The year 2000 so far has been a remarkable year for many people, most of all the Koreans. At the inter-Korea summit in June leaders of North and South Korea met and shook hands for the first time since the end of the Korean War. The follow-up agreements and measures yielded more hope for long-waiting peace and rapprochement in the Korean Peninsula. Just last Friday, President of South Korea Kim Dae-jung was awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to democracy, human rights and conciliatory efforts towards North Korea. Earlier this year, North Korea, under the shadow of disastrous famines and collapsing economy, started to reach out and establish diplomatic relations with Italy (the first G7 country to normalize ties with North Korea) and Australia in January and May respectively, and is turning to the EU and nine European countries including Britain, Germany, and Spain for diplomatic recognition. Also in May, North Korea formally applied to enter the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) -- hitherto the only organization involving a large number of Asia Pacific countries and discussing Asian security issues regularly -- and received positive responses from other members. Yet this is not the end of the list. From 20-21 October, South Korea is hosting the third Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Seoul, where heads of state and government and senior officials from some 10 Asian countries: ASEAN's members (Burma, Laos and Cambodia are not yet members of ASEM) plus Japan, South Korea, China, and 15 European Union (EU) members and the European Commission get together to address issues of mutual concern. Basking in the international glory of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Kim is determined to put the issue of North Korea on top of the agenda. The Korean Peninsula remains one of the flashpoints in the post Cold War period. Half a century of separation, ideological and military confrontation makes the rapprochement process a daunting task. Therefore, a brief review of history seems timely and useful to help one better understand its background, and realize that there is only a fine line between peace and war.
Between 1991-1992, in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were some positive developments in the Korean Peninsula. The US, for example, removed nuclear weapons and cancelled the annual Team Spirit military exercises.
North Korea signed an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement and the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, Exchanges, and Cooperation with South Korea (the South-North Basic Agreement) and the Joint Declaration on Denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. However, IAEA's inspections in 1992 brought about suspicion that North Korea might have extracted plutonium from its Russian-type graphite reactors for an underground nuclear development programme.
In response to international condemnation and criticism by the IAEA, in March 1993 North Korea suspended its NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) membership, which it signed in 1985. By the end of 1993, the situation on the Korean Peninsula became so tense that there was real danger of direct military confrontation. Fortunately, a visit by former US President Jimmy Carter to North Korea in June 1994 succeeded in averting the crisis by forestalling the imposition of economic sanctions, and a negotiated solution, known as the Agreed Framework, was eventually agreed upon on 21 October 1994 in Geneva between the US and North Korea.
Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea undertook to freeze and eventually dismantle its national nuclear program. In return, the US, acting in concert with South Korea and Japan, committed itself to organize an international consortium to finance and build two light water reactors (LWRs) in North Korea by 2003 at an estimated cost of US$4.6 billion.
In addition, 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) would be delivered to the North annually in the interim period until the first new reactor begins operating. To implement the terms of the Agreed Framework, Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO, 朝鮮半島能源發展組織) was established on 9 March 1995 in New York. While the nuclear crisis was the direct background against which KEDO was established, KEDO in effect represents one strand of new thinking in the US-multilateralism and the so-called `soft-landing' approach. The latter refers to an approach, formulated since the mid-1990s, to engage North Korea economically and diplomatically, so as to prevent the immediate collapse of the North Korean economy and regime, and gradually to integrate it into the Northeast Asian community, and thereby lessen its security threat. In addition to KEDO, other elements of the policy included talks between the US and North Korea to halt the latter's suspected export of ballistic missile technology to the Middle East, the Four-Party (the US, South and North Korea, the PRC), talk since April 1996, and the humanitarian aid to North Korea. This in a way reflected the new and broader strategies that the US has adopted for Asia and elsewhere in faced with security issues in the post-Cold War period. As part of the US Department of State's `soft-landing' approach as attempts to resolve North Korea security threats, KEDO therefore contains broader regional and global significance and implications.
Nuclear non-proliferation per se was not only one of the major threats to the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia, but clearly of global security and strategic concern, with wide-ranging implications in the post-Cold War era. The construction of the LWRs would directly involve contacts and cooperation between South and North Korea, and reduce the North's international isolation.
Since KEDO's inception in 1995, its contribution to the stability of the Korean Peninsula has received increasing confirmation. For example, Professor Young Whan Kihl at Department of Political Science of Iowa State University wrote in 1997 that "the Agreed Framework and KEDO have become more than simply a nuclear accord, but a central arm of the US Clinton Administration's North Korea policy and the cornerstone of confidence building in Northeast Asia." Moreover, it is suggested that KEDO represents an innovative institutional experiment in international diplomacy, and has become "an important feature of the political landscape of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia." It offers an important mechanism for coordinating and harmonizing major countries' interests and policies, which may not always be identical and is a test case for US-South Korea-Japan trilateral cooperative relations with regard to the Korean Peninsula. The `pragmatic multi-lateralism' of KEDO in dealing with North Korea's nuclear issue, as KEDO's first Executive Director Stephen Bosworth termed it in an interview in 1997, seems to have borne some fruits as its membership and supporters extend region-wide and beyond. As of September 1999, besides the four Executives members of the US, South Korea, Japan and the EU (represented by Euratom-European Atomic Energy Community-and formally joined KEDO in September 1997), KEDO's members include Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Speaking at the G8 Summit in Okinawa on July 22, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia would join KEDO, a move favored by North Korea and backed by Japan and the US. Kyodo News Agency reported on August 7 that a Russian official from Ministry of Nuclear Energ said that when joining KEDO, Russia is willing to offer its light-water reactors for KEDO, which are cheaper than those designed by South Korea.
Taiwan had also expressed interests in participate in KEDO. On his trip to China on October 14-19 1998, Koo Chen-fu (
But that was rejected out of hand by Qian, and not supported by Japan and the US either. Though not directly involved in the operation of KEDO, the weighty influence of China in the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia in general makes repercussions on Taiwan's participation the last thing the countries concerned would like to see.
Though behind the original schedule and suffering from a chronic shortage of funds, KEDO's model as an innovative, international framework to address the problem of proliferation has been well acclaimed. One idea was to test whether the Euratom model could be successfully adapted to East Asian circumstances (ie: ASIATOM). Furthermore, the multilateral approach in KEDO has helped to inspire the sub-regional multilateral security framework, eg, the Northeast Asia Security Dialogue (NEASED), designed to be an instrument of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) in the region, in the form of a mini-OSCE involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan, for the area.
In addition to its political and strategic purposes and implications, Bradley O. Babson, Senior Advisor to the World Bank, spoke in late September on the seminar "KEDO at Five" in New York that to make KEDO `the center of international support to rehabilitate and make economically efficient the whole of the energy sector,' it is desirable and practical to `expand KEDO's mandate and resources and increase its coordination with other players in North Korea's energy sector and overall economic management.' This will also improve the overall economic conditions for North Korea to join the international financial institutions, including World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Wu Pei-shih (吳珮詩) is an editorial assistant for the Taipei Times. Part two of this series concludes tomorrow.
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