How inclined are the North Koreans to listen to the Chinese?
While Iran, the North’s partner on missile and nuclear deals, has agreed to stay away from enriching uranium for nuclear weapons, North Korea leader Kim Jong-unremains impervious to pleas to follow that example. As the Iran nuclear deal takes effect, South Korean physicist Chang Soon-heung believes South Korea and the U.S. “must cooperate with China” in the quest for a “creative solution” to the impasse with the North.
From his vantage as president of Handong Global University in the fast-growing city of Pohang on Korea’s east coast, Chang harks back to the 1994 Geneva framework under which North Korea was promised two light-water nuclear energy reactors produced in South Korea in return for giving up its nuclear weapons program.
A member in that period of the international safety group of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Chang believes the Geneva agreement, had the U.S. and North Korea abided by its terms and South Korea’s Korea Electric Power Corporation, KEPCO, installed the reactors, would have worked.
The Iran nuclear deal, Chang believes, adds urgency to the need for a new deal with North Korea. It’s time, he says, for a fresh understanding despite the danger of North Korea conducting another nuclear test. ”I would like to ask the U.S. and our government to create a solution,” he says.
Chances of North Korea giving up its proud position as one of the world’s nine nuclear powers appear virtually nil, however, as long as the North works closely with Iran on missiles and nuclear technology. James Lewis, director of strategic technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says Iran and North Korea scaled down their activities for several months while Iran negotiated the nuclear deal with the U.S. but are back to business as usual. “We assume they are coordinating on such activities,” he says.
Bruce Bechtol, a former US marine intelligence analyst and author of numerous studies on North Korea’s leadership and armed forces, predicts North Korean scientists and engineers sooner or later “are likely to launch their latest version of the Taepodong” — the long-range missile that’s capable of reaching the U.S. The North, he says, “may follow up with an underground nuclear test” — fourth in a series that includes tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
At the same time, North Korea has repeatedly declared its “legitimate right” to fire long-range missiles in order to put a satellite into orbit, as it did nearly three years ago, but the real purpose clearly is to see how far and well the missile can travel. At the same time, North Korea over the past two years has repeatedly tested mid-and-short-range missiles.
Behind the North Korean launches is the desire not only to display North Korea’s military power in northeast Asia, as a counterpoint to U.S., South Korean and Japanese forces, but also to market its missiles mainly in the middle east as it’s done for years. North Korea counts on its prowess in missiles for earning sorely needed income while China, the source of virtually all the North’s oil and most of its food, goes through an economic downturn that impacts the North’s dilapidated economy. “North Korea has thousands of missiles in warehouses,” says Bechtol, “They’ve got munitions factories making more of them.”
Most of North Korea’s missiles for years have been going to buyers in the middle east, notably Iran and Syria but also Egpt, Yemen, Libya and other markets. Although slowed down by sanctions, sales of short-range Scuds and mid-range Rodongs have been an important source of foreign exchange for the financially strapped regime.(Donald Kirk)
Link:http://www.forbes.com/sites/donaldkirk/2015/11/13/forget-about-china-n-korea-markets-missiles-as-iran-nuclear-deal-approaches/
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