The North Korean Debacle  

Simona SOARE
April 18, 2009  

Despite warnings from several regional and international actors, on April 5, 2009, North Korea launched a rocket that, officially, carried on the orbit a North Korean experimental communications satellite. Pyongyang threatened that any attempt to shoot down the rocket, which was to transit Japanese and South Korean air spaces, would be considered an act of war and it would retaliate escaladating the conflict. Contradictory news about the test’s supposed results issued at once. On April 13, 2009, the Security Council of the United Nations adopted a common statement condemning the North Korean missile launch, which violated Resolution 1718 of 2006 as well as the September 2006 agreement reached within the Six-Party Talks by which Pyongyang committed to nuclear disarmament and return to the Nonproliferation Treaty. In response to the UNSC statement, the DPRK expelled IAEA as well as American inspectors from North Korea on April 16, 2009 and threatened to resume its military nuclear program and refuse further participation in the Six-Party Talks. China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the US have called upon Pyongyang to re-enlist constructive dialogue in the Six-Party Talks format. Mohamad El-Baradei declared that North Korea could reopen its nuclear (weapons-grade) facilities within months if not stopped (Reuters, AFP, Yonhap, VOA News, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, China Daily, Military Balance 2009). 

 

The North Korean nuclear disarmament process is just one of those cases in which the partners in negotiations can never truly rely on each other’s commitments and this general atmosphere of distrust leads particularly to self-fulfilling prophecies. It is nearly two years ago that I wrote the February 13, 2007 Agreement within the Six Party Talks which was hailed as the beginning of the end of tensions in the Korean Peninsula, is a reversible stage of the DPRK’s nuclear disarmament process. At that time I wrote: “There is no doubt that the July 14 [2007] shut-down of Yongbyon is a major success for the nuclear disarmament process. […] However, we should all keep in mind the fact that these procedures are not irreversible and any stalling in the disarmament process or any significant rollback of the progress made so far could prompt Pyongyang to reactivate [its military nuclear process and facilities]. […] in spite of the success achieved with the shutting down of Yongbyon much attention should be paid to the fact that this process is neither irreversible, nor definitive; but rather its overall success depends upon further implementing similar steps in the near future” (www.csis.ro). 

 

North Korea continues to use a very aggressive stance as legitimating self-defense even under circumstance when, by all accounts, there are no objective reasons to suspect partners in the Six-Party Talks are breaking with their commitments. In this case, North Korea willingly and knowingly broke with its commitments and is now using the strong response it got from the international community as a means of seeking a way out of those very commitments. The February 13, 2007, the September 19, 2006 Agreements, both signed by North Korea, explicitly prohibit Pyongyang to continue to develop military components of its nuclear cycle, to further research and actual building of nuclear warheads and to build and test nuclear vectors (namely, missiles).

 

Of course, it is easy to just point fingers and say: the North Koreans are guilty! They are the bad guys! If only it were that simple. Under circumstances of long-lasting, protracted conflicts such as the case of the Korean Peninsula and the North Korean military nuclear program there is a great degree of inertia that works in favor of perpetuating the conflict rather than decreasing tensions and constructively working out definitive, lasting solutions. First of all, the parties in the conflict tend to distrust each other as a result of the incompatible and inimical interests they develop. Moreover, this deep distrust further builds mutual expectations, usually based on the worst-case scenario, that tend to reinforce each other in time. Under these circumstances, the tendency to personalize every move of one’s opponent is high and thus even behavior that is not particularly threatening or directed at one’s opponent may be interpreted by the latter as hostile – and thus may confirm and reinforce his expectations. In response to his hostility, the other opponents will also tend to adopt much more rigid postures, either political or military, and thus the spiral of distrust and tension continues to build until armed hostilities break out.

 

This process seems like a one-way street, one with conditional access. Once they go down this road, the longer it lasts, the more difficult it is to turn the process around. Relapses are common and they are usually a part of a cyclical development of relations between the rival parties. The North Korean nuclear disarmament is a classical example of the type of behavior of involved parties I have described above.
 

The Six-Party Talks are stalling since August 2008 when the parties could not agree on the specific means to verify North Korea’s past nuclear activities; moreover, the DPRK’s stance become much more rigid after rumors that its leader King Jong Il was medically incapacitated. After the US agreed to take North Korea off the terrorism-sponsor states list in September 2008, North Korea agreed to resume cooperation with international monitors and observers, which can hardly be hailed as even moderate success. Pyongyang protested vehemently and claimed the international community is accusing it unfairly of testing aggressive weapons, in violation of its international commitments. The rocket it tested on April 5, 2009, according to the North Korean authorities, was carrying an experimental communications satellite into space, a part of Pyongyang’s peaceful, non-military space programme.

At a closer look though, information just simply doesn’t add up. North Korea declared its test a success, with the satellite safely entering the orbit just nine minutes after launch; however, American, Russian, South Korean and other European space agencies announced nothing entered the orbit, no new satellite. Moreover, the US Space Agency declared the test a failure and suggested the North Korean “satellite” was safely resting on the bottom of the ocean. Hence, either the test was a failure – which North Korea would not acknowledge publicly since this would greatly infringe upon the deterrent capability it is seeking to build – or they really didn’t launch a satellite but a long-range ballistic missile – in which case the evidence about the success of the test is much more conclusive:  “Stage one of the missile fell into the Sea of Japan," the statement said. "The remaining stages along with the payload itself landed in the Pacific Ocean. No object entered orbit and no debris fell on Japan” (NORAD).

This type of behavior for North Korea may seem to break with the pattern I have described above. However, this is not the case. Though there did not seem to be any threats that North Korea was responding to by testing the long-range ballistic missile, it is quite clear that Pyongyang feels the stalled Six-Party Talks are offering it a window of opportunity which if exploited correctly could help put Pyongyang in a completely new posture of force in the regional arena. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear as we see the entire process unfolding in time that such tense stages of negotiations are also brought about by one of the rivals’ increased sense of vulnerability and domestic weakness. Under these circumstances, we could interpret the April 5, 2009 test of a long-range missile as a part of a cycle determined by rumors concerning North Korea’s domestic vulnerability and weakness in a period of deep financial-economic crisis and of medical incapacity of its supreme leader, which further determined a more rigid stance by Pyongyang in an attempt to prove its conventional deterrent is just as credible as ever. Over the past six months North Korea tested several short-range ballistic missiles into the Yellow Sea. The April 5 test could be an instance of this string of tests. Under these circumstances, the DPRK need not admit publicly it truly was a missile test since the message is just as strong to regional and international political decision-makers. However, combined with the threats to withdraw from the Six-Party Talks, which are just threats, common in times of tensioning of relations, and to restart its nuclear facilities, the message North Korea is trying to send across seems to transcend the message it was seeking to send by testing short-range ballistic missiles. If in previous months the DPRK was trying to prove to the international community that it retains a credible conventional deterrent, by the April 5, 2009 test it is suggesting it possesses the capability to transform it into a credible and noteworthy nuclear one.       

 

This is, however, true only at a purely symbolic level. If North Korea truly tested a long-range ballistic missile (as it apparently is the case according to American, Japanese, South Korean declarations), capable of reaching Alaska and even beyond, this would mean simply a paper success for Pyongyang. On the one hand, North Korea only possesses one type of nuclear vectors: ballistic missiles – to be more exact, short and mid-range ones tested successfully and versions of Taepodong 2 long-range missiles, one military-able and one apparently developed for satellite placing on orbit (www.fas.org/nuke/dprk/missiles). All of these vectors are launched off ground-based launching pads which makes them highly vulnerable to being shot down before they reach their targets, because they are more easily monitored – hence a surprise attack to make up for the limited arsenal is out of the question. Moreover, none of these vectors is a MIRV, which makes them even more vulnerable because it gives the defender a series of possibilities to shoot them down either before they enter the atmosphere, or on their return path (an option which is not possible in the case of MIRVs). On the other hand, the US has installed missile defense systems in both Alaska and California meant to intercept any incoming missile (conventional or nuclear-payload alike) likely to reach American mainland. Also, US sea-based missile defense systems are also dispatched in the China Sea and in Japan. The probability of North Korean missiles bypassing this ring-shaped defense system is needless to say very small – particularly in the nuclear field where North Korea is suspected to have less than 8 nuclear warheads. Last, but not least, if indeed North Korea is seeking to prove a credible nuclear deterrent by testing a nuclear-able long-range missile, this brings it no more success either. Whether the Taepodong 2 missile can successfully accommodate a nuclear warhead is doubtful. Designed on the model of the Shahab 5 Iranian missile and the SS-5 Russian missile which both have payloads of over 3000 lbs, the Taepodong 2 missile can carry a payload nearly three times smaller, suitable for a conventional payload, but doubtful whether it can accommodate a nuclear one.