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What would be a thoughtful and intelligent response to North Korea? One thing is clear: 50 years of isolation have not worked, and attempting to starve a patriotic and proud people into submission will not work either.
Following the talks that my noble friend and I had with senior figures in Pyongyang, including Kim Yong Nam, the president of the Presidium, and Choe Tae Boc, the Speaker of their Assembly, whom we invited to the United Kingdom in March 2004, we have argued for what I have called “Helsinki with an Asian face”, engaging respectfully, sincerely and forcefully on questions such as judicial reform. If the
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Although the United States is understandably wary of being detached from the six-nation talks, I can see no justification for continuing the illusion that the US never talks directly to Pyongyang. There have been plenty of periodic encounters at the margins of multilateral talks. For instance, Kim Jong-il met Madeleine Albright. Establishing an embassy and diplomatic relations, as the United Kingdom has done, would be a positive and constructive move and could hardly be portrayed as rewarding the regime.
And what about the United Kingdom? North Korea’s ambassador to London, Yong-ho Ri, has just been recalled to Pyongyang, where he is likely to have a key role in overseeing the six-nation talks. I met him before he left, and he believes, as I do, that the UK could be a useful bridge-builder between the United States and North Korea. He also believes that Britain should provide leadership in Brussels in seeking varying levels of constructive engagement, especially once the security concerns are resolved through development aid and assistance towards reunification of the two Koreas.
All that said, for North Korea it is the United States that matters. It is the major player involved, and it alone can guarantee the security that North Korea craves. That is precisely the successful approach used by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher during the worst years of the Cold War. Think of the normalisation of US-Libyan relations in 2004.
Recent changes in Washington create new opportunities. Yesterday Tom Lantos, who is about to become chairman of the congressional Committee on International Relations, said that he is willing to meet Kim Jong-il, and he says that Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill should be dispatched to Pyongyang to open a dialogue. There are also other new, lower-key policy options that we can pursue. We have nothing to fear from, for example, student scholarships and exchanges, medical assistance or the offer of technical assistance to promote the rule of law. That will be crucial to economic development as well as to changing attitudes towards human rights.
While more substantial engagement depends on North Korea’s compliance with Security Council resolutions, the UK should in principle support its wish for sustainable development rather than food aid. Tying such development aid to capacity building in the rule of law would be a virtuous conditionality. English language training is also vital if North Korea is to be drawn into the international community and into rules-based international systems. The engagement policy of the South Korean Government also deserves our wholehearted support.
We should explore all possible steps that can open space for civil society, however modest. The “hermit kingdom” needs to know about the outside world, as opposed to the distorted picture that its people have been fed all their lives. We must encourage any moves towards reform and openness, not to mention making a small improvement in people’s lives. That might
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In many respects, North Korea’s mad dash to develop a nuclear weapon is a sign of weakness and desperation, and we should see it thus. When my noble friend Lady Cox and I stood at Panmunjom on the North Korean side of the border, where the 1953 ceasefire was signed, it was hard not to think of Berlin and the Cold War that divided and devastated large swathes of Europe. North Korea is often called “the land that never changes”, but for the sake of its people and its neighbours we should devote our energies to disproving that proposition. I beg to move for papers.
1.13 pm
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I am extraordinarily grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for this debate. I suffer from the great weakness that I have spent most of my life in trade and the financing of trade, and I have never understood, nor will I ever understand, international politics. However, I have always felt that when a country is divided and both countries keep the same name, they probably intend to unite.
My only knowledge and understanding of Korea goes back to Bill Speakman’s VC, the glorious Glosters at Imjin River and Hill 327. More recently, though, maybe 25 years ago, when I was working in the banking world, I was told that Korea was a good place that could build ships, and that it could undertake major contracts. I am afraid I did not believe it. Then I found that the Korean contractors—I still called all of them “Korean”—were some of the most successful in the Middle East, that their shipbuilding side was outstanding, and that on the electronic side they had become pretty important.
In looking at trade and the opportunities that go with it, there is no such thing as geography, and here politics comes into it. I was always amazed that when I worked in and with some of the extreme socialist states such as Libya, Angola, Cuba, Vietnam or even Iran, they all had a trading relationship. I shall use Vietnam as an example. It was a total no-go area. It was the “axis of evil”. It had a close relationship with Iran when I was out there. I found to my amazement that there were swaps going on for rice and energy. North Vietnam had a problem, however: the rice was broken. I had no knowledge of rice. I knew that Thai rice was among the best in the world, and I do not think many of us ever believed the rice world would
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In the financial world we always had a rule: you did not finance any country unless you had been there, and “been there” meant you had to have been there within the previous 90 days. I found to my surprise, when I was introduced to North Korea—I have not been there; this is the only time I have spoken in this House about a country to which I have not been—that I was an unwilling interlocutor between some forms of extremists. I mentioned that in your Lordships’ House in an earlier debate.
I was dragged into all this. I was in Berlin last week, seeing the same sort of friends, and they said, “You British have got a role here. You must help North Korea”. I said, “How can we do that?”, and they said, “Oh Lord, go and see them. Tell them what you think”. I went to see Ambassador Pak, an elderly ambassador in the Korean Embassy in Berlin, when there were no other people around. I have the feeling that Berlin is still the centre of North Korean politics in Europe. I sat down with the ambassador and his chargé, and said, “Can I speak openly?”. He said, “Yes. Can I speak openly too?”. I said, “Look, you’ve got get rid of all this nuclear stuff. Everybody’s getting worked up about it. What can I do to help? Can’t we give you a few power stations or things like that instead? We won’t tell anybody, but we could do that”.
They reminded me, as I was reminded again last week, that the United States had originally proposed to build North Korea a nuclear power station, before pulling out, because power was one of the problems that created serious difficulties for the country. These days there are new developments, and I think we should give North Korea a nuclear power station. Coal power stations were also suggested, as it has coal. As your Lordships will be aware, there has been a cycle in the nuclear world with a return to thorium, which is safe and non-weapons grade.
We had these discussions, and they said they would like a few power stations. I said, “What about the Americans? They’re the ones who cause the problems”. They said, “Ah. You see, this all began when they came up the Daedong River, robbed the tombs of our ancestors and took the gold crowns out”. I have never been able to find out who did that, or how. They continued: “Then they made more difficulties for us so we had to let them know that, although they did one good thing—President Roosevelt in 1906 got the Nobel peace prize for ending the Russo-Japanese war”. My knowledge of conflicts in that part of the world is limited.
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Their tirade against the United States went on. That was why Korea had to have the Taepo Dong 1, the short-range missile, which was quite good, so many of them were made. It was also why Korea sent the Taepo Dong 2 over Japan. The missile was empty, as was pointed out. It was rather like the situation with Iraqi Scud missiles; you want to frighten people and make them think you are more important and powerful than you are. That is why the Taepo Dong 3 has a range that, I am told, would take out Washington and New York. When I spent some time in Ukraine and went around the Dnipropetrovsk missile factory, they had SS-24s, or maybe SS-25s or SS-26s. I said, “How far do you go up? Why does everyone go progressively from one number to the next—one, two, three? Why don’t they jump a few?”. “Ah,” they said, “you don’t know that we don’t have an SS-50”. During my conversations in Berlin, the ambassador said, “There may be many other missiles—and of course we are going to join the space race”.
Here is a very proud people who would tell you that they have 16,000 howitzers which can land on Seoul. As we were talking in German, I was not quite sure what a howitzer was these days—I thought it was something antique. I met Dr Hans Haubenschild, quite a remarkable man. Sometimes you can go into a room and feel that the person you are with is a good man. He was in charge of the East German training programme for Koreans before perestroika and had trained 600 young Korean orphans. They were sent back, so many a year, over 10 to 20 years, trained in everything. I asked whether that could have included nuclear, and he said that it included everything, from the full range of the arts. Then I was attacked because of who had made them orphans—the United States of America. The anti-American feeling is genuine in a way but much of it is, I feel, promotional.
Dr Haubenschild died a year ago, and I was asked to the funeral. He was replaced by another man, who was trying to see whether the British could help get rid of the mines between north and south. He even asked whether I could put him in touch with the people who had the support of Princess Diana. When I had these discussions, I was told that they all get together some time but that they had different cultures and different rules. When I said that the extreme left was fading away, I was told that the Cubans were too liberal for them now, Iran was changing and there is no solid grouping of extreme left states any more. So they will move with the times.
As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, quite rightly, there is a need for a carrot. I have a feeling that we should be looking at helping them with their power stations and in other fields, but doing a trade in reduction. At 11.28 this morning a statement was sent out from Beijing that Christopher Hill had returned with a promise from North Korea that the discussions over the past two days would be considered very seriously. I believe there is a chance that these discussions could be considered seriously, provided that someone else can intervene and broker them. I do not think that the United States can do that and, in a strange way, nor can we.
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In Germany this week, the all-party group sat with the Minister of Defence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and various committees and talked about Iran, Iraq and North Korea. They seem pretty well determined that they would do what they could during their presidency to solve these problems. Recognising that the relationships that existed between East Germany and North Korea might have been stronger than any other, I believe that the Germans could play an important leading role. When we had our chargé in North Korea, he was in the German compound.
I have been told that many of the NGOs are finding it difficult to do things over there. I was told last week that things were not quite so serious on the food front; they are managing but they do not want to use the begging bowl because of their pride.
It is a country which offers a great challenge. I believe that there is a genuine possibility that it could be united, possibly within my lifetime. Once these things start, they move quickly. But unless we can help them build and develop their economy, we will find it extremely difficult. I hold no brief for any political views; I have been with the left, the right, the north and the south. I have been attacked as a lackey of British imperialism. I have had everything thrown at me and have absorbed it with sloping shoulders.
What we need is dialogue. It was put to me that perhaps the least democratic and worst country in the world was a British colony called Rhodesia. The devils in the world are all around. Our Government and others should do the maximum to start a dialogue between individuals, not necessarily Governments.
1.24 pm
Lord Garden: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for calling this debate on North Korea. As we discussed in the debate on the gracious Speech, the international security outlook is very gloomy, and proliferation is high on the agenda. In looking for the best way forward, as your Lordships will do throughout this debate, we need to reflect on the various approaches tried in recent years, learn the lessons from them and look at the policy options that could help to counter the proliferation problem, to benefit regional stability in the longer term and to improve the prospects of the benighted people of North Korea.
While the nuclear test of 9 October this year was presumably North Korea wanting to signal its membership of the nuclear club, the country has, of course, been working towards this moment for a very long time, going back to its civil nuclear programme of the 1960s. By the early 1990s, the United States was concerned that it might have already extracted enough plutonium-based fissile material from a research reactor to make a bomb. That led to the negotiated agreed framework, which was designed to provide two light-water reactors and oil to compensate for the nuclear energy lost in return for a freeze on the North Korean nuclear programme. That light-water project, as we heard, fell behind schedule, and we know now that from 1996 the North Koreans started a covert programme of uranium enrichment, which they eventually admitted to in 2002.
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While all this was going on, the diplomatic game changed very significantly, with the change of US Administration at the start of 2001. It certainly appeared at first that the United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, would continue the Clinton Administration’s policy of diplomacy as the best way of preventing North Korea from becoming a nuclear weapons state. But very early in 2001 the Secretary of State was countermanded by President Bush, who made it clear that he no longer supported the north/south dialogue. A year later, in the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush completed the diplomatic isolation of North Korea by making it number three on the axis of evil.
It is easy to argue that North Korea would have continued on the path to its nuclear test whatever the circumstances, even if support had continued for the sunshine policy rather than the country’s inclusion on the hit list represented by the axis of evil. However, it is clear that once Iraq, the number one nation on the axis of evil, was invaded, the other two—Iran and North Korea—were reinforced rather than deterred in their views about the need for nuclear capability. By the time the diplomatic path found favour again through the six-party talks, which started in August 2003 after North Korea had withdrawn from the NPT, it was clear that North Korea’s attitude was that the United States would remain a hostile power.
Now that the test has happened, we need to assess the threat that that capability represents and, in the light of that, what we need to do. Assessing North Korea’s nuclear capability is a somewhat imperfect art. It must be based on the amount of fissile material produced each year, the technical capability to weaponise it and the availability of delivery systems. There seems widespread agreement that the test of 9 October produced a surprisingly low yield—less than 1 kilotonne. That could mean that it was an only partially successful fizzle, in the terminology of the nuclear weapons people, or that the North Koreans are so advanced that they can produce extraordinarily low-yield weapons. I think the former is more likely. In plutonium-based weapons, such a fizzle can result from pre-detonation, insufficient manufacturing precision or impurities in the weapons material. That suggests that they have some way to go before they can produce an assured weaponised capability in a form which can be delivered over a distance.
Estimates on the amount of fissile material North Korea can produce are also uncertain. I draw for my data upon the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. On plutonium, North Korea currently has one small 5 megawatt electric reactor which is calculated to have produced, during its lifetime, 43 kilograms of plutonium, plus or minus 10 kilograms. That represents between five and 15 weapons’ worth, a rate of production that will produce one new bomb per year.
There is a larger reactor, which North Korea still has not finished building, although it has been under construction for some 20 years. If that were ever brought into service, North Korea could produce enough plutonium for 10 to 15 bombs per year. Delivery systems, which were also an important part
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Nuclear weapons are not the only threat that North Korea presents. There is a whole range of security questions, and one needs to consider all of them when strategising about how to tackle North Korea. I shall try to put in rough order the threats that North Korea poses to the international system.
First, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, the primary threat is to North Korea’s own people, who are suffering not only an intolerable abuse of human rights but deprivation, famine and death from both natural and state causes. I think that the whole GDP of North Korea is somewhat less than the defence budget that the Minister looks after.
The second most important threat is what would happen if the state were to collapse or implode and refugees flooded across the borders from north to south. There is a potential population of 23 million.
The third threat that I would worry about is the still possible conventional war. The noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, may not be sure what howitzers North Korea has, but it has an awful lot of them and a very big conventional capability, which is within range of being able to take out Seoul. Under “conventional” I include chemical weapons, because North Korea is assumed to have a fairly strong chemical weapons capability.
The fourth threat that I would worry about is the effect of North Korea coming into the nuclear club on other potential proliferators. How we handle that will affect what other potential proliferators decide to do. The fifth threat is the potential sale of nuclear capability to third parties.
Then we come on to the direct threats. First, there are the threats to regional neighbours, including Japan, from North Korea’s nuclear weapons, and then the much longer-term threat of a longer-range strategic possibility. When we look for policies, we have to take into account that if we counter one concern and tackle only one problem we may exacerbate others. We need a strategy that addresses all the problems with the best possible outcome. The UN Security Council resolution following the tests, which has been mentioned, was useful in showing a united international view. Despite the North Korean claims that sanctions were an act of war, seeing China and Russia support the United Nations must have helped put pressure on the regime. The return of North Korea to the six-party talks is also a sign of hope.
North Korea is a very fragile state, however, and the international community, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, needs to be careful that it does not turn the screw so tightly that it collapses uncontrollably. It may be that, as Robert Kaplan has argued, we shall see a future in which China will play
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