Diplomacy vs. Missiles in Korea

...But exactly how farthe Obama Administration is prepared to go to halt the North's program remains unclear...

...The sense is that North Korea is likely to sit through endless stop-and-start six-party talks—at which it agreed two years ago to abandonits nuclearweapons operations—while holding out for bilateral negotiations with the U. S. Skeptics here see North Korean acceptance of sixparty talks as a ruse to exclude the South...

...Secretary Clinton appeared to be in complete agreement...

...His reason for making a show of the Taepodong-2 was to suggest what he could do "if"—rf the North developedanuclearwarhead small enough to fix to the tip of a missile, if the world orthe region were plunged into such hell as to give a maniacal military leader the idea of nuking an American target in a much advanced version of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor...

...His strategy was simple and not unprecedented...

...One purpose of a missile launch over the Yellow Sea would be to feed the debate in the South about President Lee's conservatism...

...Analysts speculated about whether his left arm was immobilized by the stroke...

...Finding the South suffering its worst jitters in years about the North's next move, Clinton was firm about calling on Pyongyang to stop upsetting everyone with its dark intimations...

...Hubbard predicts that American diplomats, led by Clinton, will try to repair the damage...

...But she was less than totally reassuring when she talked of the need for "dealing with the government that exists right now" in North Korea—of looking "for ways to engage that government," to "bring them back through the six-party process" they have been avoiding since last year...

...The level ofthreat is higherthan before," says Kim Tae Woo, vice president of the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses...

...But the message was clear: Kim is in control, doing fine in the quest for wild promises of billions in aid and enjoying the fealty of his upper crust of relatives, the military and government loyalists while keeping the rest of the people in degrees of subjugation...

...General Walter Sharp, the commander of U.S...

...Almost daily in Seoul, large contingents of police can be seen pouring out of hundreds of police buses— many of them shiny new vehicles replacingthose that were trashed by demonstrators during three months of protests last summer and fall against importing U. S. beefproducts...

...Clinton’s answer: “North Korea is not going to get a firm relationship with the United States by insulting dialogue...

...Foreign Minister Yu, though, felt it necessary to express the South's opposition to bilateral talks between the U. S. and North Korea, and to be explicit about its feeling that "verification" of the North's nuclear activities is "indispensable...

...Sharp is adamant about withstanding a maj or North Korean assault, but has been circumspect about what to do in response to a lesser provocation...

...If the talk was tough, the reality was not quite unequivocal...

...The worry at present is that NorthKorea will stage low-level attacks to test American and South Korean resolve...

...He emerged from that trip saying he believed North Korea wanted to continue the “six-party talks” favored by previous U.S...

...ambassador here during Bill Clinton’s last three years in office, Bosworth was close to former President Kim Dae Jung, who initiated the Sunshine Policy of reconciliation with North Korea a decade ago...

...While he was the U.S...

...American analysts dismiss the first one, on October 9,2006, as almost as big a failure as the launch of Taepodong-2...

...North Korea can always make waves by testing missiles or firing a few shots at SouthKorean vessels in the Yellow sea, but the real attention-getter would be another nuclear test...

...That seems to belong to Kim Jong II...

...Still, the chief of police had to resign...

...Yet in this tense time of shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang and moves toward resuming six-party talks, as North Korea raises conditions for giving up the six to 12 nuclear warheads it already has, the South fears U. S. officials will accept North Korea as a bona fide, card-carrying nuclear power...

...A fire broke out that took the lives of six people, including a policeman...

...The Taepodong-2 has a range of 4,000 miles, but no one imagines Kim is about to fire one off to Alaska or Hawaii...

...As spy satellites followed the Taepodong-2's movement, analysts agreed South Korea has more to worry about from North Korea's Scuds and Rodongs...

...But he did not rule out a parallel bilateral dialogue...

...I don't see a John Bolton in this crowd," he says, recalling the outspoken former U.S...

...automobile industry and other depressed sectors...

...Atthe same time, he adds, "There need be no concern" that the new people in Washington "will tolerate North Korea as a nuclear state...

...But neither she nor Yu nor Obama nor Lee are likely to have the last word...

...Next came talk of firing lesser missiles downrange over the Yellow Sea...

...The danger of a nonnuclear missile strike on closer targets is not quite as far-fetched...

...Lee's problems at home worsened after police attacked a building slated for demolition that was occupied by squatters who refused to move...

...MEANWHILE KlM JONG iL, who is widely thought to have suffered a stroke in August, is in orbit again...

...Leftist activists blamed the police for the fire and staged their biggest demonstrations since last year...

...Lee tried to win pledges of unstinting U. S. support at a "business lunch" with Clinton in the Blue House, the presidential residence...

...He is portrayed as a "hardliner" despite his pleading for patience every time North Korea attacks him as a "traitor" and "lackey...

...Worst of all, in his view, was the complete breakdown in 2002 of the 1994 Geneva Framework Agreement, which he had a major role in negotiating, requiring North Korea to freeze the nuclearprogram at its Yongbyon complex in return for the promise of twin light water nuclear reactors and shipments of heavy fuel oil by the U.S...

...In the past, however, Leftists have blocked meetings and votes, sometimes violently...

...To confuse the enemy, photos were released showing the Dear Leader visiting military units, construction sites, factories, and farms...

...North Korea has been reinforcing its demands by calling for a "nuclear-free" peninsula while vowing not to give up its nuclear capability even if the U. S. agrees, as the North has long wanted undiplomatic relations...

...Neither did Clinton when she said, “We will be discussing what ways we can best approach North Korea,” and told the South Koreans “the most immediate issue is to continue the disablement and dismantlement of the nuclear facilities and get a verifiable nuclear program...

...The Taepodong-2 was judged a failure that time...

...arcing like a giant Roman candle, it plunged into the water about 40 seconds after liftoff...

...forces in Korea, prefers to talk up the ability of South Korea's forces, backed by the 28,500 U.S...

...ambassadorto the United Nations...

...Garbed against the winter weather in a gray coat, his hands were not visible...

...NorthKorea might escalate tensions beyond a missile test or even a gun battle at sea by attacking SouthKorean islands near the scene of bloody naval engagements during the spring crabbing season in June 1999 and June 2002...

...Since then the North's scientists and engineers have figured out out how to make Taepodong-2 fry right...

...An investigation concluded that the squatters were at fault...

...Recognition of North Korea as a nuclear state would change the nuclear map of northeast Asia," says Kim Sung Hak, an analyst at Hanyang University...

...And the publicity engendered by the eyes-in-the-sky of intelligence organizations watching the missile on a railroad flatcar trundling up the coast, reaching the launching site and fueling has provided Pyongyang with an invaluable negotiating ploy...

...He celebrated his 67th birthday on February 16, undoubtedly happy and secure in the certainty that he had thrown the Americans and the South Koreans into disarray—as they confirmed a few days later by falling back on the enduring clichés of the KoreanAmerican alliance with no idea of how to hold him in check...

...policy if you exclude the hard line of George W. Bush's Administration during its first five or six years...

...That stretch says Hubbard marked "one of the most dramatic breaks I've seen in 40 years as a diplomat, with disastrous results...

...Lee is already in deep trouble because of the sagging economy and reform bills he is tryingto ram through a fractious National Assembly...

...First, North Korea wheeled a fearsome Taepodong-2 to the launch site...

...In calling on North Korea "to stop its nuclear program," he warns that the South is ready "for any contingency...

...The Scud can travel 400 miles, enough to hit any target in South Korea...

...troops still in the country and a well-stocked inventory of modern weapons...

...response ever since President George H.W...

...American "involvement," he says, "would be up to the presidents" of the U.S...

...Would Bosworth, too, recommend diplomatic relations with the North even as it stonewalls verifying the disablement of its nuclear weapons...

...They see the FTA as a plot to undercut indigenous farmers and workers—the same complaint voiced on Capitol Hill, notably by two ex-senators, Obama and Clinton, who have long had misgivings about the FTA's impact on the ailing U.S...

...An example is their outrage over proposals to wipe out constraints on the chaebol, as the usually family-owned conglomerates are called...

...General Sharp of course denies the existence of nukes in the South— the common U.S...

...and South Korea...

...In addition, the emboldened North's speaking about sending a few smaller missiles into South Korean waters bolstered its rejection of the Northern Limit Line set in the Yellow Sea by the United Nations Command after the Korean War...

...The fear now is that activists, led by Leftist labor unions and political groups, will go on a rampage to block Lee's controversial economic reform...

...She went on to compliment South Korea’s leaders for their “calm reaction to provocative action” by the North, including tirades against “traitor” President Lee...

...The scenario was a reminder of July 2006, when North Korea fired off seven missiles, including an earlier version of Taepodong-2, three months prior to drawing the world's serious attentionby testing its first nuclear device...

...Then they will start bilateral talks as well before they make any concessions...

...The underground blast was far smaller than anticipated and may have been evidence the North was not a nuclear power at all...

...the Rodong, a soupedup Scud, can go thrice the distance, posing a threat to Japan and the U. S. Marine and Air Force bases on Okinawa...

...South Korea’s current leaders blame him for providing large sums of financial aid to the North, not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars in secret payments to bring about his June 2000 summit in Pyongyang with Kim Jong Il, and getting very little in return...

...Activists also are dead set against the U.S.-KoreaFree Trade Agreement (FTA), concluded after a year and a half of tortuous talks and now in need of ratificationby Congress and the Assembly...

...The legislation, say Lee's opponents, would make the rich grow richer as the chaebol expand their empires, taking over banks in which they had not been permitted to hold controlling stakes...

...We will have to concede and give more to NorthKoreainorderte weaken or dismantle its nuclear status...

...Thomas C. Hubbard Bosworth's successor as ambassador here, stresses that this represents the continuity of U.S...

...As Clinton expressed those assurances standing beside South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan, one nevertheless wondered whether North Korea might succeed in its heavy-handed attempts to separate the conservative administration of South Korea’s President Lee Myung Bak from that of President Barack Obama, presumed to be a liberal in search of reconciliation and compromise...

...Donald Kirk, who began writing on Asian affairs for the NL in 1966, is the author most recently of Korean Crisis...

...We have worked to develop some contingency plans" and "options...

...Lee worked for Hyundai Construction, mother company of the mighty Hyundai group, rising from college recruit to chairman...

...negotiator Christopher R. Hill, which included China, Japan and Russia...

...She also stressed “our shared values on democracy and human rights,” promised “together to address a range of issues,” and declared there is “no issue on which we are more firmly united than to bring about denuclearization” of the North...

...Missiles in Korea By Donald Kirk Seoul During her February 20 visit, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton professed “fond memories of the times I’ve spent here as First Lady...

...they had ignited paint thinner used for making Molotov cocktails to toss at the cops...

...Her ultimate objective, she indicated before leaving Washington, is diplomatic relations with North Korea, a peace treaty in place of the armistice that ended the Korean War, plus a vast infusion of economic aid— assuming the North agrees to verification of whatever it claims to be doing about its nukes...

...It went nowhere...

...So Secretary of State Clinton, on an Asian tour that began with discussions in Tokyo and Jakarta, would arrive in a rattled Seoul before going to Beijing, where the last six-party negotiations took place in December...

...Hillary’s appointing Stephen W. Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, as her special envoy to North Korea raised questions in the South...

...Bush said in 1990 that the U S. had withdrawn its warheads...

...True, Lee's conservative Grand National Party controls a majority of the Assembly seats...

...The Obama Administration will start off with six-party talks," Kim Sung Hak forecast inaconversationwithme...

...DJ, as he is referred to in local headlines and conversation, is sharply critical of the hard line of his foes here and in Washington...

...But Kim got plenty of leverage from the exercise...

...Did he promote bilateral talks when he visited Pyongyang before his appointment...