China Gets Tough on North Korea

North Korea's best friend -- if the hermetic, authoritarian, communist state can be said to have any friends -- is giving it the cold shoulder. Bloomberg reports that China will, for the first time, agree to punish North Korean leaders in retaliation for Pyongyang's refusal to accept United Nations resolutions on nuclear tests and missile launches.

China has long defended North Korea, perhaps less out of ideological comradeship than out of what is believed to be a desire to keep a unified and likely pro-Western Korea off its borders. But that loyalty has cost the leadership in Beijing. "The failure to develop a consensus in the Chinese capital to use its leverage over North Korea has permitted [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong Il to repeatedly defy Beijing and the embarrass it," Gordon G. Chang told The Commonwealth Club on May 25, 2007. [Listen to audio of Chang's speech.]

Chang, author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World and columnist for Forbes.com, urged the West to make nuclear proliferation "a litmus test of our relations" with China. "The West has been patiently engaging the Chinese for decades, and now it's time for them to act responsibly."

So what has changed in Beijing? Some observers say that North Korea's recent nuclear detonations and missile tests, reportedly designed to bolster at-home support for Kim Jong Il's youngest son and chosen successor, embarrassed China so much it had to take action. But Leif-Eric Easley writes in the Christian Science Monitor that China's rapid development has led it to diverge from North Korea, its economic model taking it closer to Japan, the United States, and South Korea than to North Korea.

Whatever the reason, China's most recent move to help punish its client state is likely to have significant impact in Pyongyang.

What Does North Korea Want?

North Korea has an uncanny ability to shape its geopolitical reality despite the weak hand it's dealt itself, noted author and Korea expert Gordon G. Chang during a Commonwealth Club speech May 25, 2007: "[The U.S. is] the strongest nation in history. North Korea is one of the most destitute states. Yet for more than five decades, the regime run by the Kim family has outmaneuvered us at almost every turn. The situation is even more peculiar than that, because North Korea is not only outmaneuvering us; it's outsmarting the rest of the world." [Listen to entire program.]

Global attention is once again focusing on North Korea amid reports that Pyongyang is preparing a long-range missile test sometime around July 4. As a result, additional protections have been ordered for Hawaii in the event a missile is launched. While North Korea denies it is threatening the United States, the North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun stated, “As long as our country has become a nuclear power, the U.S. should take a correct look at whom it is dealing with.”

In an interview with CBS News’ Harry Smith, President Barack Obama said he did not want to “speculate on hypotheticals.” But at the same time, Obama stated, “This administration – and our military -- is fully prepared for any contingencies.”

Meanwhile, North Korea also claimed last week that Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two U.S. journalists who had been sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp, admitted entering the country illegally in order to slander the country’s human rights record. There are no independent accounts of exactly where the journalists were captured, and the U.S. has asked for the release of the two women. However, many speculate that the journalists are being used as bargaining chips by North Korea against the United States.

As we near the possible launch of the missile toward Hawaii and we await an outcome of the prisoner saga, it might be a good time to dig a bit deeper into Korean politics, culture, and history. In recent years and months, The Club has hosted many programs concerning North Korea, featuring experts from a variety of viewpoints. Several of these discussions were moderated by Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy, who served as U.S. Special Coordinator for Cooperative Threat Reduction and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the 1990s. To view these programs, visit our video partners at Fora.tv.

--Commonwealth Club Media and Public Relations Department

North Korea's Nuclear Test may be Obama's First Challenge

North Korea's detonation of a nuclear bomb in the mountains near the Chinese border may be the initial foreign test Vice President Joe Biden infamously foresaw earlier this year. Last March, New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent told the Commonwealth Club that an administration's first crisis may not portend disaster. Sanger noted the Bush Administration's successful responses to the China EP-3 controversy when an American fighter jet collided with a Chinese jet over Hainan Island, and the handling of the post-9/11 up until the invasion of Iraq.

Sanger believed that an international incident including North Korea would likely be early in President Obama's first term and an unfortunate leftover from the previous administration's foreign policy regarding the communist nation.

"North Korea, to my mind, was probably the single biggest failure of diplomacy of the Bush Administration -- not that they didn't try in the second term -- but if you look at the moments when the North Koreans got their nuclear fuel, it was January, February and March of 2003, just as we were heading to Kuwait and up into Iraq," said Sanger, "That was the moment they picked, in full view of our satellites. I suspect North Korea could end up, just because it wants the attention, to be one of the early crisis."

The size of the nuclear bomb is unclear, although seismic readings suggest a blast one-quarter the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. To exacerbate international outrage over the test, it was reported that the North Koreans launched three short-range missiles, and some reports suggest the regime of Kim Jong Il is showing strength in the face of his waning health and uncertainty over who will succeed him.

Some experts are suggesting that the response to a nuclear test by North Korea seems to have hit the Obama Administration flat-footed.“As much as they understood this was going to be an issue, they weren’t ready for a nuclear test in May,” an expert on North Korea told the New York Times. “They’re in a situation now where they have to contain and manage a crisis.”

How the president handles the situation will likely give the Iranians -- who are also believed to be actively pursuing the development of nuclear weapons -- an indication of how the administration will play its cards, yet each scenario has it differences. While Iran is believed to be seeking nuclear protection from a strike by either Israel or the U.S., some believe that North Korea has always used the procurement of nuclear weapons, in simplistic terms, to draw the attention of the Western world. Wendy Sherman, a policymaker in the Clinton administration, said succinctly, “The North Korean leadership cares about internal matters, not external matters. They care about external matters only insofar as it helps ensure the survival of the regime.”

For some important background on North Korea's nuclear ambitions, watch this May 25, 2007, video from the Commonwealth Club speech by Gordon C. Chang, author of "Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World."