Dirty Business at the Border in N. Korea

In a quiet way, the Clinton administration has just acknowledged two of the dirty little realities of North Korea--the secrets of modern life in that country that visiting American members of Congress aren’t allowed to see on their guided tours.

The first nasty truth is that North Korea has been producing opium. Yes, this is the same North Korea suffering from famine and hunger. It turns out that while North Korea’s ability to grow rice and wheat has been devastated, the poppy crop seems to be doing just fine, thank you.

“We are concerned that North Korea may have substantially increased its opium production in recent years,” the State Department admitted. That astonishing statement was made recently in a written response to questions raised by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a couple of months ago.

The amount of opium North Korea makes is about 40 tons a year, comparable to some of the world’s other middle-level producers. To be sure, the administration says that most of the North Korean opium “apparently is exported to neighboring countries,” especially Russia.

A British correspondent for the Guardian newspaper, visiting Vladivostok last May, reported that on at least five occasions during the previous year, the trains from Pyongyang to Moscow have been turned back because Russian border guards have found large amounts of raw opium stashed beneath the seats.

The State Department says reassuringly that “none [of the North Korean opium] is known to have entered the United States.” Nevertheless, the administration’s confirmation of the regime’s venture into the trafficking of the drug gives us another interesting perspective on North Korea’s food crisis.

The opium production is, of course, another sign of the economic desperation of the North Korean regime. And it shows that North Korea continues to operate far outside the norms of international behavior, even as it seeks aid from abroad to help feed its people.

The second dirty little secret that the administration has quietly confirmed about North Korea is this: China is helping to feed the North Korean army.

Stop and ponder the implications of that fact for a minute. North Korea’s million-man army is still deployed in such a way that it could attack South Korea. The United States maintains 37,000 troops in the South to defend against an invasion by North Korea.

One might wonder whether, amid North Korea’s economic woes, the prospect of such an attack might be increasingly remote. The Pentagon, however, takes the possibility seriously. Whenever the Clinton administration tells the world why it still needs land mines, the first argument it makes is that the weapons are needed to help defend against a North Korean invasion.

When you put it all together, China is helping to keep alive the North Korean army that the Pentagon says is threatening U.S. forces.

In its written statement to the Senate foreign relations panel, the administration explained that China’s food aid to North Korea is provided “without monitoring. Thus, the use of that food is entirely up to [North Korean] authorities, and part of it probably has gone to the military.”

Privately, U.S. officials go a bit further than this written statement. An administration official says Chinese officials have admitted to the United States that they are helping feed the North Korean military. American officials don’t object strongly; instead, they merely say that on the whole, they wish China wouldn’t do this.

What should one make of this curious state of affairs? It suggests that in dealing with China and North Korea, the Clinton administration is being either foolish or devious.

If the administration is merely passively accepting a situation in which China feeds the North Korean army, then it’s being inept. American taxpayers are footing a large bill to defend against that North Korean army.

On the other hand, it’s also possible the administration and China are secretly collaborating on North Korea. Maybe Clinton and his foreign policy advisors are tacitly going along with Chinese handouts to the North Korean army as part of some deal or arrangement in which China will eventually help change or keep control over North Korea.

“The $64 question is what the United States and China are telling one another about North Korea,” says Jonathan Pollack of the Rand Corp.

He’s right. Reading between the lines, there seems to be considerably more going on between the United States and China than last week’s showy summit debate on human rights between President Clinton and Jiang Zemin. There appears to be a secret agenda between the two countries, with North Korea at the top of the list.

We now know that North Korea is the sort of country that grows increasing amounts of opium while its people starve. And we know that, for public consumption, the Clinton administration is serenely accepting China’s willingness to feed a supposedly menacing North Korean army.

What we don’t know is why the administration is so accepting of this. In North Korea, Clinton may have at work a secret policy based on secret diplomacy, with secret benefits the American people may some day discover. One hopes so because otherwise, his North Korea policy would make no sense at all.

Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.