Don Oberdorfer
Journalist-in-Residence,
The Johns Hopkins University,
Former Washington Post Correspondent
"The Korean Peninsula: Where Do We Go From Here?"
March 28, 2003

Don Oberdorfer: Korea is a matter of important contemporary interest. The situation in Korea until the onset of the current war in Iraq, I considered to be the most urgent and the most dangerous situation, which the United States and other countries face overseas. Of course, once you get into a war there is nothing more urgent than today’s battlefield situation. But, it still remains an extremely…in my view, an extremely urgent and I think very dangerous situation. In some ways the dangers on a global and strategic level are greater than those in Iraq although the immediate dangers of course are not.

The situation on the Korean peninsula has long been a problem, as you all know. It was the United States at the end of the Second World War which divided Korea to keep the Soviet Union from taking all of it after the Japanese indicated they were surrendering in 1945. The US set up a more or less US dominated regime south of the 38th parallel, which was the designated dividing line. The Soviet Union set up a soviet style regime north of the 38th under a 38 year old former guerilla commander, who called himself Kimel Syung.

In 1950 the North Koreans under Kimel Syung attacked, invaded with the approval of Josef Stalin and with the approval of the Chinese and the Korean War was on for three years. A very bloody war which ended very close to where it had all begun; right around the…close to the 38th parallel. And there it has been since the armistice of July 1953. Fifty years.

I was there as a soldier, as a lieutenant in the American army just days after the Korean War ended. And I served there for eight months.

There has been basically…although they have been back and forth kinds of skirmishes between north and south, basically it has been a question of strategic stability for the past half-century. There was a nuclear related crisis in 1994, which I will get to in a minute. But I would have to say that having watched Korea for half a century, I am more concerned than I have ever been about the possibilities of that strategic stability coming to an end in the coming months. And we have been witnessing another more serious crisis on the Korean peninsula than we have seen before.

For basically three reasons. One of them has to do with the situation in South Korea. The second one has to do with the situation in North Korea particularly North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons. And third has to do with the government of the United States.

Let me start with South Korea. Many of you know that in December of last year, South Korea had an election. A national election, presidential election. When I was lieutenant in Korea in 1953 and immediately afterwards, Korea was a war torn poverty stricken country where there was little democracy. But in the last half century all of that has changed. It is now a democratic country after a good many trials and tribulations along the way with some advice and help from the United States. It is an important international economic power. This little half of this little peninsula jutting down from the mainland of Asia is the thirteenth…twelfth or thirteenth depending on the day…largest economic power on earth. It’s per capita income of it’s people nears ten thousand dollars. It is one of the more prosperous countries in Asia. Like others it has had it’s ups and downs. And for the past several years since Kim Day Jung who was it’s former president went to North Korea and had a summit meeting with Kim Jung Ill the leader of North Korea. The tension level on the Korean peninsula until recently has been lowered dramatically.

The result…be careful what you wish for…the result among other things is a generation of South Koreans who have very different ideas about the world and especially about North Korea and about the United States and their predecessors. Not only do they not remember the Korean War…of course they don’t because that ended fifty years ago. But what they do know is not poverty but a degree of affluence and they know that since they have been alive there has been no serious…been no attack across the DMZ. They have accepted North Korea as a fact of life. And they have accepted that the tensions have been lowered. The leaders have met. Roads are being built through the DMZ by the two sides. A railroad built by the Japanese is being restored. And they do not feel any sense of threat from North Korea….very little. And they don’t want any conflict with North Korea.

I was there in last July and interviewed the man who is now been elected president, No Wu Chung who at that time it didn’t look like he had a very good chance of winning, but I interviewed him. And I made it my business to talk to a number of younger South Koreans particularly some college students and those who were grad students immediately after graduating from college. What struck me was the total absence of any sense of threat. And their suspicions about the United States even then as a country that is pushing them, they felt, into a confrontation with North Korea.

One young woman said something that really stuck in my mind. She said North Korea to us like a distant cousin that you meet in a family reunion once in a while. You want to have as little to do with him as possible but you know that he is your kin so you can’t ignore him completely. That is a totally different attitude than that which is prevailed for most of the fifty years.

Just last weekend there were polls in South Korea…public opinion polls. I will just give you a sampling of this. You get a feeling of how the thinking has changed in South Korea. An outfit called Hangul research interviewed by telephone. Of those responding, 75% opposed the Iraqi war. 22% support the war. The question was asked by another research outfit, FN Research. Do you support the withdrawal of US military forces from Korea? The United States still has 37,000 troops in Korea to help keep the peace fifty years after the end of the Korean War. Do you support the withdrawal of US forces from Korea? 68% said yes. 31% said no. So two to one basically…at least on this public opinion poll…the people polled said get rid of these troops…American troops.

Who is mainly responsible…mainly responsible for the development of North Korea…North Korean nuclear crisis? The United States and North Korea jointly…35%. South Korea, North Korea and the United States jointly…25%. The United States…21%. North Korea…15%. South Korea…1%.

They asked…the same outfit asked a bunch of professors…not just the normal general public who was responsible. And of the professors, 40% said North Korea. So less than half. That is a very different way of thinking than has been the case for most of the last half century when South Korea was looked upon…it was…basically as a reliable anti-communist ally under a kind of anti-communist ideology which was existing at the time because of the conflict with North Korea.

So that is one factor. North Korea and the United States in my opinion have been drifting apart. Secondly the North Korea nuclear program…the North Korean regime…a dictatorial regime with a huge army has always wanted nuclear weapons. That is not surprising. Most military people do if they are in any kind of situation. Nuclear weapons were threatened during the Korean War but never used. Never deployed and I don’t think we ever came close to using them although Eisenhower…President Eisenhower made some statements that I think were intended mainly to scare the North Koreans.

After the war, the United States deployed atomic weapons in South Korea as part of the worldwide deployment. In 1964 the Chinese exploded their first nuclear device and Kimel Syung immediately got in touch with Mao Tse Tung, the Chinese leader, and asked him to share the secret of nuclear weapons with north Korea. Because we are brothers and you should help us. Mao refused. But that did not stop the North Koreans. Actually in the 1970s it was the South Koreans who had a secret nuclear program going on…nuclear weapons program, which the United States found out about. And the Ford administration…the administration of Gerald Ford put it’s foot down and told the South Koreans that if you proceed with this, our alliance is over. So they dropped it.

Around the same time or maybe slightly later, we don’t really know precisely, the North Koreans started their secret nuclear program. And the US watched it developing in the late 70s and early 80s and into the 80s. The struggle over it came to a head in the early 1990s. The North Koreans had built a huge factory at a place called Yung Byung, which is north of the capital city of Chung Yang to produce plutonium, which is a raw material of nuclear weapons.

About two or three pounds of plutonium is enough to make a nuclear weapon the size of that which went off at Hiroshima or Nagasaki and devastating an entire city. And of course those things are small compared to some of today’s nuclear weapons. At any rate, through international pressures the North Koreans were forced, basically, to permit the United Nations atomic agency…the International Atomic Agency, IAEA to send inspectors to North Korea to make sure that they were not diverting what was a supposedly civilian power plant to make nuclear weapons. But there were disagreements over what these inspectors could do. And 1994 came to crisis.

Former Defense Secretary, Bill Perry who was our secretary of defense at the time, has subsequently said that the United States and North Korea came close to war and closer to war than any other situation, which he came about during his time as secretary of defense. The day was saved by Jimmy Carter, then a former president, who as things began to ratchet up, both sides are kind of looking for the next step militarily. Carter was uncomfortable with the fact that nobody…no American official had been to see Kimel Syung, even then the leader of North Korea, who was the person in that system who alone had the power of decision. So he decided to go. He had been invited. The US government state department asked him on a number of occasions not to go because they don’t want to interfere with our diplomacy and so forth. And he agreed up until then. But he said things are getting out of hand and he called Vice President Gore and he told him to tell President Clinton that he was inclined to go. And they said, okay go but don’t make…make it clear please that you are not a representative of the US government. But he talked with Kimel Syung. Kimel Syung agreed to freeze this program and to begin negotiations basically to put it on ice.

Those negotiations ended in something called the agreed framework. It is like a treaty but it is not a treaty, of 1994. October 1994. In which North Korea agreed to freeze it’s existing nuclear program to put this factory under international atomic energy inspection. In return for the world community, principally the Japanese and South Koreans with the US in sort of overall supervision, building another kind of nuclear plant as a substitute…a kind of plant that is not as susceptible to being diverted for nuclear weapons. And the supply of 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil a year to make up for the energy which North Korea had given up by shutting down the existing reactor.

And so from 1994 until now…until a few months ago, that factory was under inspection every day by the United Nation’s inspectors. And nothing was happening there. In the meantime, however, we didn’t know this but and we still have…at least publicly…a little bit of sketchy knowledge of it…around 1997, something else happened. The Pakistanis had been buying ballistic missiles from the North Koreans. The North Koreans produced ballistic missiles. Pakistanis of course have their direct conflict with India. India has ballistic missiles so Pakistan wanted ballistic missiles. India had nuclear weapons, Pakistan developed nuclear weapons. In 1997, the Pakistanis having bought ballistic missiles from the North Koreans evidently went to the north Koreans and said, you know instead of us paying you in money, which we don’t have, why don’t we pay you with technology and perhaps materials to create your own secret plant to produce highly enriched uranium which is another means of creating atomic weapons. And the North Koreans agreed.

And since 1997 or perhaps 1998, starting small and getting a little bit bigger all the time, the North Koreans while they had this agreement with us to shut down this plutonium factory and were keeping, over on the other side are working on a secret project for highly enriched uranium which is another way to create nuclear weapons. In violation of the treaty with us, violation of the non-proliferation treaty, in violation of their agreements with South Korea.

There were rumors about this and various reports about this but nothing that was definite. Nothing that the US government could really agree was real until after September 11th, 2001. And what happened then was that because Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda was in Afghanistan, the United States established a much closer relationship with the government of Pakistan. Pakistan became an essential ally in the war against terrorism. In response, in part, President Mussaref, the leader of Pakistan who had not been responsible for this secret program…that was done by some of his predecessors…told the US government or had allowed some of his aides to tell, exactly what had taken place in the deal with North Korea.

So suddenly the evidence was in hand that this secret program was taking place. In October last year, the United States government which it has a devil’s own time trying to decide what to do about North Korea since President Bush came into office, parenthetically, President Clinton’s administration had gone far in negotiations with North Korea to shut down their ballistic missiles program and almost had come close to reaching a full agreement by the end of the Clinton administration.

Bush came in and dropped it. Secretary Powell wanted to continue with the Clinton’s negotiations and the White House repudiated his statements in a very embarrassing, diplomatic way. And they were determined not to talk with the North Koreans. At any rate, finally last October, they sent assistant secretary Jim Kelly…assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific affairs…a man I have known for many years, a very fine person and diplomat…to North Korea.

He went to Pyung Yang, the capital. The North Koreans were anticipating that he was going to tell them okay, we finally agree, now let’s all get together and work on a joint problems. Instead, he said, we know that you have a secret Uranium program aimed at producing nuclear weapons. And we are not going to deal with you until you get rid of it. Period. Full stop.

The North Koreans had an all night meeting to figure out what to say because they were shocked. They didn’t know that the United States knew about it. In fact, probably most of the diplomats that Kelly saw didn’t even probably know about it. It was a secret program. The next day, Tekong Piu, who is a man who was their top diplomat although he doesn’t have the title, who I have known for many years…finally told Kelly after they had considered what to say, we are entitled to have a nuclear weapons program and more because of your hostile attitude. Never mind the fact that this program had started back during the Clinton time. But any rate, that was their answer. The United States interpreted this as an admission that they had the program, which is, I think, a correct interpretation.

I was there in North Korea with the former US ambassador to South Korea, Donald Greg, in November. One month after the Kelly mission. And we saw the top leadership of the diplomats and lieutenant general in the army. We were the last Americans to have such conversations as far as I know. They told us that the would, "clear the concerns of the United States.", which we interpreted meant get rid of this highly enriched program or put it under some kind of severe control if the US would do three things. Recognize their sovereignty…whatever that means. Not interfere with their economic programs. They weren’t asking for any money or any resources, just leave us alone. And third, sign a non-aggression treaty or pact with the United States to assure us that you are not going attack us.

My own conclusion was that they would have settled for something considerably less than a treaty, which I think is impractical. I think they wanted to get out of that program. They knew that is was years away from producing any actual anything for them that had been discovered. And that it had cut across all the other things they were doing. They had began opening up in the last several years in a controlled fashion to the rest of the world. Realizing that their economy is going south all the time. That they can’t live alone in the world. And so as I said, they had been making improved relations with South Korea. They had established diplomatic relations with almost every country in Europe and with the European Union. They improved their relations with Japan. The Japanese Prime Minister had been up there in September. They had tried to improve their relations with the United States. They had undertaken some serious economic reforms of a kind of…in the direction of the Chinese model…not the same as…last summer. And I think they knew that this enrichment program was going to make it very difficult for them to do any of these things.

So we came back and we talked to the White House and the state department at rather high levels. We told them what we had heard. And suggested that they engage the North Koreans to get rid of this highly enriched Uranium program which was very dangerous.

Unfortunately the government decides to do the opposite. Rather than engaging them they decide that they would pressure North Korea to give it up. They would try to organize all their neighbors to pressure them. And in mid-November, they cut off the supply of fuel oil that had been owed to the North Koreans under the 1994 agreement, which of course the North Koreans had violated.

I can’t prove this but I am almost as sure as I stand here, that after the United States government made it very clear it would not negotiate or directly deal with North Korea, the North Korean military and some others of like mind in the country, went to the leadership and said, there is only one way to ensure our security. And that is to go for nuclear weapons as rapidly as possible. And that is what has been happening, I believe, since mid-December.

First they announced that they are re-starting the reactor at Yung Byung which had been frozen since 1994 and then they broke the seals that had been placed by the United Nations inspectors on the fuel canisters and material at Yung Byung. Then they put hoods over the cameras that had been placed by the UN inspectors. Then they kicked out the UN inspectors. And they announced that they left the treaty against proliferation of nuclear weapons. And then they took the material that had been under seal and had been under inspection in the fuel ponds and moved it back into this factory where they can begin producing plutonium. If they have not already started.

So we are coming up to a very difficult situation in North Korea in which our ally, South Korea, has very different ideas than those of the United States. In which the potential for a conflict with worldwide ramifications is there. In which the US government for reasons that it can state, but I find of insufficient validity, refuses to deal directly with North Korea. Saying this is a regional problem and all of it’s neighbors ought to deal with it. And you don’t know where the next step is.

So I am very much concerned about where this is going or where it might go. It is off the front pages for the moment because of what is going on in Iraq. But I think it is pretty good bet that it is going to come back to the front pages. I don’t know exactly when. It could be tomorrow. It could be a month from now. It could be two months from now. Three months from now. But it is not going to be terribly long. We are going to facing another crisis in Korea.