The Korean Nuclear-weapon Crisis
By Rene Wadlow*

The 9 October 2006 nuclear-weapon test of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the possibility of a second test in the near future has again drawn world attention to the Korean peninsula and to the security needs of Northeast Asian states, in particular the relations between the two Korean states, China, Japan and Taiwan.

There were many warnings from North Korea that such a test was coming. It was obvious that such a test would produce insecurity in Japan, China, and Taiwan. Such waves of insecurity could flow outwards and potentially add to the already nuclearized tensions between the South Asian states of India and Pakistan. The North Korean test could also influence the nuclear-weapons policy of Iran.

Thus the major governments involved were already agreed upon taking the situation to the UN Security Council and had largely agreed upon the nature of a resolution. By 14 October — a very short time by UN negotiation standards — a resolution on the nuclear test was adopted unanimously by the Security Council. The sanctions voted will have little immediate impact on the North Korean economy or its government policy. The resolution, however, is a sign that the test and its consequences are taken seriously by major powers. The Security Council resolution bans North Korean trade in materials linked to its nuclear weapons program, as well as heavy military equipment such as tanks, artillery systems, missiles and warships.

North Korean officials reacted angrily to the resolution. The DPRK Ambassador to the UN in New York called the resolution a “declaration of war” and promised to “deal merciless blows” to countries that breach North Korea’s “sovereignty and right to survive.” For North Korea, the issue is regime survival. There have been repeated declarations by North Korean leaders that “we will increase our self-defensive power in every way to cope with the prevailing situation no matter what others may say.” North Korea needs to develop its devastated economy without upsetting its political structures, which have given a small number of political and military elite a stranglehold on power. The North Korean leadership feels the slow strangulation of their regime and the growing exasperation of their Chinese neighbors. They know that nuclear-weapons will not change the geo-strategic picture, but they will not give up their nuclear program easily.

North Korea remains a closed society with a small leadership base. The lack of transparency and a lack of any public debate makes it difficult to know what sort of confidence-building measures are worth proposing given the long length of time between setting out a proposal and a change in reality.

There seems to me to be three challenges which face the United Nations after the North Korean nuclear tests:

1) There is a need to help negotiate a nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula along with new, written security guarantees.

2) There is a need to help in the creation of a wider Northeast Asian Security and Cooperation Zone.

3) There needs to be a realistic reconsideration of nuclear-weapon non-proliferation measures in particular the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the reasons that the Treaty’s provisions for nuclear disarmament have never been seriously put into practice.

The fact that the new Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon is from South Korea and knows the first two challenges well provides an unexpected opportunity to deal with these issues in a creative way. Thus we will return in later articles to look at each of these challenges.

*Rene Wadlow is the editor of the online journal of world politics —
www.transnational-perspectives.org — and the representative to the United Nations, Geneva, of the Association of World Citizens.