The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [158]
Close to a dozen satellite photographs of North Korean installations and attempts at deception at Yongbyon were presented to a closed session of the IAEA board on February 22. The impact was electric. Although the senior North Korean representative at the meeting, Ho Jin Yun, denounced the photographs as fakery, the initially skeptical board was deeply and decisively impressed. At the end of its meeting, on February 25, the board demanded that North Korea permit the special inspection of the two disputed sites "without delay." As a concession to Chinese requests, it provided a one-month grace period for North Korean compliance, making clear that if Pyongyang did not act, it would take the issue to the Security Council for international sanctions or other actions.
By this time, the credibility and international standing of both the IAEA and North Korea were at risk, with the stakes very high for both sides. If the IAEA could not secure international backing for inspections when there was evidence of cheating, its newly asserted authority could be defied with impunity, and the post-Iraq drive against nuclear weapons proliferation would be set back decisively. For Pyongyang, the danger was that this would be only the first of increasingly intrusive inspections it regarded as masterminded by hostile U.S. intelligence.
Also at risk was the sensitive issue of respect, what Koreans call ch'emyon and Westerners call "face," a matter of tremendous, almost overwhelming, importance to the reclusive North Korean regime. "For us, saving face is as important as life itself," a senior North Korean told Representative Ackerman during his visit to Pyongyang, and experts on North Korea say that may not be much of an exaggeration. For although the "special inspections" were unlikely to clear up the inconsistencies in Pyongyang's program, they would almost certainly provide overwhelming evidence that North Korea had not told the IAEA the whole truth about its nuclear facilities and then had sought to cover up its misstatements. In the court of international opinion, North Korea would face demeaning condemnation. Such a prospect was intolerable for Pyongyang. As the tension increased, the country's minister of atomic energy, Choi Hak Gun, told IAEA inspectors, "Even if we had done it [cheated], we would never admit it."
As the conflict between the IAEA and North Korea was coming to a head in November 1992, Governor Bill Clinton was winning the American presidential election over incumbent George Bush. The outgoing administration was unwilling to contemplate long-range policies for dealing with North Korea and the issues posed by its nuclear noncompliance, and in the early months after its January 20 inauguration, the incoming administration was not organized well enough to do so either. Similarly in Seoul, Kim Young Sam, assisted by last-minute red-baiting against Kim Dae Jung, won the presidential election in mid-December and took office on February 25, far from well equipped to deal with immediate crisis.
The IAEA, however, did not wait for the new governments in Washington and Seoul to get settled before pressing its ultimatum. On February 26, the day after the IAEA Board of Governors formally endorsed the demand for mandatory "special inspection" of the two suspect sites, Blix sent a telex to the North Korean Foreign Ministry requesting that IAEA inspectors be permitted to travel to Yongbyon on March 16 to examine the two disputed places. Blix also notified the UN Security Council, which would be faced with enforcing the demand if North Korea refused to comply.
It was a tense time in North Korea. March 9 was the kickoff of the new Team Spirit exercise, this time downsized to a still-impressive 70,000 South Korean troops and 50,000 American