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Web-only Exclusives November 30, 2000 From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead Bad news for the Philippines - and some others From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights? |
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Something for Nothing? North Korea is getting good at bargaining hard By LAXMI NAKARMI Seoul September 15, 1999 Web posted at 12:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 12:30 a.m. EDT
Such a move would have rattled Washington and Seoul as well as Tokyo. The U.S. has long been concerned about the proliferation of missile technology - Pyongyang supplying parts and know-how to such countries as Syria and Iran. Also, the Taepodong-2 missile that North Korea was planning to test-fire is believed to have a range up to Alaska, with the capability of carrying nuclear warheads. South Korea (especially President Kim Dae Jung) would have interpreted another North Korean test as evidence of Pyongyang's seeming disregard of Seoul's conciliatory "sunshine policy" toward the North. Japan would have regarded the test as a direct threat to its security, a worry that is already causing Tokyo to gradually upgrade its defenses. But now, says U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, "some form of easing sanctions [imposed by Washington] might be appropriate." South Korea, for its part, might step up economic aid and investment. And Japan might renew humanitarian assistance and even consider war reparations for its harsh 35-year colonization of Korea. North Korea is getting good at bargaining hard, while doing very little - or, in this case, doing nothing at all - in return. Remember when, in 1994, for discontinuing its nuclear program, Pyongyang won two light-water nuclear reactors, to be built by South Korea with Japanese help, plus nearly a million tons of heavy oil from the U.S. worth over $5 billion. At least Pyongyang, long known for its unpredictable behavior, seems finally to be responding like any other government would to a carrot-and-stick approach. On the long-bristling Korean peninsula, we have to be thankful even for small mercies.
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INTELLIGENCE
TIME ASIA
