With a fresh round of sanctions in the offing in response to North Korea’s third nuclear test last month, calls are mounting for a brand new approach to halt its nuclear programs and pressure it back to the negotiating table.
The U.N. Security Council has repeatedly leveled condemnation and economic sanctions over the years. But North Korea has defied all the pressure by exploding more fission devices and launching even more rockets, resulting in another resolution and penalties.
As its renewed brinkmanship plunges neighbors into deeper frustration, politicians and experts are calling for revamping the current strategies to crack the vicious cycle and block the North from achieving its goal of becoming a nuclear power state.
“Given North Korea’s recent behavior, sanctions would not likely lead it to step back. They went ahead (with the test) expecting new sanctions,” said Chun In-young, a professor emeritus in international relations at Seoul National University.
“They would step back when facing extremely severe pressure. But, in other words, it would hang in there when the other side, especially the U.S., is immersed in other issues ― right now Iran, Afghanistan and Syria, as well as the sequester. North Korea is taking advantage of the situation.”
The U.S. and China have reportedly clinched a tentative agreement on a draft UNSC resolution. Russia, which assumed this month’s presidency, will convene a closed-door meeting on North Korea in New York on Tuesday, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Cho Tai-young said.
The looming sanctions are widely expected to include a freeze on North Korea’s overseas financial assets, travel bans on key individuals, and stricter inspection on sea cargo shipped to and from the country.
The upshot of the debate is whether the UNSC will embrace a measure similar to Washington’s 2005 asset freeze on Banco Delta Asia, a family-owned small bank in Macau believed to be a money-laundering outlet for the communist dynasty.
Shortly before the Sept. 19 joint statement, the U.S. Treasury Department froze about $25 million in the bank’s accounts traced to the regime to help dry up resources for nuclear projects. It appeared to have dealt a blow to then leader Kim Jong-il, who responded with a missile launch and first nuclear test in 2006.
Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Relations, is reportedly pushing for a similar bill for separate country-basis sanctions.
China’s opposition aside, skepticism persists over the potential efficacy of another BDA-style measure in light of Pyongyang’s steadfast atomic development ever since.
Others warned of possible political headwinds such as the U.S. saw in 2007 during a months-long delay in returning the frozen assets due to technical and legal problems.
“All sanctions are meant to bring an indirect effect that if we tighten economic screws on North Korea it will renounce nuclear development because of too high costs. Twenty years of history proves that our logic has not worked,” said Paik Hak-soon, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute.
“In the end, the most essential nature of the nuclear standoff has to do with how to make North Korea an active player. That’s because this issue can only be resolved when North Korea casts off its nuclear weapons by its own hands.”
The simmering security crisis poses threats to President Park Geun-hye’s “trust-building process” policy designed to make way for reconciliation between the two Koreas.
With the North seen inching closer to its ultimate aim, hardliners led by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Saenuri Party lawmaker Chung Mong-joon have floated military options such as a preemptive strike at the North’s nuclear complex or redeployment of American tactical nuclear arms in the South.
“We should make a tactical, short-term response such as developing nuclear weapons just because the North has some,” said Huh Moon-young, a senior fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification.
“We should once again clarify our stance for peninsular denuclearization and move in close cooperation with the U.S. and China over the North’s nuclear issue. But that does not mean we don’t pay attention to bolstering our defense capabilities. We should at the same time focus on enhancing our military power.”
In Washington, U.S. Sen. John McCain on Monday slammed the U.S. government for offering concessions to rogue states like Pyongyang and Tehran, saying the policy was “doomed to fail.”
“Iran sees what is happening in North Korea. We are giving in again and again under Bush and Obama. Tehran feels we are weak,” he told a conference hosted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an Israel lobbying group.
The two countries are suspected to have been cooperating on atomic weapons and ballistic missiles programs through personnel exchanges and technology sharing. Their ties appear to have deepened after former U.S. President George W. Bush branded them part of an “axis of evil” in 2002.
“(Sanctions) are not working in changing Iran’s behavior and they are unlikely to work (for North Korea),” said Yousaf Butt, a nuclear physicist and professor at Middlebury College in Vermont.
“The North Koreans, witnessing what is happening to Iran, are probably quite pleased that they demonstrated a nuclear weapons capability, however crude it may have been.”
Pyongyang was also closely watching talks between Iran and a group of world powers known as the P5+1 which ended in Almaty last week with an agreement to gather again.
Though no breakthrough appeared within sight, the Tehran government called the meeting a “positive step.”
Yet the Kazakhstan talks show that dialogue may still be the only feasible answer to the deep-rooted impasse with North Korea, some analysts say.
They claim that other policies have made little headway, from international sanctions to Washington’s “strategic patience” to Seoul’s stringently reciprocal, conditions-loaded approach.
“I don’t believe there’s a special way other than diplomatic steps, backed by sufficient cooperation between the U.S. and China in closing their differences and pressing North Korea,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea studies professor at Dongguk University in Seoul.
“Meanwhile, there should be sanctions in place and efforts to prevent the situation from deteriorating further.”
Joel Wit, a senior scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said that the North Korea policies of former President Lee Myung-bak and U.S. President Barack Obama were a “total failure.”
“Tough measures aren’t going to work. That is just the history of this issue. Sanctions and military measures aren’t going to change the direction of North Korean policy,” he said in a recent interview with The Korea Herald.
“We need to combine those with strong diplomacy that gives North Koreans an escape route, and that hasn’t been done. So, until we do all that, we are going to stay in a cycle of action and reaction, and things will keep getting worse.”
