The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future

574 Pages·2012·10.11 MB·English

by  Victor Cha

THE
IMPOSSIBLE
STATE
NORTH KOREA,
PAST AND FUTURE
VICTOR CHA
Dedication
For my mother, Soon Ock, and my wife, Hyun Jung
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
A Note on the Korean Text
Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Chapter One - Contradictions
Chapter Two - The Best Days
Chapter Three - All in the Family
Chapter Four - Five Bad Decisions
Chapter Five - The Worst Place on Earth
Chapter Six - The Logic of Deterrence
Chapter Seven - Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible Dismantlement
(CVID)
Chapter Eight - Neighbors
Chapter Nine - Approaching Unification
Chapter Ten - The End Is Near
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Photo Section
About the Author
Also by Victor Cha
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
A Note on the Korean Text
Romanization of the Korean language has long suffered from a lack of a single,
agreed-upon standard for spelling, which is why you will variously see “Kim
Jong Il,” “Kim Jong-Il,” “Kim Jong-il,” and “Kim Chŏng-il” in the press and
academic publications. The book at hand uses something of a mishmash of
different standardized Romanization techniques. For names and places that will
be familiar to many readers, such as “Kim Il-sung,” “Kim Dae-jung,” and
“Pyongyang,” Revised Romanization is used. For names of people and places
less familiar to the casual observer, McCune-Reischauer Romanization is used.
And for those who aren’t acquainted with Korean, Chinese, or Japanese names,
it bears pointing out that in nearly all cases (with the exception of a few, whose
names are widely known and/or used in the reverse order, such as Syngman
Rhee), Korean, Chinese, and Japanese names are written in their traditional
order, with the surname first and the given name last.
Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations
BDA Banco Delta Asia
BTWC Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CMEA Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon)
CSIS Center for Strategic and International Studies
CWC Chemical Weapons Convention
DMZ Demilitarized Zone
DNI Director of National Intelligence (U.S.)
DPJ Democratic Party of Japan
DPMO Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office
DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)
EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone
EIU Economist Intelligence Unit
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization (U.N.)
FDR Flight Data Recorder
FROG Free-Rocket-Over-Ground
GDR German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
HEU Highly Enriched Uranium
HFO Heavy Fuel Oil
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
ICAO International Civil Aviation Organization
ICBM Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
ICC International Criminal Court
IED Improvised Explosive Device
IOC International Olympic Committee
JFA Joint Field Activity
JRA Japanese Red Army
JSP Japan Socialist Party
KAL Korean Air Lines
KCIA Korean Central Intelligence Agency (South)
KCNA Korean Central News Agency (North)
KDI Korea Development Institute (South)
KEDO Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization
KINU Korea Institute for National Unification (South)
KOTRA Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (South)
KPA Korean People’s Army (North)
KWP Korean Workers’ Party (North)
LDP Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)
LWR Light-Water Reactor
MAC Military Armistice Commission
MTCR Missile Technology Control Regime
NAM Non-Aligned Movement
NBA National Basketball Association
NCAFP National Committee on American Foreign Policy
NDC National Defense Commission (North Korea)
NEACD Northeast Asian Cooperation Dialogue
NPT Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty
NSA National Security Agency (North Korea)
NSC National Security Council (U.S.)
NWFZ Nuclear Weapons–Free Zone
ODA Official Development Assistance
OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
POW/MIA Prisoners of War/Missing in Action
PUST Pyongyang University of Science and Technology
PRC People’s Republic of China
PSI Proliferation Security Initiative
ROK Republic of Korea (South Korea)
SAM Surface-to-Air Missile
SDF Self-Defense Forces (Japan)
SEZ Special Economic Zone
STU Secure Telephone Unit
TD-I Taep’odong-I
TD-II Taep’odong-II
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNSCR United Nations Security Council Resolution
USAID United States Agency for International Development
WHO World Health Organization
WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction
Chapter One
Contradictions
W
e passed over barren and gray fields as the gulfstream vi touched down on
the empty runway of the airport. As the plane taxied on the tarmac, there was no
flight traffic to be seen. No baggage carts or fuel trucks shuttling about. It looked
as though we were the only arrival or departure of the day. We cruised past two
passenger planes with propeller engines, the kind you would see in a 1940s
Humphrey Bogart movie. Then the plane turned right and the main terminal
came into view, a small 1960s-era building about one-tenth the size of today’s
international air terminals. Scrawled across the top of the edifice with large, red
block letters was pyongyang, written in English and in Han’gŭl (Korean
characters). Hanging atop the center of the Sunan international air terminal’s
façade was an oversize portrait of the first leader of the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea), Kim Il-sung.
We prepared to deplane into the cool spring air, after the long flight from
Elmendorf Air Base in Alaska. It was dusk with an orange glow to the sky, and it
was eerily silent: no street sounds, no car horns, no birds. We disembarked one
by one, following established security protocol, while two security officers,
known as “ravens,” checked each of our names off the passenger manifest. The
ravens then escorted us to a receiving party of North Korean airport staff and
foreign ministry officials, who were standing on the tarmac in front of the Kim
Il-sung portrait. It was at that point that our security detail turned around and
headed back to the plane. I blurted out, “Hey, aren’t you guys coming with us?”
The agent, looking puzzled at my naive question through his dark sunglasses,
responded, “No sir, we stay with the plane. Too much sensitive comms
equipment aboard to stay overnight in enemy territory. We will transport
southbound to Osan [air base in South Korea]. See you on the other side in a few
days, sir.” The Gulfstream VI was a military plane that the White House
provided at the request of New Mexico’s then-governor Bill Richardson who had
pressed the George W. Bush administration to allow him to visit North Korea.
The plane was capable of confidential communications (and probably a whole
host of other things I was unaware of). I then remembered that the ravens, who
were fully armed, always checked us on and off the plane at our various stops
along the way, but the only time they ever separated from the plane was when
we overnighted at Elmendorf Air Force Base, a secure facility. I thought to
myself, “U.S. military plane, invaluable; U.S. government officials,
expendable.”
My job on this trip as National Security Council (NSC) staff was to
accompany the governor and make sure he did not make any nuclear deals
outside of the ones we were then trying to negotiate through the Six-Party Talks.
Our specific mission was to negotiate the successful return of a set of POW/MIA
(Prisoners of War/Missing in Action) remains from the Korean War that was
held by the Korean People’s Army (KPA). Two experts from the Defense
Department were detailed for the trip. One was a forensics expert. The other was
a Central Asia policy expert, who also was a Ph.D. candidate at Georgetown
University, and on whose dissertation committee I later served. Richardson, then
about to announce his candidacy for president on the Democratic ticket, was the
media highlight of the trip (he had brought with him Andrea Mitchell of NBC
News and an Associated Press correspondent, to ensure adequate publicity), but
this was the first time U.S. officials from the second term of the Bush
administration had entered North Korea. The last time had been in 2002, when
the United States confronted North Korea about a clandestine second nuclear
program that was in violation of standing agreements. This sparked a major
crisis that led to ballistic missile tests and, ultimately, a nuclear test by
Pyongyang. So no one knew exactly what to expect.
As we walked up a small set of steps to meet the receiving party in front of the
VIP entrance, the only recognizable face was that of Mats Foyer, the Swedish
ambassador to Pyongyang, who I later found out had insisted on being at the
airport to greet us, since Sweden was the protecting power for American
interests in North Korea. This arrangement with Sweden exists because the
United States has no embassy in Pyongyang, as it remains technically at war
with the country. A cease-fire, not a peace treaty, ended hostilities in 1953. I
looked over my shoulder to see our plane departing down the runway, and
mumbled to the two Pentagon officials standing next to me, “The three of us
should stay together, and not get separated during this trip.” Once inside the
terminal, we were offered some refreshments and exchanged some diplomatic
pleasantries. We were asked to pay an entry fee in cash. (Credit cards don’t work
in North Korea.) We were given our schedules by the hosts, which under normal
circumstances would be something handled by our embassy and for which every
detail would have been painstakingly ironed out in advance of the trip. In this
case, however, the North Koreans provided no details in advance, preferring to
maintain total control of the itinerary; hence, we were literally flying blind into
the country, unclear of what we would do.
As we headed out to the transportation vehicles, I looked at the departure