The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [172]
The caution was warranted. North-South working-level meetings began at Panmunjom but quickly deadlocked over a series of North Korean demands and a stiffening of South Korean positions. At Yongbyon, while IAEA inspectors were permitted to carry out their maintenance and inspection activities at six sites, they were barred from taking sophisticated measurements at key points in the seventh and most sensitive site, the plutonium reprocessing plant. While the North Koreans produced legalistic justifications for its refusal to permit the measurements, IAEA officials concluded that its real purpose was to apply pressure in connection with its dispute with the South over the exchange of envoys. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Hubbard, who was heavily involved in the issue on the Washington end, said, "There were two different games here, linked together. The international need of the IAEA was linked to NorthSouth dialogue where the two Koreas play games."
From that point on, it was all downhill. On March 15 the international agency ordered its inspectors home, announcing that since they had failed to complete their work, the agency could not verify that there had been no diversion of nuclear materials to bomb production. In a special meeting, the IAEA board finally voted to turn the matter over to the UN Security Council. "The general mood is that the IAEA has really been jerked around long enough," an administration official told The Washington Post.
The U.S. military immediately began consulting Seoul about rescheduling the Team Spirit military exercise. Washington canceled its plans for the third round of U.S.-DPRK negotiations and once again resumed preparations to seek UN sanctions.
On March 19, at a final North-South working-level meeting at Panmunjom to discuss the deadlocked exchange-of-envoys issue, North Korean negotiator Park Yong Su dramatically worsened the explosive atmosphere. After harsh words had flowed back and forth across the table, Park threatened his southern counterpart, Song Young Dae: "Seoul is not far from here. If a war breaks out, it will be a sea of fire. Mr. Song, it will probably be difficult for you to survive." Shortly after that, the northern team walked out of the meeting.
South Korean officials watched the exchange on closed circuit television, which was rigged up to allow a select group in each capital to observe the Panmunjom meetings, even meetings such as this one that were not open to the press. In an unprecedented move, the Blue House, with the approval of Kim Young Sam himself, ordered release of the videotape of the closed meeting to television stations, alarming the South Korean public.
After the breakdown of IAEA inspections and the "sea of fire" remark, Kim Young Sam summoned an emergency meeting of his national security cabinet to approve deployment of the U.S. Patriot missiles, which had been in limbo while the nuclear negotiations held promise of results. The South's action, in turn, inflamed leadership and military circles in Pyongyang. Suddenly the Korean situation was headed into a new downward spiral, with potentially calamitous consequences.
13
SHOWDOWN OVER
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
he crisis over North Korea's nuclear program that gripped the peninsula and engaged the major powers in the spring of 1994 had much in common with the confrontation a year earlier over North Korea's threat to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. As before, the North-South dialogue had broken down, pressures from all sides were building up against Pyongyang, and the International Atomic Energy Agency touched off the crisis by publicly declaring North Korea to be in violation of its international obligations.