Presidential Visit

08 March 2001

Text: Sen. Biden Urges U.S. Engagement with N. Korea on Missiles

(Biden discourages "lengthy policy reviews" on N. Korea) (4170)

The United States should work with South Korea to help end the threat
to regional peace represented by Pyongyang's "deadly and destabilizing
pursuit of long range missiles," according to the highest-ranking
Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"We should engage North Korea in a serious diplomatic effort aimed at
an iron-clad agreement to end forever the North's pursuit of long
range missiles," Senator Joseph Biden (Democrat of Delaware) said in a
speech on the Senate floor March 7.

Such an agreement, he told colleagues, "would remove a direct North
Korean threat to the region and improve prospects for North-South
reconciliation."

Biden, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 1975,
said a deal with Pyongyang would "remove a major source of missiles
and missile technology for countries such as Iran."

A "tough, verifiable" agreement with the communist rulers of North
Korea, Biden said, might be possible "in exchange for reasonable U.S.
assistance that would help North Korea feed itself and help convert
missile plants to peaceful manufacturing."

Many nations, including South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia, "share
a desire to see North Korea devote its meager resources to food, not
rockets," Biden said.

"The only countries which want to see North Korea building missiles
are its disreputable customers," the co-chairman of the Senate
National Security Working Group said.

Biden stressed that the United States has a vital interest in
maintaining peace and stability in the region.

"We have good friends and allies -- like President Kim Dae Jung of
South Korea -- who stand ready to work with us toward that goal. It is
vital that we not drop the ball; miss an opportunity to end North
Korea's deadly and destabilizing pursuit of long range missiles," the
Delaware lawmaker said.

Biden, who led the successful 1997 effort in the Senate to approve
ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, acknowledged that in
the end Pyongyang "may prove too intransigent, too truculent, for us
to reach an accord."

Biden urged Bush to "listen closely" to South Korean President Kim and
"work with him to test North Korea's commitment to peace."

The United States, Biden added, should not engage in "lengthy policy
reviews" about the Pyongyang regime, but should rather "forge ahead
and test North Korea's commitment to peace."

Following is the text of Biden's remarks from the Congressional
Record:

(begin text)

NORTH KOREA
Senate
March 07, 2001

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the situation in
North Korea. Today President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea is meeting
with President Bush as part of his official state visit. His visit
occurs against a hopeful backdrop of the third round of family
reunions on the divided Korean peninsula. Fathers are greeting their
grownup sons; sisters are hugging their sisters they haven't seen for
a generation. Grandmothers are meeting their grandchildren who they
have never met.

Tomorrow the distinguished chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs
Committee and I will host the President of South Korea for coffee here
on Capitol Hill. Kim's visit will give us a chance to renew the close
bonds forged in blood in the common struggle against the forces of
oppression which unite our people in the United States and South
Korea.

I rise today to talk a little bit about the Korean peninsula and the
important role the United States can play in concert with our South
Korean allies and other friends to help build lasting peace on that
peninsula.

Yesterday the New York Times published an article by veteran defense
correspondent Michael Gordon which suggests that a missile deal with
North Korea may have been within reach last year. As fascinating as
this rendition of events was and as fascinating as the policies were,
we now have a new President. The failure or the judgment to not
proceed with negotiations into the month of January of this year on
the part of the new President is in fact at this moment irrelevant. We
have a new President and a new administration. The question squarely
now is not whether President Clinton should have gone to North Korea;
the question is whether this administration, the Bush administration,
is going to build on the progress made over the past 5 years since we
narrowly averted a nuclear showdown on the Korean peninsula.

I was pleased to see Secretary of State Powell quoted in a Washington
Post article today, suggesting this administration was going to pursue
the possibilities of a better relationship with North Korea and was
going to leave nothing on the table. I was slightly dismayed to read
of an informed source in the administration who chose not to be
identified, demonstrating a great deal more of what seemed to me in
the article to be not only skepticism, which I share about the
intentions of North Korea, but willingness to pursue vigorously the
possibilities of further negotiations. Hopefully, I am misreading that
unidentified highly placed administration official.

In my view, there is only one correct answer and that is the one
Secretary Powell has indicated today. For it would be irresponsible
not to explore to discover whether North Korea is prepared to abandon
its pursuit of long-range missiles in response to a serious proposal
from the United States, our friends, and our allies.

North Korea confronts the United States with a number of security
challenges. North Korea maintains a huge army of more than 1 million
men and women in uniform, about 5 percent of its entire population.
Many of that army are poised on the South Korean border. The threat
that North Korea opposes extends well beyond the Korean peninsula. Its
Nodong missile can not only strike all of South Korea but can also
threaten our ally, Japan. North Korea sells those same missiles to
anyone who has the cash to buy them. North Korean missile exports to
Iran and Pakistan have guaranteed, unfortunately, that any future war
in the Middle East or South Asia will be even more dangerous and more
destructive than past conflicts in that region.

North Korean missiles and the very real concern that North Korea might
even build longer range missiles capable of striking the United States
are a driving force behind our plans to build a national missile
defense system.

If we can remove that threat, that is, the threat from North Korea
long-range missile possibility, the impact will be huge, not only on
the security of Northeast Asia but also on our own defense strategy as
we debate how best to deal with our vulnerability to weapons of mass
destruction.

For most of the past 50 years, U.S. soldiers of the 2d Infantry
Division have looked north from their positions along the DMV at North
Korean adversaries that appeared unchanging -- a hermit kingdom,
locked in a Stalinist time warp. Indeed, 2 or 3 years ago if I had
spoken to the American people about landmines, the 38th parallel, and
the armies of North and South Korea, it would have been to discuss the
latest northern incursion along what remains the most heavily armed
border in the world. The troops of the 2d Infantry Division are still
standing shoulder to shoulder with our South Korean allies. The
landmines are still there.

And much of the tension along the DMZ remains unabated, at least for
now.

But maybe, just maybe, things are beginning to change.

The United States should end our ``prevent defense'' and go on the
offensive to advance our vital interests -- particularly the
dismantlement of North Korea's long-range missile program. Now is not
the time for lengthy policy reviews or foot-dragging on existing
commitments. Now is the time to forge ahead and test North Korea's
commitment to peace.

A few weeks ago what had been unthinkable -- the opening of direct
rail transport across the DMZ -- became a near term achievable
objective. The militaries of North and South Korea will soon begin to
reconstruct the rail links connecting Seoul not only to Pyongyang, but
also to China, Russia, and Western Europe.

I remember vividly the moment when the people of East and West Berlin
decided to tear down the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall had become a true anachronism: a graffiti-strewn relic
of a morally, politically, and economically bankrupt Soviet regime.
Once the East German people had torn down the ideological walls in
their own minds, tearing down the concrete was a piece of cake.

The people of North and South Korea are not there yet. But the walls
are under siege. The establishment of direct rail links will represent
a major breach in the walls of fear, insecurity, and isolation which
have built up over the past 50 years.

Last October, I spoke to this body about testing North Korea's
willingness to abandon its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. At
that time, I pointed to some of the hopeful signs that North Korea was
interested in improving its relations with its neighbors -- a missile
launch moratorium now more than 2 years old, summit meetings with
South Korea, Russia, and China, and the first tentative steps toward
economic reform.

I attributed these North Korean actions to the ``Sunshine Policy''
crafted by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, and to the hard-headed
engagement strategy implemented by former Secretary of Defense William
Perry on behalf of the Clinton administration.

Since last fall, evidence has mounted steadily that North Korea's
leader Kim Jong-il has indeed decided that nothing short of a major
overhaul of his economic system and diplomatic relations is likely to
pull his country back from the brink of starvation and economic
collapse.

In addition to the progress on rail links, here are some of the other
recent developments:

North Korea has expanded cooperation to search for the remains of
Americans missing in action from the Korean war. Uniformed U.S.
military personnel are working along side their North Korean
counterparts, searching the rice paddies, often in remote areas, in an
effort to solve 50-year-old mysteries.

The North has continued modest steps to allow family reunions across
the DMZ, exposing people from the North to the quality of life enjoyed
by their brothers and sisters in the South. More than 300 families
have enjoyed reunion visits, and more are scheduled.

The North has toned down its customary harsh rhetoric about the U.S.
and South Korea, substituting a steady diet of editorials outlining
the North's plans to make economic revitalization its top priority.

North Korea for the first time last November opened its food
distribution system to South Korean inspection and also provided a
detailed accounting of food aid distribution.

North and South Korea have held defense talks at both the ministerial
level and subsequently at the working level, and have agreed, at the
urging of South Korea, to improve military to military communications.
This is the first step toward confidence building measures that can
reduce the likelihood that a relatively minor incident along the DMZ
might escalate into war.

North and South have established an economic cooperation panel and
launched a joint study of North Korea's energy needs.

North and South Korean flood control experts met last month in
Pyongyang for talks on cooperation in efforts along the Imjin River,
which crosses the border between the two countries.

The North Koreans have dispatched a team of financial experts to
Washington to examine what it would take for North Korea to earn
support from international financial institutions once it has taken
the steps necessary to satisfy U.S. anti-terrorism laws.

And, as I mentioned above, the North has not test-fired a missile for
more than 2 1/2 years, and has pledged not to do so while negotiations
with the United States on the North's missile program continue.

Five years ago when people spoke of ``North Korean offensives,'' they
were referring to the threat of a North Korean assault across the DMZ.

Today, Kim Jong-il is mounting an offensive, but it is a diplomatic
and economic offensive, not a military one. Over the past 12 months,
North Korea has established diplomatic relations with almost all of
the nations of Western Europe. Planning is underway for an
unprecedented trip by Kim Jong-il to Seoul to meet with President Kim
Dae-jung later this year.

Finally, Kim Jong-il's has publicly embraced China's model of economic
reform. His celebrated January visit to Shanghai and his open praise
of Chinese economic reforms indicates that Kim is driving North Korea
toward a future in which it would be more closely integrated
economically and politically to the rest of East Asia and the world.

What are we to make of all of this? How should we respond?

I want to be clear about why I find these developments so promising. I
am not a fan of Kim Jong-il. No one should think that his motives are
noble or humanitarian.

Over the years, Kim Jong-il has shown himself willing to go to any
length -- including state-sponsored terrorism -- to preserve his
regime.

I have no reason to believe he has abandoned his love of dictatorship
in favor of constitutional democracy. Far from it.

Kim Jong-il is betting that he can emerge from a process of change at
the head of a North Korean society that is more prosperous, stable,
and militarily capable than it is today, but still a dictatorship.

But frankly, the reasons why Kim Jong-il is pursuing economic reform
and diplomatic opening are not as important as the steps he will have
to take along the way.

If North Korea's opening is to succeed, the North will have to address
many of the fundamentals which make it so threatening -- especially
the gross distortion of its domestic spending priorities in favor of
the military. The North cannot revitalize its economy while spending
25 percent of its gross domestic product on weaponry.

The North cannot obtain meaningful, sustained foreign investment
without addressing the lack of transparency in its economy as well as
the absence of laws and institutions to protect investors and
facilitate international trade.

North Korea's pursuit of economic reform and diplomatic opening
presents the United States with a golden opportunity, if we are wise
enough to seize it.

We should welcome the emergence of North Korea from its shell not
because North Korea's motives are benign, but because we have a
chance, in concert with our allies, to shape its transformation into a
less threatening country.

If we play our cards right, North Korea's opening can lead to a less
authoritarian regime that is more respectful of international norms --
all without any shots being fired in anger.

I point out, a number of old Communist dictators had thought they
could move in an easy transition from the Communist regime that has
clearly failed to a market economy, or integration with the rest of
the world, and still maintain their power.

None, none -- none has succeeded thus far. I believe it is an oxymoron
to suggest that North Korea can emerge and become an engaged partner
in world trade without having to fundamentally change itself and in
the process, I believe, end up a country very different from what we
have now.

I am delighted that Secretary Powell has expressed his support for
this hard-headed brand of engagement with North Korea. As he testified
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month:

We are open to a continued process of engagement with the North so
long as it addresses political, economic, and security concerns, is
reciprocal, and does not come at the expense of our alliance
relationships.

This is precisely the kind of engagement I have in mind. I think we
should get on with it.

North Korea knows that under our nonproliferation laws it cannot gain
unfettered access to trade, investment, and technology without first
halting its development and export of long-range ballistic missile
technology and submitting its nuclear program to full-scope safeguards
under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

North Korea knows it won't get World Bank loans as long as it remains
on our list of nations that condone international terrorism or provide
sanctuary for terrorists. In order to get off that list, North Korea
must end all support for terrorist organizations and must cooperate
fully with the Japanese government to resolve the question of Japanese
citizens abducted from Japan -- some more than 20 years ago.

In other words, Mr. President, if North Korea is to turn around its
moribund economy and fully normalize relations with its neighbors, it
will have to take steps which are demonstrably in our national
interest and in the national interests of our allies.

We should do everything in our power to ensure that North Korea does
not diverge from the path it is now on.

Specifically, we should continue to provide generous humanitarian
relief to starving North Korean children. Nothing about the situation
on the peninsula will be improved by the suffering of North Korean
children racked by hunger and disease.

We should continue to abide by the terms of the Agreed Framework, so
long as North Korea does the same. We should not unilaterally start
moving the goal posts. The Agreed Framework has effectively capped the
North's ability to produce fissile material with which to construct
nuclear weapons. Under the terms of Agreed Framework, North Korea
placed its nuclear program under International Atomic Energy Agency
safeguards and halted work on two unfinished heavy water nuclear
reactors in exchange for the promise of proliferation-resistant light
water nuclear reactors and heavy fuel oil deliveries for electric
power generation. Without the Agreed Framework, North Korea might
already have sufficient fissile material with which to construct
dozens of nuclear bombs.

MISSILE AGREEMENT POSSIBLE -- PATIENCE REQUIRED

Finally, Mr. President, we should engage North Korea in a serious
diplomatic effort aimed at an iron-clad agreement to end forever the
North's pursuit of long range missiles.

In discussions with U.S., Russian, and Chinese officials, North Korea
has signaled its willingness to give up the export, and possibly the
development, of long-range missiles, in response to the right package
of incentives. Such an agreement would remove a direct North Korean
threat to the region and improve prospects for North-South
reconciliation. It would also remove a major source of missiles and
missile technology for countries such as Iran.

Getting an agreement will not be easy, but it helps a lot that we are
not the only country which would benefit from the dismantlement of
North Korea's missile program. Our allies South Korea and Japan, our
European allies who already provide financial support for the Agreed
Framework, the Chinese, the Russians, all share a desire to see North
Korea devote its meager resources to food, not rockets. The only
countries which want to see North Korea building missiles are its
disreputable customers.

A tough, verifiable agreement to eliminate the North's long-range
missile threat might be possible in exchange for reasonable U.S.
assistance that would help North Korea feed itself and help convert
missile plants to peaceful manufacturing.

Some people are impatient for change in North Korea. They want to
adopt a more confrontational approach, including rushing ahead to
deploy an unproven, hugely expensive, and potentially destabilizing
national missile defense system.

I understand their frustration and share their desire for action
against the threat of North Korean ballistic missiles.

But foreclosing diplomatic options by rushing to deploy NMD is not the
right antidote. Sure, a limited ground-based national missile defense
might someday be capable of shooting down a handful of North Korean
missiles aimed at Los Angeles, but it will do nothing to defend our
Asian allies from a North Korean missile attack.

Nor will it defend us from a nuclear bomb smuggled into the country
aboard a fishing trawler or a biological toxin released into our water
supply. NMD will not defend U.S. forces on Okinawa or elsewhere in the
Pacific theater. It will do nothing to prevent North Korea from
wielding weapons of mass destruction against Seoul, much of which is
actually within artillery range of North Korea.

Moreover, a rush to deploy an unproven national missile defense,
particularly absent a meaningful strategic dialog with china, could
jeopardize the cooperative role China has played in recent years on
the Korean Peninsula. Given our common interest in preventing North
Korea from becoming a nuclear weapons power, the United States and
China should work in concert, not at cross purposes.

OPENING NORTH KOREAN EYES

North Korea's opening has given the North Korean people a fresh look
at the outside world -- like a gopher coming out of its hole -- with
consequences which could be profound over the long haul. Hundreds of
foreigners are in North Korea today, compared with a handful just a
few years ago.

Foreigners increasingly are free to travel widely in the country and
talk to average North Koreans without government interference. North
Korea has even begun to issue tourist visas. The presence of
foreigners in North Korea is gradually changing North Korean attitudes
about South Korea and the West.

One American with a long history of working in North Korea illustrated
the change underway by describing an impromptu encounter he had
recently.

While he was out on an unescorted morning walk, a North Korean woman
approached him and said, ``You're not a Russian, are you? You're a
Miguk Nom aren't you?''

Her expression translates roughly into ``You're an American
imperialist bastard, eh?''

The American replied good-naturedly, ``Yes, I am an American
imperialist bastard.''

To which the woman replied quite sincerely, ``Thanks very much for the
food aid!''

Another American, a State Department official accompanying a World
Food Program inspection team, noted that hundreds of people along the
road waved and smiled, and in the case of soldiers, saluted, as the
convoy passed.

He also reports that many of 80 million woven nylon bags used to
distribute grain and emblazoned with the letters ``U.S.A.'' are being
recycled by North Koreans for use as everything from back-packs to
rain coats. These North Koreans become walking billboards of American
aid and generosity of spirit.

North Korea is just one critical challenge in a region of enormous
importance to us. We cannot separate our policy there from our overall
approach in East Asia.

We cannot hope that decisions we make about national missile defense,
Taiwan policy, or support for democracy and rule of law in China will
be of no consequence to developments on the Korean Peninsula. To the
contrary, we need to think holistically and comprehensively about East
Asia policy.

Our interests are vast. Roughly one-third of the world's population
resides in East Asia. In my lifetime, East Asia has gone from less
than 3 percent of the world GDP in 1950 to roughly 25 percent today.

Four of our 10 largest trading partners -- Japan, China, Taiwan, and
South Korea, are in East Asia.

Each of those trading partners is also one of the world's top ten
economies as measured by gross domestic product. China, Japan, and
South Korea together hold more than $700 billion in hard currency
reserves -- half of the world's total.

East Asia is a region of economic dynamism. Last year Singapore, Hong
Kong, and South Korea grew by more than 10 percent, shaking off the
East Asian financial crisis and resuming their characteristic
vitality. U.S. exports to the region have grown dramatically in recent
years. U.S. exports to Southeast Asia, for instance, surpass our
exports to Germany and are double our exports to France. U.S. direct
investment in East Asia now tops $150 billion, and has tripled over
the past decade.

And of course these are just a few of the raw economic realities which
underscore East Asia's importance. The United States has important
humanitarian, environmental, energy, and security interests throughout
the region.

We have an obligation, it seems to me, not to drop the ball. We have a
vital interest in maintaining peace and stability in East Asia. We
have good friends and allies -- like President Kim Dae Jung of South
Korea -- who stand ready to work with us toward that goal. It is vital
that we not drop the ball; miss an opportunity to end North Korea's
deadly and destabilizing pursuit of long range missiles. I don't know
that an agreement can be reached. In the end North Korea may prove too
intransigent, too truculent, for us to reach an accord.

But I hope the Bush administration will listen closely to President
Kim today, and work with him to test North Korea's commitment to
peace. We should stay the course on an engagement policy that has
brought the peninsula to the brink, not of war, but of the dawning of
a brave new day for all the Korean people.

I yield the floor.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)