Pyongyang from a list of “pariah” or “rogue states” — including Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Cuba — with which it had been invariably associated in U.S. foreign policy since the early 1980s.

The reason for the change in the U.S. attitude is the October, 1994, accord struck between North Korea and the United States on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear energy programme which Washington charged was a cover for a major nuclear-weapons programme.

“It is critical that North Korea’s nuclear programme stays shut down and on the way to the scrap heap,” Christopher said January 18 in what was the most authoritative statement to date about the focus of U.S. interests in Pyongyang.

Since signing the 1994 accord, North Korea has complied scrupulously with its terms, according to U.S. officials and inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) based in Vienna. Its compliance has eased criticism of the accord by Republican lawmakers who had argued that Pyongyang could not be trusted to carry it out.

The accord itself has been bolstered in recent months by two key developments.

In December, Pyongyang signed a contract to acquire a South Korean nuclear reactor as part of a scheme hatched by Seoul, Tokyo and Washington called the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO). KEDO was set up to help provide alternative energy sources for North Korea to make up for energy that would have been produced by the reactors it is now dismantling.

The second boost came last week when the U.S. Congress, after three months’ delay, finally approved a 1996 foreign aid bill which includes 22 million dollars in oil that Washington promised to provide Pyongyang as part of the 1994 accord. Like the South Korean reactor, the oil is to help make up for energy lost when Pyongyang began dismantling the older reactors.

While Washington needs to find another 30 million dollars to provide the oil it promised to North Korea, U.S. officials say the appropriation should reassure Pyongyang that the U.S. is acting in good faith.

The fly in the ointment is in Seoul where the government of President Kim Young Sam remains very distrustful of Pyongyang. It has downplayed reports of a desperate food situation in North Korea and insisted that Pyongyang has sufficient food stocks in hand — mostly reserved for the army — to ward off starvation.

Seoul has been angered by Pyongyang’s ungrateful reactions to previous food shipments it sent to the North. Recent incidents — including the prolonged detention in North Korea of a South Korean fishing boat, three of whose crew were killed during its seizure — has further soured prospects for better relations.

The South Korean leadership opposes any independent move — especially by Washington and Tokyo — to help North Korea, because, in the words of one official here, “that undermines their equities” with Pyongyang. “They want to be in the driver’s seat on relations (of other countries) with North Korea,” he says.

But Washington believes that its case has been strengthened by China’s recent decision to provide substantial amounts of food aid. “It shows that the Chinese agree the situation is more difficult than Seoul thinks it is,” says another official.

U.S. military officials have recently told reporters that they are concerned how the North Korean army could react to a major internal crisis such as one that could be set off by famine. Recent reshuffles in the senior military echelons have brought to power a more hard-line group of generals, according to one school of thought here.

They may be more inclined to act militarily against the South, where 37,000 U.S. troops are based, to distract attention from Pyongyang’s serious internal problems, say proponents of this view.