Transcript of Executive Policy Luncheon
China's Approach to North Korea

Speaker
Gordon Flake
Executive Director
Mansfield Foundation


Dr. Stephen Noerper, Senior Vice President of The Korea Society, welcomed Mr. Flake for this second in a series on China’s relations with North Korea. Dr. Noerper noted Flake’s current position as executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, his previous service with the Atlantic Council and the Korea Economic Institute of the America (KEIA), and his ongoing and important contribution to Korean policy discussion in Washington, DC.  He noted the prior lecture of Dr. John Park of the U.S. Institute of Peace on China-North Korea party relations and the leadership succession issue, and pointed to Mr. Flake’s tackling issues from a geopolitical and geostrategic perspective, with an eye toward the impact on the ROK-U.S. relationship and China’s rise. Dr. Noerper described the presentation as very much in the spirit of the late, beloved Senator Mike Mansfield, whose foundation is now headed by Mr. Flake.


GORDON FLAKE:
Good afternoon. I am delighted to focus today, in a very unfettered way, on my personal views of the China-North Korea relationship. For decades now, we've been focusing on the North Korean conundrum. It's really one of those issues that cannot be solved without understanding China and understanding China's role. I thought what I would do at the outset is look at the historical context to put us where we are today, talk about some rather recent developments and then finally look at some of the prospects as we go forward.

Interestingly enough, if you look both from an American perspective and a South Korean perspective at cooperation with China in regards to dealing with North Korea, it's a situation of worst to first to worst again. At the beginning, with obviously the legacy of the Korean War and China's involvement, we had a situation where American and South Korean troops were fighting with the Chinese volunteer forces.

During the Cold War's relative stalemate, there was a period of tremendous cooperation with China in dealing with North Korea. You've now gone from that period of cooperation to a period of rising frustration once again; certainly not what it was in the past, but something worth talking about.

It's useful for us to realize how far China has come and to give them every credit that is due for how far they've progressed on the North Korea issue. In 1993 during the first North Korean nuclear crisis (which Ambassador Minton was very much involved in during that decade as head of the Office of Korean Affairs in Washington, D.C.) China, to be honest, was very much on the sidelines. They were very reticent about being involved. They were not a member of KEDO. China really sat on the sidelines in every way, shape and form.

Beginning in 2003, China begrudgingly was involved in the start of the Six-Party Talks process. In 2003, they first hosted three-party talks, which then led into the Six-Party Talks.

Then toward the latter part of the Bush administration and at least the first year of the Obama administration, there was a remarkable shift driven primarily by North Korean actions. They had gone beyond the pale and crossed a little bit too far. It really drove Chinese decision making to the point where U.S.-China cooperation on North Korea became part of the mantra and one of the highlights of U.S.-China cooperation. If you look at the last four years of the Bush administration and the first year of the Obama administration, you cannot find a speech on U.S.-China relations not highlighting the importance of U.S.-China cooperation in North Korea. It was the fundamental aspect of our relationship.

It's useful to note that if you had asked me before 2006 if I ever thought that China would support a UN Security Council sanctions resolution on its ally North Korea, I would have said, "Never. You're crazy." China despises sanctions as a tool of foreign policy and despises interference in other countries' domestic affairs (at least according to their mantra) and certainly not with their ally North Korea.

And yet we now have a situation where China has voted (not just abstained) in favor of three separate UN Security Council sanctions resolutions, and supported two different presidential statements condemning North Korea, their ally. To say that China has done nothing obviously misses the point. They've really come a long way. Now there's a long debate about how much they've done, how much they've actually implemented these sanctions resolutions, and how far they're willing to go; but I think it's useful to point out that there was a period of time, just recently, where China-U.S. cooperation on the issue of North Korea was very much a highlight of our overall relationship with China.

I think now it's useful to step back and look at how China views North Korea. And from my own personal assessment, it strikes me that China has always had "three no's" in regards to North Korea. You know if you're a China specialist that they have to have the four red flags. There's always some type of a grouping.

China's "three no's" in regards to North Korea have also been no nukes, no war, and no collapse. Those are their fundamental priorities on the Korean Peninsula, and those three priorities don't always mesh well. The Chinese challenge has always been how to balance and maintain all three priorities while avoiding all three negative scenarios at the same time in regards to North Korea.

One would argue that after the 2006 North Korea nuclear test, China began to emphasize "no nukes" and to work very cooperatively with the United States, the U.N. and other venues to make sure that there were consequences for North Korea's development of its nuclear program, even to the point of implementing sanctions.

Certainly that gained steam in the first year of the Obama administration with the June 2009 test (a second test of a nuclear weapon) where we passed UN Security Council Resolution 1874. By most accounts, China began to actively cooperate with the United States in the implementation of that sanctions resolution.

So what happened and how did we get to where we are today? By most accounts, sometime in the summer or the early fall of 2009, China became increasingly concerned about North Korean domestic stability. Kim Jong-il's health, after he suffered a stroke in late 2008, was a concern.  There were concerns about the succession of his twenty-six or twenty-seven-year-old son.

From China's own rhetoric and from what they were talking about, they began to stop implementing the sanctions resolution, to stop cooperating with the U.S. on this, and decided they wanted to put their focus on stabilizing North Korea. So among the "three no's" they shifted their priority toward "no collapse." That was their number one concern.

If you look at the fall of 2009 and the majority of 2010, China's number one priority in North Korea was stability with no collapse. They were concerned about war and they were concerned about nukes because yes, those were priorities; but clearly the number one concern was collapse. That's where they put their efforts and put their priorities. They were actually very overt about this.

After the sinking of the Cheonan, the tragic naval incident in March 2010, the Chinese basically were faced with a choice. Do they continue with their overt support of the Kim regime or do they push back on this very remarkable provocation, which by any indicator or classification would be an act of war? Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed in active, open hostility. The Chinese decided to not hear it, and said, "We don't want to hear it. We don't want the briefings. We don't want the evidence." They essentially decided to double-down on their bet on North Korea and Kim Jong-il.

Even after the sinking of the Cheonan and before the conclusions were there, President Hu Jintao decided to host Kim Jong-il, not once but twice, with hugs and smiles and drinks and a very clear indication that we are with you in this hard time. We are doubling our bet. As late as October of 2010, my Chinese friends were, to be charitable, very confident in the rectitude of their approach. They said, "Look. You Americans and South Koreans are trying to put pressure on North Korea. We're worried about stability, and we have decided that we're going to back the regime more proactively. And look. Since we began this, there have been no more nuclear tests. There have been no more long-range missile tests. The situation has stabilized because of our approach." They ignored the sinking of the Cheonan because, of course, "We don't know what happened there. That's a different issue altogether." That was the Chinese position.

Unfortunately in November 2010, that position took a pretty big hit because all of a sudden out of the blue, despite Chinese assertions that things were going well, there was not only the very visible shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, but also some very serious developments on the nuclear front.

The North Koreans revealed to a visiting American delegation that they were constructing a light-water nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and then revealed most shockingly of all that they had a uranium enrichment program. They actually showed the centrifuges to a visiting delegation.

Then you had the shelling of Yeonpyeong. It was a 1-2-3 punch, all in that month, which really undermined the Chinese assertion that their policy had been very effective at altering North Korean behavior. December and January of this year became a time of internal (I wouldn't say soul-searching) policy reevaluation in China.

Now you had some strong statements come out of China. You had some remarkable statements from Chinese scholars. If you talked to the foreign ministry types and you talked to the scholars that had any knowledge, it was really kind of embarrassing. Here is China being overly supportive of North Korea, and you had this long list of North Korean provocations done in the face of Chinese support.

The quick retort from the Americans to the Chinese was, "Look. Kim Jong-il (when he met with Hu Jintao twice last year) knew about the uranium enrichment program but didn't tell you. In fact, at their last meeting he knew about the plans to shell Yeonpyeong Island and didn't tell you." This was in spite of the fact that in both meetings between Kim Jong-il and Hu Jintao, the emphasis on the Chinese side was "no surprises". We coordinate policy with no surprises. Clearly there were some big surprises for China.

I confess that at the end of last year I had some optimistic expectations that China would recalibrate its response. I didn't expect that China would abandon its ally North Korea, but that they would recalibrate between these "three no's". And I think there was some optimism on the part of the Obama administration that China would recalibrate. You saw this notion that China needed to recalibrate leading all the way up to the summit meeting between President Obama and President Hu Jintao in January of this year.

I think it's interesting if you look at U.S. government rhetoric at that time. In the summer after the sinking of the Cheonan, the U.S. accused China of willfully ignoring North Korean bad behavior. That's one issue. After the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, that rhetoric shifted dramatically and China was accused of enabling North Korean bad behavior. This was repeated in several cases.

Admiral Mullen called them enabling bad behavior. In January prior to the summit, Secretary Clinton gave a speech where she asked in a straightforward and undisguised manner if China had not been so overt in supporting North Korea after the sinking of the Cheonan, would North Korea have shelled Yeonpyeong Island? She provided a direct correlation between the two events, and you really can't get much clearer than that. It's not that they're blaming China for North Korea's actions, but they're blaming China for shielding North Korea from the consequences of their actions, and thereby enabling their behavior.

In my travels in China, I had to spend a lot of time explaining enabling behavior. Given China's long history of the Opium Wars, I thought it very inappropriate for an American like myself to try to lecture China using a drug vocabulary; but enabling behavior is a vocabulary that isn't just in Korean. Ganeunghage haneun is to enable and make possible, but it has to be understood in the context of addiction, addiction recovery and American drug behavior.

So the notion (and I explained this to a lot of my Chinese interlocutors) is that it's not that China is responsible for North Korea's behavior, per se; but is just like a father who has a son he loves that is a drug user. Even though my son is a drug user, as his father I let him stay in my house.  I give him money for food even though I know he might use some of that to buy drugs. I drive him to go play with his friends, even though I know they're drug users, because I love him and I don't want him walking the streets by himself.

I'm motivated by good intentions, but in the end I am shielding my son from the consequences of his drug use and I'm making it less likely that he will ever be able to quit taking drugs. So it's not that it's the father's responsibility to solve the drug problem. It's the father's responsibility to stop the activities which prevent the son from being able to address those issues.

In the policy perspective of China, the notion wasn't that China would abandon North Korea or that China somehow was responsible for North Korea's actions; but that China through its shielding of North Korea from the consequences of its actions was actually facilitating North Korea continuing those actions. That's pretty harsh rhetoric, and in the end I was quite pleased (and I think the administration was quite pleased) with the Obama-Hu Jintao summit.

Now on one level, in the entire joint press conference and joint statement between President Obama and President Hu Jintao, there was only one tiny paragraph about North Korea at all. Hu Jintao skillfully avoided it altogether. But in that one tiny paragraph, they mentioned the September 19, 2005 joint statement three times.

Now this may seem like a really weird thing if you're not a Washington insider. For those of you who have followed Korea's nuclear issues and Korean Peninsula issues very closely, the September 19, 2005 joint statement is an agreement of the Six-Party Talks, which to be honest was never implemented in full. The process had started, but it is an agreement of now moribund, arguably dead talks.

So why in the world would the two presidents reference this arcane agreement of some moribund talks three times in their joint statement in that one single paragraph? That's actually a very important thing. North Korea's core position for the last four years has been that they are a nuclear power, and that they must be recognized as a nuclear power. They're happy to have the Six-Party Talks, but the Six-Party Talks [from a DPRK perspective]  are about peace and security in the region, not about denuclearization.

So if you look carefully in that joint statement between President Obama and President Hu Jintao, they made it very clear that North Korea's declaration of the uranium enrichment program was a violation of the September 19, 2005 joint statement Six-Party Talks. They made it clear that the parameters of the Six-Party Talks were the September 19, 2005 joint statement. They made it clear that progress had to be done in the context of that September 19, 2005 joint statement.

That September 19, 2005 joint statement says in a nutshell (the core portion of it from the U.S. perspective) is that North Korea will abandon all nuclear weapons and all existing nuclear programs and return at an early date to the NPT in the IAEA. Obviously this is not something that North Korea wants. The Six-Party Talks, by themselves, are just kind of a format; but the content of the Six-Party Talks, which we hold to against all odds, is really that agreement.

And so the fact that President Obama and President Hu Jintao got that together in an agreement was considered to be a great sign of where U.S.-China cooperation would go, and there was optimism in the administration that China would then work more cooperatively with the U.S. again in the United Nations. The U.S. began to seek an effort to condemn North Korea's uranium enrichment program in the UN.

This would seem to be (to use our intelligence terms) a “slam dunk.” It is pretty easy. North Korea declares that they have a uranium enrichment program which would fall under all nuclear weapons and all existing nuclear programs pretty clearly. It seemed to be in violation of this previous agreement. It seemed to be in violation of previous UN Security Council sanctions resolutions which the Chinese signed onto. The notion that the UN Security Council should condemn that seemed to be pretty obvious. It seemed to be an open and shut case.

Unfortunately the Chinese view was, "No, we did all that we're going to do in the joint statement. We're not going to say anything more about it. That's done. Let's move back to the negotiating track." And so the U.S. was quite frustrated on that front as we looked forward.

And then something else happened. The world became distracted by a series of events which are still going on right now: the Arab Spring, the Jasmine Revolution. And so in my mind, if you look at the Chinese response to the Jasmine Revolution and their own internal anxieties surrounding domestic stability in China and North Korea, it reinforced something that was already there; which was China's reticence to do anything that would destabilize North Korea.
China was not about to put pressure on Kim Jong-il during this transition and succession when they themselves were deeply concerned about the Jasmine Revolution. The Jasmine Revolution was just one more factor that influenced decision making in China.

There's one other useful point I want to highlight here. China's relationship with North Korea has historically been referred to as a "special relationship," as close as “lips and teeth.” And these days there's plenty of jokes to be had about dentures and whether they're removable or not, and that process into the relationship.

But if you look at it, the Chinese relationship with North Korea is special not just as an emotional one (Mao Zedong's son was killed in the Korean War among the volunteers and the old guard among the Chinese leadership had literally spilled blood on behalf of North Korea.) But it's special organizationally as well.

Unique among all their relations, the Chinese DPRK relationship is not handled by the foreign ministry. It's not handled by the PLA. It's handled by the International Affairs Department of the party. So the relationship with North Korea is not a state-to-state relationship. It's a party-to-party relationship. If you can get a Chinese diplomat aside speaking freely, you will hear him voice some of the very same frustrations that you or I might voice about North Korea because they have little trust and very little influence over that process.

Now if you're a Chinese diplomat, think about this. You've spent fifteen years in very aggressive diplomacy trying to improve China-South Korea relations with some tremendous success, and in the course of a year you've seen that all squandered on behalf of North Korea with the backing up of North Korean bad behavior. South Korea rightfully, after fifteen years of diplomacy with China, expected more.

They expected China to be more supportive of the South Korean position because it was so clear-cut and so obvious. Instead, China refused to hear the evidence of the Cheonan, refused to support South Korea, and refused to condemn North Korea. Even after the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island where it was cut and dried, China refused to call on both sides to step back.

The South Koreans are deeply offended by that. When you couple that with what went on in the South China Seas and the Senkaku Islands, Chinese influence in Northeast Asia has been dramatically damaged, and they've paid the price. They've paid the diplomatic price for North Korean bad behavior in that regard. And so, if you're a Chinese diplomat, you recognize that very clearly and you're deeply frustrated with North Korea.

If you look at long-term trends among Chinese academics, as well, the frustration with North Korea is growing. I think that's been set. But the relationship is really not handled by them. It's a party-to-party relationship. As a result, it's the International Affairs Department (the party people) who are the ones most anxious about the Jasmine Revolution and other destabilizing influences in the regime. They're also the least likely to be persuaded to pursue policies toward North Korea that might have a destabilizing effect.

Let me just touch on one more issue, and that is the question of the day, which is food aid. There was a lot of attention from former President Carter's visit a couple of weeks ago with the Elders [to the DPRK], and from a full-court press by North Korean diplomats, as to whether we should respond to North Korea's request for food aid. They claim that they have greater than normal food shortages in North Korea. The interesting part about this is that there's been almost nothing said about China's role in this process.

Again, this is in a nutshell and I'm simplifying this. North Korea has about a 5 million metric ton grain requirement every year to feed their population. In a good year, the harvest brings about 3.5 million metric tons, and so they usually are left with about a 1.5 million or a 1 million metric ton shortfall which they meet through purchases, aid, assistance and through other means.

The United States was giving food aid to North Korea at the end of the Bush administration. In late 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) negotiated a very careful memorandum of understanding on food aid with North Korea which was considered to be a really high quality agreement. It allowed Korean speaking inspectors. It allowed a survey to take place in advance of the food aid. It allowed for a number of measures that would guarantee confidence in the delivery of the food aid.

It seemed to be a very good agreement. The US had agreed to give some 500,000 metric tons of food to North Korea and of that, some 300,000 tons had been delivered. In early 2009, North Korea decided that they didn't want it. They kicked out the U.S. inspectors and the World Food Program. They said, "No more. We're not going to do it."

In public discourse you'll hear this notion that somehow the Americans are refusing to give food aid to North Korea. The truth is that the U.S. offer for food aid stands. The North Koreans actually asked us to leave. It's extremely difficult, as you might imagine, for the United States to now say, "Look. We negotiated an agreement with you. You abrogated the agreement. We'll renegotiate and come in under a different agreement. If we do return to providing food aid to North Korea, it will have to be under the terms of the previous agreement."

I think in the last month you've heard five or six different U.S. administration officials (including Robert King, the Special Ambassador for Human Rights in North Korea and Steve Bosworth) repeat this mantra about U.S. food aid. We will give food aid on a non-political basis. That is the old Reagan doctrine of a hungry child knows no politics.

But first there has to be demonstrated need in North Korea that can be verified. Secondly, there has to be relative need, meaning more need there than in other areas of the world, because we have a world of finite resources. And then third and fourth, there has to be confidence that the food is getting to the people it's intended for. There has to be transparency in monitoring and delivery.

Those discussions and negotiations are ongoing, as well as a real debate in the United States whether it should be given. As an aside, I want to bring China back into the discussion. In 2010, China had a 50 million metric ton wheat surplus, a carryover from the previous year. You know it goes in their stockpiles, but they have it. China had a 40 million metric ton rice surplus or carryover from the previous year. China also has $1 trillion in U.S. currency reserves.

Yet somehow the notion that China might be responsible or actively involved with North Korea's food aid hasn't been broached. Jimmy Carter accused the United States and South Korea of violating North Korea's human rights by not providing them food, and yet somehow in his trip in from China didn't seem to suggest that China might be violating their ally's human rights by not giving them food aid or have some responsibility in that process. And again, part of this is very political. It's a very complex issue in terms of whether we should give or not, which I don't have any firm conclusions on, but I'm happy to talk about that and other issues as we go into greater detail in the future.

In the end, there's no question that China remains the key to the North Korea issue. We can't solve the issue without North Korea, but it's one of those keys where you stick it in and it's ill-fitting and you've got to jiggle it just right. Sometimes it seems like it's going to work, then it doesn't. Right now, there's no question that it's the key. It's in there and it's right, but it's a key that's not turning. And so we're left with a conundrum that clearly will have to be solved as we go forward. Whether it's on security or economics or both, the China and North Korea issue which is continuing to evolve is one of keen interest both to us and, of course, to our ally, South Korea.

I will end my initial remarks here and open it up for any questions or discussions you might have.


TYLER BEEBE:
My name is Tyler Beebe. I have two questions on the food issue. Question one is what was North Korea thinking in kicking out the U.S. aid food supplies in 2009? Question two is why wouldn't the Chinese think it was a smart move, globally speaking, to send food aid to North Korea? Why wouldn't China see that as a smart PR move? You wonder if that thought ever went through their minds.


GORDON FLAKE:
Those are both questions I really can't answer with great confidence because they involve decision making processes in North Korea and in China. On the North Korea side, why did they kick us out? One obvious answer is they were threatened by Korean speaking inspectors.

If you put it in the context of what was happening between North Korea and the U.S. at that stage in early 2009, North Korea had just tested a long-range missile. They called it a satellite. We successfully got the UN Security Council to issue a presidential statement which condemned the launch as a violation of the previous UN Security Council sanctions resolution.

The North Koreans were furious about that. So this may have been a political move. And maybe they felt they were okay. They didn't need it. It wasn't worth the hassle. I honestly don't know all the reasons why they kicked it out. Again, they had agreed to the terms of the memorandum of understanding, and then they were the ones who asked the United States to cease the program.
I would add that there is a problem here, too, in that between 29,000 and 30,000 metric tons  which were delivered were never monitored. We don't have record of that, so any resumption of U.S. food aid would require that going forward.

It's very interesting. My understanding is that for the very first time last week China released a white paper on foreign aid. It's a remarkable document; China is beginning to appear more like a regular nation-state. In this white paper, there's relatively little reference to North Korea, and they go out of their way to emphasize that they have given no cash. They have given construction materials for airports. They have given oil, coal and some other key energy inputs. They don't mention food.

One of the real questions from the American perspective is we really don't know how much food China is giving and why they don’t give more. I think that's a very fair question. I honestly don't know the answer. It would seem to be a relatively easy thing for China to meet that gap.

The truth is (and this is very important to recognize) it's a relatively easy thing for North Korea to meet that gap, too. If you're talking a million metric tons of grain, that wouldn't solve the problem, but depending on world grain prices (they're pretty high right now and I'm not an expert, so somebody can correct me if I'm wrong on that) my understanding is that's $200 million or $300 million. Just a relatively small reallocation of North Korean military priorities could take care of a big chunk of that.

So there's a major part of the North Korean food crisis that's manufactured. This is an issue  which is really troubling to someone like me. I'm kind of stuck in the middle. On the one hand, I'm on the board of directors of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea which issued a report about North Koreans using food as a weapon. It's a very conservative organization and I'm kind of the pinko Commie lover among that group.

On the other hand, I'm also on the steering committee of the National Committee of North Korea which is a much more pro-engagement coalition of organizations that are actively interested in engaging North Korea. I'm kind of the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal among that group.

I will be the first to tell you, despite following it as closely as I can, that I can't come to any real conclusions about the state of the food situation in North Korea right now. I mean, there's no question there's chronic need in North Korea. I know it was very cold during the winter when the crops are normally grown on a grain basis. It may have impacted potatoes and other crops, but I can't see the rationale as to why there is this dramatic spike in North Korean diplomatic activity in the fall or early spring to try to raise grain.

The political explanations make a lot more sense to me. They're coming up to their 2012 year next year, where they want to be a great and powerful nation. They have big birthdays coming up next year that they want to have stuff for parties. It seems to be more politically driven. At the same time there is need, and yet without being able to get in there on the ground and have a real sense for how bad it is and what the Chinese are doing, it's remarkably opaque. It really is.


HENRY SEGGERMAN:
Henry Seggerman, Korea International Investment Fund. Just a clarification and also a question for you. China has, indeed, supplied grain to North Korea for a number of years. I don't know whether it's 1 million metric tons, but they have supplied hundreds of thousands of metric tons, and this has been reported in the New York Times and other prominent publications.

China also supplies (it's unclear) up to 50 percent of North Korea's fuel oil needs, which is a tremendous financial gift, if you will. Some of these are outright grants and some of these are paid for on the layaway plan, by barter or different kinds of deals to make it more digestible to North Korea. It's really true that North Korea is very dependent on China, and although China may want the U.S. to kick in a million tons of grain here and there to reduce their load, North Korea is very reliant on China. That's my clarification.

Now my question. About a month ago, I was at the Unification Ministry and I asked them, "Why don't you go to China and say, 'Look. This will be a good deal. Help us do a reunification and the U.S. troops can leave.'" That's been discussed in the press, too. I was told they had already gone to China on many occasions and tried really hard to get China to help them with their relationship with North Korea and even discussed reunification.

My question to you is what would happen if South Korea just discontinued the relationship altogether? What if they closed the Kaesong Industrial Park and the U.S. extended the sanctions to become some kind of embargo. I remember the Banco Delta Asia scenario. $25 million was all they had in that account. Freezing the assets was very painful to North Korea. What if South Korea and the U.S. got really tough with North Korea and China and just said, "Hey, China. You like North Korea? You can have it. It's all yours because it's basically a failed state." What do you think would happen?


GORDON FLAKE:
Well, this is a wonderful hypothetical that people ask all the time. One, it doesn't fit very well with political realities in South Korea. Interestingly enough, recent polls by conservative newspapers in South Korea showed some 70 percent of South Koreans were opposed to food aid to North Korea, even the Kyŏnghyang Sinmun, the more progressive paper in South Korea showed that some 63 percent of South Koreans were opposed to food aid to North Korea.

Now that seems to suggest that South Koreans have shifted dramatically and they might support precisely that type of approach: just shut it down; shut down Kaesong. There is no ground swell to shut down Kaesong in South Korea. They want to keep their options open.
In general, South Korea wants to be respected. They want to make sure that any relationships they have with North Korea are reciprocal, but they certainly don't want instability in the region.

If you look at the immediate response in the Blue House upon the first news of the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, it was no escalation, no escalation, no escalation. So as much as I was criticizing the Chinese for focusing too much on no collapse among their "three no's" at the cost of some of the others, the truth is that no collapse is also South Korea's number one priority right now.

I will make note that there has been a shift. In a previous panel I was a part of here at The Korea Society last December, we were talking about shifting South Korean views on unification. The fundamental shift that's taking place in South Korea (and I think opinion polls bear this out, particularly among the government and the foreign policy elite) is that while there is no desire to be proactive in trying to instigate change in North Korea or to seek a collapse of the North Korean regime, there certainly is, at this point, no ground swell of public support to artificially prop up the North Korean regime.

The notion that was really very persuasive for the bulk of the decade of progressive governments in South Korea (that South Korea should be proactive in stabilizing North Korea by  getting food and grain and fertilizer in there to keep North Korea from destabilizing) has shifted dramatically.

In terms of whether it would actually happen or not, part of the problem here is the U.S. is not going to be proactive one way or the other without a green light from South Korea. From day one the Obama administration has made its number one priority North Korea policy coordination with South Korea. I think that's been one of the great untold successes of this policy.

If you just remember the Bush era, where Bush and Roh Moo-hyun were like oil and water; divergent approaches to North Korea and divergent views on North Korea fundamentally threatened our alliance. I mean, that was a really rocky period of time. The Obama administration, having learned from that, really had to emphasize first and foremost every step will be coordinated with our ally in that regard.

I have a hard time imagining that at this point the United States would be very proactive in trying to push a full embargo. The president issued an executive order two weeks ago. It sounded like a full embargo. It wasn't a full embargo. It basically said "no imports from North Korea" but that was really in response to Congressional threats to the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and worries that products from Kaesong would come into that process going forward. But even in South Korea, I think the desire right now is to try to maintain some status quo, maintain stability, and not be overtly proactive in pushing it forward.

As to whether or not we could ever make it entirely China's problem, therein lies my real answer to your question. It sounds good rhetorically to say, "Look. This is China's mess. They made it. Let's let them clean up their own sandbox. Let's just cut it off and let happen." But the reality is that's one of South Korea's greatest fears, the fear of Chinese influence in North Korea, to turn over North Korea to the Chinese.

And so, one of the most compelling arguments for maintaining engaged at some level with North Korea is to make sure that the Peninsula isn't once again stuck with a tragic division based on Chinese influence in the region. Again, it's kind of a mushy answer but it lets you know that those scenarios have a lot of other factors and impact as we go forward.


CHARLES KIMBALL:
Thank you very much. I'm Charles Kimball with the Korea Center for International Finance. I'm wondering about how you would characterize the relationship between China and North Korea in the sense that you mentioned father-son. I was in China for three years from 2006 to 2009 and colleagues who I spoke to there were thinking of it as older brother-younger brother.

Neither one fits. Why would you let North Korea, your younger brother or your son, suffer so much and not help them with development? And then in your framework of father-son, if it is a father-son, is it a young son and is there control? Or is it completely out of control?


GORDON FLAKE:
I probably was overly black and white when I was criticizing China for not providing aid to North Korea, because North Korea is China's number one aid recipient. For the bulk of the 1990s, North Korea was the United States' number one aid recipient in Asia, at least if you put the numbers together in that regard. China really has been very proactive in helping North Korea.

The real question isn't whether or not China provides aid to North Korea, but how much China would provide if North Korea is even remotely thankful or compliant or appreciative. So, in general, my view is that the Chinese have for a long time told us that they don't have any real influence over North Korea, all the time expecting that we will think they have influence over North Korea. In reality, they have very little.

The Chinese influence over North Korea is what I would describe as a negative influence. They have the ability to turn off the spigot, to cut off that finance which has been key; to cut off the fuel oil, the coking coal, the key inputs to North Korea's economy that would destabilize it. In fact, China tried in the early 1990s to put their relationship with North Korea on a cash only basis, and that led to such a precipitous decline in the economy and rising instabilities that the Chinese quickly altered course and went back to that process.

The fundamental dynamic here is (whether it's father-son, I'll get to that in a minute) China provides aid to North Korea for China's sake, and China's interest is stability. Now if North Korea had been remotely solicitous of China or compliant with Chinese needs or anything other than the most prickly ally you can possibly imagine, my anticipation is that China would give a lot more.

The truth is (and the United States has found out as well as other countries) that it is hard to give aid to North Korea. Even during the peak of the COMICON and the Socialist Bloc, North Korea was the one country that deliberately altered its five-year plans not to be in sync with the other five-year plans of COMICON. They didn't want to be part of that process. And so, the notion that it's all China's fault is also untrue here. Giving aid to North Korea is tough in that regard.

As to relationships, whether its father-son, older brother-younger brother; I think you can make a case for all of them depending on which academic bench you come from in terms of that relationship. There's a wonderful book out by a fellow name Brian Myers who is a professor at  Dongseo University in Pusan. It's called The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters.

It was a wonderful essay which he turned into a very long book. His basic premise is that the North Koreans, far from being a Communist state or a Confucian state, really have focused on ethnocentricity and keeping out everyone including the Chinese and the Americans and their influence. It portrays Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung not in fatherly terms, but in motherly terms. That's his core thesis. And if you look at the words they use, it's the "motherland" and the "mother party".

You have these almost androgynous pictures of both father and son hugging and holding to their breast the North Korean people. And as such, the North Korean people are poor, innocent and pure, and need to be protected from the worldly influences outside. It's really a very compelling read. The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters. I would advise you to glance at it if you're interested because they have more insight than I do about those relationships.


JOHN KOTCH:
John Kotch. I'm a Korea researcher. Thank you for your insightful presentation. You made the point that the U.S. and China had cooperated with respect to U.N. sanctions and so forth. You just mentioned stability. My question has to do with probing for proactive diplomatic cooperation.

The way I read the Hu-Obama summit statement is that there was some basis for doing that. You probably caught the fact that in the aftermath of the Cheonan, China suddenly said, "Well, let's let the MAC look at it." So I said, "Great. Not to investigate the incident, but if we could reactivate the MAC, perhaps we could solve the problem of the West Sea. So to calm the waters, get China back into the MAC."

I tried to push that view on some officials but it didn't get very far, because as you said, the U.S. has contracted its policy to South Korea in terms of what it sees as in its interests; and now because of the tragedy, South Korea is in no position to compromise. But if you look at the problem objectively, there is a solution.

Do you see any possibility that the U.S. and China would see it in their interest to override this constant conflict that has tragically wasted lives on both sides? That would seem to be an opportunity to jump-start talks on more serious topics like nuclear proliferation; much more complex topics. This is simply a boundary issue. If they can't solve a boundary issue, there really isn't very much that they can solve.

You talk about reunification. I mean, that's way off in the future. This is very concrete and practical. If we can get past that and stop these incidents, we might then use that as a building block for more productive relations as we had envisaged.


GORDON FLAKE:
I'm not sure I fully buy into the underlying assumption that this is just a boundary issue and it's just this squabble between these two kids in the schoolyard. Somehow if China and the U.S. would just come in and knock heads together and take care of it, then we could solve the problem.

The reality is it's much more fundamental than that, and at this point; however true that may have been at different points in the history of this issue, it's much more fundamental than that. And the nuclear issue, actually, greatly complicates this problem.

So if we were having this discussion pre-2006, before the first North Korea nuclear test, then we would have had a lot more options on the table. In fact, one of the trends that is really important to understand in looking at the Korean Peninsula problem in general over the last twenty years is it's not just a land of lousy options, but the land of ever diminishing options. Each subsequent activity or provocation really takes something off the table that wasn't there before.

And so right now, the fundamental obstacle to moving forward on the Korean Peninsula, in my mind, isn't the lack of an agreement on the boundary of the West Sea. North Korea has, at various times in the last forty years cared about that or not cared about that; agreed upon that or not agreed upon that. That's much more a symptom, in my mind, than a cause. I don't see that as a root cause.

The problem (and this is the fundamental challenge) is how do we engage North Korea in a meaningful way while they assert that they are a nuclear power and that they are negotiating as a nuclear power? Because to be very blunt, the United States has a broad global interest in maintaining the nuclear nonproliferation regime and not recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power. If a poor, bankrupt, starving pariah regime like North Korea can kick out IAEA inspectors, test a nuclear weapon, declare themselves a nuclear power and become accepted as a nuclear power; who can't?

Which country in the world is less acceptable to the international community to be a nuclear power than North Korea? They have never met a weapons system or technology they haven't proliferated or sold. They consort with all the worst people around the world. It's hard to come up with a scenario; even Zimbabwe, which would not be more threatening to our interest in North Korea.

So, that is the fundamental crux of the issue. North Korea has twice tested a nuclear weapon and has rejected the Six-Party Talks, at least the substance of it. This goes back to what I was saying about the strange relationship between the Six-Party Talks and the September 19, 2005 joint statement. If you're not following it very closely, you're like Why do you keep focusing on this deal? The reason is because North Korea could lie. They could just come out and say, "We are committed to the September 19 joint statement and we will abide by that in the Six-Party Talks and we'll work towards completion." Then, at least, we have the groundwork for negotiations.

But as long as North Korea continues to assert, "We are a nuclear power, and you will negotiate with us as a nuclear power," then there really is no basis for discussions, as long as that's not part of the parameter of the discussions. Now in the spring of 2010, North Korea proposed a peace treaty. Sounds like a great idea. What's wrong with a peace treaty? There couldn't be anything better. We should explore that, shouldn't we?

Except that the North Korean fundamental position is, "We are a nuclear power. We will negotiate as a nuclear power. We'll sign a peace treaty with you as a nuclear power, and maybe one day we'll come back to your Six-Party Talks." (In a sense, de facto recognize them as a nuclear power.) There are downstream implications for that everywhere else in the world for other countries who are seeking a nuclear option.

I'll give you another very current example. In January, North Korea offered to have unconditional talks with South Korea. They didn't move very well. Jimmy Carter, thinking he's got something new came out again and said, "I've got a note from Kim Jung-il that says he's going to have unconditional talks with Lee Myung-bak. Except for if you step back and think about it, it's conditional. It's conditional on not talking about nukes and recognizing that North Korea is a nuclear power. It’s conditional on ignoring the killing of forty-six of your sailors, ignoring the shelling of an island and the killing of your civilians (both acts of war). And let's talk about how you can help us economically. Those are underlying conditions to the notion of unconditional talks as you go forward.

I'm just saying it's really not that clear cut, and this is why if you look at the wording coming out of both the Blue House and the White House; it's not harsh wording that we'll never, ever talk to you guys again. It's we're looking for some indication of seriousness of purpose, seriousness of intent. North Korea is not even willing to make a reference to the September 19 joint statement.

Again, here I should make a clear clarification. When they say the word "denuclearization," bihaeghwa in North Korean, that may sound great. "Oh! The North Koreans said they're committed to denuclearization. We should have talks." But the North Koreans have also been very explicit about what they mean by denuclearization. That is mutual disarmament between the United States and North Korea. We abandon our nukes and they abandon their nukes. They've subsequently gone on to say, "global" denuclearization. "We're committed to global denuclearization."

This is fine, but the September, 2009 joint statement defines denuclearization as North Korea returning to compliance with the IAEA and the NPT with the 180 countries which have all signed onto the same deal. It's not the "You alone get to be a nuclear power" kind of deal as you go forward. And so again, it may seem simple up front, but it's a really thorny, complex issue as you go forward.


MR. CAMBRIA:
My name is Cambria. Thank you for the discussion. The picture you paint is extremely bleak. It's just as hard-line as you paint the North Korean position. There's absolutely no room for maneuver. In fact, if there was a political will, a lot could be overlooked.

For example, Israel is our ally, but it also is a nuclear power. It's palatable to us to recognize that. The North Koreans have. And what about the fate of the Korean-American businessman who was taken prisoner in November? It could be interpreted that the shelling from the South to the North and then the North to the South was one way for the North to ensure that open hostilities would not advance much because the U.S. has to protect its own citizenship.

I heard a different scenario about food and that was on the Channel 13 News Hour. A man who is with Mercy Corps in Washington said that for two years, up until 2008 when the U.S. and South Korea turned off the spigot of food, that there was a protocol that this volunteer organization had with the North whereby Mercy Corps had control of food and its distribution from the point of arrival in Pyongyang to its distribution to areas in the provinces where they were both needed. So there are modalities that could be taken on.

It's just that the U.S., as you point out, has put itself as a hostage to South Korea, and it's the same type of policy that the U.S. did when it dealt with Iran, when it deals with Pakistan today and the same type of policy it tried to incur when it wanted to remove Nasser. So overall, the picture is rather bleak and the U.S. policy remains, from my point of view, extremely static over the past sixty years.


GORDON FLAKE:
Let me start with that last notion first, that somehow the U.S. is hostage to South Korea and we've turned over our policy to the South Koreans. The truth is the U.S. has placed a high emphasis on coordinating a policy, but then the United States doesn't farm out very much to anybody. We're very proactive in this process. And I think it really speaks, more than anything else, to a real sense of common purpose and common agreement between the U.S. and South Korea in this regard right now.

And here let me step back. I may sound extremely pessimistic and even hard-line in terms of the prospects for solving the North Korean problem right now. Step back and look at this in a broader, regional perspective. What are the United States' strategic interests in Northeast Asia?

Our strategic interests are not North Korea itself. Our strategic interests really are the peace, stability and economic progress of Northeast Asia as a whole. And I would argue there have been some previous times in recent history where we have overemphasized trying to solve the North Korea problem, and as a result deeply jeopardized our relationships with our allies South Korea and Japan.

If our interests are maintaining our alliance relationships with South Korea and Japan, maintaining the overall stability and making sure that our policy is carefully coordinated with China and with Russia, and that the region as a whole is not destabilized, then that makes some sense. There are many frightening nightmare scenarios that can come out of North Korea, but the most frightening is North Korea somehow becoming an issue of contestation between us and the Chinese or us and the Russians. That's the real nightmare scenario.

What does that say in terms of where our economic priorities should be during this sixty-year period of stagnation? They should be focused on trying to make sure that we are securing our real strategic interests in the region: securing our alliance relationships, maintaining the stability and the peace of the region at large, and we have been relatively successful. It's just not sexy. I mean, going to Pyongyang and having really cool talks with the North Koreans, that's sexy; but really that's not our core strategic interest.

And so, if you're looking at what the current U.S. administration and the past administration has on their plates right now, and if I had President Obama's ear and could advise him personally (and I really care about North Korea) how could I go to him today and say, "You know what? I see in North Korea today the prospect of real fundamental change and real fundamental negotiation if you would just give some real political capital to this right now. This should be your priority."

Think of all the other priorities the president has right now. Could you make the case to him right  now that there is a prospect for fundamental change in North Korea if we just applied resources and energy and effort to this right now? There's very little indication of that right now, which is precisely why what you're hearing out of the White House and the Blue House is, "Look. We're just looking for some indication of seriousness of purpose from North Korea." If we saw that, South Korea would move first. I guarantee you South Korea would lead us to that and it would be very easy for us to go into that process.

The reality is (and with the succession that's going on there now, too) it's not there. And so when it's not there, what you do is you step back and you focus on your core strategic interests. Not sexy. Not satisfying. But I think that's a pretty clear, accurate reflection of where our government is as we go forward.

I should say I agree with you completely in terms of Mercy Corps and other NGOs who have been involved in that. They have also been very effective at giving food aid, and on the organization-to-organization level been very effective at negotiating with and dealing with North Korea. I would not mean to suggest at all that it's impossible, particularly for NGOs.

The key factor here, obviously, is that South Korea in the past has never given its aid through the WFP. They have never had any standards on their past aid. It's just gone straight to the government. The Chinese clearly have given this party-to-party or state-to-state. Most of it has been on a business level, not just direct aid; but that hasn't gone through the WFP with standards and monitoring.

And with the U.S., we negotiated a very good deal. It was being done and people were pleased with it. The North Koreans decided that they didn't want it anymore. So again, I would characterize quite differently the notion that somehow we pulled out because it didn't happen. It was a decision on North Korea's part.

As to whether or not the Korean businessman was abducted as a way to avoid escalation of Yeonpyeongdo attacks; that is probably a little bit too clever for me, but I honestly don't know. I'd have to look at the timing of that. Tellingly, for those of you that haven't followed this very closely, there was some anticipation that President Carter might bring him out. That didn't really come up on the agenda, so I feel sorry about that.

But the U.S. has been pretty clear over the last two years after several similar incidences to tell U.S. citizens, "Don't go to North Korea. You go at your own risk." I think after Jimmy Carter came out last August with the unfortunate Aijalon Gomes, this fellow up in Boston, the State Department spokesman at the time said, "Please don't go to North Korea. We're running out of former presidents." And so, there's a certain amount of personal responsibility that's involved in the process as you go forward.

To that broader question as to why we can't just recognize North Korea as a nuclear program going forward. Obviously if we were willing to recognize North Korea as a nuclear power, we could have relations with them today. I testified at the beginning of April before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a very good friend of mine, Bob Carlin, who probably has forgotten more about North Korea than I will ever know. He's a really, really sharp man. And he was asked by Senator Kerry what we should do right now. And his response was that we should just set the North Korea nuclear issue aside. We can't solve it for right now because that's going to become an obstacle in improving our relationship with North Korea.

And he's absolutely right. If our objective is to improve the relationship with North Korea, then by all means, we should recognize them as a nuclear power or just ignore the issue for now. But that's not our sole objective. There are competing objectives, and a very important one is maintaining the viability of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime. We're dealing with very difficult issues around the world.

I would reject the notion of some moral equivalency between the state of Israel and the state of North Korea in terms of the nuclear issue, or even India and Pakistan. When India and Pakistan went nuclear, many people made that same argument. And obviously, real international politics are not fair. North Korea is not India. North Korea is not Pakistan in that regard. And I cannot foresee a scenario in which anyone at any part of the U.S. political spectrum would take a step which would recognize, de facto or otherwise, North Korea as a nuclear power. Yes, ma'am?


RONDA HAUBEN:
It's Ronda Hauben, and I write for taz.de (Die Tageszeitung) and for other publications. You mentioned the UN situation with North Korean issues, but you left out one. You left out the Cheonan issue.

The Cheonan situation was that it was brought to the Security Council in June of 2010. There was a presidential statement in July of 2010. The implication of that was different from all others, in some ways, because there was an effort at the Security Council to treat the issue in a way that it heard from South Korea, it heard from North Korea; and then when there was activity going on, it heard from all the parties.

There was a presidential statement that, in fact, looked at the positions, the understandings and the evidence of both parties and treated it in a balanced way. It said that South Korea blamed the Cheonan on North Korea, but North Korea said that it didn't do it. It presented it and others agreed with that. It also talked about having a decrease of tension in the region and solving issues by negotiations. But the response to all that was an increase in military maneuvers in the region by the U.S. and South Korea.

Looking at the issue of stability, it seemed that the Security Council made an effort to hear the different sides and to take them into account. In South Korea and around the world, there are many people with very serious questions and disagreements with the South Korean investigation. It was not an internationally independent investigation. There's a lot of criticism of it; there's a real issue in dispute; and there's an effort to hear the different sides in the dispute.

I wonder if you have any sense that, that kind of process is something that in fact is a way forward? Instead of just presenting in the U.S. that everyone accepts the Cheonan investigation, is there some way to recognize that there's a different view? I think the Los Angeles Times mentioned that there is a different view around the world. Is there a way for us to see this as a set of differences that have to be looked at and understood, and then a way found forward out of them?


GORDON FLAKE:
Thank you. I appreciate the sentiments that underlie that perspective. Obviously the UN Security Council is not just a body unto itself, but it's made up of member states, and that agreement, of course, was one that was considered by Seoul to be a great failure. There is probably some frustration on the U.S. side, too, because really it represented a very watered down kind of compromise statement on the Chinese part.

I would just give a couple of anecdotes that are related to that. Without naming a name, a very senior Chinese official in just the weeks after the sinking of the Cheonan was in Seoul negotiating on this issue, and was very frustrated. On the one hand he said, "Kim Jong-il told us to our face that they did not do this." And then on the other hand he turned around and said, "But if you had been more proactive in negotiations, he wouldn't have done it."

And so, I will be very honest. I don't think there's a single Chinese official who has any knowledge of this that has any doubt that North Korea sank the Cheonan. I am not aware of a single U.S. government official that has any doubt that North Korea sank the Cheonan. If you look at President Carter, it seems pretty clear that for all of his apologetic moves last week, he said, "Well, North Korea recognized that they did it and said they're sorry for it, but they're not going to formally apologize." President Carter is pretty clear that the North Koreans were pretty forward with him that they did it.

Again, I don't have access to intelligence. I haven't seen the intelligence. But it's not just the South Korean report. Again, I think the South Koreans have been paragons of patience. They have been pilloried and attacked. But what would the United States have done? What would China have done if one of our corvettes had been sunk and forty-six sailors killed?

South Korea took three months to do a very careful investigation. It wasn't perfect. The Russians were not invited in. The Chinese were invited in, but there are some reasons for that in terms of trust and intelligence as you go forward. They were both invited and there were different things that they rejected in that process.

Again, I personally don't see this as much of a controversy. I almost put this much more in the Obama birther category than a serious international dispute if you really understand the dynamics there. You go beyond just the South Korean technical report and you start asking questions. If not the North Koreans, than who? When you look at questions of North Korean responses before and after, chatter in North Korea and North Korean statements that have been heard afterwards, I think it's a pretty open and shut case. Again, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see that as such.

The broader sentiment that the UN Security Council statement was an opportunity to remove tensions and go forward in that regard; again, there was clearly a U.S.-South Korean response in terms of increased military exercises among allies. Again, I cannot imagine the Americans or any other country having been that patient in that process. That was an extremely careful and cautious response on South Korea's part and is something I think we would have been much more forceful in.

So to heap criticism on the country that had forty-six of its sailors killed, I think, kind of misses the broader point, at least from my perspective.


HENRY SEGGERMAN:
You mentioned the Cheonan and the Yeonpyeong shelling, as well as the enrichment program as three occurrences that cause you to think that the Chinese might recalibrate their attitude towards North Korea and their priorities. But I would suggest that if you looked back to the history of the West Sea, you can see why China might not consider the shelling and the Cheonan.

The Northern Limit Line was not part of the armistice that was signed by North Korea, and was essentially drawn by the victor (the United Nations) without consulting North Korea. It hugs the North Korean coastline three miles, sixty-five miles up the coastline, so that the only warm water port in wintertime, Haeju, can't really have decent access to the open seas, and that is really extremely restrictive.

Over the decades since the end of the war, there have been numerous fishing and naval conflicts between North and South Korea just fighting over this Northern Limit Line, which the North hates and detests. And it's just another aspect of the end of the Korean War where there was no peace treaty and only an armistice. I would think that the Chinese probably look on the two naval incidents as rather light matters; and right or wrong that they're really not that significant. Many North Korean sailors have lost their lives in such conflicts over the decades.


GORDON FLAKE:
Thank you, and I agree with you and I appreciate that perspective. It is important to make sure that if you look at the last five years in terms of Chinese actions and when they first supported the UN Security Council Resolutions 1695, 1718, and 1874; in my mind, I view these as a growing body of international law and precedent upon which any future action would be built. That would become the new foundation and the new starting point the next time North Korea did something.

And then along came Cheonan and along came Yeonpyeong, and they didn't do that. They actually downgraded their response. And so your explanation would really help explain precisely why that is, because they don't view those at the same level. They view those as much more lower-level, internal Korean domestic issues.

I would, however, caution that the notion that this is just an ongoing dispute that's been a problem since the Korean War; while it's true that's been a long time, the decision for North Korea to escalate at that time and the decision for them, in particular, to shell Yeonpyeong Island (the first time physical land has been shelled since the end of the Korean War) killing civilians wasn't just a normal part of that ongoing squabble over crab fishermen.

And the thing that's really disturbing about this is that Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-Un visited the district the day before, and there's pretty clear evidence right now that this was part of a succession process and effort to perhaps bolster Kim Jong-Un's military credentials. Regardless, there was a decision on North Korea's part for this to be a provocation.

So the notion that it is just part of that ongoing issue I think misses something that's a little bit different about this one. It's something I wouldn't so readily group in that, although you're right. The Chinese would like to.


YUNG SU LEE:
I'm Yung Su Lee. I'm just wondering about the Chinese shifting policies after  November, 2010. In your view, is that something related to the Chinese confidence? And is the regime intending to step up as a world leader? In a sense when we see that, we see no geopolitical reason why China defends North Korea, but North Korea's regime stability is very important for China's regime stability, as well. But at the same time, what is your sense that China, seeing all of this global investment, wants to step up as a world leader in this context?


GORDON FLAKE:
The events of 2010 were broader than the Korean Peninsula and there's a bunch of them that can be grouped together to be viewed in that context itself. The Chinese actions near the Senkaku Islands and the dispute they had with Japan on that, their statements and actions in the South China Seas, and these actions on North Korea; they're all widely seen as the Chinese feeling their oats, rejecting the Deng Xiaoping notion of "hide and bide". Just keep quiet and keep your heads down.

By the end of 2010, I think there was a general assessment in China that they had overreached. They had gone too far. They had dramatically damaged perceptions of China in the region from Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia at large; and so there's an effort to kind of step back and repair that. A couple of areas where there really has not been much repair work done yet, of course, is this issue of Korea. I mean, at this point, there's still a lot of work to be done diplomatically in terms of Korea-China relations. Yes, sir?


ROBERT LAIDLEY:
Robert Laidley, a member of The Korea Society. It seems that the major motive governing the Kim family in North Korea is to stay in power. And to do that, they need reliable overseas funds. At the moment, they have a situation where if it's negotiated on a current basis, it would drop. And this, perhaps, is a major factor in their decision to go nuclear. If you don't have the funds, have a weapon.

Now one possibility to give them reliable long-term funds is to build a natural gas pipeline from China through North Korea to South Korea and give them transit rights payments. Of course then it would be a situation where if they decided to be difficult and cut it off, they would have done it. If they behave, they continue to get the payments. Of course to stop blackmail on South Korea, you would need to build an LNG terminal at South Korea. Has this been considered and would you care to comment?


GORDON FLAKE:
Thank you. Over the past decades there have actually been several pipeline proposals and ideas, most of them driven by the Russians; with interestingly one driven by Lyndon LaRouche that was a big thing for a while. There are a range of similar creative ideas that would ostensibly provide core support for the North Korean regime that would help back us out of this issue.

Again, this is a case where I really don't want to sound like this overly pessimistic, down on everything hard-liner, but the reality is, as I've been watching this closely for the last twenty years (I'm not quite as smart as Ambassador Minton) what I've seen is a lot of these issues where there were possibilities in the past, but because of actions taken, those possibilities have now been foreclosed. The doors are shut. And so, the notion now that we would go ahead with that at this time without some progress on the nuclear issue or the other issues is almost inconceivable. That said, I do think that there is a great cause to continue to have this type of an ongoing discussion.

I will dispute the notion that somehow North Korea, if we could just give them funds or money, would gain a regime-bolstering kind of confidence. The premise for a long was that we could induce North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapons. At this point, it's pretty clear that inducement alone will not work. And it's also pretty clear that threats alone will not work.

And so we've got a really difficult situation. If we are ever to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear capacity or their nuclear ambitions, there's got to be the right mix of pressure and inducements at the same time, and that's a very difficult thing to try to find. Obviously, in light of the context today, it's one that the United States is going to have to do jointly with China as we go forward. I'll end my remarks there. Thanks.


MARK MINTON:
Gordon, I shouldn't do this, but I'm going to take the privilege, being president of The Korea Society, and just ask you to follow up on something that's been implicit or been a thread through your whole discussion. You talked about if the North Koreans had not turned us away. You talked about if the North Koreans had not taken negative actions.

We have several decades of this pattern. What's behind the pattern? And why do we have this continuous record of initiatives thwarted leading to dead ends turned aside with anyone of the things you've mentioned this afternoon? What is behind it? It's a demand side question as opposed to a supply side question. North Koreans are not being given food aid by the Chinese, but why is it the North Koreans, perhaps, are not requesting food aid from the Chinese?


GORDON FLAKE:
It's not because the North Koreans are inherently evil. It's not because the North Koreans like to poke the world community in the eye. My view is it really has to do with the fundamental weakness of the North Korean society. And again, this is simplistic; but in my view, North Korea and the regime in North Korea survives on three pillars: control over the movement of people, control over the flow of information and control over the means of production.

And this is neither China reforming in the 1980s, nor Mongolia, Laos, Vietnam or other countries reforming in the 1990s. The fact that there is a divided peninsula means that there's this ongoing competition for legitimacy, and North Korea has a very difficult time finding the right path to open reform.

As you might understand, everything that we want to offer North Korea: to become a normal nation, opening, economic reform, investment, trade, all of these things are fundamentally poisonous to the regime, because the regime is structured on the regime being the provider of all jobs, all goods and everything else. The regime is structured on controlling the flow of information.

What happens (and we're starting to see this) when everybody realizes that everything they've been told their entire lives is not quite accurate, to be charitable in that regard. What happens when people are able to freely move around in that society?

This is why we've now seen a twenty-year period of time with the regime taking one hesitating step forward and then two steps back. They recognize that the regime, itself, and the way the regime is structured is very difficult. So we now have added to that fundamental challenge this nuclear question. The regime, having failed in every other measure: economically, societally, internationally, now has a nuclear weapon, and they've convinced themselves that this is their identity.

I'm increasingly worried that having wrapped themselves in that cloak of nuclear legitimacy, that's it going to be easy to get the Kim family to take that off. And they've been pretty clear about it. The real danger that we're in right now is that they will perceive themselves to be stronger than they are because of that nuclear capacity. "Because we are a nuclear state, we can go ahead and sink a submarine. Because we are a nuclear state, we can go ahead and shell them because the South cannot respond at this point." And that sets up a very dangerous dynamic as we go forward, but a very important one nonetheless.

I'm happy to give a speech like this at The Korea Society because I see in the audience, and definitely in the staff here, far greater minds than mine; and so I'm convinced that this is a problem that won't be solved in Washington, but maybe one that will be solved in New York. Thank you.