So much for consequences for North Korea over ship sinking

Posted By Josh Rogin Friday, July 9, 2010 - 10:36 PM Share

When the results of the international investigation into the sinking of the South Korean ship the Cheonan were released in May, the U.S. State Department was adamant that it believed North Korea was responsible -- and that the country would have to face some actual punishment for killing 46 innocent South Korea sailors.

"I think it is important to send a clear message to North Korea that provocative actions have consequences," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said May 21 while visiting her Japanese counterpart in Tokyo.

Fast forward to today, when the United Nations released a presidential statement which not only does not specify any consequences for the Kim Jong Il regime, but doesn't even conclude that North Korea was responsible for the attack in the first place.

The statement acknowledges that the South Korean investigation, which included broad international participation, blamed North Korea, and then "takes note of the responses from other relevant parties, including from the DPRK, which has stated that it had nothing to do with the incident."

"Therefore, the Security Council condemns the attack which led to the sinking of the Cheonan," the statement reads.

The White House's spokesman on such matters, Mike Hammer, issued a statement clearly stating that the Obama administration believes North Korea was responsible and arguing that the U.N. statement "constitutes an endorsement of the findings" of the Joint Investigative Group that issued the report blaming North Korea.  

So the U.S. and the South Koreans believe North Korea was guilty but the U.N. isn't willing to go that far. But what about the next step? Will there be any follow up, any "consequences" for North Korea, as Clinton seemed to promise in May?

"I think right now we're just allowing North Korea to absorb the international community's response to its actions," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Friday.

North Korea's representative to the U.N., Sin Son Ho, called the statement a "great diplomatic victory."

"That doesn't sound like a lot of absorption," one member of the State Department press corps shot back at Toner.

When asked what comes next, Toner said there were no plans to pursue additional measures, other than enforcing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, and there were no outstanding requests from South Korea for additional measures. "We'll wait and let the statement stand," he said.

So what happened between May and now? According to both South Korean and U.S. officials, the countries pushing for actual penalties were serious about it at first, as is shown in the June 4 letter from South Korea, endorsed by the U.S., which urged the Security Council to "respond in a manner appropriate to the gravity of North Korea's military provocation in order to deter recurrence of any further provocation by North Korea."

But as China, ever the defender of the Hermit Kingdom, stalled on making any definitive statements about the incident, officials in Seoul and Washington began to worry that they might not be able to get any U.N. action whatsoever.

Then, toward the end of June, Beijing became nervous about the mounting international pressure and decided to try to wrap up the U.N. discussions as quickly as possible. They calculated that it was a losing game, so moved to get a statement out quickly with a small concession as a means of getting the whole issue behind them.

"This is less than we expected from the beginning," a South Korean official told The Cable, "But it clearly says the Cheonan was sunk by an attack, cites the five-country international joint-investigation result, and condemns it as a deplorable behavior. Even though it did not clarify it was North Korea's torpedo attack, it theoretically points the finger at North Korea as being responsible."

The South Korean official pointed at Russia and China as being responsible for the weakness of the statement.

"Definitely there has been a tough negotiation, especially to persuade the PRC and Russia, and this is result," the official said, "All the other countries except [China and Russia] strongly supported putting pressure on them."

Korea experts and former officials in Washington are sympathetic to the Obama administration's compromise in terms of the statement, but strongly lament that this administration seems not to be in any rush to do anything to engage North Korea or get back to tackling the problem of its growing nuclear arsenal.

"This is a glass one third full, with an explanation to convince you that it's not two thirds empty," said former North Korea negotiator Jack Pritchard, now president of the Korea Economic Institute. The statement was meant not to identify winners, but to allow everyone to avoid being named losers, he said.

"It's not clear cut and it's unsatisfactory, but it may have been the best that we could do," Pritchard acknowledged. The problem as he sees is it that now the Obama administration is back to the status quo, which means no discernable progress on North Korea nuclear discussions, something referred to as "strategic patience."

Joel Wit, another former negotiator who is now a visiting fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the time is way past overdue to find some way to get back to talking with North Korea.

"The key issue here is, are we ready to turn this corner and try to return to some sort of negotiation, some sort of dialogue that tries to deal with the problems between us, or do we just continue with strategic patience?" Wit said.

Pritchard warned that because Pyongyang has backed off its promise to move towards denuclearization and the Obama administration can't accept a nuclear North Korea, the only way to move forward would be to get North Korea to change its calculus... and that can only be done with Chinese help.

"It requires at least a perception that the Chinese will abide by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 and that's not currently the case," said Pritchard. "Strategic patience is an attitude, not a policy."

LEE JAE-WON/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:EAST ASIA, CHINA, DIPLOMACY, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, MILITARY, NORTH KOREA, NUKES, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, RUSSIA, SECURITY, STATE DEPARTMENT, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, UNITED NATIONS
 

MARTY MARTEL

8:14 PM ET

July 10, 2010

US needs to force China's hand on North Korea

Even South Korea itself had ruled out compromising its huge trade relationship with China to punish North Korea over ship sinking. So South Korea expected a mild UN resolution to begin with.

Atleast Obama is acting wisely to refuse to follow Clinton’s and Bush’s footsteps to appease North Korea since they lead NOWHERE.

As long as US is unable to pressure China to stop upholding Kim’s North Korean regime, nothing will change.

May be Iran has shown the way. First US has to assure the success of its own sanctions against Iran. US has to sanction all the Chinese companies that flout US sanctions against Iran. It will hurt US businesses too but can Obama’s US such a hurt?

If yes, then US can force the passage of similar UNSC resolution and the follow-on US resolution that can punish Chinese companies who do business with North Korea.

Appeasement of North Korea does NOT work except that US is made a sucker for more aid.

Only way to break that cycle is to force China’s hand on North Korea.

 

PUBLICUS

12:11 PM ET

July 16, 2010

Y'all come on up.....

The PRC government is reporting in its news media of every kind that the DPRK government has invited any and every interested government to travel to Pyongyangland to investigate freely because we'll of course find that N Korea was not involved in the sinking.

Foreign governments can interview DPRK generals, admirals, intelligence personnel, any government official - visit military facilities, naval ports, tour submarines, visit torpedo factories etc etc etc......pop into a few nuclear facilities too while there, eh?

As I've been saying to my Chinese friends and associates, Beijing can't fool all of the Chinese people all of the time, but it can fool almost all of them almost all the time. That's a lotta people.

 

PUBLICUS

3:00 PM ET

July 16, 2010

Bacon fat

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reuniting of Germany, the United States has been a passenger on the Korean Peninsula express with the South Koreans in the driver's seat. Yes, S Korea and the PRC will not allow the DPRK to fail - it's directly against every interest each country has.The US cannot direct or control either the PRC or the ROK in the matter of re-uniting the two Koreas.

Since the fall of the wall the S Koreans have been saying reunification of the two Koreas couldn't occur for another ten years. The S Koreans have been saying this each year since the 1989 event. Ask a S Korean today and the answer to your inquiry will be "in ten years." Ten years, each year since 1989, begins to aggregate, if you know what I mean. That is, South Koreans are not sincere or serious about reunification in the foreseeable future.

In other words, the South does not want reunification anytime soon - not today, not tomorrow, not in five years, not in ten years. And the South is as controlling in this matter between and among Koreans themselves as are the North.

Why?

Several years after the reunification of Germany, the Koreans went to the new united Germany to examine and evaluate the process and its effects. The S Koreans were aghast, to include corporate chaebol, other S Korean business and corporations, the government, the bureaucracy, civil society - all sectors and groups of S Korea.

Germany at the time was the world's 3rd largest economy and remains one of the richest countries of the world - indeed, a charter member of the G-7. Yet the economic costs of bringing the East even reasonably close to the standard of living and the quality of life of the West were and remain staggering. The social challenges have been and still are great and extensive. Introducing the East to democracy and Western liberalism was a formidable challenge. Training socialist workers of the East in the modern, high tech, fast paced German economy and its globalism became a huge and extensive, expensive, undertaking. Etc etc etc.

The Koreans have drawn their conclusions from the German Reunification Model relative to the peasant, low skilled N Koreans, N Korean unskilled labor, the uneducated masses of destitute people north of the 38th parallel. It's too big a headache for the S Koreans who are more than pleased to be enjoying their status as a developed economy which continues to progress, and as a progressing society, culture and civilization. The prosperous and playful newly rich S Koreans are wholly disinterested in taking on the gargantuan task of stopping their newfound lifestyles to bring their N Korean kin up to speed. So the unification issue languishes on the Korean peninsula in both Seoul and in Pyongyang.

Neither the PRC nor the ROK want a change to the status quo on the peninsula. For the PRC the collapse of the DPRK would mean a refugee disaster and severe, complex tensions between Beijing and Washington, Seoul and Pyongyang concerning refugees, and concerning who comprises a new government of a unified Korea. If there were an involuntary reunification, to whom would the new government of all Koreans turn for aid and assistance in reclaiming and developing the North? The PRC or the United States? What about Japan?

And what of US military forces in bases south of the 38th parallel? If US military forces remain in a unified Korea, then a central tenent of Beijing policy would again be tested, i.e., no US troops directly in contact with the borders of the PRC (which is the policy that triggered the PRC entry to the Korean Conflict of 1950 - 53).

Koreans themselves will keep the status quo on the peninsula for as long as they possibly can. The rest of us are passengers on this train.

 

PUBLICUS

6:21 PM ET

August 7, 2010

2012

You're on to it: The Shanghai Invasion Plan will be executed in 2012, leading to the end of the world. The end of the world will be of course, as with every evil, the direct doing of the United States.

To validate your wild claim, you'd need to present credible statements and evidence, then proof, from authoritative sources in SOUTH Korea. Some backup support from Japan of your certain conspiracy would be more than helpful to support of your conspiratorial assertions.

What would the United States gain from such a treacherous black op as you like to claim it committed? The DPRK absolutely needs no further discrediting. It's selling missile technology to Pakistan and is feeding the same or similar knowledge to Iran and to Burma/Myanmar. And from whom do the wizards of science and technology in the DPRK get the knowledge to begin with? You know and I know it comes from the PRC.

The United States fully knows that at the UNSC the PRC and Russia could and did mute the Council's response to the sinking of the Cheonan. US haters globally have jumped on the UNSC namby-pamby resolution to try to say the US and S Korea were unsuccessful at the council. So, as an additional matter you'd need to present is why the US decided to undertake such a black op?

 

John Hudson reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.

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