balked at including the South, and the South worried that Carter’s aim was for the United States to abandon South Korea, much as it had South Vietnam four years earlier.
Diplomats and military leaders alike “were horrified by the peremptory and damaging way the issue was pursued by the Carter White House,” noted Don Oberdorfer, who covered Asian affairs for the Washington Post for a quarter century.27 Carter’s intentions may have been noble, but his single-minded rush to diplomacy was costly. Ultimately, time ran out. An assassin’s bullet felled the South Korean leader and ushered in years of political upheaval, while the Iran hostage crisis consumed Carter’s attention through his last year in office.
Reagan and Korea
Ronald Reagan inherited a more dangerous Korea largely because Carter’s desire for diplomacy had emboldened Kim Il Sung. Reagan turned Carter’s approach on its head. Carter wanted to evacuate troops from the Korean Peninsula; Reagan increased their numbers. Diplomacy took a back seat. Halfway through Reagan’s first term, a Soviet fighter jet downed a South Korean airliner that had strayed over Soviet territory, killing 269 people, almost a quarter of them Americans. Tension skyrocketed not only between the superpowers, but also between Seoul and Pyongyang.
It was against this backdrop that China again became central to the Korean conflict. A decade after Nixon visited China, Beijing was finding its stride. On October 8, 1983, Chinese diplomats passed the American embassy in Beijing a North Korean message expressing Pyongyang’s willingness to participate in tripartite talks. In the face of Reagan’s military buildup, the North Korean leadership had decided to cast aside its objection to South Korean participation, the basis for its rejection of Carter’s offer.
Kim Il Sung’s about-face might be seen as validation of the idea that engagement with rogues can work if it is conducted from a position of strength. Events the next day challenged that assumption, however. As South Korean cabinet members and presidential advisors awaited President Chun Doo-hwan’s arrival at a wreath-laying ceremony in Rangoon, three North Korean army officers detonated a bomb they had hidden in the roof of the mausoleum, killing twenty-one, including the foreign minister and the deputy prime minister. It was no rogue operation. At the time, Pyongyang’s foreign operations service was under the command of Kim Il Sung’s eldest son and future successor, Kim Jong Il.28
If Western diplomats believe that transforming rogues into responsible regimes boils down to incentives, the Rangoon massacre should disabuse them of the notion. Rogues are proactive rather than reactive. They simply do not accept international norms. Limiting strategy to the tools of normal diplomacy will fail.
After the bombing, Reagan’s attitude toward North Korea diplomacy cooled. In January 1984, the Chinese premier, Zhao Ziyang, passed a North Korean message to Reagan again endorsing three-way talks between the Koreas and the United States. The offer fit a pattern in which Pyongyang proposed engagement only to deflect consequences for its behavior. Many rogues understood that dangling the prospect of diplomacy can lead the West to put aside its disgust at earlier actions.29 Diplomats look forward, and they are often willing to put atrocities behind in exchange for the promise of a better future. Seldom do olive branches offered by rogue regimes suggest a desire for peace, however.
There had been no softening of Kim Il Sung’s complete refusal to accept South Korea’s legitimacy. When the International Olympic Committee selected Seoul to host the 1988 Olympics, some South Korean officials hoped they might leverage the games for reconciliation.30 The Dear Leader, for his part, saw any acceptance of Seoul as a blow to his claim to be Korea’s only legitimate leader.31 North Korean threats had forced the relocation of the 1970 Asian Games away from Seoul, but in the run-up to the 1986 games in Seoul, Kim Il Sung’s complaints fell on deaf ears. Six days before the opening ceremony of the Asian Games, North Korean terrorists detonated a bomb at South Korea’s main airport, killing five. The world might know that North Korea was guilty, but if other states hesitated to deal with the South, then Kim Il Sung could claim victory. For rogue regimes, terrorism is a fully legitimate tool in the diplomatic kitbag.
To drive home the point, North Korean agents placed a bomb on board a Korean Air flight from Baghdad to Seoul in November 1987, killing 115. One North Korean agent committed suicide, but police captured his accomplice, who confessed that Pyongyang had ordered the bombing to suggest that South Korea was unsuitable to host the Olympics.32 The international community did not back down, and the games proceeded without a hitch. As for North Korea, it won a spot on the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list.33
After the Olympics ended, South Korea’s president, Roh Tae-woo, announced that the South would no longer seek to isolate the North. “The basic policy in the past was to try to change the North Korean position by isolating them,” Roh explained. “We have changed this. We think that by encouraging them to be more open, we can have peace in this part of the world.”34 Later that week, Roh unveiled a program to promote trade, exchanges, and humanitarian contacts with the North.
North Korea initially brushed off the initiative, but the White House embraced it. The State Department effused, calling it “a major—indeed historic—reversal of traditional” South Korean policy.35 Not everyone was happy with how diplomacy had become intertwined with incentives. Benjamin Gilman, a Republican and chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, observed, “We are paying for bad behavior by rewarding North Korean brinkmanship with benefits.” He further noted, “North Korea is now the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in East Asia, and in response to recent North Korean provocations, the Administration proposes only to increase the level of our assistance.”36
Skeptics abounded, but it was hard to argue when America’s Korean allies wanted to talk. After Roh informed the Americans that he would seek a summit with Kim Il Sung, the State Department let Pyongyang know that Washington would also like to improve relations should North Korea cease its belligerence and terrorism.37 The North Koreans agreed, and so began a series of nearly three dozen bilateral meetings spread over five years. Direct talks eased communication—no longer did the two sides have to use China as an intermediary—but the talks did little to address the chief U.S. concerns: North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.38
North Korea’s Nuclear Program
In 1980, a spy satellite spotted construction of a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, about sixty miles north of Pyongyang. Four years later, satellites detected craters suggesting that North Korea was experimenting with detonators used in nuclear bombs.39 That North Korea had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985 should not have assuaged diplomats; the Soviet Union had promised North Korea four nuclear plants if it accepted the treaty.40 Its signature allowed Pyongyang to import dual-use equipment. While the NPT requires states to sign a safeguards agreement with the IAEA within eighteen months, Pyongyang refused.41
The Pentagon monitored Yongbyon from afar as the complex grew. By February 1987, it was clear that North Korea intended to produce plutonium. The next year, satellites detected a new facility, two football fields long and six stories high, and more evidence that North Korea was experimenting with the explosions needed to set off a nuclear warhead.42
Whereas Reagan had kept concerns about Yongbyon secret in order to maintain the option of a surprise attack, George H. W. Bush put diplomacy front and center. Bush trusted that the world would see the North Korea threat just as he did. Secretary of State James Baker explained, “Our diplomatic strategy was designed to build international pressure against North Korea to force them to live up to their agreements.”43 In a national security review, the White House also embraced a carrots-and-sticks policy.44 Bush’s approach to Korea essentially paralleled Carter’s strategy toward Iran. After cultivating international opinion, he sought to entangle Pyongyang in dialogue and nonproliferation obligations.45 There was one big difference between Carter on Iran and Bush on North Korea: Bush understood the importance of deterrence.
Undermining Bush policy, however, was a lack of consensus about its goals. One camp, giving priority to arms control, viewed compliance with the NPT and IAEA inspections as the top goal. They