North Korea is facing international condemnation after conducting a nuclear test Wednesday. North Korea claims it successfully tested a hydrogen nuclear device for the first time, but U.S. and international experts have voiced doubts over the claim. Seismic data shows Wednesday’s test was likely smaller than North Korea’s last nuclear test in 2013. North Korean state media described the action as an act of self-defense against aggressors. But the international community has widely condemned North Korea. The U.N. Security Council held an emergency two-hour meeting Wednesday. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described North Korea’s action as “profoundly destabilizing.”
China condemned North Korea’s nuclear test and called for a resumption of the six-party disarmament talks, which broke down in 2009.
Christine Ahn talking:
We will not get independently verified assessments of whether North Korea did succeed in a hydrogen bomb, and, as you noted, there are lots of skepticism about whether they did in fact achieve in building and testing a hydrogen bomb. What I think this signals, more than anything, what we do know for certain, is that this is a complete failure of the Obama administration’s strategic patience, which has really been just about waiting and seeing, and waiting for the North Korean regime to collapse.
And what it’s really important for our listeners and the U.S. audience to understand is that North Korea did this test as a direct message to the United States, that they want to—I mean, it’s a really bizarre way to extend a message, but they are unable to get the U.S.’s attention any other way. And they want to sit down and have talks.
And what’s important to understand is that this is in the context of an unended state of war. You know, the 1950-to-’53 Korean War never ended. It ended with a ceasefire. And the signatories to that armistice agreement, which includes the United States, on behalf of the United Nations Command—that included South Korea—China and North Korea. And they promised, within 90 days, to return to sign a peace deal. And 63 years later, that has never happened. And I think that that is at the root cause of why there is this nuclear crisis, why there is militarization on the Korean Peninsula, why there is repression on both sides of the DMZ. We have to see it through the framework of an unended Korean War.
I think it would look like what the terms of the armistice agreement outlined, which is, one, no new weapons on the Korean Peninsula; that there is a peace deal that ensures the sovereignty, that guarantees a non-aggression pact; in the case between DPRK and U.S. relations, that the U.S. lifts economic sanctions against that country; that there are normalized relations; that, you know, they discuss the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, which there are currently 28,000 troops still on the Korean Peninsula in South Korea; that there are no more new military games, that are conducted regularly between the U.S. and South Korea. And I think that, you know, to really see a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, we have to have a Korean Peninsula that is free of war.
And I think it’s really important to note the history of the introduction of nuclear weapons onto the Korean Peninsula. For one, 53 years ago—I’m sorry, 63 years ago, on January 7th, the U.S. announced that they had succeeded in producing a hydrogen bomb. I think that tells us a few things. One, it was conducted and tested during the Korean War. We know that Truman had considered dropping atomic bombs on the Korean Peninsula during the Korean War. And we know that the Korean War was a brutal, brutal war. But the point is that it was the U.S. in 1958 that first introduced nuclear weapons onto the Korean Peninsula. They had it in South Korea until 1991, with the—until the disintegration of the Soviet Union. And North Korea is the one that had appealed to the United States and to the international community—which fell upon deaf ears—that the Korean Peninsula should be free of nuclear weapons. And so, you know, they didn’t really begin to pursue nuclear weapons until the Soviet umbrella, nuclear umbrella, was no longer there.
So then there was, you know, the potential preemptive strike during the Clinton administration, that ultimately, you know, from that crisis led to the agreed framework, where North Korea had agreed to freeze its nuclear program and, in exchange, that the U.S. provide light water reactors and fuel, and that, you know, there was the prospect of—and at the end of the Clinton administration, there was the prospect of finally signing a non-aggression pact. And unfortunately, that was foiled with the Al Gore-George Bush debacle. And then we know the recent history with the Bush administration, in which North Korea landed on the list of “axis of evil.” And North Korea then watched how the U.S. militarily invaded and occupied Iraq, what it did in Afghanistan and what it did to Libya.
And so, I think that, you know, to say that North Korea is pursuing a nuclear weapons program for self-defense isn’t a far cry. And, you know, there are experts all over Washington, D.C., and also in Seoul, including Seok-hyun Hong, who is the CEO of the JoongAng Ilbo Group, which is the largest media conglomerate in South Korea, that said, “Let’s delink regime change with the nuclear talks.” And I think that we will get a genuine response from North Korea if we could do that.
Joseph Cirincione talking:
let me talk about the test first and then the reaction that you’re seeing to it. From the beginning, it was pretty clear that this was not a hydrogen bomb test, despite the claim of Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea. The seismic signature was just too small. And we know this, because we have an international organization, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, that has ringed the world with seismic monitors, acoustical monitors, atmospheric sensors, that can detect any test anywhere in the world. And this registered at around six kilotons. That’s about half the size of the Hiroshima bomb and nothing close to what you would expect from a hydrogen bomb. The reason you’re worried about this is that a hydrogen bomb can be a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima-type devices. So even a handful of hydrogen bombs in North Korean hands would pose a huge threat, specifically to South Korea and Japan, and other countries if they developed longer-range delivery systems, which they don’t now have. But—so we’re pretty confident at what they failed, if there was even an attempt at a hydrogen bomb test.
But the other significance is that they’re still trying. This is their fourth test. They got the bomb under George W. Bush, so the Bush policy to stop North Korea failed. But they continued to keep the bomb under the Obama administration, so the Obama administration plan to stop North Korea from getting a bomb failed. This is a clear violation of an international norm that we’ve had, that nobody test nuclear weapons. No one else in the world has tested a bomb since 1998.
What do we do about this kind of thing? I think the answers that you’re getting from people like The Wall Street Journal—here’s their fear-mongering editorial in today’s paper—a new proliferation age—and The Washington Post is that the only answer is regime change, that this shows that the only way to deal with this problem is what they proposed with Iraq, that you have to go in and physically, militarily overthrow the regime. Nonsense.
There is a way out of this. And although they didn’t test a hydrogen bomb, the shock that North Korea produced in the international system from their claim may be enough to finally jolt the two powers that can actually do something about this into action: China, which has the most ability to put pressure on North Korea, and the United States, which has the set of incentives that North Korea actually wants. It may jolt China and the United States to finally cooperate in a realistic and sincere effort to once again get North Korea back to the negotiating table, drop the preconditions the U.S. has set on these talks, get North Korea to drop its preconditions, and put together the kind of combination of pressures and incentives we saw work so well with Iran. Remember, when we started talking with Iran, that was a pipe dream. People said it was impossible, we could never get them to stop. Well, Iran is dismantling its nuclear program today, as we speak. You can do the same with North Korea, if you have a determined and focused global effort. It’s not just the United States. It requires a collaboration.
so what you see in some of these countries—and this is a typical right-wing reaction—the conservative elements in South Korea and Japan use this to scare their populations to do an agenda they already want. So South Korean politicians are saying it’s time for South Korea to get nuclear weapons. You hear similar echoes in Japan. And so—and that ripples around in the United States, where, as I say, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post are saying it’s time to get tough, it shows that we have to have more weapons, more military action, not less.
China is upset about this. China doesn’t mind having North Korea being a stick in the eye to South Korea and Japan and the United States, but they don’t want it upsetting its border regions. China has much bigger problems. Look what happened to the stock market today. They want an extended period of peace and stability in the region so they can grow economically. They may be willing to clamp down more on North Korea to try to rein them in, but they don’t want to do that to such an extent that it destabilizes the regime. They don’t want a nuclear-armed North Korea, but what they want less is a destabilized or collapsed nuclear-armed North Korea. So they’re trying to thread the needle there.
I think there’s a role for the United States to play here with some of our other close allies, with South Korea, with Japan, to get talks going again. The lesson we have learned from the past few years—and I think your other guest will agree with me—as we learned from the Clinton years, is when you talk to North Korea, you constrain the program. We stopped the bomb program for eight years with the Clinton plan, with the agreed framework. It’s when you don’t talk to them that they start building, they start testing, they start firing missiles. You can’t make the mistake that Michael Douglas made in Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close, thinking that you can walk away from this problem. Like Glenn Close, North Korea will not be ignored.
Christine Ahn talking:
And the one other thing that I think it’s important to put into geopolitical context is the U.S. Pacific pivot to Asia. And although China may consider North Korea to be a thorn in its side, they also would—they are also very concerned about the pivot to Asia, in which, you know, by 2020—which is in four years—the U.S. will have 60 percent of its air force and naval capacity in the Asia-Pacific, and in an effort to contain China. And so, North Korea plays a very convenient bogeyman to justify greater militarization in the region.
And, you know, the recent bilateral deal that recently took place between South Korea and Japan, I think, is alarming to both North Korea and to China, that these Cold War lines are being drawn again, and that, you know, the U.S. needs Japan and South Korea—you know, the unsinkable ship that they call Japan, and, you know, the beachhead that they call South Korea—in its effort to contain a rising China. And so, you know, the timing of North Korea’s test, I’m sure, has something to do with that, as they see the U.S. galvanizing its allies in its military buildup against its Cold War enemies.
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Christine Ahn
founder and executive director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War.
Joseph Cirincione
president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. He is the author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It is Too Late and Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.
— source democracynow.org