Page 4 of 5 CHINA AND THE
US PART 9: The North Korean
perspective By Henry C K Liu
relevant facilities, sacrificing a
self-reliant nuclear power industry, and made a
decision to switch the existing graphite-moderated
reactor system to a light-water reactor system.
The DPRK-US Joint Statement was adopted on
June 11, 1993, and the DPRK-US Agreed Framework,
which promised in essence to settle the nuclear
issue on the Korean Peninsula, was adopted on
October 21, 1994. After the Bush administration
came
into
office in January 2001, North Korea repeatedly
proposed holding direct talks with the United
States and firmly insisted on settling the nuclear
issue by concluding a non-aggression treaty so as
by all means to prevent the rupture of the process
of denuclearization of the peninsula even as US
maneuvers to abrogate the DPRK-US Agreed Framework
and scrap the North-South Joint Declaration on
denuclearization intensified.
Thus North
Korea claims that the historical facts show that
it has worked for denuclearization on the Korean
Peninsula for decades, while the US has tried
systematically to scrap the North-South Joint
Declaration on the denuclearization of the
peninsula and otherwise has hindered
denuclearization. On top of nuclear weapons
stockpiled and deployed in South Korea, the US
deployed internationally banned depleted-uranium
weapons in Iraq in 1991, in Kosovo in 1999, in
Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq again in 2003.
Bush nullifies Agreed
Framework Upon entering the White House,
Bush served notice on nullifying the DPRK-US
Agreed Framework, as reported in New Korea Times
on June 23, 2001. The May 17, 2001, edition of
Tong-a Ilbo reported that Condoleezza Rice, then
the US national security adviser, submitted a
strategic report titled "Global Trends 2015" in
which she officially rejected the Joint
Declaration of the denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula by putting emphasis on raising tension
against North Korea to bring South Korea into the
proposed missile-defense system.
On June
6, 2001, Bush announced a statement on North Korea
policy, the main contents of which were
improvements to the implementation of the Geneva
Agreement with regard to nuclear activities,
including those conducted in the past; regulations
on verification of missile development projects;
and reduction of conventional weapons.
The
June 8, 2001, edition of Tong-a Ilbo assessed
Bush's statement on North Korea as the virtual
declaration of a policy of confrontation against
the DPRK, implying that force could be employed in
the event that North Korea did not accept US
demands such as approval of nuclear inspections,
suspension of missile launches and reduction of
conventional weapons. The Bush administration's
extreme, hostile policy toward the DPRK became
overt when he designated North Korea as part of
the "axis of evil" in his State of the Union
address on January 30, 2002.
The
Korea-Taiwan link in US-China
Relations Related to this hostile policy on
North Korea, US Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) director Kurt
Campbell, a former deputy assistant secretary of
defense for East Asia and the Pacific, as a member
of the National Security Council staff, made
vociferous remarks in an interview with Asahi
Shimbun on November 12, 2002, that the ultimate
goal of US policy toward the DPRK was destruction
of its regime, not normalization of relations.
Campbell also went on record to interpret
the Bush administration's policy on China as a
clear change from so-called "strategic ambiguity"
to a new policy of "dual clarity", one of "no
military coercion, no independence". This means
any Chinese military action against Taiwan would
clearly encounter US force.
The Bush
administration - in subtle ways, silently and
behind the scenes - changed long-standing US
policy on Taiwan as defined in the three US-China
Joint Communiques signed by three of Bush's
predecessors. The US operates with the unrealistic
aim that a status quo on Taiwan would not deter
improvement in US-China relations that the US
needs for achieving its global objectives. From
China's perspective, until the United States stops
interfering on Taiwan, which Beijing considers an
internal affair, no sustainable improvement in
US-China relations can be institutionalized,
including the Korean problem on which the US
actively seeks Chinese help in solving.
US policy of regime change for North
Korea The Bush administration publicly
asserted a policy of regime change for North Korea
and characterized as "provocative" Pyongyang's
response to repeated provocation by the United
States to derail the denuclearization of the
Korean Peninsula and to "suffocate" North Korea
with sanctions.
The October 2002 edition
of the South Korean magazine T'ongil Hanguk
reported that the US had conducted a nuclear
bombing exercise against a model of North Korean
targets at a US Air Force base in North Carolina
since 1998 and that this kind of exercise had been
conducted on an extended scale after the Bush
administration took office.
According to a
South Korean KBS broadcast on March 15, 2002, the
Bush administration ordered that a nuclear-attack
plan against North Korea be established, and the
US Defense Department
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