US joins North Korea in isolation

SEOUL - North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun had a message for the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), an annual gathering that attracts the foreign ministers of just about any country with a stake in the region.

Paek’s message at the gathering in Kuala Lumpur last week wasn’t that of reconciliation, or desire for talks, or talk about talks, or talks on the sidelines or any of the other terms bandied about by hopeful diplomats and journalists.

Stolidly silent, refusing to attend a separate confab of 10 other ministers trying to entice him back to six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, Paek had just the opposite news for anyone yearning for an easing of tensions since his country test-fired missiles in early July.

We’re going to tough it out, he seemed to be saying, and we’re not yielding to anyone until the United States removes its "sanctions" on financial firms doing business with North Korea. There would be no quick tete-a-tete with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who flew in frantically from the uproar in the Middle East, no handshake, no trace of a smile for journalists and think-tanks to analyze.

Paek’s instructions, presumably straight from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who has been out of public sight since before the test-firing, were clearly to avoid the slightest nuance of a hint that Pyongyang, having gotten the world’s attention with the missile shots, was now ready to deal. As Rice passed within centimeters of him for a photo-shoot of the assembled ministers, he managed only a scowl.

Probably no one was more disappointed than South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, who is bucking for the post of secretary general of the United Nations and eager to demonstrate his own skills as a peacemaker on a world stage.

But Ban can pride himself on getting the forum to come up with meaningless disapproval of North Korean missile-testing. Ban, who sometimes appears to have modeled his bland, boring statements after those of current UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, was just as anxious to see that no harsh language reverberated around the ARF as he was trying to bring the North to the table.

Having gotten nowhere in Kuala Lumpur, Rice flew back to Israel while that country’s planes were bombing the hapless city of Qana in southern Lebanon, leaving her assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific, Christopher Hill, to moan over North Korea’s deepening "isolation". Hill warmed to the theme at a weekend retreat in the Philippine hill resort city of Baguio, telling reporters outside another conference that the United States was ready to isolate North Korea still more if that was the game Pyongyang wanted to play.

Seen as a skilled diplomat not given to intemperate outbursts, Hill no doubt carefully measured his words for maximum intimidating effect. His words, though, were clearly the diplomatic equivalent of "Bring ’em on."

The United States could well press switches and pull levers that might deepen North Korea’s agony. For starters, the US could play on that "unanimous" tut-tutting by the UN Security Council over Pyongyang’s weapons program. Didn’t the resolution not only spank North Korea for firing the shots, but abjure member nations not to buy, sell or otherwise deal in anything to do with weapons of mass destruction or missiles going to or from that country? And didn’t all that verbiage also call a halt to sending funds to North Korea that might be used for its missile program?

The resolution has no teeth, though, and Chinese diplomats, also in Kuala Lumpur, said no way would they support a move toward imposing UN "sanctions" on North Korea. The US might talk on and on about "isolating" North Korea, but where does China really stand?

The White House was ecstatic when Chinese banks finally "froze" North Korean accounts - supposedly before the missile shots - in retaliation for counterfeiting not only US but Chinese currency.

The impact of the Chinese move, though, remains unclear. How much was really in those accounts, and haven’t North Korea and China worked out a complex web of other relationships and connections on either side of the Yalu River?

Talk of isolating North Korea lost real meaning, moreover, in the aftermath of the bombing of Qana. US and Israeli diplomats might argue that Iran and Syria were all to blame for having spurred on their surrogate force, the band of Hezbollah guerrillas, but the vast majority of the rest of the world isn’t buying that argument. It’s the United States that faces isolation - the United States and possibly Japan, as Tokyo’s conservative leaders nerve themselves up for both changing the no-war constitution, dropping Article 9, which renounces the use or threat of force as a way of settling international conflicts, and setting the stage, eventually, for defensive strikes against North Korea.

US isolation on North Korea means the United States and Japan have no real allies at all when it comes to getting tough on Pyongyang. Nor can the United States begin to think of a real war in the region without a vast change in the US mood, already turned off by war in Iraq and hostile toward any notion of reviving the draft.

For now, the US needs to fight through its own surrogate armies - how else can one characterize the Israel Defense Forces, armed with tanks, aircraft and almost everything else by the United States?

US policy also calls for a surrogate defense force in South Korea - that is, a South Korean military establishment that’s strong enough to take on the North and anyone who might rush to the North’s defense, mainly China. That’s why the United States has committed US$11 billion to modernization of South Korean forces, and that’s the rationale for pulling back US bases and scaling down forces to maybe 25,000 troops in two years from the current level of 29,500 - already down from 37,000 five years ago.

The United States, however, is isolated in South Korea as well. No doubt South Korea is turning conservative; radical demonstrations have lost much of their appeal and most people would like to preserve the diplomatic and military status quo while worrying about the perception of a weakening economy. The government of President Roh Moo-hyun, anxious for appeasement, is highly unpopular, but that’s mainly because of unease about the economy and distaste for his political and personal style.

The last thing South Koreans want to risk is a second Korean War - especially one they would have to fight to prove the US point about North Korea’s isolation. Anti-Americanism smolders here. A US move toward military action against the North might be all that’s needed to ignite a conflagration.

Kim’s strategy rests in part, it seems, on encouraging his own isolation. Quite aside from disappearing from view for more than a month now, he’s closing down to the outside world in other ways. Last weekend, the North canceled the Arirang Festival, a display of Mass Games with a cast of tens of thousands, to which 7,000 South Koreans flew on overnight trips last year. This year thousands of foreigners were also supposed to go, all at rather exorbitant rates for tightly guided, guarded tours, but they’ll have to wait until April.

The excuse for the cancellation was the damage caused by flooding, but that’s probably a pretext. The cancellation came right after Paek’s display of standoffishness in Kuala Lumpur and before a military exercise called Ulchi Focus Lens in which thousands of US and South Korean troops play computer games. North Korea clearly wants to show off its petulance, to demonstrate the power of isolation - and challenge China to stand on its side in a showdown.

No one doubts North Korea is isolated, and possibly getting more so. It’s also possible Kim faces severe internal forces of which no one really has any knowledge. The fighting in Lebanon, though, echoes here in the sense of rising US isolation - and America’s inability to do much about it without risking grave, unforeseen consequences. The images of suffering inflicted by US bombers - piloted by Israeli surrogates - carry an indelible message for South Korea: our US ally is responsible and we can’t let it happen to us.