Daily Times Editorial Feb 14, 2013

North Korea’s nuclear test The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, known in common parlance as North Korea, has just carried out its third nuclear test. The development has raised a storm of protest across the world. The UN Security Council (UNSC) has convened to discuss the issue. Condemnations of the test have flown thick and fast, including from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the five permanent members of the UNSC -- the US, UK, France, Russia and China – India, and a host of others. Pakistan has diplomatically expressed its regret at the test without going so far as to join the chorus of condemnation. The UNSC is attempting to widen and deepen the sanctions already in place on North Korea because of its previous two tests in 2006 and 2009, as well as its launch of a satellite into space in December last year. The international chorus characterises North Korea as a rogue state that flies in the face of the world’s opinion and concerns. But this may be partly a self-serving argument. The Korean Peninsula is one of the last frontlines left over from the Cold War. The 1950-53 Korean War ended not in peace but in an armistice that has frozen the divide between South and North Korea. While the latter has lost its erstwhile supporter the Soviet Union (post-Soviet Russia is hardly a substitute) and has an increasingly uneasy relationship with its sole remaining ally China, South Korea not only enjoys the support of the west and Japan, with US troops still stationed on its soil 60 years after the Korean conflict ended in a cold peace, it can boast a security cordon in which the US-led west would fly to its rescue were there to be a resurgence of conflict with North Korea. Pyongyang, on the other hand, isolated internationally (with the exception of Beijing), feeling itself constantly under threat and insecure, feels it has no alternative except to take a belligerent and defiant stance, especially when from time to time it feels threatened by the alliance of the US, South Korea and Japan, and knows that it has only itself to rely on in the event of hostilities. If the pattern of behaviour of North Korea in the face of international isolation, sanctions and threats is taken into account, some home truths become evident. North Korea needs not threats, but balm on its wounds from the past and its threat perception about the present and future. That is why there is much weight in the argument that the Framework Agreement of 1994 should be revisited for a fresh approach to what is increasingly becoming a dead end of confrontation alone. To remind our readers, the Framework Agreement of 1994 was former US president Bill Clinton’s diplomatic engagement with North Korea to find a way out of the confrontational mode in which North Korea’s relations with the rest of the world appeared frozen, and which arguably led an insecure Pyongyang down the path of increasingly sophisticated missile and rocket development (for a lethal delivery system) and nuclear weapons, which this third test indicates are now at the stage of miniaturisation with added potency, an achievement that may allow North Korea to mount nuclear warheads on its rockets and missiles. The 1994 agreement offered North Korea peaceful nuclear technology in exchange for abandoning the quest for nuclear weapons, and held the promise of diplomatic engagement to provide aid to the struggling North Korean economy. It further held out the promise of a peaceful resolution through political engagement of the long standing confrontation on the Korean Peninsula. Sanctions against North Korea have not worked, and arguably have helped harden Pyongyang’s defiant stance. Perhaps a new, or rather return to an old, diplomatic initiative may serve better. Admittedly, given the mutual distrust and suspicion between North Korea and the west and its allies, this is no easy task, as the interlocutors of the group of six countries attempting a negotiated peaceful settlement of the Korean question have found over many futile years. But that should not be an argument for refraining from a return to diplomatic and political engagement that reassures Pyongyang about its security, gently nudges it in the direction of becoming a member of the world community, and helps it overcome its difficulties through trade and aid. The bottom line is, difficult as it is, this is the only reasonable way forward for peace and tranquillity to return to the Korean theatre.