The Marmot’s Hole

UPDATE: Responding to a question by Uri Party lawmaker Choe Sung during an parliamentary interpellation session Thursday, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon slammed Nick Eberstadt’s comments in the Seoul Shinmun. Ban called Big Nick’s claims that Korean government figures had been hoping against Bush’s re-election “irresponsible,” and said that while the scholar’s opinions were his own, they were inappropriate for Korea-U.S. friendship and the development of a healthy relationship.

Of course, when Democratic Labor Party lawmaker Roh Hoe-chan goes out during the same parliamentary interpellation session and talks about how there are “claims” the USFK redeployment was to hit North Korea with pre-emptive strikes, that ain’t irresponsible, even if the Defense Minister’s response was just plain dumb.

Choe also asked Ban is it had been appropriate for the Korea Foundation to have given the AEI US$330,00 — US$165,000 to Dr. Eberstadt personally — over the last five years, to which Ban replied that the issue of grants to research institutes would be looked into and necessary matters considered.

Now, aren’t you curious to know what Big Nick said to piss Ban off? Read on below — you know you want to.

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ORIGINAL POST: American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholar Nicholas Eberstadt, a favorite of this humble blogger, caused quite the shit storm today courtesy an interview he gave with the Seoul Shinmun in which he apparently accused some folk at Cheong Wa Dae and in the National Security Council (NSC) — specific figures, mind you (not they he disclosed who they were) — of not fully backing President Bush’s eventually successful re-election bid. And that wasn’t all — Big Nick spoke his mind on a number of issues, including what was in his estimate South Korea’s insincerity concerning the North Korean nuclear threat. Being, as he is, Nicholas Eberstadt: Neo-con Extraordinaire, the views expressed in his interview are being construed in some circles as the Bush White House’s unofficial “official” positions vis-a-vis both Koreas, not a completely unreasonable thing to believe given how U.S. Undersecretary of State John “Human Scum” Bolton once pointed to Big Nick’s The End of North Korea as the solution to the North Korean nuke issue. The interview also got the boys and girls at Korean Internet media site Pressian seriously unhinged, resulting in the following headline:

U.S. ‘Neo-con’ Causes Stir by ‘Carpet Bombing’ Cheong Wa Dae, NSC

You get that? Big Nick CARPET BOMBED ‘em. BA BOOM!

Best Pressian headline I’ve seen since July, when it ran one that went, “If We Don’t Send Troops to Iraq, U.S. Will Launch Scorched-Earth Campaign on Korean Economy: Cheong Wa Dae.” That beauty got Cheong Wa Dae pissed off — mostly on account that Cheong Wa Dae didn’t actually say what was attributed to it in the headline — sparking an ugly little dispute all about which you can read in OhMyNews.

Anyway, besides Pressian — which described the AEI as “the representative U.S. extreme-right think tank” — Cheong Wa Dae was a little taken back by the interview as well, particular the part about specific figures in the Roh administration rooting against Bush. The Chosun Ilbo quoted one unnamed high-ranking Cheong Wa Dae official as having said, “What utter rot!”

No idea who Eberstadt was talking about, although it wasn’t a secret that Cheong Wa Dae — from President Roh on down — would have preferred a Kerry White House. Frankly, I would have been more shocked if Big Nick had claimed that someone in Cheong Wa Dae had actually been pulling for Bush. Having said all that, and assuming a) the Korean translation of the English interview was accurate (more on that in a second); and b) Eberstadt wasn’t just talking about something he read in the WSJ or the like, the smart money says he was pointing to NSC deputy chief Lee Jong-seok, who’s currently on visit to Washington. Why Lee, you might ask? For starters, he’s rather well known for his emphasis on what we’ll call for now “independent diplomacy,” and the opposition Grand National Party (GNP) has been calling for his head since Bush’s re-election. Lee is also a) an academic; and b) more specifically, a North Korea specialist, so you’d think he’d know Eberstadt, at least professionally. One wonders if Lee didn’t run his mouth off to him prior to the U.S. election. But as was pointed out previously, Big Nick ain’t naming names, so I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.

The man I felt most sorry for in this whole mess was Institute for International Economic senior fellow Marcus Noland. The Seoul Shinmun piece actually consisted of not one, but two interviews — Eberstadt’s was the first, followed by Dr. Noland’s. Problem being, Noland didn’t carpet bomb anyone, so nobody seemed to care. Poor guy. Especially unfortunate because his interview was worth reading.

Runner up for my sympathy award would be Hoya professor David Steinberg, whose op-ed piece in the IHT on South Korea’s “second social revolution” probably would have been a bigger deal if he had just taken the time to carpet bomb someone.

OK, this brings us to the translations. I took the liberty to translate Dr. Eberstadt’s and Dr. Noland’s interviews in the Seoul Shinmun, both of which you’ll find below. They are MUST READS, but a word of caution. They original interviews were given in English, translated into Korean, and retranslated back into English. Obviously, with all the translating going on, there’s plenty of room for things to go horribly wrong, especially when the final translation is being done at 3-4 o’clock in the morning. The Seoul Shinmun didn’t run a copy of the original English versions, which was unfortunate, but also fair enough, given that I didn’t recall the Financial Times running the original Korean version of its last interview with Kim Dae-jung. I spent the better part of the evening discussing this piece with the Oranckay, and we are both very keen on seeing what was actually said in the language in which it was uttered, especially because the Korean version makes Big Nick look something like a Big Dick (not that I didn’t agree with just about everything he said, but the tone could rub some people wrong). Anyway, you’ve been warned, so without further ado, I present to you the interviews below.

Nicholas Eberstadt, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

What is your forecast for the DPRK-U.S. relationship?

No matter what, it seems like it will be a “zero-sum game.” It would be good if it turned out to be a “win-win” game in which both sides won, but in reality, the probability of that is low. The U.S. and DPRK have arrived at the stage where both are only disappointed in one another.

Will the six-party talks continue?

I think they’ll be held one more time. Within the Bush administration, their evaluations of the six party talks are getting stricter as time passes. President Bush got his MBA from Harvard Business School. What you learn there is to tell whether a business will succeed or fail. In the same way, Bush is taking all sorts of factors and evaluating whether the six-party talks will succeed or fail. I think he will evaluate they’ll fail.

What will he do after making such an evaluation?

Just because he makes such an evaluation doesn’t mean the Bush government will go straight into unilateral action. The participant nations in the six-party talks will have to get together and think of what to do next. In particular, the United States, China and South Korea will hold close discussions. After all the participating nations get together and judge that the six-party talks can’t go on like this, they will have to find a different way.

Is there the possibility of military action?

There are some who point out that military action might be difficult with large numbers of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the U.S. has sufficient high-tech military strength in its navy and air force. Of course, a diplomatic solution will continue to be possible. For example, China led the six-party talks. In the international community, this was China’s first leading role in trying to resolve a dispute. Yet if this attempt ends in failure, what will happen to Beijing’s face? The U.S. and China will come to discuss North Korea’s unreasonable negotiating attitude.

How do you see the South Korea-U.S. relationship?

I’ve come to doubt whether South Korea is sincerely interested in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. I don’t know whether Seoul is simply saying North Korean nukes are a threat, or whether it really does feel the threat. If it really does feel the North Korean [nuclear] threat, it would have to prove so through decisions about its aid to North Korea. Isn’t Seoul still giving aid to North Korea under various pretexts?

Will the Korea-U.S. relationship worsen because of North Korea?

That’s no secret. The U.S. feels a greater threat from North Korea than South Korea. It’s a real paradoxical imbalance. The U.S. takes the possibility of North Korea giving nuclear [weapons, materials, etc.] to terrorists very seriously, while South Korea thinks of only an attack on Seoul. Now, in both the United States and Korea, nobody seems to be seriously agonizing over the future of the Korea-U.S. alliance. This is something that will have to be seriously discussed now.

Haven’t both governments been discussing the future of the alliance?

It’s important to look at the intricacies of the entire Korea-U.S. relationship, not simply make a few changes to the text of the Korea-U.S. mutual defense pact. South Korea, geopolitically, is an area surrounded by four Great Powers and has no choice but to be faced with threats. In the long term, threats to South Korea’s security will not go away just because the North Korea issue has been resolved. Threats to security change with the times.

Between Iraq and North Korea, which one will the Bush administration prioritize?

To the United States, the North Korean threat is greater than the one posed by Iran. The potential threat is greater than the one posed by Iraq. Among the “Axis of Evil” nations of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, North Korea is the one that is potentially the most threatening.

It seems you have much to say to the Korean government.

It was said that Cheong Wa Dae and the National Security Council viewed Bush’s re-election as an emergency. I, too, know full well there were specific people [or a specific person] in Cheong Wa Dae that didn’t want Bush to win. Nevertheless, even if the Korean government didn’t support President Bush, the two nations are historic allies. There are too many things the two countries have to cooperate on.

There is discussion of an intra-Korean summit…

The last intra-Korean summit presented overly large burdens on the South Korean taxpayer. If another summit comes about, it should be legally transparent, and there mustn’t be any secret transactions.

Marcus Noland, Senior Fellow at the Institute of International Economics

What do you predict for the North Korea policy of the 2nd Bush Administration?

President Bush has a “political reason” to quickly resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. The Bush administration really wants to concentrate on issues in the Middle East like the Iraq War. To do this, it is going to decide one way or the other about the North Korean nuclear issue within a short period of time.

Do you think North Korea will agree to negotiations?

If North Korea thinks nuclear weapons are absolutely necessary for its security, the participating nations in the six-party talks need to give it confidence that its security could be guaranteed without nuclear weapons. If North Korea is using nukes as a weapon to get promises of economic aid, here as well, the participating nations need to plant in North Korea confidence that “no nukes” is a shorter path to prosperity than “with nukes.” Of course, it’s still unclear whether North Korea would come to have confidence, but…

Do you think the six-party talks will continue?

I hope so. The important thing is that the participating nations need consensus. Someone will ruin the negotiations. One needs to compare what the U.S. said at the talks with what the North Koreans said and clearly uncover who is to blame. For the Bush administration, joint understanding with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia is important.

Are bilateral talks between North Korea and the U.S. necessary?

For the United States, whatever agreement it makes with the North Koreans, it needs to verify it with other participating nations. It would give a chance to see if North Korean claims like U.S. economic sanctions on North Korea are destroying North Korea’s economy were true or not.

How important an issue is North Korean human rights to the United States?

It’s a secondary issue. The most important pending issues are nuclear weapons and missiles. After that are restoring the DPRK-U.S. diplomatic relationship, economic issues, human rights and so on.

How are Korea-U.S. relations? Is the North Korea issue always predominant in the relationship?

About North Korea, the positions of South Korea and the U.S. are generally the same, I think. They are not precisely the same, however.

South Korea sees the intra-Korean relationship only from the perspective of the Korean Peninsula, regardless of whether its nukes, or conventional weapons, or economic cooperation. The United States, however, has wider interests. Because the U.S. military is stationed in South Korea, it sees the North Korea issue from a Korean Peninsula perspective as well. But there are also matters it must see from an international perspective, like nukes and missiles. Accordingly, the issues and priorities of the U.S. and South Korea are different. This is a factor in the tensions [between Seoul and Washington].

In South Korea, there is discussion of the possibility of holding an intra-Korean summit…

It should be possible. It’s just that from Washington, you get the feeling the Korean government is reluctant to act with North Korea. No matter what North Korea does, it gets something from South Korea.

An intra-Korean summit must be a place to tell North Korea, “If you cooperate, you can get something, but if you don’t cooperate, you may have to pay a price.” Moreover, it must be a place to convey to North Korea that President Bush really wants to negotiate, but if North Korea doesn’t negotiate, the situation will deteriorate. The U.S. is concerned, however, that the South Korean side, in reality, will not do that.

Do you think North Korea will eventually give up its nukes?

I’m skeptical. I hope I’m wrong. But even if I’m right, the U.S. must show a sincere negotiating attitude. This is because only by doing so would the blame be placed on North Korea should the talks eventually fail, and the U.S. and other participating states could apply sanctions and pressure.

Scenarios dealing with the collapse of North Korea have been frequently appearing recently.

I don’t want to predict North Korea’s collapse to the readers of the Seoul Shinmun. But with nukes, missiles, the economy and its confrontation with South Korea, the fact is that North Korea’s situation is serious. It wouldn’t surprise me even if there were big changes in the North Korean system or it [the North] completely disappeared within a couple of decades.