Left Flank

Blame it on Roh Moo-hyun!

Obviously, Pyongyang believes it deserves more for what little it has done to comply with its December 31, 2007 promises.

Under the terms of that agreement, Pyongyang was supposed to have detailed its nuclear programmes – both a known plutonium programme and a suspected uranium one – by the end of 2007 in return for energy aid. But the deadline passed this week without any such declaration or any explanation from North Korea as to why it had not complied.

Pyongyang has co-operated on other aspects of the agreement, shutting down its main Yongbyon reactor and allowing nuclear inspectors to start disabling it. However, the uranium issue is a sensitive one for North Korea as it has always denied having an enrichment programme.

The latest problems stem from North Korea's continuing mistrust of the US administration, according to a South Korean official who has recently been involved in direct talks with counterparts from the North.

Pyongyang doubted that Washington would keep its promises to normalise relations and provide meaningful economic and energy aid, including light-water reactors, the South Korean official said.

Washington had offered to submit to Congress the paperwork needed to remove North Korea from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism if the nuclear declaration had been provided by the end of December.

North Korean state media also said on Friday that Pyongyang had slowed the pace of disablement of the Yongbyon reactor because it did not think the other parties had fulfilled pledges to supply energy aid in a timely manner.

The energy-impoverished nation has so far received 200,000 tonnes of the 1m tonnes of heavy fuel oil it is set to receive under the deal.

But, I seriously doubt there's any number between zero and 1 million either the US or DPRK could agree as a reward for what Pyongyang has done. I assume that agreement will most likely occur in early 2009. The South Korean concept of trading Pyongyang's compliance with other parties' carrots simultaneously is the stumbling block, and one that should be eliminated in 2009.

Meanwhile, dealing with Pyongyang for a year will be tough. Gabriel Scoenfeld advocates "going Chinese":

In Korean culture, showing respect is critical. Obviously, the State Department should have been more deferential.

To revive the talks, which have been generating so many valuable broken promises, the United States should now reverse course, publicly declare that the word «unfortunate» was unfortunate, and join the Chinese in calling the North Korean delay «natural.»

Next, DPRK Studies counsels a certain sense of humor:

Of all the excuses, saying they'd already sent it (did it get lost in the mail?) is a good one and earns North Korea some originality points. Perhaps they'll decide to have talks to define the meaning of «full,» or something equally as useful.

Again, on deadlines, think like Beijing:

MR. ROSE: Did they have any objections about what we are saying and what we were doing? I'm sure they didn't love the idea of making them one of the three worst regimes in the world, which the President said in his State of the Union.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Well, I must say with the Chinese there is also this dynamic where they ask for more patience from us, and we ask for less patience from them. So the Chinese do operate on kind of different time horizons.

The Economist is a little less patient:

For now it will not sound the alarm. After all, an earlier part of the deal, the closure of the Soviet-era nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in July, came three months later than promised. Since then American inspectors have moved into Yongbyon to see that it is disabled and eventually dismantled. December 31st was also meant to be the deadline for Yongbyon's disablement, which was missed as well. But this week America was at pains to stress North Korean technical co-operation. If anything, it said, the delay was because of its own insistence that due care be taken in removing the thousands of fuel rods from the ageing reactor.

A few weeks' delay in the declaration of North Korea's nuclear programmes would be tolerable. Any longer and the six-party process would be in trouble. For the nuclear programmes are the crux of the matter. Declaring them was never going to come easily to Kim Jong Il, North Korea's «Dear Leader». His nuclear weapons, however few and feeble, provide his only leverage against the world. Yet America is unlikely to stand for any bluff—not least because of suspicions that a Syrian site bombed by Israel in September was a nuclear facility that had North Korean help.

The questions now are not only how much plutonium North Korea has extracted and how many warheads it has made. The Bush administration also wants to know the scale of the programme to enrich uranium to which North Korea admitted in 2002. Earlier claims by America about its scale seem exaggerated; still, it has evidence that Pakistan's nuclear racketeer, Abdul Qadeer Khan (see article), sold the North uranium-enriching gear.

It's going to be a long year.