hankyoreh

By Kang Tae-ho, senior staff writer

North Korea’s successful placement of a satellite into orbit on Dec. 12 comes 14 years after its launch of the Taepodong-1 (Paekdusan-1) rocket in August 1998. On its fifth test launch since first developing a three-stage rocket, it established that it now has the intercontinental ballistic missile technology to strike the continental United States.

Previously, US military expert Joseph Bermudez predicted that North Korea had the technology to mount a rudimentary nuclear warhead onto a ballistic missile. The latest launch now provides Washington with its first confirmation that a rogue state, or one of the so-called “Axis of Evil” has the capability to strike its own mainland with a nuclear weapon.

“This is in some sense a game changer,” said a senior South Korean government official.

North Korea failed in its launch of the Eunha-3 in April 2009, just after the Barack Obama administration took office in Washington. At the time, James Cartwright, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff dismissively asked, “On the idea of proliferation, would you buy [missiles] from somebody that had failed three times in a row and never been successful?”

Three years later, in April 2012, the Eunha-3 launch ended in a midair explosion. The North Korean threat lost much of its punch and slipped down the Obama administration’s foreign policy priority list. Now, just seven months later, North Korea has succeeded with a launch of the same Eunha-3 rocket, demonstrating that it has confidence in its rocket capabilities, production facilities, and preparations.

Analysts said the launch is likely to have an impact on the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” as it begins its second term in office. Over the past 14 years, relations between Pyongyang and Washington over the missile issue have come in three main types. Under Bill Clinton, the approach was on resolving matters through negotiation. Under George W. Bush, sanctions were followed by missile launches and a nuclear test in an extreme confrontation that eventually gave way to negotiations. And under Obama, sanctions from Washington alternated with nuclear test and missile launch provocations from Pyongyang.

In each case, North Korea launched rockets. The difference in outcomes resulted from the response out of Washington.

The first three-stage rocket launch in 1998 altered the Clinton administration’s policy course on North Korea. Clinton immediately appointed former defense secretary William Perry as North Korea policy coordinator and launched full-scale negotiations to resolve the missile issue through the so-called “Perry process,” coordinated with the Kim Dae-jung administration’s engagement policy in Seoul.

Following their agreement to normalize relations with a joint communique in November 2000, the two countries proceeded into the final stage of removing the missile threat, with terms including US food aid, North Korea’s halt of and compensation for missile exports, and the launch of a satellite on North Korea’s behalf.

The agreement was subsequently cancelled by the Bush administration, but that administration too changed policies after Pyongyang followed up its July 2006 launch of seven Taepodong-2 and other missiles with its first nuclear test in October of the same year. The two sides cooperated with Seoul and Beijing to head back to the bargaining table with the six-party talks on the condition that North Korea not conduct a second nuclear test. Eventually, an agreement was reached to disable the country’s nuclear facilities.

Under the Obama administration’s first term, North Korea’s rocket launch in April 2009 was denounced in a UN Security Council president’s statement. Over the next four years, North Korea conducted its second nuclear test and three rocket launches, put modern uranium enrichment facilities into operation, and built a light-water reactor.

The results could be called an utter failure for a North Korea policy aimed at blocking the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Additional sanctions at the UN level were of no avail. Now, as the Obama administration enters its second term, the latest success of North Korea’s satellite launch could be the occasion for a bold change in approach in which it tries for a more fundamental resolution of the issue by pushing to normalize relations with Pyongyang and finish the missile negotiations and nuclear deal left over from the Clinton years.

“It doesn’t really make sense anymore to simply suggest going to back to the six-party talks and the September 19 Joint Statement,” said one senior South Korean government official. “What we need now is a new agreement framework that includes missiles.”

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