But inch by painful inch, old enemies on the Korean peninsula are edging toward conciliation. In the agreement reached last week, the North, the South and the United States will hold a “joint briefing” in a few weeks on beginning real peace negotiations; they will talk about talking. Immediately after that briefing, bilateral discussions between North Korea and the United States are supposed to resume on a number of subjects: opening liaison offices in Pyongyang and Washington, ending North Korean missile sales abroad and allowing officials from the U.S. Department of Defense to comb the northern countryside for remains of American soldiers killed in the Korean War.
The sub incident had stymied all kinds of initiatives, “like throwing molasses on clockwork,” as one State Department official put it. Now, plans to build two lightwater nuclear reactors in North Korea should move forward when a couple of key protocols are signed this week in New York, and when Pyongyang resumes “canning” nuclear waste from the unsafe reactor it operates now. And on the very day of the DMZ ceremony, the U.S. Treasury Department approved a long-pending license for Cargill Inc. to sell Pyongyang 500,000 tons of wheat and rice.
Hard-liners in Seoul and Washington argue that the North is acting out of desperation, and that the best way to win more concessions would be to let it get more desperate still. The annual shortfall in grain production is estimated at 1.8 million tons, and a recent report by the World Food Program suggests that real famine in North Korea may be at hand as early as March or April. In this year’s official New Year’s address, the regime called on its citizens to concentrate on solving “the question of eating.” Many already are–by scavenging for roots and leaves. Manufacturing is operating at about 30 percent of capacity, electricity is intermittent and trains take a full day to chug 50 miles. Yet people who deal with the North Koreans report that they are as stubborn as ever at the negotiating table. “The theory that they’re so desperate they’ll accept any terms is just not true,” said one U.S. government official who deals with Pyongyang. “That’s not their mind-set.”
Meanwhile, the South may be reluctant to deal for its own reasons. Presidential elections to be held late this year have narrowed the maneuvering room for President Kim Young Sam. He cannot run again, but wants to leave his designated successor in the strongest possible position. Presiding over real peace talks with the North would be a strong position indeed. But trying to talk to the North and failing would be a political disaster. Last week the biggest labor strikes in Korea’s history swept the country as the ruling party rammed through laws that weaken unions and assign the Korean CIA to investigate anyone who “praises the enemy”–that is, the North. Paranoia about left-wingers at home and left-wingers in Pyongyang have always gone hand in hand in Seoul. South Korea is unlikely to take risks with either of them this year.
The U.S. role, an awkward combination of chaperon and donkey-driver, will not be much easier. South Korea is a close ally, and 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed there. But relations grew chilly after Seoul believed that the Americans didn’t condemn the submarine incident strongly enough. (The new agreement seems to have dispelled those hard feelings, but the South Koreans are always anxious that Washington will cut a deal with Pyongyang behind their backs.) The United States will lose an important conduit to the North if the Senate confirms Rep. Bill Richardson, President Clinton’s personal emissary to Pyongyang and other renegade regimes, as U.N. ambassador. From the White House, Richardson “has already gotten a lecture that he can’t meet with his old buddies from bad places,” says one U.S. official. Fortunately, other channels between Washington and Pyongyang are open now. Negotiators meet quietly, usually in New York City. There’s less temptation, that way, to fall back on propaganda.
