January
10, 2003 2:25 p.m.
Pyongyang Blues
On
the North Korean situation.
ou have to
face it, the North Koreans are a piece of work. In the last few weeks
they have 1) airily announced that they were back at work reprocessing
uranium, in violation of the understanding of 1994, which understanding
we backed up by shiploads of oil; 2) announced that remonstrances by the
United States are merely cover for our imperial designs; 3) declared that
they would agree to suspend their nuclear program if the United States
concluded a non-aggression pact with Pyongyang; and 4) just now, announced
that they were withdrawing from the Nonproliferation Treaty effective
immediately.
To withdraw from
the treaty "effective immediately" is a violation of the treaty,
which requires serving 90 days' advance warning. The North Koreans drool
on such bourgeois bureaucratic objections, advising that when they set
out to withdraw from that treaty in 1993, they in effect served the 90-day
notice required by the treaty. That 1993 notice was merely sitting there
in abeyance, like good wine waiting to be served when mature. There is
a mind-boggling fog generated by these averrals. You guarantee A in 1993,
suspend A in 1994, renew A in 2002, affirm non-A in 2003: The blur has
a way of mystifying thought.
And the only thought one needs to keep in mind is that Kim Jr. is as unreliable
as his father and that the feints and threats and digressions mean very
little, but that we can parse a strategic design. It is that the North
Koreans will use their repository, which may actually include one nuclear
bomb or two, in order to press their concerns. These include enfeebling
the South Koreans (which could be done by alienating the United States
to the point of withdrawing our two divisions there), getting oil, and
appeasing China.
We read that an effort by the South Koreans, backed by the United States,
is being made to penetrate North Korean ignorance by circulating radios
that receive South Korean broadcasts. The radios currently in use in the
north receive, like crystal sets, only pre-designated transmissions, in
this case, authorized government broadcasters. This means hour upon hour
of official propaganda aimed at stressing the need for strenuous military
activity as a defensive imperative and as testimony to national integrity.
Radios that are sent into the country are emasculated: Solder is used
to keep the dial out of reach of external temptresses. I recall a train
ride in 1970 from Moscow to Leningrad. We boarded at 7 P.M. and the radio
in our private compartment was on. I reached to turn it off, but the knob
was not functioning. I called "Ninotchka," who came in and through
her surliness managed to convey that the radio station could not be
turned off, nor the volume diminished, that it would cease broadcasting
whenever it was turned off by the broadcasting station, which turned out
to be about 10 P.M.
But we discovered from the Orwellian USSR that penetration by external
news, however important, could not be counted on to change fixed government
policies. This was clearest of all in Berlin. In the Eighties it was estimated
that 90 percent of East Berliners got their television news from West
Berlin: It had become a practical impossibility to block transmissions
from the West. But another decade was needed before glasnost set in, and
the Wall came down. In North Korea there isn't that kind of time, and
to disengage the North Koreans from 50 years of paranoia and internal
terror is going to take more time than we can safely count upon.
Now our official position is that we will not bargain with Pyongyang until
it demobilizes its nuclear plants. And we know enough, finally, that only
tactile inspection of North Korean nuclear facilities can confirm that
the threat is removed. How to get to do this is, of course, the problem.
Our weapons are oil, food, pressures on China, antimissile deployment
in Japan, and nuclear submarines. We need also, always, to remind ourselves
how jejune are treaties with hostile powers that can't be relied upon
to keep them.
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ou have to
face it, the North Koreans are a piece of work. In the last few weeks
they have 1) airily announced that they were back at work reprocessing
uranium, in violation of the understanding of 1994, which understanding
we backed up by shiploads of oil; 2) announced that remonstrances by the
United States are merely cover for our imperial designs; 3) declared that
they would agree to suspend their nuclear program if the United States
concluded a non-aggression pact with Pyongyang; and 4) just now, announced
that they were withdrawing from the Nonproliferation Treaty effective
immediately. 
