Author Archives: J-Pollack

Hats Off to Pinkston and Crail

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Like “everyone else”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2354/pinkston-on-nork-goodies, I’ve been reading (or at least skimming) Daniel Pinkston’s trio of new reports on North Korea.

Only now do I notice this “March 31, 2009 report”:http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6030&l=1 in anticipation of the long-range rocket launch of early April. (You have to register to read the whole thing.) Of special interest: he picked up on the legal maneuvering in real time:

bq. On 12 March, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) declared that it had acceded to the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (Outer Space Treaty) and the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space.9 The DPRK also notified the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that it planned to launch the satellite sometime during the period 4-8 April 2009.10 The Outer Space Treaty stipulates that all nations have the right to the peaceful exploration of outer space “without discrimination of any kind”, and – as noted in the next section below – the DPRK does seem to have a genuine interest in establishing a space-launch capability.

And it goes on from there. Here I was, thinking myself so clever for “picking up on the same thing after the fact”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1975/those-wily-norks.

It turns out that you can learn an awful lot if you’re willing to slog through the daily drivel at KCNA. “Like this here”:http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200903/news12/20090312-11ee.html. It’s a dirty job, so we should at least pay attention to those willing to do it. Hats are off.

Yeah, yeah, nobody wears hats anymore, but the sentiment is the same.

Update: The title of this post has been updated. Here’s what Peter Crail “wrote about this subject”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2009_04/NKlaunch (shortly before the launch) in Arms Control Today:

bq. The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) also declared March 12 that Pyongyang acceded to two international instruments on the civilian use of outer space: the Outer Space Treaty and the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space. Diplomatic sources contacted by Arms Control Today in March indicated that North Korea only acceded to the latter and informed Russia, a depository for the Outer Space Treaty, that it was adhering to that accord.

*Paul Adds:*

Josh is known for his hat collection, but doesn’t want to brag.

For NK’s Next Act: A Two-Fer?

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There are “reports”:http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20090617_5686.php that North Korea may be getting set for not one but two long-range missile tests. We may be in for some impressive fireworks.

Discussion of further nuclear tests in the near future still seems a bit speculative.

Collision at Sea

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A few days ago, “CNN reported”:http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/12/china.submarine/?iref=mpstoryview that a Chinese submarine had collided with the towed sonar array of a USN destroyer.

The “AP now reports”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ignFB0xqptAOIRHzT4_SSfGQ3o8AD98RLOE00 confirmation of the incident by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The American side has “yet to acknowledge it”:http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=63326, according to _Stars & Stripes_.

Perhaps now would be a good time to start U.S.-Chinese talks on an incidents-at-sea agreement. Before the PLA Navy* sends nuclear weapons out to sea, that is.

Updates:

“X-posted to ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2355/collision-at-sea. See the “comments at ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2355/collision-at-sea#comment.

*PLA Navy (or PLAN) = “People’s Liberation Army Navy”:http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/plan-overview.htm.

The “WSJ”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124584004195946677.html and “AP”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzzULJt2ZiW2IZR3KKuViEpbOAlQD9910U580 report that U.S. and Chinese defense officials have agreed to discussions on avoiding military incidents at sea. The talks will start in July.

Regime Type Déjà Vu

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This one is somewhat off topic, but may be of interest to anyone who has tried to anticipate what Country x or Country y will do in relation to matters of armament and disarmament, war and peace. Or whatever.

A question that plagues discussions of deterrence, proliferation, alliance formation, and assorted other security policy issues — or enlivens them — is systems of government: how they work, who runs them, how they will behave under various circumstances. It’s notoriously hard to reduce any of this to a neat formula. Not that this stops anyone from trying, but you know how it is: governments are made of people, and people are quirky.

It Ain’t Beanbag

The never-ending debate about revolutionary states and their leaders — rash or rational? — is merely one frame for this picture. Not that I’d recommend it. Anyone who has ever been part of any organization ought to be quick to recognize the inadequacy of either label. Not that this stops anyone from using them.

There are basically three problems. First, “nobody knows anything”:http://books.google.com/books?id=m9bviPR-UvIC. It’s not like all this stuff is written down somewhere.

Second, even when you do think you know something, it’s complicated. The biggest concerns can be parsed out — structure, traditions, ideologies, personalities — but they are all mutually entangled and overlapping. The best analysts will have a feel for how it all fits together, not a mathematical model.

Third, all this stuff keeps changing. Like small children or pets when someone is trying to take a family portrait, nothing sits still for too long.

Everything Ancien Is New Again

Even so, one of the more interesting recurring aspects of even some of the most unpredictable regimes is how much they seem to resemble their forerunners. Every “matryoshka”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll that starts with Vladimir Putin seems to end with Tsar Nicholas.

Consider Mehdi Khalaji’s “op-ed in today’s Post”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401758.html, comparing this week’s “military coup” in Iran to the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. In a few quick strokes and without explicitly saying anything about it, Khalaji has clarified the interminable argument over the roles and powers of Iran’s Supreme Leader and President. The former looks awfully like a Shah, the latter like a Prime Minister. So who really holds the power? Well, it depends on who and when, and you can’t really say except in hindsight. For comparison, is the American office of the Vice Presidency a powerful position? Very few people thought so in 2002.

Or take North Korea… please. In how many Communist states does authority devolve according to the “dynastic principle”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2029/il-piccolo-principe, based on a claim to “divine or semi-divine origins”:http://articles.latimes.com/1992-06-02/news/wr-623_1_kim-il-sung? According to one “school of thought”:http://dissidentvoice.org/Oct06/Leupp16.htm, these features of the regime were borrowed more or less directly from its predecessor, Great Imperial Japan.

There is nothing inevitable about any of this; that’s just how it came out. If Kim Il Sung had made other choices, it might have worked out somewhat differently. Egypt, for example, is still noted for its highly centralized form of government, even if it no longer has “divine pharaohs”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pharaohs to speak of.

Or think about these United States we have over here. It’s a federal republic, not a constitutional monarchy. There is no established church. And we don’t have a parliamentary system. But somehow, it does happen that we have a powerful head of state, a bicameral legislature, and an independent judiciary. “Wherever could all this have come from”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom?

Maybe revolutionary apples don’t fall so far from the tree. Something for the Supreme Leader to think about as he weighs his next move.

He could also “listen to this musical bonus”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFipyKSC2U8.

NK Diplomacy, 1985-2009

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ACA has a handy new “Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy”:http://armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron now online. Can’t say that I’ve read it end to end, but it looks like a useful resource.

If you just can’t get enough NK chronology, NTI has more on “missiles”:http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/Missile/chronology_2008.html and “nukes”:http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/Nuclear/nk_nuclear_2008.html.

Bosworth: NK Maintaining Radio Silence

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In “testimony to the SFRC”:http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2009/hrg090611p.html, Special Representative for North Korea Policy Steven Bosworth spells out the diplomatic situation:

bq.. Fourth and finally, we remain willing to engage North Korea to resolve our differences through diplomacy, including bilaterally, within the framework of the Six-Party process. A central tenet of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy approach to date has been a willingness to engage in dialogue with those with which we have had differences, sometimes very serious differences. From the beginning, this has been the approach we have pursued with North Korea. But North Korea greeted the open hand of the new Administration with preparations to launch a ballistic missile. When I was appointed by the President and Secretary Clinton, I proposed to the North Koreans a visit to Pyongyang, in the spirit of engagement, rather than threat. To this day, I have received no response.

On our trip, we made clear that the United States remains open to bilateral dialogue with North Korea in conjunction with the multilateral effort to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. As we have repeatedly stated, the United States has no hostile intent towards the people of North Korea, nor are we threatening to change the North Korean regime through force. We remain committed to the September 2005 Joint Statement from the Six-Party Talks, the core goal of which is the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through peaceful means. We believe it benefits North Korea’s own best interests to return to serious negotiations to pursue this goal. The United States position remains unchanged: we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.

In conclusion, diplomatic outreach will remain possible if North Korea shows an interest in abiding by its international obligations and improving its relations with the outside world. If not, the United States will do what it must do to provide for our security and that of our allies. We will work with the international community to take defensive measures and to bring significant pressure to bear for North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. The choices for the future are North Korea’s.

p. Shorter version: The ball is in Pyongyang’s court.

_Update: Also of interest are “Bosworth’s remarks to the Korea Society”:http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2009/06/124567.htm in New York last week._

V. Cha: What KJI Wants

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Victor Cha has a “measured take”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/12/AR2009061202685.html on what the North Korean regime is really after (an India-style deal), what we can realistically expect from them (not much), and what the real value of diplomacy with Pyongyang probably is: damage control.

“Check it out”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/12/AR2009061202685.html.

Mis-Reporting North Korea

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Can I start by saying that I hold no brief for the DPRK? That ought to be “reasonably”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2029/il-piccolo-principe “clear”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2028/what-kji-is-after by now, but I’d like to avoid any confusion on that point. They’ve earned the “disrespect”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1892/how-much-respect-does-a-nuclear-arsenal-get and then some.

It’s also not my intention to become one of those raging _Death-to-All-MSM!_ types, although the sentiment “certainly seems”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2285/oh-calm-down “warranted”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2027/the-disappointing-new-york-times “at times”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2018/art-of-the-blown-headline.

OK. End self-referential throat-clearing. Here’s the bad news about this morning’s newspaper.

What the North Koreans Said

Yesterday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry released another milestone “statement” via “KCNA”:http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm. This one comes in response to the “passage of UNSCR 1874”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/world/asia/13nations.html on Friday. As of this writing, the official English translation is not yet up on the site, but Reuters has “gotten ahold of the text”:http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSEO5078.

Update: the “official text”:http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200906/news13/20090613-10ee.html is now online.

(This is a media-criticism post. I’ll tackle the implications of the statement later, time permitting.)

The statement announces three North Korean “countermeasures” to the Security Council’s resolution, which can be summarized as follows:

* “Weaponizing” plutonium that North Korea now claims to have already reprocessed from its current bunch of spent fuel rods.

* Commencing uranium enrichment on an “experimental” basis, in connection with fueling a light-water reactor, as yet not built.

* A “decisive military response” and “all-out confrontation” against any “attempted blockade” of the DPRK by “the U.S. and its followers.”

Got it? For your reference, again, “the text is here”:http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSEO5078. I’ll put it in the comments, too.

So why can’t the _Washington Post_ get the story straight?

Sorry, Guys, You Blew It

There’s already so much confusion and mythology out there about North Korea’s activities in the field of uranium enrichment (to say nothing of uranium conversion). Why does the _Post_ have to add to it with this “rhetorical flourish in the lede”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/13/AR2009061300636.html?

bq.. TOKYO, June 13 — North Korea adamantly denied for seven years that it had a program for making nuclear weapons from enriched uranium.

But on Saturday, a few hours after the U.N. Security Council slapped it with tough new sanctions for detonating a second nuclear device, the government of Kim Jong Il changed its tune, vowing that it would start enriching uranium to make more nuclear weapons.

p. Let’s compare this directly with the relevant section of the NK FM statement, “via Reuters”:http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSEO5078:

bq. Second: The process of uranium enrichment will be commenced. Pursuant to the decision to build its own light-water reactor, enough success has been made in developing uranium enrichment technology to provide nuclear fuel to allow the experimental procedure.

Do you see any reference to making uranium-based nuclear weapons there? I sure don’t. At best, that’s an inference by the _Post._ Maybe it’s warranted. But the DPRK “vowed” no such thing. This is just plain bad reporting, based on careless reading.

The part of the NK FM statement about the uranium came right after the part about weaponizing plutonium, so it’s not hard to see where the confusion started. But the same _Post_ story discusses the history of the uranium issue at some length, and even quotes part of the relevant excerpt of the NK FM statement above. There’s just no excuse.

How the Others Did

It must have been an easy mistake to make, since the _Post_ was merely this morning’s worst offender. “AFP blew it”:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25634212-12377,00.html, too. So did “this AP story by Carolyn Thompson”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iwlhL35A2ztIHM3SXt-k0qKVfuMgD98Q5VU00.

The _New York Times_ “did somewhat better”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/world/asia/14korea.html:

bq. In a statement on the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, an unidentified spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying that his nation would continue its nuclear program to defend itself against what he called a hostile United States policy. He was quoted as saying that his nation would “weaponize” its existing plutonium stockpiles and begin a program to enrich uranium, which can also be used to make atomic warheads.

Yes, this wraps up the plutonium and uranium issues together, and does not mention the LWR angle, which could be misleading. But it contains little that can be called inaccurate. (The statement said that that NK would “commence” enrichment, but also said that the development of technology has been underway for an unspecified time, so “begin a program” does not seem quite right.)

The NYT also noticed that this part of yesterday’s statement echoes “one from late April”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2021/what-to-expect-from-north-korea. That’s something else the WP -got wrong- _appears to have missed._

This other “AP story by Hyung-Jin Kim”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090614/ap_on_re_as/as_koreas_nuclear;_ylt=AqBRpW8iowxU7sCNOahYFAys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJqaDI1aDJvBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwNjE0L2FzX2tvcmVhc19udWNsZWFyBGNwb3MDMwRwb3MDMTAEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDbmtvcmVhd2FybnNv got it right about the LWR angle, wrong about the novelty of the statement:

bq. In Saturday’s statement, North Korea said it has been enriching uranium to provide fuel for its light-water reactor. It was the first public acknowledgment the North is running a uranium enrichment program in addition to its known plutonium-based program. The two radioactive materials are key ingredients in making atomic bombs.

Sorry to drag on like this, but I’m really frustrated by the bad reporting. Can you tell?

On a Happier Note

The _Washington Times_ “got it pretty much straight”:http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/14/un-sanctions-prompt-threat-to-attack/?feat=home_headlines:

bq. The news agency quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry official as saying that Pyongyang would start a program to enrich uranium for a light-water reactor.

As in the case of the NYT, one could quibble about the word “start.” Regardless, I’m awarding to Desikan Thirunarayanapuram of the _Washington Times_ the inaugural _TW Prize for Largely Accurate Reporting About North Korea._ Congratulations, Desikan.

Natanz

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Strains are starting to show in the “monitoring arrangements”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gODK4WyI04gVjnabOevtEzeWBdKAD98OIRH00. A bad sign.