Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
Johns Hopkins University
November 2, 2006
SPEAKER: C. KENNETH QUINONES, DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL STUDIES, AKITA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
MODERATOR: DON OBERDORFER, CHAIRMAN, U.S.-KOREA INSTITUTE, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY,
PAUL H. NITZE SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
MR. OBERDORFER: Glad to see you. I am Don Oberdorfer, the chairman of the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS, and it's my pleasure and privilege to have Kenneth Quinones here to talk about his activities and adventures as an intermediary between the United States and the DPRK on matters of importance in recent years.
Before we do that, I am forced to make a little statement of my own because of an erroneous article that appeared today in the Chong Anobo (ph) that misunderstood, I think, a conversation between a Chong Anobo (ph) reporter and myself in the evening two days ago. And I've given this statement to Chong Anobo (ph), which I hope they will publish.
The Joongang Ilbo quoted me in its November 2nd edition as saying that U.S. Treasury officials told me that at least $8 million of the $24 million blocked in the Bank of Delta Asia is "clean money," unquote, not connected with illegal activities. The story went on to say that some people were suggesting that these funds might be released.
I did not make such statements. I visited the Treasury Department on October 4th and learned that a study had been launched to determine the sources of the blocked funds of the Macau bank. It was I, not the Treasury officials, who brought up the claims of the
Daedong Credit Bank and the British-American Tobacco Company that at least $8 million is from legitimate business.
The Treasury officials made no comment on these claims. There was no suggestion from them that these funds are about to be released. The Treasury officials told me it was not the Treasury that has blocked these funds, but the monetary authorities in Macau.
So I apologize for taking your time with this, but it's all over the Korean and even some foreign newspapers, and I don't want to let it stand without setting the matter straight.
Ken Quinones is known to many of you, I expect, as a long-time official of the Department of State and a person who has been studying Korean matters for a great part of his life. If you have read my book -- another second commercial, I guess -- (laughter) -- you will find that he had an extraordinarily interesting role in the inception of
the talks between the United States government and the DPRK when the nuclear issue first arose in a major way in 1993.
American officials were very much concerned about reports of what DPRK officials were planning to do with their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, and they were in a dither to know whether they should contact the North Korean officials or not. And at this point, a
diplomat in the DPRK mission in New York telephoned Ken Quinones, who at the time was the North Korean officer on the Korean desk in the State Department, and asked if Americans wanted to meet; and if so, he said, the sooner the better.
Quinones's colleagues were amazed that he had actually spoken on the telephone with an official of the DPRK. But Mr. Quinones pointed out that the North Koreans had placed the call. All he did was answer it. This was the very beginning of a long encounter between two governments, which continues to this day with many ups and downs. Currently it's in one of its downs. But Ken has seen it all, both positive and negative.
Since retiring from the State Department in 1997, he worked for Mercy Corps and for nongovernment organizations. He has written three books between 2001 and 2005. He is currently the director of Global Studies and professor of Korean Studies at Akita International University in Japan. And between 2002 and -- I'm sorry, between 2004
and early this year, he was a frequent go-between between the United States government and North Korean mission in New York. And he is here to tell us about it.
So, Ken, the floor is yours. You might want to use that podium.
MR. QUINONES: Good afternoon. And thank you, Don, for the introduction. And thank you for coming this afternoon.
Before I start, a little story about Don. I was a young Foreign Service officer in Seoul many, many years ago, and I was being briefed by my supervisor, the political minister. And he was warning me about journalists. He said, "Just don't talk to them. But there is one fellow that you can trust." And that was Don Oberdorfer.
I didn't meet Don for many years, but we in the United States embassy in those years did have respect for him because, one, he observed the rules. If you said it was off the record, it was off the record. Secondly, he quoted you accurately. And also, you could
always count on him to keep asking questions. And that kept you on your toes. But I appreciate his introduction.
And, yes, I was sitting eating a State Department cafeteria salad one day and the phone rang. It was in May 1993. The secretary came in and she said, "Oh, you're in big trouble. There is a North Korean on the telephone, and he will only want to talk to you." And she said, "What are you going to do?"
In those days, before you talked to any North Koreans, you had better write an action memo and get permission. I mean, you didn't simply pick up the phone and talk to North Koreans. You didn't buy them coffee. There was no contact. We had what was called smile diplomacy. That was approved by South Korea. Smile diplomacy meant that if you were at an international third-party reception, dinner or what have you, and a North Korean citizen or official approached you, you could shake their hand, you could say hello, you could comment on the weather, and you could then excuse yourself. And that was it.
I'm afraid I broke the rules. But in my mind, there was something more important than rules at stake, and what was at stake was getting diplomacy underway. And that's what I want to talk about this evening with you.
First let me kind of put the cards on the table so that you know where I'm coming from. I fully support our government's objective of achieving a peaceful diplomatic resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue. I have no qualms about that whatsoever.
My concern is how we get there. And from where I sit, outside the government -- and I have absolutely no ties to any government whatsoever -- it seems to me that there's only one way you can achieve a diplomatic solution. That's through diplomatic dialogue and diplomatic negotiation, give and take.
There are some who these days would argue diplomacy has failed. That's why North Korea has become a nuclear power. That's why they fired the missiles, and so forth. I would contend, to the contrary, that the track record of the current administration is not one of diplomacy, but rather one of vacillation, inconsistency, and ultimately undercutting the position and the efforts of its own diplomats.
And that's why I decided, after the firing of the ballistic missiles this summer by the North Koreans and their more recent tests of a nuclear device, it was time to go public and try to argue convincingly that we are going to have to give diplomacy a chance.
And let me briefly summarize for you in very candid, vivid detail, what options do we have to deal with North Korea? We can have another Korean war. We tried that, and frankly the cost was tremendous, 1950 to 1953. Three million Koreans, at least, died, not
to mention several tens of thousands of American soldiers and other U.N. forces, troops, plus Chinese and others.
The Korean peninsula was left divided. We have now yet to deal with a haunting legacy of bitter mistrust between North and South Koreans. When people ask me how come it takes South Korea and North Korea so long to reunite, I say they never -- the Germans never had a war. They never killed each other. In Korea, unfortunately,
tragically, the memories of that terrible experience linger on and have yet to be completely overcome.
And let's say what happens now if there is another war, if that is the option we settle on. You're not going to be able to limit the war to the peninsula. You will devastate the international economy because you will shut down at least two of the world's most dynamic economies, South Korea and Japan. You will have probably ballistic missiles fired from North Korea rain on U.S. bases in Japan and Japanese cities. The cost will be astronomical.
My conclusion is that option does not serve our interests. We need an option that will achieve maximum gains for us with minimal losses, at a minimal cost.
Our next option is to try to engage North Korea through diplomacy, give-and-take diplomacy. And I would argue we could achieve a great deal at a much lower cost using that option.
The third option is to bring about so-called regime change in North Korea, be it through economic sanctions or any other variety of options and what have you. But as we have seen in Iraq and in Panama and elsewhere, regime change does not produce democracy or political stability. It only compounds and complicates the problems.
So my preference is, even though the North Koreans -- despite all their shortcomings, their track record, their so forth, my preference is we stop judging them and start talking to them.
So a couple of years ago, while very much enjoying the peace and quiet of not being in the United States government, the group I was affiliated with -- and please, I'm not giving names, places, dates or details of that sort tonight, because there are people I don't want to have concerned or involved -- but essentially the organization, an NGO, nongovernmental organization, said, "You've been dealing with the North Koreans. Would you contact them and see if you can open up communications between House and Senate committees and the North Koreans? Open up some dialogue."
So I did; the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, among others. And initially the efforts were appreciated on both sides. And then the North Koreans said, "You know, we've dealt with you for quite a few years. Could we start sitting down with you on occasion and candidly share with you on the basis of confidence what our position
is and where we want to go in terms of the future?" And I said, "Fine, I'm willing to go with that, as long as you understand, none of it is official." And none of it was. It was all just two guys over lunch trading views, candidly and so forth.
Briefly, what I learned during these meetings was the North Koreans were very precise and consistent in their position. Some people might challenge that. I found the best guide was to read their foreign ministry statements. That really clearly, precisely
summarizes their position. And if you go back over the past three years or so, the bottom line has been, both in their statements and in their candid remarks, "One, we want to negotiate. Two, we're not out to threaten anybody; we're out to establish a different order in Northeast Asia. And three, we want to do it the same way we did it in
1993-'94."
So I said, "You mean, you guys want to go back to where we were in '93-'94?"
"Yes."
"What terms?"
"We want a new agreed framework. Can you come up with another solution? Can you come up with a solution whereby you can overcome a half century of mistrust, war, animosity and so forth, other than working through a sequence of simultaneous steps? Can you come up with another idea whereby we trade something that you want for
something that we want?"
I said, "What do you want?" They said, "Come on, two nuclear reactors."
"Why?"
"Well, look, if father could get two, son's got to have two. And besides that, you now want more from us than we had back in '93-'94. We're not asking for more. We're willing to give up more to get the same thing we had long ago."
"How are you going to achieve this?"
They said, "Only one way, and that is to be able to sit down face to face with U.S. government officials and work things out."
And that was my objective. I wanted to get out of this business of being back and forth and so forth. When I was at the State Department, my primary role, as I saw it, was to get the State Department in the business of talking to the North Korean government.
And that's where this belongs. The entire issue is not a matter for NGOs, intermediaries or so forth. It requires direct, candid communication between the two sides and so forth.
Unfortunately, we have to go through all kinds of stumbling blocks to get there. I would contend last year that on at least three occasions, mixed signals, crossed-up efforts, what have you, within the Bush administration undermined agreements that set the stage for the North Koreans to return to the six-party talks.
For example, what did the North Koreans want? In March 2005, they had three things they wanted to return to talks: An apology from Condoleezza Rice, because she had called them an outpost of tyranny; secondly, they wanted President Bush to stop his public criticism of the DPRK's leadership; and third, they wanted the so-called New York
channel to be reopened that facilitated communication between the State Department in Washington and the North Korean mission in New York; not out of the question.
I told them I thought an apology from the secretary of State was politically unrealistic, but maybe we can get somewhere on the other two. We did. We actually had an agreement. Until April 1st, President Bush had a press conference, and somebody asked him what he thought of Kim Jong Il and he said he's a tyrant. Bingo, the next day
I get a telephone call saying, "Deal's off. We're not coming back until your president stops the rhetoric."
After another six weeks of chatting back and forth and so forth, the North Koreans didn't change anything. They said, "Okay, we'll drop the apology. Let's open the channel, the New York channel, but your president just has to stop the rhetoric."
And again, late May we had another agreement with them until Mr. Rumsfeld, talking to reporters on the way to Singapore, mentioned that the United States was preparing to send the North Korean issue to the U.N. Security Council, dispatched a squadron of F-117 stealth fighters to South Korea and directed that the United States Army pull all of its personnel out of North Korea who were involved in joint recovery-
of-remains work, a project that had been established in 1996 and that brought together U.S. Army and North Korean army to work together to find the remains of American soldiers who had died in North Korea.
When the North Koreans heard that, the reaction was, "You gave our generals everything they wanted (to ?) stay out of the talks. You again pulled the rug out from under a diplomatic agreement. You turned everything over to the generals and you heightened Pyongyang's suspicions."
To the credit of both the State Department and the North Koreans, they said, "Let's give it one more try." And this time the State Department had to kick it up a couple of notches. And it was possible -- and this is when Ambassador DeTrani and his fellows did set up a face-to-face meeting in New York, and they were able to discuss with their North Korean counterparts an agreement that finally put the North Koreans back on the track to the six-party talks.
Fortunately, that time the agreement held. We got back into the talks and we made a lot of progress very fast, until September 20th. On September 19th, the six parties issued the so-called joint statement, which promised the North Koreans a variety of concessions
in exchange for ultimate dismantlement of their nuclear program. But there was instantaneous criticism of that agreement.
Also there was an effort to win U.S. government approval that went outside U.S. government channels. With the assistance of the Japanese government, the Bush administration initially approved the joint statement, but then unfortunately, within 48 hours, that position was reversed. Our senior representative in the talks was required to read a statement on September 20th that basically put a huge impediment in front of further progress, the issue of two lightwater nuclear reactors.
Here the bottom line is that the North Koreans don't want to negotiate with a government that they cannot comprehend, that does not have a consistent strategy, a consistent policy. Every time during 2005 they worked something out, they found the rules change. The administration couldn't follow through.
They didn't know who they were dealing with. Was it State Department, Defense Department, National Security Council, what have you? There seemed to be a void, a vacuum of leadership and decisiveness and so forth.
That's where things stand today. I do hope that it will be possible if we have successful working-level talks, something that was proposed in February this year. That might get us back on the track to the six-party talks.
In summary, I would say that all the good news we have heard these days takes us back to where we were a year ago. It actually takes us back to 1994, except for two things. North Korea today does have a nuclear capability. They didn't have that last year. They didn't have that in 1994.
Secondly, you can be sure that when we return to the negotiating table, the price for diplomatic resolution will be far higher than would have been last year or 10 years ago. And as long as we have a realistic expectation of what to expect from the North Koreans, we're more likely to achieve success through diplomacy.
Okay, so let me bring an end to my remarks, and then I'll turn it over to Don.
MR. OBERDORFER: Thank you very much.
Well, we've got lots of time for questions. If you ask a question, please put a question mark at the end of it. And we've got some mikes here. Where are they? Who are the people with the mikes? C-SPAN is here, and we don't want the listeners to not know what the question is when people give the answers. Okay, here comes a mike.
All right, back there. Barbara, you're first. Would somebody give a mike to Barbara? Make sure it's turned on.
Q I have a question to both of you at once at this event.
MR. OBERDORFER: And introduce yourself.
Q Barbara Slavin of USA Today; not as early a comer to this story as Don, but fairly consistent, at least, over the last 10 years.
Ken, you said that the price will be higher. But you also said that they're going to come back and ask for the same two lightwater reactors. So do you think that it's just -- first, what, in addition, do you think they're going to ask for? Do you think they would really agree to the complete denuclearization at this point, or they're going to want to talk about arms reduction instead of denuclearization? And is it really possible for an agreement between the Bush administration, given this history of mistrust, and the Kim Jong Il regime? Thanks.
MR. QUINONES: Well, first, there is still, I guess, the very, very serious lingering problem of distrust and so forth. I mean, it's devastating to diplomacy, for two reasons. It's a legacy that both sides have. But as I discovered in the '93-'94 negotiations, as each side began to move toward an agreement, their home governments began to show distrust for their own delegates and began to pull the two sides apart. That's a fundamental dynamic when you have so much mistrust. So it's going to be extremely complex.
I would say it's fortunate this time we do have at least a consensus among several members of the six parties. Specifically I'm talking about Seoul, Beijing, Moscow, and increasingly Tokyo. And the agreement is they prefer peace and stability to war and
destabilization. So they've narrowed the options. And I think the United States government is increasingly comfortable with that.
In terms of what the North Koreans want, I don't know for certain. I'm very confident that the North Koreans, yes, their beginning point will be a new agreed framework, simultaneous steps. All the rhetoric that we worked out in 1993-1994 I hear again. Then they want reactors, lightwater reactors. That we've heard time and again. Probably they will want somebody to upgrade their power grid, an issue that was discussed before the collapse of the agreed framework.
But also, I'm a bit concerned that they might want to push too hard and want to get into the area of disarmament, the withdrawal of U.S. troops. So I think at some point we're going to have to draw a line on them and tell them, "Hey, time to get realistic. We can go only so far in this process."
MR. OBERDORFER: (Inaudible.)
Q Thank you. Mike Billington from Executive Intelligence Review.
Two questions, if I may. Have you or Ambassador Laney or anyone else tried to get Jimmy Carter back involved again this time?
And secondly, on a more serious level, you haven't tried to give a judgment as to why this administration has gone so far to sabotage every possible deal, including its own. It's well-known that Cheney in particular and his allies believe in preemptive war. They may not wish to start one on Korea now But is it not apparent that they wanted to push North Korea to do, for instance, its nuclear test to create some sort of justification for attacks, perhaps, on Iran, but to further their cause of needing emergency rule and needing war?
MR. OBERDORFER: Okay, that's a good question.
MR. QUINONES: Okay. Well, first, on President Carter, no. Some people have raised that with him and he has firmly ruled out any possibility of going back. Now, if you get a chance, read the book by Marion Creekmore, "A Moment of Crisis," that is very, very helpful in understanding the present atmosphere in light of what happened back in 1994.
On the question, I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories I don't think we have anybody within the United States government that is trying to manipulate the situation one way or another to bring about war or what have you.
I would -- and I haven't sat in principals' meetings and so forth, but working off my experience in the United States government -- and I don't think there's been any profound change since the '90s in terms of how policy is made -- I think a lot of it is, one, ego; very frankly, ego. Once you're in the government and you stake out a claim, a policy claim, you defend that. I think, unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of that within this administration.
Secondly, when you have that happen at high levels, you need a decisive level. And, candidly speaking, I don't see that in President Bush. If anything, I see vacillation. Some may say, "Well, that's good. That's pragmatic." But there's no strategy there. There are
no foul lines, no out lines, which way to go. What are our goals? If your goal is a diplomatic settlement, you'd better focus on diplomacy to get there. And we haven't done that.
MR. OBERDORFER: Okay, back there, this gentleman right here.
Q Good evening. My name is Michael Choi. I am a Korean Flagship fellow. Thank you very much, Dr. Quinones and Professor Oberdorfer.
My question is regarding American public. I wouldn't say I'm an expert. I'm a student. I'm trying to still sort things out. One of the things I have heard about the Clinton administration, the negotiations that led to the agreed framework, is that then, like now, there was two camps, those hawkish and those that favored engagement. So that is similar to the current administration.
And also I think back then, American society was of two camps along the same lines regarding North Korea, some favoring diplomacy while others seeing North Korea as an evil enemy, a violator of human rights and a weapons proliferator.
So seeing those parallels, I'm just wondering, how was the Clinton administration able to overcome -- actually, it's not that clear to me if the Clinton administration was able to overcome that internal debate and to, with a united front, go forward with diplomacy. And how does that differ now? Because as you mentioned, and it seems pretty obvious, in the past few years there seems to be a lack of consistency and a lack of a clear mission and clear position regarding North Korean negotiations. Thank you.
MR. OBERDORFER: Thank you for your question.
MR. QUINONES: Okay, thank you.
I would -- it brings back some good memories, some very accurately recorded in Don's book, "The Two Koreas," in which we had, in the Clinton administration, received from the prior Bush administration a clear strategy, hammered out by then National
Security Adviser Scowcroft, President Bush and other key figures. We had a clear set of priorities that ranked precisely what the United States government would achieve and in what order.
And then, within that context, the State Department was allowed the flexibility of developing the means of getting to those ends. And the Clinton administration -- actually, the day of President Clinton's inauguration, we in the Office of Korea Affairs did a worldwide cable that summarized precisely what the Bush administration strategy was. We sent that up to the National Security Council under President Clinton, and they signed off on it.
What the Clinton administration did is precisely what its predecessor had started -- engagement of North Korea. And here were the steps. And the first priority was end North Korea's nuclear programs. So we knew what we were supposed to do. There were
hassles. There were disagreements, but not about the priorities.
You did have people who argued, "Gee, why are you supporting a dictatorship? Why are you overlooking human rights and so forth?" But there was nevertheless a consensus that national security came first and matters of morality and so forth were put aside later. So I think that helped us a great deal.
In February 2001, the North Koreans sent a mission here to Washington, D.C., and I met with them. And they wanted to go to the White House -- not to the White House; to the State Department -- to say, "Hey, we want to sit down and begin a new series of talks with you guys." They were not allowed to go.
Then Mr. Lee -- we'll leave it at that -- was outraged that they couldn't even get into the Department of State. Why? Because they were told our policy toward North Korea was under review. And I would contend it's been under review ever since. And the people in the U.S. government, despite their best efforts, are constantly fighting to achieve priorities that are never certain.
So you can't get anywhere without a clear road map, and we don't have one.
Q Hi. My name is Leslie Barim (sp), a conflict management concentrator here at SAIS. And I hear you saying that you suggest building trust between the two sides, which I can see where diplomacy is very important. But I'm wondering how you deal with the fact, at the same time, that could be seen as a reward to North Korea for having this nuclear weapon that they've tested, and how the rest of the world would view that as well.
MR. QUINONES: I think that's -- one of the unfortunate things is that there has been a rewriting of history since 2001. And as I just pointed out, the whole idea of engaging North Korea to begin with was a Republican concept initiated by President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger in 1971 toward China. It had nothing to do with Democrats.
Secondly, the Clinton administration's strategy was identical with the Republican strategy initiated under former President Bush to engage the North Koreans. So once we set out on that, we didn't say we were appeasing them. We didn't say we were rewarding them. We said we are out to achieve U.S national interest.
And we established as our priority national defense. That had nothing to do with keeping Kim Jong Il or Kim Il Sung in power and so forth. That wasn't our goal. Our goal was to secure the United States and its allies. We had a clear focus. And you heard that. You heard that from critics and so forth.
I think, unfortunately, that kind of rhetoric has only muddled the issue and made it harder for the American people to decide which direction we want to go in.
Sitting down with your enemies to negotiate, according to former Secretary Baker, is not rewarding them. It's solving problems. If you don't talk to them, you're going to fight with them. Then we really have problems.
Appeasement is a word that in English carries a lot of historical baggage. But if you look at China, for 2,000 years it used appeasement to maintain its world order. It gave its neighbors, the barbarians or what have you, symbols of status, of power, access to China and so forth, in exchange for security. So there's a long history of diplomacy that involves not appeasement but the exchange of concessions.
We always insisted upon equivocal changes. Let me give you a simple example what I mean. When Ambassador Pak Gil Yon and his wife came to attend a national prayer breakfast here in Washington in February 1993, I was their host. And we were sitting at a lunch with General MacArthur's nephew [Amb. Douglas MacArthur II], outrageous Republican that he was, and Mrs. Pak turned to me and said, "Can I go sightseeing?" I said, "Sure."
"Can I take pictures?" And she pulled out this little instant Kodak camera. I said, "Of course you can take pictures." And MacArthur says, "I'll take you around." He didn't speak Korean. She didn't speak English. But she had a wonderful afternoon, and she saw all the monuments in Washington, D.C. and took photographs.
After that, every time I visited Pyongyang, I never had problems taking pictures. That's reciprocity. And, you know, I worked on that principle with the North Koreans. And you have to do that. If you're going to build trust, you give and take and so forth.
I remember I got in trouble for buying coffee for our meetings in the basement of the United Nations building. You know, and the press was crazy. Where did these guys meet? Well, it was the basement of the United Nations. And I went to buy coffee. And finally somebody reported me. And thereafter, honest to God, I had to write a memo to
the secretary of State to get permission to buy coffee -- four cups, two for Americans, two for the North Koreans. And the North Koreans appreciated that.
It's very small things, but that's the way you begin. You begin building a human contact. You have to remember, you know, when we began to deal with the Soviet Union over nuclear issues in the 1960s and so forth, we had a legacy of being allies in World War II. We had a legacy of decades of cooperation, international change and so forth.
We had none of that with North Korea. We began at zero -- enemies. And so if you're going to resolve conflict, you begin at a very humble level and build from there. And in the process, what I discovered is the North Koreans will come back at you. You just have to be willing to take a step in their direction.
MR. OBERDORFER: It's interesting to me, as a historian of these things, looking at the Carter talks with Kim Il Sung in 1994, the first thing that Kim Il Sung said, according to the records of the meeting, was not something about the nuclear weapon. He said, "First we have to build trust," which, of course, in today's situation is extremely difficult. It's made more difficult by firing ballistic missiles and testing a nuclear device.
I would just say, for my own self, I'm very concerned about American public opinion, which you brought up a minute ago, not that we can approve many things that the North Korean regime does, and I have made no bones about it. I think their human rights policies and some of their other policies are horrible.
But if we're going to make any agreements with the DPRK, we're going to have to consider them as a regime that we could work with. And more and more, it seems to me, this is like the day after the goblins came out on everybody's doorstep last night for Halloween. It's like a Halloween scene that they're just about to pounce on us.
This is a small, poor country in a lot of trouble, that has gone into some directions that are probably going to make it a lot harder for them to get out of this trouble in one piece. I don't mean through military means. But if that regime is going to survive, it
can only survive with the tolerance and interaction and approval of their neighbors and of the international community as a whole.
I just don't think it's on, over the long haul, for it to survive as a nation that everyone disapproves of, which means part of this story is a part that they have to do and a part that we have to do as well if it's going to come out anywhere.
Anyway, that's enough of a sermon from me.
Well, John.
Q John McLaughlin. I'm a senior fellow here at SAIS.
Ken, I wonder if you could step back and reflect on how we should think about this in longer-term strategic terms. I'm playing a little off of what Don just said. Don is fond of reminding us that this is one people on this peninsula. And when we work to establish trust with the North Koreans or we do anything that represents an agreement with that regime, how should we think about it in the longer term? Are we doing that?
Should we be thinking about it as something we do with a country that we expect to be there for a while, or should we be thinking about it as something we're doing with a country that ultimately may not be there? And to what degree should we be doing all of this -- and I have a view on this -- hand in hand with the South Koreans? In other words, it seems to me the most important of these countries in the six-party framework are the South Koreans, because this is one people.
MR. QUINONES: Right.
Q So should we be doing this with a conscious strategy in mind, formed with the South, about what the longer-term condition and configuration is on that peninsula? And how does that play against the North Korean desire for recognition and for steps that reinforce that regime?
MR. QUINONES: That's a very crucial question. And I confess that when you're in North Korea, there's very little to do at night. You have to give a lot of thought to that, because I would see during the day things I could never put up with. And you become frustrated and you say, "How are we ever going to get to a point where we go beyond this unacceptable situation and move either toward reunification, reconciliation and so forth?"
I think we're going to have to start thinking now precisely about that. Change is underway on the Korean peninsula, and we're not managing that change, at least here in the United States. I think the South Koreans have gotten way out ahead of us. The so-called sunshine policy is long term.
They're not looking at specific issues now. They're not looking at the legacy of the Korean War, the Cold War. They've said, "Okay, we've got history. It's ours. Let's go into the future." And I think in the United States, the American public and many people in government haven't gotten to that point.
Secondly, the South Koreans are saying, "We need to engage this society and, through a gradual process, transform it." I was involved in a study in 2000-2001, headed by Bill Perry, and it was "How could you ever verify that the North Koreans have given up their nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and so forth?"
And the conclusion by some of the best American scientific minds was, "You will never get there. Technologically, it's impossible." Therefore, what do you do? And the conclusion is that you do the same as we have done with China and the Soviet Union. You engage them, and through a process of gradual engagement, educational exchange and so forth, you begin to transform that society.
Moscow still has weapons of mass destruction. We'll never get rid of all of them. But at least they're not as hostile, and much less dangerous now than they were just a few years ago.
China; many of us can remember when China was nothing more than Red China, communist China, a fearful red dragon ready to destroy us. They haven't changed in terms of their government. It's still despotic. They haven't given up their arsenals. But what has changed is the society, and the society is increasingly becoming more attuned
to the international community and ours. And I think that's what we're going to have to do with North Korea.
The South Koreans are already way ahead of us. And what we need to do is get on track with the South Koreans, and instead of telling them to shut down Kaesong and stop the visits into diamond mountains and so forth, is quicken the pace, intensify the engagement, and then you begin to manage the situation, both the pace of change as well as the scope and so forth. And we were doing that in the 1990s through
humanitarian aid, United Nations and so forth.
Unfortunately, we've disengaged from that. But, yes, ultimately, even if you have an agreed framework, a new version of it, I couldn't sit down and say I put my full trust in the current government in North Korea. Who knows where they might stash something away for future use or so forth?
So you're going to have to get to the point where you transform the society and you work with them rather than antagonize and work against them. We don't have any such strategy that I'm aware of here in the United States. And we would do well to look to the South Koreans for leadership in that regard.
MR. OBERDORFER: (Inaudible.)
Q Thank you for -- (inaudible) -- Doctor.
As you said, given the Bush administration --
MR. OBERDORFER: Why don't you introduce yourself?
Q (Inaudible.)
Given the Bush administration foreign policies, ideological or idealistic, as you said, how do you see -- do you see any chance or any possibility that next U.S. administration get to the realistic approach in terms of foreign policy?
MR. QUINONES: In what regard, North Korea?
Q North Korea.
MR. QUINONES: I think there's always a possibility. And I think we are seeing come together a number of factors that may well compel the administration to become more realistic in its engagement with North Korea. Iraq won't go away. It only gets worse. And it has prevented the incumbent administration from having any other options, such as a military option and so forth.
The American public wouldn't put up with a war in Northeast Asia. The South Koreans and the Chinese -- we can't afford to lose a position of leadership in East Asia and alienate those two key societies, especially South Korea.
Even the Japanese -- I'm surprised now; what you read in the papers about Abe is true. He leans toward the right wing and so forth, but the guy has a lot of sense. And he is the one who first went to Beijing and to Seoul, and he's saying, "I'm an Asian nation, Asian leader. I need to work with my Asian colleagues."
So that could also very well convince the Bush administration that they have to moderate. And I would say we're even seeing the administration admit that recently by recognizing China's contribution to (giving ?) North Korea back. Yes, I think that's a possibility. How far? How soon? That's anybody's guess.
MR. OBERDORFER: (Inaudible.)
Q (Inaudible.)
In the '90s, the nuclear issue was mainly a problem between the United States and North Korea. Now the Bush administration says it's a real problem. In reality, currently China is deeply involved and Japan is more involved in the talks. How do you see the difference? And also, in the '90s the original framework was between the United States and North Korea, and South Korea and Japan stayed outside of the negotiation table and took the bill and paid the bill. And now all countries are involved in six-party talks.
Do you see the North Korean issue as a (reunion ?) problem while also there may be problem between the United States and North Korea? And how do you see the (meaning ?) of bilateral talks between the United States and North Korea in changing circumstances?
MR. QUINONES: Well, first of all, the nuclear problem is not a bilateral problem. In the 1990s it was not a bilateral problem. One of my chores every night after negotiations was to line up so that Ambassador Gallucci could brief all of the ambassadors of all the nations you just mentioned -- Russia, China, Japan and so forth.
We coordinated daily with all those governments. They were never, never out of the first series of talks, 1993 to 1994. The only government that gave us difficulty was the Kim Young-sam government. We had terrible problems trying to coordinate. Why? He didn't want us to achieve an agreement. He wanted the United States engaged, but he wanted to be the one who made the decisions and so forth. So there was tremendous friction during that period.
With the others, even the United Nations, when we were preparing for human sanctions in May and June 1994, just as we saw, we spent many days at the United Nations consulting. The difference was we did not do it publicly as a group. We kept it on a bilateral U.S.-North Korea. But the United States actually had more than one set of negotiations. We were negotiating with the North Koreans, but we also, at the same time, were negotiating with the other nations and so forth.
I think we learned from that experience. And I think, this time around, it was not the United States that initiated the six-party talks. That was China that finally brought everybody together and said, "Good." And I think finally the United States now, only now, is beginning to recognize it cannot run the six-party talks. It cannot use China as the hammer to beat up on North Korea. It can't tell other countries what to do. The United States has to be one of several participants.
Today South Korea's position is exactly opposite of what it was in the 1990s. South Korea is pushing now for a negotiated settlement and so forth.
So I think those things are very important to get hold of. History is extremely important here. We did learn from the past, the United States, at least the State epartment and so forth, put everybody together in the same room.
In terms of U.S.-North Korea bilateral talks, you're going to have to have them. They're indispensable, just as every day we have bilateral talks in Washington, Tokyo, Seoul and so forth, between the United States and the other governments. You have to have the same type of talks with the North Koreans, just as the South Koreans almost
daily have talks with the North Koreans.
So bilateral talks are nothing special. They're just another element of this mix. And why have them? Clarification. You cannot sit down every day reading newspapers or trying to figure out what the other side says. It's better to sit together in the same room over a cup of coffee and get it direct from one another so you can report it back home. That's the purpose -- clarification and consistency of policy and so forth; the more talks by all the participants, the better.
Yes.
MR. OBERDORFER: Back in the back there. Yes.
Q Hidei Kata (ph) from Nikkei Newspapers, Japan.
I'm just curious what you have to say why North Korea has decided to return to six-party talks today instead of, for example, waiting for another two years? And secondly, you mentioned that -- (inaudible) -- have to transform their society. Can we achieve that
with the current regime in place or current type of regime with military (first ?) policy in place?
MR. QUINONES: Well, my impression is that the North Koreans decided to drop out of the six-party talks because there were no negotiations. Negotiating does not mean that you are presented with an either-or, make-a-strategic-decision type of situation. That's not negotiation. That's capitulation.
And it presented to the North Koreans a choice that was politically unrealistic for Kim Jong Il to make in Pyongyang. If he were to bow to the imperialists, as we are perceived, the Americans and the Japanese, he would lose his credibility as the leader of North Korea.
Bowing means accepting President Bush's terms; take it or leave it. That's not a negotiating position, though. So they said, "Fine, we're going to check out and we're going to proceed to do what we need to do first; take care of our national defense." And I think they made that very clear. Again, if you go through their foreign ministry statements and so forth, they've been very consistent.
In terms of transformation, you know, I guess it's relative, but when I first went to Pyongyang in December 1992, God, it was a cold, dark place. I mean, there was no oil. The Chinese had cut off the oil. That was in 1992, after the Chinese recognized the South Koreans and the North Koreans got angry with them. There was nothing in Pyongyang at that time that suggested any openness or what have you.
And then I kept going back over the years. My last trip was in 2004. And there I am at an academic conference with 75 people from around the world, and I actually sat down with members of the Academy of Social Sciences in North Korea and argued with them for three hours about that very question.
I said, "If you people want to preserve North Korea, you're going to have to change." They said, "You mean regime change." I said, "No, you're going to have to transform yourself. You're going to have to modernize, open up and so forth."
And if you look around the world, you will be amazed at how many North Koreans are in Europe, Italy, Norway, France. There are at least a thousand North Koreans now studying market economy, economics and so forth, in Europe. They're all over China. They're in Australia. They're in Kuala Lumpur at the IMF institute there, and so forth.
There is a process underway whereby they are training a cadre of officials whose primary aim is to transform North Korea and set the stage for engaging in international trade and so on. They have yet to reach a critical mass. You have European Union NGOs working frantically in Pyongyang and so forth. The United Nations Development
Program has been extremely active for 20 years retooling all of North Korea's agriculture and so on.
So a quiet transformation has been underway for a long time. When I was with Asia Foundation, we funded four North Koreans to acquire MBAs at Australian National University. I set up four legal seminars at Beijing University to train North Koreans in South Korean law. And those were all first efforts which have multiplied ever since.
There is a transformation underway, but you're not going to see it when you go to Pyongyang, though. If you go as a visitor, you won't have access. If you go there as a working person, we have to get into offices with people and so forth. That's when they'll let you see.
The Canadians, for example, have a program, English language training; Syracuse University, training computer exports; American -- (inaudible) -- service, medical science. There's an awful lot of activity. It simply doesn't get the attention.
One of the reasons is that North Koreans haven't figured out the best thing they could do is let some American journalists come in and look at this. There's a disconnect. They're doing all of this, but they won't let anybody in to see it. If they would do that, then you might have the American public beginning to change its attitude.
So, you know, hopefully Japanese journalists will be able to get in more and out -- you've got to get out of Pyongyang, because the activity is not just in Pyongyang. It's not journalists' fault; it's the North Koreans. They haven't figured out that their own activities
are their best selling point.
MR. OBERDORFER: With that (precede ?), Ken, I want to ask a couple of journalist type questions. The first one is, why do you think the North Koreans have now decided to come back to the six-party talks?
MR. QUINONES: Well, I think that's extremely complex. And we won't know for years precisely. So all I can do is add my speculation to others. There's no doubt, I think there are bits taken back by the Chinese leaders. I mean, really, the Chinese have had enough of this little upstart nation.
And my understanding is the Chinese drew the line in July and said -- look, China started the six-party-talk process. It was China's first initiative into international relations, and they're not going to allow the North Koreans to undermine it. They're not going to crush North Korea, but they're going to put it on notice. "Get back to the talks or you people are really going to have problems." I think that's a clear reason.
I think also the North Koreans now see the possibility of flexibility on the part of the Bush administration. I think, in part, that is a contribution of Chinese-South Korean jawboning, diplomacy and so forth. If there is the promise, expectation of some flexibility, some negotiating and so forth, yes. Why stay out in the cold? Why not come back, and so forth?
Finally, I would say Kim Jong Il has proven to his generals that he's as good as his dad and will stand up to the imperialists. If you notice, at the end of June everybody was saying to North Korea, "Don't launch the missiles." We should have said the exact opposite, because the more pressure you focus on Kim Jong Il not to do something, the more he's got to do it or he discredits himself.
And then along comes the nuclear test and the same exercise, and everybody focused on him and said, "Don't do it," and he did it. Why? He's got to show he's brave. He didn't fight against the Japanese like his father. He didn't fight against the Americans like his father. But now he's standing up to them. And I think, having stood up to them, now that's gotten him some flexibility within his own government.
MR. OBERDORFER: Now the second journalist type question. You stood up there and you told us about three occasions on which an agreement was made with the North Koreans to do something, and then it got fouled up, to use a colloquial expression. It didn't happen.
Well, now, how were these agreements made? You heard from the North Koreans what they wanted. Did you convey this some way at the State Department? How did these things come together in the first place?
MR. QUINONES: It's very frustrating. You know, I would go up, have lunch in New York, and they would say, "Hey, we want to get back to the six-party talks. We've got to save face. We need something." I said, "Well, what do you want?" And then they'd list it.
So I'd come back to Washington, D.C. I'd meet a friend at the State Department and I'd say, "Here, three things on the wish list. What do you think about that?" A couple of days later, I would get a response. "Okay, we can do with A and B, but throw out C."
And I'd get back on a plane, I'd go back up north and sit down. And it was not a negotiation; it was really just running, rambling discussion. And each time, I'd get a call from New York saying, "Okay, we got the green light from Pyongyang. We're ready to go back, but we need face-to-face meeting to confirm it"; in other words, get me out of the scene and bring them together.
And, yes, there was a lot of this back and forth, and what did they want and what the U.S. would put up with and so forth. And it finally came down to both, especially the U.S. side, saying, "Yeah, why don't we just go up there and sit down with these people?" And what we did was the Bush administration said, "You can have a U.S. bilateral with the North Koreans if the North Koreans say they're ready to come back to six-party talks."
So you take out the word "ready" and say, "are seriously considering." And that was good enough to set the stage for face-to- face meeting. And then once the two parties got together, bingo, Pyongyang had what it wanted.
MR. OBERDORFER: So you say, "Are you seriously considering it?" and they say, "Yes." Is that the deal?
MR. QUINONES: Yes. Yes. (Laughs.) Really, I mean, you have to dance around the words a little bit.
MR. OBERDORFER: Yes, back here, this gentleman with his hand up.
Q My name is Shinfo Zhu (ph). I'm from Shanghai -- (inaudible) -- daily.
Sir, according to your observation, what could be achieved in the next round of six-party talks? And what kind of flexibility -- if the U.S. and North Korea, both sides, show some flexibility, what kind of concessions should the U.S. and North Korea make during the next stage in order to keep the six-party talks alive? Thank you.
MR. QUINONES: Well, first of all, I think the next meeting will automatically achieve a very valuable step forward. It'll stop the spiral of escalating tensions. You can't have effective negotiations in an atmosphere of tension and reprisals and so forth. So that's -- we're not there yet, but once they get together in Beijing, good.
Secondly, all the sides, especially U.S. and North Korea, will be able to table their toughest positions. That's the beginning of negotiations. It's just like buying a car. You go in and the dealer says, "Here's my price," and it's sky high, and you tell him, "No, I'm
down here." He's at 30; you're at 20.
Again, both sides will no longer have to rely upon press reports or anything else. It'll be right there in front of them. And they'll be able to go back to their home governments and say, "Okay, where do we go from here?" That in itself is progress.
And I think then the main step forward is for everybody at the table to say, "We're going to go back and report to our government and meet on such-and-such a date. We need a specific date for the next meeting." And that alone, I think, is enough to get started again; in other words, keep our expectations low and expect a long haul, and we
won't get frustrated.
MR. OBERDORFER: Well, we've had a lot of questions and a lot of answers, and we've talked to the guy who talked to the people who talked. (Laughter.) And I don't know if you feel better for the experience or worse for the experience of having to be the man in the middle, but we have certainly learned something from your account of it.
MR. QUINONES: Thank you.
MR. OBERDORFER: Want to make a final couple of remarks?
MR. QUINONES: Just briefly, I would say I'm very, very pleased to no longer be an intermediary. It is absolutely essential that the matter be handled by governments and diplomats. It's a serious matter, and it does require full concentration and so forth. So the fact that we're on the eve of a resumption of the six-party talks, I'm very happy to see that.
I'm relieved that for a couple of years, maybe by going back and forth and chatting with people on both sides, that kind of served as a safety valve. It didn't solve anything, though. But at least, as long as you keep alive the hope that you can negotiate, then you can resolve -- reach a peaceful resolution. But once both sides shut down and you have a standoff, forget it.
And so I guess it's my sense of kind of frustration at having seen the agreed framework collapse. And then, having the chance to kind of step in again and facilitate communication, I said, "Why not?" But I'm very, very happy now to be able to go out to Japan and teach.
MR. OBERDORFER: I want to make two comments; two announcements, so to speak. One is that this is a program of the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS, an institute which was launched in September with the assistance of Assistant Secretary Chris Hill and five former ambassadors to the Republic of Korea. And we have a bunch of programs.
We have a website up, which is USKoreaInstitute.org, where you can keep up with our programs and what we're doing and reports. This one we will have within a day or two, an audio version of this meeting on the website, as we have with our previous meetings, and you could consult it. If you say, "Well he didn't say that," then --
MR. QUINONES: It's all off the record. (Laughs.)
MR. OBERDORFER: Right. It's off the record. It's all on the record, and it will all be on the website. The other thing is that in the next room we have some food. Actually, it's Korean food from a restaurant that's just opening up in Dupont Circle, a new Korean
restaurant in Washington. And we invite all of you to come and partake of it and chat with Ken. And thank you all for coming.
(Applause.) |