Aftermath of a Breakthrough

Last December, North Korea’s chronic energy shortages became so severe that the lights and heat began to go off in Pyongyang, the capital.

It was those winter power outages, Clinton administration officials believe, that finally drove North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to pursue the historic opening with South Korea that the world witnessed this week.

“It’s one thing when you’ve got lots of people hungry in the countryside, as North Korea had in past years,” one senior administration official observed Thursday. “But when the lights go out in your capital, then that’s hurting the country’s elite.”

In the wake of the Pyongyang summit between the North Korean leader and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, U.S. officials are examining what led up to the dramatic events and what seems to be motivating Kim Jong Il.

The answers to those questions will have significant implications for future U.S. policy toward the North Korean regime. Clinton administration officials are in the process of carrying through on earlier promises to lift 50-year-old economic sanctions against North Korea.

But it’s still unclear how far Kim Jong Il’s opening will go and, in particular, whether he will rein in his country’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons and missiles.

“They [North Koreans] have gone from being the Hermit Kingdom to the Hyperactive Kingdom,” said another senior U.S. official, referring to recent diplomatic overtures by Pyongyang toward Italy, Australia and other countries. “This must have reflected a conscious decision.” He too attributed the change to the deterioration of North Korea’s economy.

Although the power shortages may have been the proximate cause for Kim’s decision, there were other factors as well, say U.S. analysts who specialize in Korean affairs.

Politically, this week’s summit showed that Kim has managed to consolidate his control of North Korea. He assumed power after his father’s death in July 1994, and until recently, there were questions about the extent to which he was the unchallenged authority.

Kim’s consolidation of power has not been automatic or trouble-free, according to U.S. government sources. Within the North’s intelligence and security apparatus, some officials have been ousted or executed.

Some Clinton administration officials also believe that U.S. diplomacy helped to bring about the dramatic summit session.

They point out that the approach adopted last year by former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, then the administration’s special coordinator for North Korea policy, laid out a series of incentives and punishments to be applied to shape North Korean behavior.

Moreover, administration officials say the U.S., South Korea and Japan managed to work so closely together that they presented Kim with a united front--and he responded as they had hoped: by choosing the conciliatory approach embodied in the summit.

As if to underscore that approach, the State Department announced Thursday that it will donate an additional 55,000 tons of surplus U.S. commodities to North Korea. It was the latest in a series of American food shipments to the Pyongyang regime, now the largest recipient of U.S. aid in East Asia.

President Clinton said last week that the U.S. will soon lift the sanctions that were imposed on North Korea during the Korean War. Those measures have generally barred American investment in or trade with North Korea.

As a result of the sanctions, North Korea has been unable to carry out the export-led growth strategy that has brought prosperity to its East Asian neighbors.

However, others--not only Republican critics but also some independent analysts--doubt that U.S. policy had the sort of impact on Kim that the administration claims. In fact, some critics say, Kim decided to pursue his opening with South Korea as a means of goading the U.S. and undermining the close links among Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.

“They’re cozying up to South Korea and trying to be irritating to the United States. The goal is to split the alliance,” said Chuck Downs, a former Pentagon official and author of the 1998 book “Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy.”

Korea scholars outside the U.S. government agree with the administration that the energy shortages appear to have been the main factor driving Kim’s change in approach.

North Korea has no oil and relies on coal for energy. Its electrical grid is in such poor condition that estimates of losses during transmission range from 16% to 84%.

“The North Korean economy is, in essence, broken,” said economist Marcus Noland of the Washington-based Institute for International Economics. In a new book, “Avoiding the Apocalypse,” Noland labels Kim’s nation “the people’s republic of misery.”

In 1994, the United States worked out a deal in which North Korea agreed to freeze its fast-developing nuclear weapons program in exchange for energy supplies from the U.S. and its allies.

The Clinton administration agreed to provide the regime with supplies of heavy fuel oil and to arrange the construction--with South Korean and Japanese financing--of two civilian nuclear reactors.

But the reactors aren’t expected to be completed at least until 2003, and construction is far behind schedule. For this reason, U.S. officials believe, Kim decided that he had to take steps now to try to keep his country afloat.

“He knows he’s going to need a lot of external assistance,” one U.S. official said. “And the North Koreans never thought they could get what they needed from the Americans. The only ones who can give them the help they need are the South Koreans.”

Some U.S. officials believe that the severe power shortages of the past winter merely caused Kim to speed up policies that already were in place. They say that, over the past decade, North Korea has repeatedly shown signs that it might be willing to open up to the outside world.

The question now is whether North Korean officials are ready to abandon their pattern of military threats, such as the firing of a newly developed missile across Japanese airspace in August 1998.

North Korea agreed to a moratorium on missile tests in September but has not yet agreed to make it permanent.

“For them to drop the moratorium and test a missile at this point would jeopardize everything that’s gone on for the past six months,” one administration official said as the summit of the two Korean leaders drew to a close.