International Affairs Forum: A few months back saw massive protests in South Korea over the decision to allow the import of beef from the United States. What effect has this had on South Korean President Lee Myung-bak who only took office this year, and on relations with the U.S.? L. Gordon Flake: Lee really inherited a situation where a lot of the hard issues were already addressed by Roh Moo-hyun, who had a tendency to say the wrong things while doing the right things. So the number one mandate for Lee was to say the right things. And so far, the problems with the beef issue haven’t really spilled over to sour the U.S.-Korea relationship. Lee’s summit meeting in April in Washington is still widely regarded as a success. He has said all the right things about the alliance. He is viewed as a strong ally by the United States, and even the beef issue is basically viewed favorably as Lee “taking one for the team.” The U.S. is highly aware of, and appreciative of the domestic political price Lee has paid to do the right thing and move forward on the beef issue. So the fact that there have been demonstrations, the fact that he has been greatly weakened, concerns the U.S., but it shows that he is a dependable ally. The beef issue is of domestic political concern in South Korea, but it is not seen as anti-U.S. or as fundamentally damaging U.S.-ROK relations. IA-Forum: So is the relationship with the U.S. still viewed positively in South Korea? Mr. Flake: There’s no question about that. In some respects the election last year was a mandate on Roh and his distance from the U.S. The clear message in that election was a desire to strengthen the U.S.-ROK alliance. The beef issue, if you look at it closely, was very much about food safety, but probably first and foremost about the management style of Lee. It was a domestic issue, not an anti-American issue as such. It had the potential to turn into that, but it was handled well, and in the end it did not. The U.S. perception of ROK relations in terms of the alliance was obviously facilitated by concerns about the emergence of China – Chinese behavior during the torch relay, concerns about China’s intentions on North Korea – those are all really things that are also sustaining the U.S.-ROK relationship in terms of domestic perceptions in South Korea right now. Also, I think the way President Bush handled the Dokdo [islets dispute] issue enabled a symbolic but successful summit in August. IA-Forum: The U.S. seems to have taken a tougher line with North Korea in recent weeks. What do you make of this? Mr. Flake: It’s being portrayed as the Bush administration taking a tougher line, but I would describe it more as holding the line. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill has had a lot of leeway in his negotiations with North Korea for the last two years. Remember we are right now still negotiating what were called the “initial steps”, outlined in the February 13th agreement. This was to be a series of moves-freezing facilities for 50,000 metric tons of fuel oil, disabling it for 950,000 tons-that were intended to take place within 90 days, which would then lead to a dynamic or momentum that would carry us over to the ministerial level meetings and ultimately put the real issues on the table, which were weapons themselves and fissile materials etc-things that were not even referenced in the February 13th agreement. Now, almost two years later, after the U.S. has continued to compromise on the pace, on deadlines, and on content, we have reached a point where we start talking about verification, and there is not a lot of wiggle room – either you have a meaningful verification or you don’t. Christopher Hill I think by most accounts negotiated and accepted a declaration – a declaration that was originally due 90 days after the February 13th agreement which under new agreement in October was promised by the North Koreans by the end of last year, but which was ultimately not delivered until June. However, that declaration is by no one’s imagination a complete and correct declaration. It is a very limited retroactive declaration largely about North Korea’s nuclear material production capacity – in other words Yongbyon. What it doesn’t give you is a forward looking declaration of weapons themselves, the fissile material and its current status, the nuclear weapons production facilities and processing, the nuclear weapons testing facilities, the highly enriched uranium or proliferation – all the hard stuff is not in there. Where we are now is not bad, I mean shutting down Yongbyon, blowing up the cooling towers, is good, but to me it is like closing the barn door after the horses have already gone, and then burning the barn down just for good measure. It’s not a bad thing, but what about the horses? That information is not provided by this declaration. So I think again, President Bush gave Hill a lot of leeway, but the price for accepting an incomplete declaration was the promise that the outstanding issues would be solved at the verification stage, and obviously that’s where we’re butting heads with the North Koreans now. You can understand the North Koreans’ logic. How are we going to verify that which we haven’t declared? Why would we verify something we haven’t even admitted we’ve got? Their view is that the scope of verification is limited to the scope of their declaration. But that wasn’t what Bush was promised, because to be honest verification of Yongbyon is meaningless strategically – we pretty much know about Yongbyon already. That’s not where the mystery lies. So if it doesn’t include Syria, or the weapons themselves, or their status, or heu, then what does it mean? It’s strategically meaningless. That’s where we are right now. The North Koreans are protesting our demands and have claimed to have stopped the disablement process, which is relatively meaningless at this point. My guess is that we’ll have negotiations for the next six months about what the verification principles are, and there may be some compromise that allows us to move forward. But there is not likely to be some kind of hail Mary pass that will allow us to move past this second stage right now, which is essentially where we’ll end this administration. IA-Forum: You suggest there that we’re about as far as we’re going to get for the time being. How optimistic are you in the medium to long term that this issue can be resolved? Mr. Flake: You have to begin to ask yourself the question of whether this is an issue that can be resolved through the long term application of diplomacy, particularly by the United States itself. I am of the mind that while we have to pursue diplomacy, the primary point of diplomacy is to ensure that China, Russia, Japan South Korea and the United States are on the same page. That’s the objective. But the reality is that the chances of solving this diplomatically with North Korea are extremely low – everybody knows that. Because in the end, what are we doing? In exchange for giving up their nuclear weapons, we’re offering them obscurity and irrelevance. The base of support of the regime rests on three pillars – control over the flow of information, control over the movement of people and control over the means of production. As a reward for giving up their nuclear weapons we tell they can become a normal nation and open up and reform. But opening and reforming would require undermining the very pillars of the regime, so you can see why they’re ambivalent about that. If you take a step beyond that, we’re offering them a chance to be a normal nation, but one that is starving, backwards–North Korea without nuclear weapons is Bangladesh, with my apologies to the Bangladeshis. So we’re offering them irrelevance for giving up their nuclear weapons. So if you put it in that context, are they likely to give up nukes? No. Does that mean we shouldn’t try? Of course not. We ought to continue with the negotiating process, because in the end, even on the rare chance that a negotiated settlement was successful, it would require the sustained application of high-level political capital by the United States for a long period of time. And put simply, that is not going to happen. There are too many other priorities for the U.S. to do that. So even in the best case scenario, if you’re a U.S. politician and you can marshal that kind of political capital, what you’re going to be doing is hoping for a best case scenario, which is a series of compromises with a country that is a drug smuggling, human rights abusing, counterfeiting pariah state that has no political constituency in the United States. There’s no political upside. So what we ought to be focusing on is not the sexy stuff, which is negotiating with North Korea directly, but the more important work of building and coordinating a response among our allies in the region. Because in the end, whether North Korea reforms or collapses or whatever isn’t as important as making sure that whatever North Korea does, it doesn’t impact on the broader regional picture, which is far more important strategically. L. Gordon Flake is Executive Director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. Prior to joining the foundation he was a Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the Program on Conflict Resolution at The Atlantic Council of the United States. Before moving to The Atlantic Council, he served as Director for Research and Academic Affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America.

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