Bush’s N. Korea Stance Signals a Shift

South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s visit to Washington has brought forth the first significant change by the Bush administration in U.S. policy toward Asia.

With a few brief remarks by President Bush on Wednesday and further explanations by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Thursday, the new administration threw cold water on the Clinton administration’s efforts last fall to bring about a speedy rapprochement with the Communist regime in North Korea.

“What the president was saying . . . is that we’re going to take our time . . . and in due course, at a time and at a pace of our choosing, we will decide and determine how best to engage with the North Korean regime,” Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday.

During his campaign for the White House, Bush suggested that he might take a tougher line in dealing with China and North Korea than had the Clinton administration, without saying exactly what he would do. This week’s standoffish remarks on engagement with North Korea represent the first sign that his campaign rhetoric on Asia will translate into a different approach to policy.

At the least, these remarks mean that there will be a freeze for several months in the movement by the U.S. government toward a deal to halt North Korea’s missile program. It remains possible that after a review of policy, the Bush team will pursue a deal not radically different from the one envisaged by the Clinton administration.

But privately, some Bush administration officials this week have gone further than merely talking about a delay. They also have called into question the underlying assumptions of the Clinton administration in dealing with the regime of Kim Jong Il, and even suggested that the Bush team might abandon the Clinton administration’s quest for a deal curbing Pyongyang’s missile program.

“There needs to be a timeout to break [the North Koreans] out of the bad habits the Clinton administration created,” said Robert Manning, a Korea specialist with the Council on Foreign Relations who is familiar with the views of the Bush foreign policy team.

“There was a premise there that we’re scared of the North Koreans, that they are irrational and that if we’re not nice to them, they’ll start a war. I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I think everything they [the North Koreans] do is aimed at survival of their regime.”

The Bush team’s coolness represented at least a temporary setback for the South’s Kim, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his efforts at reconciliation with the North.

On Thursday, Kim gamely pleaded for U.S. help in dealing with Pyongyang, suggesting that his own “sunshine policy” toward North Korea could be jeopardized by the U.S. position.

“Without progress between the U.S. and North Korea, advances in South-North Korean relations will be difficult to achieve,” the South Korean president said in a speech here.

The heart of the Clinton administration’s North Korea policy was to try to bring an end to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs by offering economic inducements.

In 1994, the Clinton administration negotiated an agreement with North Korea in which the United States agreed to help Pyongyang obtain new energy supplies--two light-water nuclear reactors and heavy fuel oil--in exchange for a freeze on its nuclear weapons program.

Four years later, North Korea test-fired its newly developed Taepodong missile over Japanese airspace, and the Clinton team began seeking to negotiate a freeze on North Korea’s missile program similar to the nuclear freeze.

North Korea delayed in responding until last fall, when the Clinton administration had only a few months left in office. Then, U.S. and North Korean officials began moving hurriedly toward a deal for a missile freeze, but the agreement wasn’t completed because the United States couldn’t work out detailed procedures to verify North Korean compliance.

No one in the new administration appears to be talking about abandoning the 1994 agreement freezing North Korea’s nuclear program--although some officials suggest that they would be happy if North Korea were willing to change some of the terms of the deal.

But other parts of Clinton’s North Korea policy are now being reexamined.

One element in the Bush administration’s approach seems to be to try to ensure that any accommodation with North Korea will cover not just its missile and nuclear weapons programs but also its conventional forces.

“For example, there’s a huge [North Korean] army poised on the demilitarized zone [between the North and South] that is probably as great a threat to South Korea and Seoul and regional stability as are weapons of mass destruction,” Powell asserted in his congressional testimony Thursday.

Beyond this emphasis on conventional forces, the administration also appears to be trying to alter the dynamics of the U.S. negotiations with North Korea.

In effect, the Bush team is arguing that Pyongyang should be in a hurry for a deal with the United States, rather than the other way around.

“They are the ones with all the problems in food, energy and jobs. They’re the ones who need a billion dollars in aid a year,” said Douglas Paal of the Asia Pacific Policy Center, who served in the administration of Bush’s father. “We don’t have to rush to a conclusion of our negotiations with them.”