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97–122 PDF 2004

S. HRG. 108–709

A REPORT ON LATEST ROUND OF SIX-WAY TALKS

REGARDING NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN NORTH

KOREA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 15, 2004

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware

PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

BARBARA BOXER, California

BILL NELSON, Florida

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia

JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey

KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Staff Director

ANTONY J. BLINKEN, Democratic Staff Director

(II)

CONTENTS

Page

Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware, opening statement ... 3

Brownback, Hon. Sam, U.S. Senator from Kansas, material submitted for

the record:

‘‘The Hidden Gulag, Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps,’’ Executive

Summary, David Hawk, U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North

Korea .............................................................................................................. 25

‘‘Auschwitz Under Our Noses,’’ by Anne Applebaum, The Washington

Post, Feb. 4, 2004 .......................................................................................... 27

Trafficking in Persons report, U.S. Department of State, information

on North Korea ............................................................................................. 29

Carter, Hon. Ashton B., former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy; Professor of Science and International Affairs,

John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge,

MA ......................................................................................................................... 33

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 38

Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, prepared statement .. 19

Kelly, Hon. James A., Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of East Asian

and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of State; accompanied by: Mr. Joseph

R. DeTrani, Special Envoy for Negotiations with North Korea and U.S.

Representative to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization,

KEDO, Washington, DC ...................................................................................... 5

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 8

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening statement ........... 1

Pritchard, Hon. Charles L., Visiting Fellow, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC ............................................................................................................. 41

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 46

U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, statement submitted

for the record ........................................................................................................ 56

(III)

(1)

A REPORT ON LATEST ROUND OF SIX-WAY

TALKS REGARDING NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN

NORTH KOREA

THURSDAY, JULY 15, 2004

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The committee met at 9:35 a.m., in room SD–419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar (chairman of the committee), presiding.

Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Brownback, Biden, Feingold,

and Bill Nelson.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR RICHARD G. LUGAR, CHAIRMAN

The CHAIRMAN. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee is called to order.

Today the committee once again turns its attention to North

Korea. I am especially pleased to welcome Assistant Secretary of

State James Kelly, who will provide an update on the latest round

of six-party talks, as he did earlier this year during our March 2

hearing on North Korea. Secretary Kelly is accompanied today by

Mr. Joseph DeTrani, Special Envoy for Negotiations with North

Korea and U.S. Representative to the Korean Peninsula Energy

Development Organization, KEDO.

The world acknowledges the importance of the six-party talks in

providing regional stability and preventing another war on the Korean Peninsula. The North Korean regime’s drive to build nuclear

weapons and other weapons of mass destruction poses a grave

threat to American national security. We are concerned about the

transfer of North Korean weapons, materials, and technology to

other countries or to terrorist groups. In addition, we must remain

vigilant to avoid a miscalculation that could lead unintentionally to

war.

The purpose of today’s hearing is to provide Secretary Kelly and

Special Envoy DeTrani an opportunity to provide a clear account

of events in Beijing. They were the leaders of the United States

delegation in the Plenary and Working Group sessions. I am very

pleased by their willingness to visit with the committee in an open

session.

As we meet, events are developing rapidly in northeast Asia.

President Bush originally envisioned a strategy incorporating a

multilateral approach to addressing North Korea’s nuclear programs, with a goal of forging a united front with South Korea,

2

Japan, Russia, and China. However, in an effort to scuttle the sixparty process, North Korea has accelerated bilateral dialog with its

neighbors on a myriad of issues.

South Korea recently engaged in high level military-to-military

discussions with North Korea and reached agreement on a number

of issues. Kim Jong-il has displayed a new flexibility with the Japanese on the abduction issue, and it appears that Japan and North

Korea may normalize relations within a year. The Chinese continue

providing massive assistance to North Korea, and the Russian Foreign Minister recently returned to Moscow from a high-level visit

to Pyongyang.

While I appreciate the inclination of countries within the region

to respond to initiatives from Pyongyang, these initiatives have not

diminished the necessity of eliminating North Korea’s nuclear programs. And I am hopeful that the leadership of Japan, South

Korea, Russia, and China will continue to work with the Bush administration in a multilateral context for a peaceful resolution of

this matter.

Both North Korea and the United States presented detailed proposals in Beijing. Secretary Kelly and Special Envoy DeTrani exhibited appropriate flexibility by engaging in occasional bilateral

interaction with North Korean officials.

I also extend appreciation to administration officials for continuing to raise human rights issues with the North Koreans. This

committee is committed to the resolution of ongoing human suffering in North Korea’s gulags and prison system.

In addition to Secretary Kelly and Special Envoy DeTrani, the

committee will hear from Dr. Ashton Carter of the JFK School of

Government at Harvard. As one who was deeply involved in

launching the Pentagon’s Counter-Proliferation Initiative some 10

years ago when he was Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, he knows that negotiations are only the first

step in a successful counter-proliferation process. We have asked

Dr. Carter to consider the administration’s proposal to the North

Koreans and to reflect on the kinds of strategies and programs necessary for freezing, disabling, and dismantling North Korea’s nuclear programs. I am particularly interested in his analysis as to

whether and how we might apply programs like the Nunn-Lugar

Cooperative Threat Reduction program to North Korea. Is such a

program feasible and what would be involved in its implementation? Under what circumstances, if any, might North Korea agree

to open itself to unfettered inspections of its nuclear program?

Ambassador Jack Pritchard is with us today as well. He has extensive background on several fronts related to North Korea, and

will specifically address the energy portion of the United States’

proposal. He served as Ambassador and Special Envoy for Negotiations with North Korea and U.S. Representative to KEDO. During

his 5 years on the National Security Council staff, Ambassador

Pritchard was involved in negotiations with North Korea. He accompanied the Secretary of State, Ms. Albright, on her visit to

Pyongyang in 2000.

We look forward to engaging our distinguished witnesses on the

situation in North Korea and U.S. policy options toward the peninsula. It is a special privilege to have these four remarkable AmeriVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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cans before us in open session so that all Americans may be the

beneficiaries of this hearing and their wisdom and consideration.

When the ranking member, Senator Biden, arrives, I will recognize him, of course, for an opening comment. I ask my colleague,

Senator Hagel, if he has an opening comment that he would like

to make.

Senator HAGEL. Well, I have just been overtaken by events.

Senator BIDEN. No.

The CHAIRMAN. Please continue while Senator Biden is collecting

his thoughts.

Senator BIDEN. I associate myself with my friend’s remarks before he makes them.

Senator HAGEL. I have no formal statement, Mr. Chairman,

other than to acknowledge once again your efforts to enlighten our

country and this institution on some of the most critical policy

issues that we are dealing with.

I appreciate, as you have noted, our witnesses and their service

to our country and look forward to their testimony. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Hagel.

Senator Biden.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR.,

RANKING MEMBER

Senator BIDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for

holding this hearing which is going to give us an update on our

country’s efforts to convince the North Koreans to abandon their

dangerous pursuit of nuclear weapons and the path that they are

on.

I am anxious to hear from our witnesses today, particularly Secretary Kelly.

At the recent third round of talks, the United States, for the first

time in my understanding, put forward a reasonably comprehensive and detailed road map for how the crisis might be resolved.

The U.S. plan reportedly offers various incentives to North Korea:

multilateral security assurances, fuel oil, sanctions relief, and the

promise for eventual diplomatic normalization, provided—a big caveat—that North Korea pledges to verifiably dismantle its nuclear

programs and then follows through on that commitment.

I must note, Mr. Chairman, that the United States has not presented any proposal addressing North Korea’s export of ballistic

missiles, but perhaps that will come at a later date.

North Korea promised to study the U.S. proposal and also presented a freeze proposal of its own.

Obviously, an awful lot of hard work remains to be done if we

are to reach out and get accord here, and it is not clear, for instance, in my view how any deal would be verified and by whom.

North Korea still has not admitted to the existence of an uranium

enrichment program, a program that has to be abandoned if we are

to forge this new relationship.

But the exchange of views in Beijing represented progress in my

view, and I hope we can now get to the real meat of these negotiations.

Mr. Chairman, it has been more than 3 years since the Secretary

of State proclaimed the United States’ intention to ‘‘pick up where

4

the Clinton administration left off’’ and work to eliminate North

Korea’s—and that is a quote ‘‘pick up where the Clinton administration left off’’ and work to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear program and to curtail its destabilizing export of ballistic missile technology.

Unfortunately, the White House overruled Secretary Powell and

adopted a posture in my view of benign neglect. Even after learning of North Korea’s attempts to develop uranium enrichment capacity in the summer of 2002, the administration took more than

2 years to resolve its internal divisions and settle on an approach

for dealing with North Korea. North Korea has used this time apparently to quadruple its stockpile of plutonium, and therefore perhaps its nuclear arsenal, progressing from an estimated one to two

nuclear weapons to perhaps as many as eight or more. North Korea

has been busy modernizing and upgrading its ballistic missile force,

although it has not flight-tested any new long-range missiles. The

bottom line is that we now confront a much more dangerous adversary than we did in 2001.

I am not at all certain—and I want to make the point clearly.

A little humility is in order here. I am not certain that if the administration listened to your suggestions and mine and others’ to

do what they finally have done, have bilateral discussions with

North Korea, which was proposed over 2 years ago by this committee, that we would necessarily be in any better shape. I do not

know that. I cannot look back and suggest that. But I am certain

that the approach taken was not productive.

But we are where we are. As former Defense Secretary William

Perry reminds us, we must deal with North Korea as it is, not as

we would wish it to be.

So I commend the administration for finally putting together a

decent proposal to test North Korea’s intentions, and I hope North

Korea will respond positively at the next round of talks scheduled

in September.

Fortunately, North Korea’s neighbors share a commitment of

achieving a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula, and I am pleased that

the administration has begun to listen more closely to the advice

that has been offered, consistently offered, by the South Korean

and Japanese allies and by our Russian and Chinese negotiating

partners. Together we might convince North Korea to change its

course, although I am not betting next year’s tuition on that. I understand this is going to be very difficult.

Mr. Chairman, I hope North Korea will not squander this chance

to improve its relations with its neighbors, to trade false security

offered by its nuclear weapons for a very real security that would

come from integration into one of the world’s most dynamic economic regions, and normalization of relations with South Korea,

Japan, and the United States.

Convincing North Korea to completely and verifiably dismantle

its nuclear weapons program and its missile program is not going

to be easy. North Korea is a weak and isolated state. The North’s

leaders consider weapons to be the ultimate guarantor of the regime’s survival, and they are obviously reluctant to give them up.

But in reality, the North’s nuclear program is a giant albatross

around its neck, a waste of resources, strains relations with its

5

neighbors, and jeopardizes the regional peace and security. I hope

that the leadership of North Korea will come to realize, through

the multilateral talks now underway, that North Korea will choose

a path of peace and integration over a path of confrontation and

isolation, although I am not prepared, as I said, to bet tuition on

that.

I thank the chairman for his dedication to this issue, look forward to hearing the witnesses, and am delighted that we have at

least moved to this point where there is a prospect of knowing

what the full offer on the table is with us for North Korea. Again,

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. I look forward

to hearing our witnesses.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I thank you, Senator Biden, for your leadership on this issue, and likewise for the bipartisan way in which

we have approached a very serious issue for our country. It is in

that spirit that the hearing is held this morning. We are grateful

for these witnesses in open session.

I would like to call now, first of all, upon Secretary Kelly, to be

followed by any comments that Mr. DeTrani might have. Would

you please proceed.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES A. KELLY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC

AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE; ACCOMPANIED BY:

JOSEPH R. DeTRANI, SPECIAL ENVOY FOR NEGOTIATIONS

WITH NORTH KOREA, AND U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TO THE

KOREAN PENINSULA ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION, KEDO

Mr. KELLY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Senators, for

this timely opportunity to meet with the committee again to discuss the efforts the United States and like-minded countries to deal

with the threat of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

I have a much longer statement for the record, and I will, with

your permission, sir, present only an abbreviated version here orally.

The CHAIRMAN. The statement will be published in full, and that

will be true for each of the submitted statements by our witnesses

today.

Mr. KELLY. I will focus my remarks on these four topics: a brief

overview of the DPRK’s longstanding determination to move ahead

with its nuclear weapons programs; second, the Bush administration’s commitment to multilateral diplomacy; third, an explanation

of the proposal that the U.S. tabled at the third round of the sixparty talks last month and of the proposal tabled by the DPRK;

and last, the opportunity the DPRK has now to improve its relations with the international community and to reap the full rewards of trade, aid, and investment, and what North Korea’s

neighbors and the international community expect in return.

North Korea’s nuclear programs are a longstanding threat. As I

detail in the full statement, the DPRK leadership decades ago set

out on a path to acquire nuclear weapons. That effort led to mounting tensions with the United States and the international community.

6

In 1993, after North Korea announced its intention to withdraw

from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the first time, the

United States and North Korea began high-level talks that culminated in the Agreed Framework of 1994. That agreement obligated the DPRK not to produce fissile material at its declared nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and its preface stated that its purpose

was ‘‘an overall resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.’’ The Agreed Framework did not, as we learned later, end the

North Korean nuclear arms programs. By the fall of 2002, our intelligence community assessed that North Korea was pursuing a

covert program to produce enriched uranium and had been pursuing it for a number of years, even as it negotiated with senior

American officials to improve relations.

I led a delegation to Pyongyang in October of 2002 to confront

the North Koreans with our assessment that they have a uranium

enrichment program. Instead of taking the opportunity we had afforded them to begin walking back their covert uranium enrichment program, the North Koreans escalated the situation, expelling

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, reactivating the 5-

megawatt reactor at the place called Yongbyon, and announcing its

withdrawal from the NPT. If the DPRK, as it has declared, has finished reprocessing its 8,000-plus existing spent fuel rods, it could

have produced enough fissile material for several additional nuclear weapons.

The United States has adhered to two basic principles to resolve

this threat. First, we seek the complete, verifiable, and irreversible

dismantlement of its nuclear programs, nothing less. We cannot accept another partial solution that does not deal with the entirety

of the problem, allowing North Korea to threaten others continually with the revival of its nuclear program. Second, because the

North’s nuclear programs threaten its neighbors and the integrity

of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime, the threat can best

be dealt with through multilateral diplomacy.

I can report some progress to you on both counts. I have reported

to you before on earlier trilateral and six-party discussions, all of

which set the stage for our third round of discussions last month

in Beijing. These were useful and constructive.

The working group met June 21 and 22 and the plenary for 4

days after that. Over the course of that time in Beijing, the United

States met directly with all of the parties, as we have at all of the

sessions of the six-party talks.

In addition to the United States’ proposal other parties put forward constructive proposals, which I have outlined in the prepared

statement. We had not expected breakthroughs and I have none to

report to the committee.

Under the U.S. proposal, developed in close coordination with the

Republic of Korea and Japan, the DPRK would, as a first step,

commit to dismantle all of its nuclear programs. The parties would

then reach agreement on a detailed implementation plan requiring,

at a minimum, the supervised disabling, dismantlement, and elimination of all nuclear-related facilities and materials; the removal of

all nuclear weapons and weapons components, centrifuge and other

nuclear parts, fissile material, and fuel rods; and a long-term moniVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
7

toring program. This would include North Korea’s uranium enrichment program, which the DPRK continues to deny.

We envisage a short initial preparatory period of perhaps 3

months’ duration to prepare for the dismantlement and removal of

the DPRK’s nuclear programs. DPRK actions would be monitored,

subject to international verification.

Under our proposal, as the DPRK carried out its commitments,

the other parties would take some corresponding steps. These

would be provisional or temporary in nature and would only yield

lasting benefits to the DPRK after the dismantlement of its nuclear

programs had been completed.

Now, the steps would include: Upon agreement of the overall approach, including a DPRK agreement to dismantle all nuclear programs in a permanent, thorough, and transparent manner, subject

to effective verification, non-U.S. parties would provide heavy fuel

oil to the DPRK. Upon acceptance of the DPRK declaration, the

parties would provide provisional multilateral security assurances,

which would become more enduring as the process proceeded.

Begin a study to determine the energy requirements of North

Korea and how to meet them by non-nuclear energy programs, and

begin a discussion of steps necessary to lift remaining economic

sanctions on the DPRK and on steps necessary to remove the

DPRK from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Secretary Powell told the North Korean Foreign Minister, at the

ASEAN regional forum in Indonesia on July 2, that the U.S. proposal aimed to go forward on the dismantlement of North Korean

nuclear programs and that there is an opportunity for concrete

progress.

The DPRK proposal restated its goal of a freeze for rewards, including energy assistance, lifting of sanctions, and removal from

the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. We are continuing to

study the North’s proposal. As I noted, it is clear we are still far

from agreement.

Our initial assessment is that the DPRK proposal lacks detail

and is vague on a number of key elements. Still, there are some

positive elements and positions that have been staked out. The

DPRK claimed that the freeze would be the first step on the path

to nuclear dismantlement, not an end to itself, and on that point

we agree.

We and other parties have questions about the DPRK proposal,

including what the scope of the freeze and dismantlement would

be. We will continue to seek answers through the six-party process.

To that end, the parties agreed to hold the fourth round of talks

by the end of September and a working group meeting in the interim as soon as possible to prepare for the fourth round.

Mr. Chairman, the six-party talks offer North Korea the opportunity to improve its relations with the United States and Japan,

to end its self-induced political and economic isolation, and to harness the benefits of normal international trade and aid, including

establishing relationships with the international financial institutions.

Although I remain optimistic on where the talks could lead, I

personally could not say at this point that the DPRK has, indeed,

made the strategic calculation to give up its nuclear weapons in reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
8

turn for real peace and prosperity through trade, aid, and economic

development.

I believe that diplomacy is the best way to overcome North Korea’s nuclear threat and that the six-party process is the most appropriate approach. Our aim is to fully and finally resolve the nuclear program, not to implement half-measures or sweep the problem under the rug for future policymakers to deal with. We are

pursuing this course patiently and are committed to its success.

That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. Mr. DeTrani, who

does not have a statement, and I look forward to responding to the

questions that you and the committee will offer.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kelly follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES A. KELLY

DEALING WITH NORTH KOREA’S NUCLEAR PROGRAMS

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this timely opportunity to meet with the committee

again to discuss the efforts of the United States and like-minded countries to deal

with the threat of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

I will focus my remarks on these four topics:

• A brief overview of the problem. of the DPRK’s long-standing determination to

move ahead with its nuclear weapons programs, and why previous efforts to

achieve a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula did not succeed;

• The Bush Administration’s commitment to multilateral diplomacy to achieve

the full denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, through the Six-Party Talks;

• An explanation of the proposal the U.S. tabled at the third round of the SixParty Talks in Beijing last month, and of the proposal tabled by the DPRK; and

• The opportunity the DPRK has now to improve its relations with the international community and to reap the full rewards of trade, aid and investment— and what North Korea’s neighbors and the international community expect in

return.

North Korea’s Nuclear Programs

North Korea’s nuclear programs are a longstanding threat. The DPRK leadership

decades ago set out on a path that would allow it to acquire nuclear weapons. After

conducting research throughout the sixties and seventies at a reactor provided by

the Soviet Union, the DPRK began construction in 1979 of the 5-MWe reactor at

Yongbyon, from which it could extract and reprocess plutonium. That reactor became operational in 1986.

In 1985, while construction was going on at Yongbyon, international pressure convinced North Korea to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, it was

not until 1992 that it finally signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement and

within months the IAEA found evidence of inconsistencies in North Korea’s declarations. I should add that throughout the 1990s the IAEA continued to find the DPRK

in noncompliance of its safeguards agreement.

Also in 1992, the DPRK reached an agreement with the Republic of Korea for a

Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons, but the North never moved to implement

it.

By 1993, IAEA pressure for additional inspections led North Korea to announce

its intention to withdraw from the NPT. As tensions mounted, the United States

and North Korea began high-level talks that culminated in the Agreed Framework

of 1994. That agreement obligated the DPRK not to produce fissile material at its

declared nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and its preface stated that its purpose was

‘‘an overall resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.’’

The Agreed Framework left resolution of pre-1993 discrepancies, especially quantities of plutonium that the DPRK might have recovered, for the distant future,

linked to construction progress on the light water reactors provided under the

Agreed Framework. The Agreed Framework did not, as we learned later, end the

North Korean nuclear arms programs. By the fall of 2002, our intelligence community assessed that North Korea was pursuing a covert program to produce enriched

uranium—in violation of the Agreed Framework, the North-South Joint Declaration

on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation

Treaty, and the DPRK’s Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic EnVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
9

ergy Agency. In fact, we determined that North Korea had been pursuing the program for a number of years, even as it was negotiating with senior American officials to improve relations.

By the way, our negotiator for the Agreed Framework, Ambassador Robert

Gallucci, had left the North Koreans in no doubt that that any uranium enrichment

program would violate the Agreed Framework. Ambassador Gallucci testified before

Congress in December 1994 that the Agreed Framework required the DPRK to implement the North-South Joint Denuclearization Declaration, which precludes any

reprocessing or enrichment capability. ‘‘If there were ever any move to enrich,’’ he

told this committee, ‘‘we would argue they were not in compliance with the Agreed

Framework.’’ I led a delegation to Pyongyang in October 2002 to confront the North Koreans

with our assessment that they have a uranium enrichment program. DPRK First

Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju told us that the hostile policy of the U.S. Administration had left North Korea with no choice but to pursue such a program. When

I pointed out our assessment that North Korea had been pursuing such a program

for years, he had no response.

Instead of taking the opportunity we had afforded them to begin walking back

their covert uranium enrichment program, the North Koreans escalated the situation. In December 2002, they expelled IAEA inspectors and began to reactivate the

5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon. In January, the DPRK announced its withdrawal

from the NPT. And on several occasions in 2003, it declared it had finished reprocessing its 8,000-plus existing spent fuel rods. If that is indeed the case, it could have

produced enough fissile material for several additional nuclear weapons. Since then,

the DPRK has stated it is strengthening what it calls its nuclear deterrent capability.

Multilateral Solution to a Multilateral Problem

The United States has adhered to two basic principles to resolve this threat from

the DPRK. First, we seek the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement

of the DPRK’s nuclear programs—nothing less. We cannot accept another partial solution that does not deal with the entirety of the problem, allowing North Korea to

threaten others continually with a revival of its nuclear program. Second, because

the North’s nuclear programs threaten its neighbors and the integrity of the global

nuclear nonproliferation regime, the threat can best be dealt with through multilateral diplomacy.

I can report some progress to you on both counts.

Late in 2002, Secretary Powell began talking with countries in East Asia about

a multilateral forum to make clear to the DPRK it must end its nuclear arms programs. He succeeded in persuading the Chinese, who in March 2003 took with them

to Pyongyang the idea of five-party talks. The North Koreans resisted, but eventually agreed when the Chinese suggested trilateral talks in Beijing be held with the

U.S., North Korea, and China.

After we consulted with our South Korean and Japanese allies, to ensure that

they supported the idea and assured them they would be in future talks, we participated in the trilateral talks in Beijing April 23-25. By the way, it was at that forum

that the North Koreans pulled me aside to say that they have nuclear weapons, will

not dismantle them, and might transfer or demonstrate them. I strongly cautioned

them against any escalation.

After those trilateral talks, we kept our promise and insisted that the next round

of talks should include South Korea and Japan. We also supported Russia’s inclusion. The Chinese did some more persuading, and the North Koreans agreed to participate in Six-Party talks. The first round was held in Beijing August 27-29, 2003.

The other five parties all told North Korea very clearly in plenary session that

they will not accept North Korea’s possessing nuclear arms. In response, the North

Koreans threatened that they would demonstrate nuclear weapons. The North Korean belligerence at the Six-Party talks had the effect of isolating them. It was a

useful first step in the difficult process of ensuring the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear arms program.

The second round of Six-Party talks was in February 2004. The parties agreed

to regularize the talks, and to establish a working group to set issues up for resolution at the plenary meetings. At the second round of talks, the ROK offered fuel

aid to the DPRK, if there were a comprehensive and verifiable halt of its nuclear

programs as a first step toward complete nuclear dismantlement.

The third round of talks, held late last month in Beijing, were useful and constructive. The working group met June 21-22, the plenary June 23-26. Over the

course of that time in Beijing, the U.S. met directly with all of the parties. We held

a two-and-a-half-hour discussion with the DPRK delegation. Some press accounts inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
10

dicated that, during that meeting, the North Korean delegation threatened to test

a nuclear weapon. The North Koreans said that there were some, not identified, in

the DPRK who wanted to test a nuclear weapon and might presumably do so if

there was not progress in the talks. The comment did not contribute to the comity

of the meeting or to any atmosphere of trust.

In addition to the United States’ proposal, the ROK put forward a concrete, detailed proposal to achieve a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. The ROK proposal was

consistent with the U.S. approach, but I will leave it to our South Korean ally to

describe its proposal in more detail if it chooses. North Korea, too, participated actively in the plenary, offering a proposal for what it describes as the first step toward full denuclearization—a freeze of its nuclear-weapons related programs in exchange for compensation from the other parties. The Japanese also had constructive

ideas, strongly supporting proposals that would lead to the timely and comprehensive denuclearization of the Peninsula subject to international verification, and expressing a willingness to provide energy assistance to the DPRK when it is verified

that the DPRK is actually on the road to denuclearization. The PRC, as host, played

a role in bringing the parties to Beijing for the third round and vigorously sought

agreement on the basic principles that would underlie any agreement on

denuclearization. The Russian delegation, under the new leadership of Ambassador

Alekseyev, also sought to promote agreement among all the parties, and offered details of their thinking. We had not expected breakthroughs and I have none to report to you. That said, all of the parties, including, in my view, the DPRK, went

to Beijing prepared for substantive discussions.

While each party is pursuing its own interests in the talks, all have publicly embraced the goal of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. I thought it was significant

that Chairman Kim Jong Il discussed the talks when he met with Prime Minister

Koizumi last month, affirming North Korea’s commitment to them. That said, proposals offered by the parties differ very considerably in substance, as I will detail

now.

The U.S. Proposal

The proposal the U.S. presented was developed in close coordination with the Republic of Korea and Japan. Under the U.S. proposal, the DPRK would, as a first

step, commit to dismantle all of its nuclear programs. The parties would then reach

agreement on a detailed implementation plan requiring, at a minimum, the supervised disabling, dismantlement and elimination of all nuclear-related facilities and

materials; the removal of all nuclear weapons and weapons components, centrifuge

and other nuclear parts, fissile material and fuel rods; and a long-term monitoring

program.

We envisage a short initial preparatory period, of perhaps three months’ duration,

to prepare for the dismantlement and removal of the DPRK’s nuclear programs.

During that initial period, the DPRK would:

• Provide a complete listing of all its nuclear activities, and cease operations of

all of its nuclear activities;

• Permit the securing of all fissile material and the monitoring of all fuel rods,

and;

• Permit the publicly disclosed and observable disablement of all nuclear weapons/weapons components and key centrifuge parts.

These actions by the DPRK would be monitored subject to international

verification.

At this juncture, I’ll emphasize that, for the DPRK’s declaration to be credible and

for the process to get underway, the North would need to include its uranium enrichment program and existing weapons, as well as its plutonium program. As of

now, the DPRK is denying that it has a program to enrich uranium, and it speaks

of an existing ‘‘nuclear deterrent’’ but has refrained from stating publicly that it has

‘‘nuclear weapons.’’

Under our proposal, as the DPRK carried out its commitments, the other parties

would take some corresponding steps. These would be provisional or temporary in

nature and would only yield lasting benefits to the DPRK after the dismantlement

of its nuclear programs had been completed. The steps would include:

• Upon agreement of the overall approach, including a DPRK agreement to dismantle all nuclear programs in a permanent, thorough and transparent manner

subject to effective verification, non-U.S. parties would provide heavy fuel oil to

the DPRK.

• Upon acceptance of the DPRK declaration, the parties would:

11

> provide provisional multilateral security assurances, which would become

more enduring as the process proceeded. North Korea’s rhetoric on this issue

notwithstanding, I would like to point out that it is reasonable to conclude that

security assurances given through the multilateral Six-Party process would

have considerably more weight than would bilateral assurances;

> begin a study to determine the energy requirements of the DPRK and how

to meet them by non-nuclear energy programs;

> begin a discussion of steps necessary to lift remaining economic sanctions on

the DPRK, and on the steps necessary for removal of the DPRK from the List

of State Sponsors of Terrorism.

Secretary Powell told the DPRK Foreign Minister, at the ASEAN Regional Forum

in Indonesia on July 2, that the U.S. proposal aimed to move forward on the dismantlement of the DPRK’s nuclear programs, and that there is an opportunity for

concrete progress.

The DPRK Proposal

The DPRK proposal restated its goal of a freeze for rewards, including energy assistance, lifting of sanctions, and removal from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. We are continuing to study the North’s proposal. As I noted, it is clear we

are still far from agreement.

Our initial assessment is that the DPRK proposal lacks detail and is vague on

a number of key elements. The scope is narrow in terms of the facilities covered

and it ignores pre-2003 plutonium, nuclear weapons, and the uranium enrichment

program. North Korea would exclude the IAEA from verification, seeking to create

a new verification regime from the Six-Party talks participants. This unprecedented

approach would be hard to set up and carry out.

Still, there are some positive elements in positions the DPRK staked out. The

DPRK claimed that the freeze would be the first step on the path to nuclear dismantlement, not an end to itself, and on that point we agree.

The DPRK also confirmed that whatever would be included in the freeze would

also be included in the commitment to dismantlement further down the line.

Specifically, the DPRK said it would freeze all facilities related to nuclear weapons and the products that resulted from their operation, refrain from producing

more nuclear weapons, transferring them, and testing them. The DPRK delegation

clearly identified the 5-MWe reactor as a nuclear weapons facility. While they said

they wanted to maintain a civil nuclear program, they also acknowledged that most

of their nuclear programs are weapons-related.

We and other parties have questions about the DPRK proposal, including what

the scope of the freeze and dismantlement would be. Again, inclusion of the DPRK’s

uranium enrichment program is critical. We will continue to seek answers through

the Six-Party process, though we have made clear all along that we are not talking

for the sake of talking and that we expect tangible progress to be made. To that

end, the parties agreed to hold the fourth round of talks by the end of September

and a working group meeting in the interim as soon as possible to prepare for the

fourth round.

North Korea’s Choice

Mr. Chairman, the Six-Party talks offer North Korea the opportunity to improve

its relations with the United States and Japan, to end its self-induced political and

economic isolation, and to harness the benefits of normal international trade and

aid, including establishing relationships with the international financial institutions.

We have outlined what is necessary to transform our relations with the DPRK,

just as we have with another nation long isolated in the international community,

Libya.

President Bush in his February 11 remarks to the National Defense University

called on other governments engaged in covert nuclear arms programs to follow the

affirmative example of Libya. The Libyan case demonstrates, as President Bush has

said, that leaders who abandon the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and

their delivery means will find an open path to better relations with the United

States and other free nations. When leaders make the wise and responsible choice,

they serve the interests of their own people and they add to the security of all nations.

We have discussed Libya’s example with our North Korean counterparts, and we

hope they understand its significance.

Of course, to achieve full integration into the region and a wholly transformed relationship with the United States, North Korea must take other steps in addition

12

to making the strategic decision to give up its nuclear ambitions. It also needs to

change its behavior on human rights, address the issues underlying its appearance

on the U.S. list of states sponsoring terrorism, eliminate its illegal weapons of mass

destruction programs, put an end to the proliferation of missiles and missile-related

technology, and adopt a less provocative conventional force disposition.

Against the backdrop of the Six-Party talks, the DPRK is undertaking measures

in response to its disastrous economy. It is too soon to evaluate the nature or impact

of these steps, but we hope they will serve as a foundation upon which to build improved economic relations with other countries in the future. By addressing the

world’s concerns about its nuclear programs and other issues, the DPRK would have

both new resources and opportunities to pursue policies for peaceful growth in the

region that is already perhaps the world’s most vibrant, East Asia.

The international community ultimately will gauge the results of the Six-Party

talks to assess the seriousness of the DPRK’s professed willingness to give up its

nuclear weapons programs. Although I remain optimistic on where the talks could

lead, I personally could not say at this point that the DPRK has indeed made the

strategic calculation to give up its nuclear weapons in return for real peace and

prosperity through trade, aid and economic development. My hope is that the serious and extensive discussions with the United States, the Republic of Korea, Japan,

China and Russia will convince the DPRK that a truly denuclearized Korean Peninsula is its only viable option.

I believe that diplomacy is the best way to overcome North Korea’s nuclear threat

and that the Six-Party process is the most appropriate approach. Our aim is to fully

and finally resolve the nuclear problem, not to implement half measures or sweep

the problem under the rug for future policy makers to deal with. We are pursuing

this course patiently and are committed to its success.

That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. DeTrani and I look forward

to responding to your questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Secretary Kelly.

We have two distinguished panels today and we have a number

of interested Senators. So I am going to suggest our first round of

questions be limited to 7 minutes to each of us, and we will see

how that proceeds. There may be opportunities for further questions if Senators wish to pursue that.

Secretary Kelly, I would begin by following through your reasoning today that the North Koreans might be willing to engage in

a freeze of activities. As you say, many questions are still to be

raised.

Is there an overall feeling on your part or among the group of

six that there is a possible formula for the dismantlement and destruction of the weapons, in return for assurances of non-aggression, some degree of fuel oil, which you have mentioned, heavy oil,

perhaps other energy resources? There is some now being provided,

as you have testified before, by the Chinese, in substantial

amounts. There has been some measure of nutrition, even going beyond that provided by the World Food Program of the U.N. and

other humanitarian efforts, with a more substantial regularization

of both aid and potential trade. Is this conceivably on the horizon

as a strategy for the regime in North Korea, that they would be

prepared ultimately, perhaps not this month or the next month,

but down the trail, to move to that kind of framework?

Mr. KELLY. Mr. Chairman, I think that is very much on the possible horizons. It is one of the strengths of the six-party talks that,

as all of the parties take their individual positions, there is a unanimous agreement on the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. In particular, the other colleagues, the four other countries

involved, made clear to North Korea what these opportunities can

be in the future. And other countries do too. In particular, the EU,

the British, Australia, a host of other countries have joined us in

13

seeking to persuade North Korea that its real security is best

served by turning from nuclear weapons. But as I said, it is not

clear that that choice has yet been made.

The CHAIRMAN. What sort of possibilities could the British, the

EU, and others outside the six offer? Do you know that they have

been involved in talks or public proposals of any sort?

Mr. KELLY. I think these are not so much in terms of public or

specific proposals, but simply on the very low level of development

assistance that has come. Over the last 10 years, there has been

a considerable opening of North Korean contacts with European

and other countries. That really did not exist at all 10 years ago,

and also with South Korea and Japan. It is very clear, for example,

with Prime Minister Koizumi’s recent visit to North Korea, that he

had serious concerns about abduction issues. But he made clear

that the resolution of the nuclear issue was absolutely crucial to

normalization of the relationship of Japan and the development of

economic cooperation, which is a kind of code word for very substantial direct aid.

The CHAIRMAN. Have the United States’ relations with the Chinese continued to strengthen because of mutual interests in this

area?

Mr. KELLY. I will leave to others to judge whether our overall relationship has strengthened, although I think it is in pretty good

shape. But China is always pursuing its own interests, and they

rarely coincide exactly with those of ours. I think they share our

determination that nuclear weapons have no role on the Korean

Peninsula, but their pace and enthusiasm for pursuing the solution

is not exactly the same as ours.

The CHAIRMAN. I believe that at a previous hearing you testified

that one of the byproducts of the six-party talks was considerable

visitation among the other five, or among those that are in Asia,

even beyond the six-party talks. They have been thinking about

Asian security, about the fact that Asia has never had a NATO or

some organization of formal character. Such might be useful and,

in fact, necessary in the future. This is not the purpose of the sixparty talks. It is to deal with the nuclear dilemma in North Korea.

Can you comment any further upon what you perceive to be the development of our overall strategy for organization of security in

Asia arising from these contacts?

Mr. KELLY. The six-party talks are definitely a step forward. It

is absolutely unprecedented to have any kind of a multilateral security dialog in Northeast Asia. In fact, the whole process is in its

infancy, even though it is some 10, or I guess 11 years old now,

that the ASEAN regional forum has proceeded. This in turn is giving a little more strength to the ASEAN regional forum as well. So

we have got people talking to each other. We have very active participation within the six-party talks of each of these parties, and

each one of the parties has a very direct and national interest in

a satisfactory outcome to this. So there are, I think, some possibilities for broadening it in the future, but for now the focus is on the

nuclear weapons issue on the Korean Peninsula.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there current indications of humanitarian

crisis in North Korea beyond those that unfortunately are normal,

namely a lot of very hungry people?

14

Mr. KELLY. I would say that is about right, Mr. Chairman. There

continue to be lots of hungry people. There have been economic

changes. I would not go so far as to call them reforms in North

Korea. These are creating new groups and new sets of winners and

losers. It is not at all clear what that outcome is going to be, but

there certainly are many people in need and a completely rustedout industrial structure.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

There is a security dialog going on, obviously, but it also seems

to be bilateral. The North Koreans and the South Koreans have decided not to wait around, and the North and the Japanese have apparently decided not to wait for outcomes. I mean, they are bilateral. The Prime Minister of Japan has indicated he hopes to have

normalization of relations—correct me if I am wrong—with North

Korea within a year, if I am not mistaken. I think that is what I

heard. And the South Koreans have stepped up considerably their

effort to deal bilaterally with the North regardless of what we are

doing. It seems that way anyway. That is the impression.

So my question is, first of all, is the impression correct? And second, if it is, why is that occurring?

Mr. KELLY. It is occurring because of the variety of contacts that

have developed over the years. Yes, Prime Minister Koizumi hopes

to begin the process of normalizing the relationship with Japan and

North Korea.

Senator BIDEN. He has begun that. Not he hopes to. He has

begun that.

Mr. KELLY. He has not begun it. He has made it clear that without resolution of the nuclear weapons issue, that it will not occur.

Senator BIDEN. No, no, but my question is there is a question of

beginning and ending. He has begun it. He said that in order to

end it, he has to—the idea that it is static like our position has

been, static—Korea you must do the following things before we do

anything—that is not the position that has been taken by Tokyo.

Mr. KELLY. Or the position by the United States, Senator.

Senator BIDEN. It has not been our position?

Mr. KELLY. It is not our position.

Senator BIDEN. It has not been our position?

Mr. KELLY. It has been erroneously reported. It has never been

our position that North Korea has to do everything before we do

anything.

Senator BIDEN. No, I understand that. But it said they had to do

a number of things. In the past, we made it pretty clear that there

would be no action taken by us at all unless there were certain preconditions met by North Korea. Now your statement—and correct

me if I am wrong. I may be wrong. It sounds as though that we

are ready to phase in a negotiating structure that we were not prepared to do before. Or am I wrong about that?

Is something different here? I guess what I am trying to get at

here is it seems as though the atmosphere has changed. Is it because all of a sudden North Korea has had an epiphany, or is it

because South Korea and Japan are worried you guys are taking

them down a road they do not want to get on and they are going

15

to go on their own path? I want to just be as blunt as we can here.

What is the deal? What has happened? Has anything changed?

Mr. KELLY. What has changed I think is that North Korea has

come to accept that the six-party process is what is going to resolve

the issue and that it is one that they cannot really escape. I think

they recognize that dealing with the United States is not sufficient,

that there are going to have to be arrangements with the other

countries.

I might add, Senator Biden, that the Japanese in particular and

the South Koreans in particular have been completely steadfast as

we would want our allies to be during the six-party talks. The commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is

very solid with all of these things.

Now, the bilateral discussion—— Senator BIDEN. That has always been their position. Right?

Mr. KELLY. Yes, sir, and it has not changed or weakened at all.

What we have got is a much deeper and broader set of contacts

with North Korea that very much serve to convince them, or we expect will serve to convince them, that their interests are in bringing this nuclear weapons issue, not to mention the other important

issues, to a full resolution.

Senator BIDEN. I want to talk about the other issues. In your testimony you included a long list of actions in addition to eliminating

the nuclear weapons program that North Korea has to take to

achieve ‘‘a wholly transformed relationship with the United States,

including issues relating to human rights, state sponsorship of terrorism, other WMD programs, missile proliferation, and conventional force disposition.’’ Now, that might suggest—and I want to

know whether it does—that even complete nuclear disarmament

would not get North Korea much from the United States other

than security assurances. It also seems a bit different from Dr.

Rice’s statement that ‘‘North Korea will be surprised to see how

much will be possible if it gives up its nuclear programs.’’ Have you spelled out to the North Koreans just what aspects of

a transformed relationship can be expected from each of these steps

in addition to the process laid out for disarmament of its nuclear

program? In other words, where do diplomatic relations, NunnLugar-type assistance, trade relations, economic assistance fit into

the various cycles of improvement of all these outstanding issues?

Because it seems to me you are—and I am not suggesting you

should or should not, but you have moved the goalposts a little bit.

Anybody listening to this hearing would assume we are talking

about nuclear disarmament and their missile program. But we are

back to where the President was at the outset, and it is consistent

that at the very beginning he threw in its conventional forces.

There had to be negotiation on that. Now is that a precondition for

any significant change in our position that conventional forces, as

the President said 2 years ago, have to be moved out of range of

Seoul and so on, the redisposition of the conventional forces? What

is the deal here?

Mr. KELLY. The deal is that the six-party talks are focused on

the nuclear weapons issue. The full dimensions of a possible future

relationship—and I very much agree with Dr. Rice’s statement

about the things that are potentially possible—recognize that there

16

are other serious issues that are going to have to be resolved. The

nuclear weapons issue is the most immediate and, I would argue,

the most serious individual issue. Ballistic missiles, conventional

forces, human rights issues are of concern.

Senator BIDEN. Do all of those have to be resolved for us to get

to the point to give security assurances?

Mr. KELLY. No, sir.

Senator BIDEN. Now I got it. So I will conclude, Mr. Chairman.

The U.S. proposal in Beijing—and this is what I am trying to figure out, whether it really represents any change at all. It seems

as though it did. The Beijing proposal seems to represent a change

from past practices. The administration, based on your testimony

and what I think was said in Beijing at the last meeting, has accepted the notion that North Korea should be offered explicit incentives in exchange for a commitment for nuclear disarmament.

Previously the administration has called that blackmail. Previously in testimony before this committee we were told flatly that

any—any—offer of explicit incentives in return and exchange for

disarmament constituted blackmail.

Now, am I correct? Have there been explicit incentives laid on

the table for the North Koreans that suggest they are available if

they in fact commit to verifiable nuclear disarmament?

Mr. KELLY. What we have done, Senator Biden, is to fill in the

details of the framework that has really always been out there.

There is a question about rewards for illegal and treaty-violating

activity, and we certainly do not propose to offer such rewards. But

we do——

Senator BIDEN. Excuse me. What does that mean? I am confused

what you mean. Is an incentive not a reward? Are you making a

distinction between——

Mr. KELLY. It means that we are not in negotiations multilaterally or bilaterally to offer sufficient money. When the former President of South Korea visited North Korea in June of the year 2000,

it now turns out that payments well in excess of $100 million were

made immediately before that and facilitated that process. The

United States has no intent of joining with any such thing now or

in the future.

Senator BIDEN. Non-aggression is not a reward. Security assurance is not a reward. When you talk reward, you mean only money.

Mr. KELLY. No. There can be other tangible parts of rewards. But

incentives or benefits that recognize the change, particularly the

multilateral context of this, makes that particularly useful. The

United States may not offer tangible benefits, but our allies may

see fit within their relationships to provide——

Senator BIDEN. Security assurance is not a tangible benefit?

Mr. KELLY. Security assurance is not a tangible benefit. A security assurance is a condition that would convince anyone that disarming is in their interest.

Senator BIDEN. No, I got it. I am just trying to understand the

vocabulary. There are revenue enhancements and tax increases.

This is Washington. I am talking to the State Department. I have

got to know the vocabulary, and I understand the vocabulary now.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you, Senator Biden.

17

Senator Hagel.

Senator HAGEL. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Secretary Kelly, welcome. Mr. DeTrani, thank you for appearing

this morning.

The first question. Do you believe the U.S. Presidential election

has any influence or bearing on the willingness of North Korea to

negotiate or come to any agreements?

Mr. KELLY. It is not at all clear that this is the case, and in fact

North Koreans have said that it is not. But who knows what they

dream. What we have repeatedly told them—and I very much believe it—is that no American administration is going to accede to

a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you.

How big a part is human rights in the process? You have mentioned it a couple of times in your remarks in response to the previous questions. Centerpiece of negotiation, part of many dynamics?

Where would you put human rights?

Mr. KELLY. I would put human rights as part of the larger part

of our future relationship with North Korea in the same category

with other problems which would include ballistic missiles, conventional forces, other weapons of mass destruction. Human rights are

a very important issue, but the principal and almost entire focus

of the six-party talks has been on the nuclear weapons issue. So

whether it be Japanese abductions or human rights issues, the list

of terrorist states, these are items that we are going to have to address in great detail later on.

Senator HAGEL. How stable do you think Kim Jong-il’s regime is?

Mr. KELLY. I do not know, Senator Hagel, and I do not think

anybody around here knows. It is obviously a lot more stable than

many people thought 10 years ago, but it is a strange kind of stability in which the economy seems to get worse and worse, more

and more hungry people, deaths continue, Koreans in considerable

numbers seek to leave the place. But there is a unique authoritarian police state that exists there and it has so far managed to

survive.

Senator HAGEL. What lessons do you think, if you think there

are any lessons, that we can learn or apply from Iraq to our current dealings with North Korea?

Mr. KELLY. Iraq is a very different situation. North Korea does

not have the panoply of U.N. resolutions violated that Iraq had. It

is in many ways as difficult or more difficult an intelligence target.

It has, once again, a particular location in that South Korea, its 47

million people and some 13 million to 15 million people that live

in the Seoul area are literally within artillery range of the demilitarized zone. So the stakes of possible combat and the potential for

loss of life is in my view even greater than it was in Iraq.

Senator HAGEL. What lessons, if any, do you think the North Koreans have taken from the current situation in Iraq? Start with our

invasion of Iraq. Do you think that has an effect on their negotiating position, how they see the world, how they see the United

States?

Mr. KELLY. It would just be speculation to say what they have

done other than some rhetorical points that keep turning up in the

propaganda one way or another. In particular, the North Koreans

18

try to say that all their nuclear weapons aspirations have somehow

sprung up over the last 2 or 3 years, and that simply is not the

case.

Senator HAGEL. Do you see a role for the United Nations in the

negotiations in North Korea? And the next follow-on question

would be, is there a role anywhere in the near future in North

Korea for the United Nations?

Mr. KELLY. There could be and probably should be a role for the

United Nations Security Council with respect to North Korea, although as long as the multilateral process is proceeding along, it

is likely that China in particular will not be very interested in having the Security Council pursue it. It is obvious that there is great

sensitivity in Pyongyang to United Nations involvement in that. So

at the moment, the Security Council is seized of the matter, which

means it has been sitting on it for a couple of years.

Senator HAGEL. You mentioned some of the conditions regarding

North Korea’s nuclear capacity and verification you have mentioned a couple of times obviously is a key component. Is it your

sense that we, in fact, can design a verifiable monitoring regime for

North Korea? I assume it is, and if you could elaborate on that.

By the way, Mr. DeTrani, if you have any comments on this, you

are welcome to join in.

Mr. KELLY. I am going to ask Joe DeTrani to join me on this answer.

The answer is, of course, yes, a verification regime can be developed. This is very much the task that the working group has before

it. But key to this, once again, is this choice by the North Koreans

to meaningfully turn away from nuclear weapons. A solution that

has inspectors racing around that country trying to dig holes is not

going to be the solution that we need. And in the end dismantlement and removal of the nuclear weapons program is going to be

essential to its resolution.

Senator HAGEL. Well, that is obviously why I asked the question

because you have just said it and we all understand it, and this

is the real world. It seems to me this is a key component of anything, and it is probably the most difficult component. The reality

of it is something I know you are dealing with, and Mr. DeTrani

is going to amplify on your points.

But I think the more we all can understand this and where we

are going, it not only deals with an expectation dynamic—that is

part of, I think, our problem that we have today in Iraq—but expectations are important not only to the people who live there, but

the guarantor of a country’s security like we are right now in Iraq.

What did we expect 15 months ago where we are today? Now is the

time to lay that out as much as we can in our dealings with North

Korea, which you know I know, Mr. Secretary.

Mr. DeTrani.

Mr. DETRANI. Sir, I just want to add something, Assistant Secretary Kelly, that that is part of what we do in the working group.

We look at all the issues. Indeed, verification is a critical issue because there is so much we do not know about North Korea, and

there has to be a commitment on their part to move toward

denuclearization rather than, as Mr. Kelly indicated a few minutes

ago, to have a covert uranium enrichment program. That is not the

19

spirit. We would need cooperation on their part. We would need

transparency on their part, and down the road we are looking at

the IAEA and others who have a great deal of expertise in North

Korea to participate in a process of that nature. But it would have

to be a strategic decision taken by Kim Jong-il at the highest levels

to commit to denuclearization and not to come up with, if you will,

a covert program to ensure they have a nuclear card in the longer

term.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Hagel.

Senator Feingold.

[The prepared statement of Senator Feingold follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD

I thank Chairman Lugar and Senator Biden for holding this important hearing,

and I thank Assistant Secretary Kelly, Mr. DeTrani, and all of the private witnesses

for being here today.

It seems that every few months, we have another hearing focused on North Korea

and the North Korean pursuit of nuclear weapons. Each hearing is a reminder of

how serious this issue is. Each hearing is an opportunity. to reflect on North Korea’s

alarming history of proliferation. And as time passes between each hearing, North

Korea has increasing opportunities to develop its nuclear weapons program, and potentially to provide nuclear know-how or technology to others. Yet, as time passes,

it is not at all clear that the United States gains any particular negotiating leverage.

What is fundamentally different about the situation in North Korea today as opposed to the situation in North Korea a year ago—besides the likelihood that the

North Koreans now possess more nuclear weapons? North Korea’s nuclear defiance

is an urgent national security issue. But since October of 2002, the administration

has failed to effectively address this problem, and I believe has failed to make this

issue the priority that it should be. I hope that the last round of talks created some

new momentum, but given the gravity of the situation before us and the amount

of time that has passed, I am not satisfied with the faint wisps of fragile hope to

be found in the latest rhetoric. I am interested in concrete progress that advances

our security.

Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good to see you

again, Secretary Kelly.

We have been dealing with this aspect of this issue for over a

year and a half now. I wonder if you could just say a little bit about

what good time does for us. Is it not the case that as time passes,

North Korea could be adding to its nuclear arsenal? And what do

you see as any additional leverage that the United States gains as

time passes?

Mr. KELLY. Time is certainly a valid factor in this. Obviously, it

would be better to reach an agreement sooner. We do not know the

details, but it is quite possible that North Korea is proceeding

along developing additional fissionable material and possibly additional nuclear weapons. The idea is that we have to have an agreement that in fact really ends this program, and that is the challenge of peaceful solutions through diplomatic means.

Senator FEINGOLD. Are you confident that North Korea cannot

transfer nuclear capacity or know-how to other actors while we

wait for the next round of talks, Mr. Secretary? On what would you

base that confidence?

Mr. KELLY. I do not have any such confidence. I would note that

after a remark of April 2003 by a North Korean interlocutor that

20

it might be possible for them to transfer nuclear material or weapons, that they have gone quite the other direction and, in fact, in

response to specific questions, have repeatedly stated that they

would not transfer nuclear weapons or fissionable material to any

other destination outside of their country. But that assurance, like

all the assurances from North Korea, has, unfortunately, not an

unlimited value.

Senator FEINGOLD. I assume that part of the North Korean strategy at these talks is to drive a wedge between other parties at the

talks. How do they try to do this? Have they had any success at

it? You could interpret the bilateral efforts of South Korea and

Japan to suggest that they may have had some success in this regard. Could you comment on that?

Mr. KELLY. Senator Feingold, I do not see the bilateral efforts

that Japan and North Korea have and that South Korea and North

Korea have as undercutting our efforts in any respect. I see them

as enhancing our efforts. This is something that did not exist at all

10 years ago, and I think it very much puts us in a broader dimension of how to do it.

Yes, sir, there have been some attempts, particularly in I think

the first round of the six-party talks, but they have not worked.

The fact is if there was any change in atmosphere in the talks, it

was because the self-isolation that was so obvious in the first two

rounds of the six-party talks was something that North Korea was

trying to avoid, but they really could not entirely avoid it.

Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you.

Finally, how do North Korean officials react when human rights

issues are raised, if you would characterize their reaction to discussion of these issues for me?

Mr. KELLY. They refuse to discuss them. Because our focus in

these particular talks is on the nuclear weapons issue, we have not

pressed the issue beyond that.

Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you for your answers.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Feingold.

Senator Chafee.

Senator CHAFEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to the

witnesses.

Maybe I will ask Mr. DeTrani since he has not had a chance to

weigh in here much.

Secretary Kelly said in his prepared statement that the proposal

the United States presented was developed in close coordination

with the Republic of Korea and Japan. So it begs the question, why

not in close coordination with Russia and the PRC?

Mr. DETRANI. Sir, certainly Russia and the PRC were consulted

on the proposal that the United States presented at the last round.

We have had very intense discussions with the Republic of Korea

and with the Government of Japan all along, certainly with the

People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation also.

So let me say I think we could categorize it that way because the

Republic of Korea has been very forthcoming in proposing things.

They have actually put proposals in front of us where they have

said, we would like to move on it. They have been a bit more

proactive in saying we need to put something on the table and

21

being very definitive. The same for the Government of Japan. It

does not mean, however, sir, that the People’s Republic of China

and the Russian Federation have not been forward-leaning. It is

just that we have had more concrete proposals by both those governments which fit in very nicely with our game plan where we

wanted to present a road map. Knowing that North Korea is moving toward economic reforms, knowing that they are looking for, if

you will, international legitimacy, we thought this was the time to

pull all the pieces together.

Senator CHAFEE. The meetings, of course, are being held in Beijing. How important is China to our success here?

Mr. DETRANI. Extremely important, sir. Extremely important.

China is in many ways the key to success. They have a very, very

close working relationship with the Democratic People’s Republic of

Korea. As we speak, their Minister of Defense is visiting in Beijing.

They have had high-level visits going back and forth, Kim Jong-il

into Beijing, and they have had senior Chinese officials into

Pyongyang. So China is very critical and they have been facilitating the six-party process in a very effective way, sir.

We continue to ask for more assistance. We continue to ask the

People’s Republic of China to better convince the DPRK that they

need to be more forthcoming in these talks. The relationship is

close with the PRC.

Senator CHAFEE. My experience in dealing with officials from the

PRC is that the top priority for them is cross-strait relations and

certainly the sale of arms to Taiwan. About the same time these

talks were going on, Condoleezza Rice was over there saying the

United States will continue to sell arms to Taiwan. As you look at

our efforts to denuclearize North Korea, to have this dynamic injected—and you just said that China is key. So by virtue of that

word, we are not going to have success without their cooperation.

At the same time, we are kind of battling over this issue. But I will

ask Mr. DeTrani. I would like to have you answer.

Mr. DETRANI. Sir, I am going to ask Assistant Secretary Kelly.

But my quick response to that would be in all the discussions I

have had with the PRC and Jim Kelly in all our meetings, Taiwan

has never been mentioned in any of our discussions as we work the

North Korea issue. But I will look to Assistant Secretary Kelly to

elaborate.

Mr. KELLY. That is a big issue in the full bilateral relationship,

but when it comes to the six-party talks, the Chinese are not posing that as a tactical issue in any respect.

I would also add, sir, that we consult very closely with China and

Russia, but we have a 50-year alliance with the Republic of Korea

and with Japan. We have a longstanding practice of consulting

with them on scores, if not hundreds, of issues. That is really why

the proposal was more carefully developed with them.

Senator CHAFEE. I myself just think it is hard to believe that

knowing how strongly they feel about this, that it is not a factor.

At the same time we are asking for their cooperation, we are not

listening to them on this issue. But you have a different point of

view and I respect that.

Mr. KELLY. We are listening to them, Senator Chafee.

Senator CHAFEE. On the sale of arms to Taiwan?

22

Mr. KELLY. Oh. Well, sir, we have something called the Taiwan

Relations Act since 1979 that requires the U.S. Government to provide, after its own assessment, necessary defensive arms to Taiwan. Our relationship with China is based on the three joint communiques and on the Taiwan Relations Act which is the U.S. law.

Senator CHAFEE. Well, thank you. I will switch gears a little bit.

You said that we are going to, in return for the denuclearization,

do three things: provide for some multilateral security assurances,

begin a study to determine the energy requirements and to meet

them by non-nuclear energy programs, and begin discussions of

steps to lift the economic sanctions. In the middle of those three,

what specifically can we talk to them about on their energy needs?

Help them build dams? Get natural gas from Russia? What specifically non-nuclear energy can we offer them?

Mr. KELLY. North Korea has a huge energy insufficiency and

problem, and it is operating in every respect. It is operating, for example, Senator, with a grid that was put up by the Japanese in the

early part of the last century.

The light water reactor project that is now in full suspension but

that was a part of the Agreed Framework, among its many anomalies is there was no way to connect the reactors, if they had ever

been completed, with the rest of North Korea. So there are many

non-nuclear aspects, ranging all the way from wind power to Russian or other natural gas to South Korean support for other kinds

of non-nuclear power generation. There is a very broad panoply,

and it has not been adequately studied and I think it would be

helpful if that occurred.

Senator CHAFEE. Mr. DeTrani, have we gotten far enough to

think about what specifically we could help them with in their nonnuclear energy needs?

Mr. DETRANI. Sir, we have discussed this in the working group

sessions. We get into these various issues. So we have talked about

natural gas, coal-fired plants, et cetera as opportunities ahead for

them. I think the North Koreans see it in that light.

Senator CHAFEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Chafee.

Senator Nelson.

Senator NELSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Kelly, are you ready to put economic assistance on the table

to get rid of their nukes?

Mr. KELLY. No, sir.

Senator NELSON. Tell me why.

Mr. KELLY. We should not give in to a pricing contest, and moreover, this is a global concern and this has got to be resolved in a

multilateral way, and a unilateral U.S. bid is simply going to result

in other bids and then an inability to check the results.

Senator NELSON. That could certainly be done multilaterally.

Mr. KELLY. Economic assistance from many different sources is

absolutely in prospect. That is what Dr. Rice was referring to, I believe, when she said that they would be surprised at all the things

that would occur. From the discussions I have had with people all

around the world, the world loves a reformed sinner, and there

would be many who would be receptive to helping North Korea’s

23

development if it turns away from nuclear weapons and perhaps

some of its other activities as well.

Senator NELSON. Well, sometimes the sinner can be encouraged

more to reform if there are the incentives that you are talking

about. Economic assistance is one of those. Energy supplies are another. Clearly the Chinese have an opportunity to be part of that

multilateral effort in either extending or withholding their energy

supplies. I recall they cut them off there for about 3 days running

at one point to underscore a point.

What do you think about the Chinese? You used the words ‘‘the

pace and enthusiasm of China is lacking.’’ Tell us about that.

Mr. KELLY. I did not say it is lacking. I think I meant that it

is different from our own. China wants North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program, but it also wants a stable situation on the

Korean Peninsula. So it tends in the direction of positive incentives, and it is not yet clear whether positive incentives will work.

Senator NELSON. Well, we have let all of these negotiations drag

out. I understand and commend you for everything that you are

doing, and your poker face is probably excellent as you deal with

the Chinese.

But let me ask you, what should we do? How are you going to

respond if North Korea tests a nuclear weapon or a new long-range

ballistic missile?

Mr. KELLY. The United States would respond with its allies, as

has been the case for all these years. Our alliances with Japan and

North Korea have to do with the possibility of hostilities. A nuclear

test would certainly be a remarkable development in northeast

Asian security, and I do not think I could or should speculate on

exactly what the United States would do. But I know there would

be a very strong reaction from all of the countries involved in the

six-party talks, for sure, including China were such a thing to

occur.

A long-range ballistic missile test is something that the North

Koreans have even again recently pledged to the Japanese that

they would not do. So this also would be a very significant development if it were to occur.

Senator NELSON. Well, as you project to the future, how long are

we going to continue to allow North Korea to develop nuclear weapons?

Mr. KELLY. We do not allow North Korea to develop nuclear

weapons, Senator Nelson.

Senator NELSON. Well, they are developing them.

Mr. KELLY. And the day is never going to come, I very much

hope, and it will certainly never come in this administration that

we will accept or accede to North Korea as a nuclear weapon state.

I know that Japan and the Republic of Korea have the very same

view.

Senator NELSON. Of course, it is the policy of the United States

that we do not allow North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, but

by the delays that have occurred, they are developing nuclear

weapons.

Well, let me just conclude with this, Mr. Chairman. When do you

think it would be appropriate to take North Korea’s defiance of the

24

international protocols, the resolutions, and the laws to the Security Council?

Mr. KELLY. As I mentioned earlier, Senator, it would be appropriate for it to go to the Security Council now. The International

Atomic Energy Agency made a report to the Security Council at the

time in 2003 when the DPRK withdrew from the NPT. There is not

a consensus in the Security Council, however, to bring it at this

time, but that could occur at any moment when other countries

than just the U.S.—it is not within our power to bring items to the

Security Council only because we wish it.

Senator NELSON. In a couple of weeks, I expect to be with a delegation meeting with President Hu in Beijing. What would you like

me to ask him?

Mr. KELLY. I think that you can simply ask him to explain to you

and to other Senators in his own way what China’s views are on

this. Dr. Rice was in China last week, I think spoke with President

Hu about this very issue. I think you and the other Senators will

find China’s views very interesting, especially after they finish the

Taiwan lecture that they will give you.

Senator NELSON. I have heard that several times.

Mr. KELLY. You will hear it again, sir, I am afraid.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson.

Senator Brownback.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you

for holding this hearing and for your focus on North Korea.

Secretary Kelly, welcome. I appreciate all your great work in this

area. I really appreciate what the administration is doing in holding a light up on what is happening in North Korea and not just

taking kind of an easy answer, let us put a band aid on this and

let us move on, because we have done that before and it has failed

and it has been a great problem. So I appreciate the difficulty of

what you are doing and I appreciate you are attempting to get real

answers in this.

I do, though, want to raise a series of questions about who we

are dealing with in Kim Jong-il and this regime and what we

know. You know this regime very well. You have been more successful than anybody about getting truth out of them, to admit

things that we have alleged for years and that they have said.

It is a terrorist state by our own definition. It is a charter member of the ‘‘axis of evil’’ by our definition. By the numbers I have,

they have killed about 10 percent of their own population over the

last 10 years through starvation, deprivation, about 2 million of a

22 million population, a little under 10 percent. If you have different figures on any of this, correct me as we go through it.

They operate a gulag system. For that, Mr. Chairman, I would

like to enter into the record at this point the summary of a report

on David Hawk’s ‘The Hidden Gulag, Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps,’’ which I know the Secretary is familiar with.

The CHAIRMAN. It will be included in the hearing record.

[The summary referred to follows:]

25

1 Before 1998, called the Sa-hoe-an-jeon-bu (Social Safety Agency). 2 A Russian-language acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, the ‘‘general administration of

[slave labor] camps.’’

THE HIDDEN GULAG

EXPOSING NORTH KOREA’S PRISON CAMPS

(David Hawk, U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea)

[Following is the Executive Summary of the full report that was released October 22, 2003]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report describes a number of penal institutions in the Democratic People’s

Republic of Korea (DPRK) administered by two different North Korean police agencies: the In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) 1 and the more political Kukga-bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency). The report outlines two distinct systems of

repression: first, a North Korean gulag 2 of forced-labor colonies, camps, and prisons

where scores of thousands of prisoners—some political, some convicted felons—are

worked, many to their deaths, in mining, logging, farming, and industrial enterprises, often in remote valleys located in the mountainous areas of North Korea; and

second, a system of smaller, shorter-term detention facilities along the North KoreaChina border used to brutally punish North Koreans who flee to China—usually in

search of food during the North Korean famine crisis of the middle to late 1990s—

but are arrested by Chinese police and forcibly repatriated to the DPRK.

Both police agencies above are involved with both repressive systems detailed and

categorized in the following pages. And both systems involve extreme phenomena

of repression that, to the researcher’s knowledge, are unique to North Korea: guiltby-association, lifetime sentences of hard labor for three generations of individuals

related to the purged political prisoners who are sent to the gulag with no judicial

process whatsoever; and forced abortions for detained North Korean pregnant

women forcibly repatriated from China or the murder of their newborn infants.

Introduction. The introduction of this report outlines the methodology, sources,

and information-base used in creating the report and contains a glossary of terms

related to North Korean repression.

PART ONE. Part One of this report begins by describing the phenomena of repression associated with the North Korean kwan-li-so, most descriptively translated as

‘‘political penal-labor colonies.’’ In the kwan-li-so, tens of thousands of political prisoners—along with up to three generations of their families—are banished and imprisoned without any judicial process for usually lifetime sentences. Their sentences

entail slave labor in mining, logging, and farming enterprises in the valleys of

mountainous areas in north and north-central North Korea. The kwan-li-so are described as colonies because they are sprawling encampments, twenty or more miles

long and ten to twenty miles wide, containing multiple, enclosed, self-contained sections, or ‘‘villages,’’ for different categories of prisoners. Some of the sections are for

the political prisoners; others are for the families of the presumed political offenders, so that purged political prisoners have no contact with their imprisoned parents, grandparents, or children.

The existence of the political forced-labor camps is denied by the DPRK. Part One

of this report also describes how the outside world has come to know about these

political penal-labor colonies, and what is known about who the prisoners are.

One of the kwan-li-so, No. 15, at Yodok in South Hamgyong Province, is unique

in that it has a re-education section, from which small numbers of prisoners can

be released. At least four such prisoners have been released from Yodok, fled North

Korea, and were interviewed for this report. They are profiled, along with a description of Kwan-li-so No. 15 drawn from their accounts. Only one former prisoner is

known to have escaped from the kwan-li-so. He is profiled along with his account

of No. 14 and No. 18, where he was imprisoned. A former guard at several kwanli-so defected to South Korea. His story is told along with his description of Kwanli-so No. 22. With the exception of Kwan-li-so No. 18, the political penal-labor colonies are administered by the Kuk-ga-bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency).

Formerly there had been a dozen kwan-li-so, but these have been consolidated

into six or seven colonies. This consolidation and what is known about the closed

camps is briefly described. Within the last several months, commercial satellite photographs of several kwan-li-so have become available. Several such photographs are

contained in this report, with specific buildings identified by the former prisoners.

Part One of this report goes on to describe the second component of the North

Korean gulag: a series of smaller penal-labor camps and penitentiary-like instituVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
26

3Three former repatriated persons interviewed for this report were so transferred.

tions called kyo-hwa-so. In the kyo-hwa-so, as in the kwan-li-so, prisoners are compelled to perform hard labor—virtually slave labor—under dreadfully harsh conditions, in mining, logging, textile manufacturing, or other industrial projects, such as

brick- or cement-making. However, these prisoners are subjected to a judicial process and given fixed-term sentences according to the DPRK criminal code, after

which they can be released. The kyo-hwa-so are administered by the In-min-bo-anseong (People’s Safety Agency).

The majority of kyo-hwa-so prisoners are imprisoned because they have been convicted of what would be in any society felony crimes. But some prisoners are ‘‘political’’ in that they are convicted for actions that would not be normally criminalized:

one woman interviewed for this report, for example, described being convicted of disturbing the ‘‘socialist order’’ for singing, in a private home, a South Korean pop

song.

A major phenomenon of repression associated with the kyo-hwa-so is the

shockingly large number of deaths in detention from slave labor under dangerous

circumstances and from starvation-level food rations. Former prisoners interviewed

for this report explain that many of their fellow captives did not expect to survive

long enough to complete their sentences—and that thousands of them did not survive. States, of course, have the right to deprive duly convicted criminals of liberty

and remove them from society. States do not have the right to deprive prisoners of

their right to food, or to work them, literally, to death. Eight former kyo-hwa-so prisoners were interviewed for this report. Their stories, and their accounts of seven different prison-labor camps, are described in Part One.

PART TWO. Part Two of this report describes a series of detention facilities, administered by North Korean police forces, that are located in areas along the North

Korea-China border and used to interrogate and punish North Koreans forcibly repatriated from China. These facilities are called ka-mok (police-station jails) or kuryu-jang (detention-interrogation facilities, typically inside a police station). The two

types of penal-labor facilities in this system are called ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae (labortraining camps) and jip-kyul-so (detention/forced-labor centers). Provincial jip-kyul- so are referred to as do-jip-kyul-so.

The jip-kyul-so detention centers are facilities where both repatriated North Koreans and low- or misdemeanor-level criminals are held for up to six months of hard

labor, for example brick-making or local construction projects. It should be noted

that many technically illegal misdemeanor offenses are famine-motivated, for example taking food from state storehouses or state farm fields; not showing up at one’s assigned workplace (when the North Korean production-distribution system broke

down and enterprises were no longer in production or paying wages, many workers

stopped going to their assigned jobs); unauthorized private enterprise; unauthorized

trading or economic activity; leaving one’s assigned village without authorization; or

leaving the country without authorization.

The ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae labor-training camps are even shorter-term, more localized detention/forced-labor facilities. One former detainee stated that, unlike the

jip-kyul-so detention centers and the kyo-hwa-so prison-labor facilities, the ro-dongdan-ryeon-dae do not appear in the North Korean statute books. Rather, they are

ad hoc measures initiated by local authorities to cope with the overflow of faminerelated misdemeanor arrestees. Another former detainee mentioned that all inmates

in one labor-training camp were former repatriates who were being isolated from

the common-crime detainees in the provincial detention center, so that the repatriated detainees could not tell the common-crime detainees about the prosperity and

personal freedoms available in China.

When first repatriated from China, North Koreans are questioned in the police

jails and detention facilities about why they went to China, what they did there,

and when. More ominous questions follow, revolving around whether the individual

being questioned had any contact with South Koreans while in China, which is

deemed a political offense. (Many North Koreans do have contact with South Koreans there, as this part of northeast China, formerly known as Manchuria, is frequented by South Korean businessmen, students, tourists, missionaries, and refugee

and humanitarian aid workers.) Fearing transfer to a kwan-li-so or kyo-hwa-so,3 or even execution, repatriated North Koreans typically deny having had any contact

with South Koreans or exposure to South Korean radio stations, television programs, movies, or music while in China. But such denials often are not deemed

credible by the North Korean police, who literally attempt to beat the truth out of

the repatriated detainees. When the police are satisfied, the repatriates are transferred to the jip-kyul-so police detention centers or ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae labortraining camps. This report tells the stories of nine North Koreans forcibly repatriVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
27

ated from China, and the police interrogations, detentions, and mistreatments these

Koreans were subjected to upon repatriation.

Two phenomena of extreme repression are associated with the treatments meted

out to repatriated Koreans. First, the jip-kyul-so, despite the shortness of sentences

served there, are characterized by very high levels of deaths in detention from inadequate food combined with excessively hard labor—most seriously affecting those detainees lacking nearby relatives to bring them extra food. (Many detainees, when

they become too emaciated or sick to perform hard labor, are given sick-leave or release so that they can recover or die at home, reducing the number of deaths in detention.) Second, in at least three places of detention along the North Korea-China

border cited by persons interviewed for this report, North Korean women who were

pregnant when repatriated were subsequently subjected to forced abortions, or if the

pregnancy was too advanced, were allowed to deliver their babies only to have them

killed immediately after birth (based on the possibility that the Korean women had

been impregnated by Han Chinese men).

PART THREE. Most of the prisoners and detainees interviewed for this report were

tortured, many horribly and repeatedly. Part Three of this report summarizes the

methods of torture endured or witnessed by the former prisoners and detainees

interviewed. It also summarizes the testimony of eight former detainees who themselves witnessed or have firsthand knowledge of forced abortions and ethnic infanticide.

PART FOUR. The concluding section of this report, Part Four, makes various recommendations to the DRPK, to China and South Korea, as North Korea’s closest

neighbors, and to other U.N. Member States in the international community. In regards to the last, this report includes recommendations that all intergovernmental

contact with North Korea should include discussion of improvements of human

rights conditions. Further, it makes the case for incorporating human rights conditions in any comprehensive approach to the multiple crises that North Korea faces

with nearby and other states—security-related, political-diplomatic, and humanitarian.

Specifically, any security and cooperation agreement for the Korean peninsula

should require that all parties, including North Korea, demonstrate respect for

human rights, including the rights of refugees who have fled North Korea, encourage human contact, promote the reunification of families, and provide for the free

flow of information. Additionally, verified improvements in North Korea’s human

rights situation should be included in any comprehensive approach to the Korean

crises involving foreign aid to or investment in North Korea. Any multilateral or bilateral arrangements involving foreign investment in extraction or production enterprises in North Korea for export to world markets should preclude the utilization

of forced, slave, or prison labor, or the evolution of a situation where privileged

workers in exclusive export zones produce for world markets, while production for

domestic consumption is based on prison, forced, and slave labor.

Senator BROWNBACK. I also would like to include in the record

an article by Anne Applebaum, who is an authority on gulags,

about ‘‘Auschwitz Under Our Noses,’’ where she talks about the

gulag system in North Korea being very akin to Nazi Germany’s

gulag system.

The CHAIRMAN. That will be included.

[The article referred to follows:]

[From The Washington Post—Feb. 4, 2004]

AUSCHWITZ UNDER OUR NOSES

(By Anne Applebaum)

Nearly 60 years ago last week, Auschwitz was liberated. On Jan. 27, 1945, four

Russian soldiers rode into the camp. They seemed ‘‘wonderfully concrete and real,’’

remembered Primo Levi, one of the prisoners, ‘‘perched on their enormous horses,

between the gray of the snow and the gray of the sky.’’ But they did not smile, nor

did they greet the starving men and women. Levi thought he knew why: They felt

‘‘the shame that a just man experiences at another man’s crime, the feeling of guilt

that such a crime should exist.’’

Nowadays, it seems impossible to understand why so few people, at the time of

the Auschwitz liberation, even knew that the camp existed. It seems even harder

to explain why those who did know did nothing. In recent years a plethora of reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
28

spectable institutions—the Vatican, the U.S. government, the international Jewish

community, the Allied commanders—have all been accused of ‘‘allowing’’ the Holocaust to occur, through ignorance or ill will or fear, or simply because there were

other priorities, such as fighting the war.

We shake our heads self-righteously, certain that if we’d been there, liberation

would have come earlier—all the while failing to see that the present is no different.

Quite a lot has changed in 60 years, but the ways in which information about

crimes against humanity can simultaneously be ‘‘known’’ and not known hasn’t

changed at all. Nor have other interests and other priorities ceased to distract people from the feelings of shame and guilt they would certainly feel, if only they focused on them.

Look, for example, at the international reaction to a documentary, aired last Sunday night on the BBC. It described atrocities committed in the concentration camps

of contemporary North Korea, where, it was alleged, chemical weapons are tested

on prisoners. Central to the film was the testimony of Kwon Hyuk, a former administrator at a North Korean camp. ‘‘I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,’’ he said. ‘‘The parents, son and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried

to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.’’ The documentary also included testimony from a former prisoner, who says she saw 50 women die after

being deliberately fed poison. And it included documents smuggled out of the country that seemed to sentence a prisoner to a camp ‘‘for the purpose of human experimentation.’’

But the documentary was only a piece of journalism. Do we really know that it

is true? We don’t. It was aired on the BBC, after all, an organization whose journalistic standards have recently been questioned. It was based on witness testimony,

which is notoriously unreliable. All kinds of people might have had an interest in

making the film more sensational, including journalists (good for their careers) or

North Korean defectors (good for their cause).

The veracity of the information has been further undermined by the absence of

official confirmation. The South Korean government, which believes that appeasement of the North will lead to reunification, has already voiced skepticism about the

claims: ‘‘We will need to investigate,’’ a spokesman said. The U.S. government has

other business on the Korean Peninsula too. On Monday Secretary of State Colin

L. Powell told a group of Post journalists that he feels optimistic about the prospect

of a new round of nuclear talks between North Korea and its neighbors. He didn’t

mention the gas chambers, even whether he’s heard about them.

In the days since the documentary aired, few other news organizations have

picked up the story either. There are other priorities: the president’s budget, ricin

in the Senate office building, David Kay’s testimony, a murder of a high school student, Super Tuesday, Janet Jackson. With the possible exception of the last, these

are all genuinely important subjects. They are issues people care deeply about.

North Korea is far away and, quite frankly, it doesn’t seem there’s a lot we can do

about it.

Later—in 10 years, or in 60—it will surely turn out that quite a lot was known

in 2004 about the camps of North Korea. It will turn out that information collected

by various human rights groups, South Korean churches, oddball journalists and

spies added up to a damning and largely accurate picture of an evil regime. It will

also turn out that there were things that could have been done, approaches the

South Korean government might have made, diplomatic channels the U.S. government might have opened, pressure the Chinese might have applied.

Historians in Asia, Europe and here will finger various institutions, just as we

do now, and demand they justify their past actions. And no one will be able to understand how it was possible that we knew of the existence of the gas chambers

but failed to act.

Senator BROWNBACK. You know people that have come out and

I know you have met with some that have come out of the gulag

system, as I have. We think there are somewhere around 150,000-

200,000 people in the North Korean gulag system. They operate

that type of horrific system.

They have lied or at least misled us in incredible ways on nuclear negotiations in the past. The 1994 agreement—I believe

quoting Secretary Powell, ‘‘the ink was not even dry and they were

looking for other sources of nuclear material.’’ I have that from one

29

of the top defectors that came out, and I believe it is in the public

knowledge or realm at this point in time. So this is not a trustworthy regime to negotiate with on nuclear issues given past performance in the 1994 signed agreement.

They are arms merchants for virtually every evil regime in the

world.

They are drug runners as a government. I held a hearing on

that.

Counterfeiting money, other items, a number of places, U.S. currency.

Human traffickers. I have got the State Department Trafficking

in Persons report of June 2004, and Mr. Chairman, I would like for

this to be entered into the record, the page on North Korea. Just

to read it very briefly, if I could. ‘‘Source country for persons trafficked for the purpose of forced labor and sexual exploitation. The

DPRK operates forced labor prison camps to punish criminals and

repatriated North Koreans. Imposes slave-like labor conditions on

its prisoners.’’ This is a State Department document.

[The page of the report referred to follows:]

NORTH KOREA (TIER 3)

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.) is a source country for persons trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. The D.P.R.K.

operates forced-labor prison camps to punish criminals and repatriated North Koreans. Thousands of North Korean men, women, and children are forced to work and

often perish under conditions of slavery. Many nations provide humanitarian assistance and food to the North Korean people, but deteriorating economic conditions

continue to pressure thousands into fleeing to China, Russia, and Mongolia. The

North Koreans’ illegal status in other nations increases their vulnerability to trafficking schemes and sexual and physical abuse.

The Government of North Korea does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making efforts to do so. The government does not recognize trafficking as a problem and imposes slave-like labor conditions on its prisoners.

Prosecution

There are no reports that the D.P.R.K. prosecutes traffickers.

Protection

The Government of North Korea makes no effort to protect trafficking victims.

Prevention

There are no reports of any government anti-trafficking efforts.

Senator BROWNBACK. Kidnapers in Japan. Maybe they are starting to get those cleared up.

Chemical weapons tests on prisoners. Now, this is only according

to the BBC and several other documents coming out. So in my estimation, it has not risen to the level of proof yet, but I quote here

from this Anne Applebaum story of a former administrator of a

North Korean camp. ‘‘ ‘I witnessed a whole family being tested on

suffocating gas and dying in a gas chamber,’ he said. ‘The parents,

son and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till

the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouthto-mouth breathing.’ ’’ Chemical testing on their own people.

They are, as I stated at the outset, a charter member of the ‘‘axis

of evil.’’ This is Kim Jong-il’s regime that we are negotiating with.

Can you really negotiate with this group? We have this track

record of what they have or are doing.

30

Mr. KELLY. There is no way to put a good face on the DPRK and

there is nothing you said, Senator Brownback, that I have any evidence to deny. To the best of my knowledge, everything you said

there, or at least the vast majority of it, is absolutely unchallenged

and widely known.

Can we negotiate with them? We do not intend to negotiate with

North Korea ourselves. We believe that the multilateral process,

that the international community is very much involved in this,

and that is why we want the six-party talks or other international

fora to take that lead.

With that said, is it possible for us to be a party to any negotiations? The answer, sir, is that it is. I had the honor to work for

the late President Reagan and he put it best: ‘‘Trust but verify.’’ If there is the verification, if there is a dismantlement, even then

we may not be 100 percent sure, but I certainly would feel much

more comfortable if the kind of quantities, that I believe are there,

of nuclear materials were removed from North Korea.

Senator BROWNBACK. And I would too.

But let me finish on this point. With all these human rights

abuses at the extraordinary level, comparing their gulag with Hitler’s concentration camps, tier 3 trafficking, chemical weapons tests

on their own people, 10 percent of their population dying in the last

10 years, if we provide resources from here for something in North

Korea in exchange for their dropping of nuclear weapons, completely verified nuclear weapons dropping, we see it, we take it out

of the country or the Chinese, with us watching, take it actually

physically out, it is dismantled, and you are still giving money to

a country operating a gulag, operating trafficking, operating chemical weapons tests on its own people?

That is the heart of the North Korea Freedom Act that we have

put forward that I have talked with you about is that I cannot in

good conscience say, we are going to fund something in here, and

recognize we will get a verifiable nuclear weapons removal, when

all the rest of this is going on. And we know it is going on and it

is right there in front of our eyes and we just cannot deny it.

I really would plead with you that you tell the North Koreans

that Congress is requiring you to put the human rights issues in

this portfolio. I know they do not want to talk about it. I would not

want to talk about it if I were Kim Jong-il or anybody in his regime, given their track record. But this is horrific.

I have spoken to you privately about that and I will continue to

do so. I really hope that we can put that issue in there rather than

us saying we will fund this for the nuclear weapons, given the level

of other things that are going on in that regime.

Mr. KELLY. Senator, we are not seeking funds and we have no

plans to provide funds. The one possible exception might be the

Nunn-Lugar money precisely for dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But we are not seeking funding. We are not looking to bribe

North Korea to end its nuclear weapons state. We see this as a

very important objective, but then we have made clear that the

normalization of our relations would have to follow these other important issues. Human rights is co-equal in importance, perhaps

even more important than conventional forces, chemical weapons,

ballistic missiles, matters of that sort.

31

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you for your work on this. I do not

want to demean it because I think you have done very important

work. But there is a level of frustration with what is there too.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Brownback.

I have one question. I know the distinguished ranking member

has another question.

Let me just state it this way. Has the United States clearly expressed to North Korea what actions on their part related to the

export or trade of nuclear-related materials would have the equivalence of crossing a red line with the United States and our allies?

Mr. KELLY. I do not know whether that is the assessment or not.

We have not talked about red lines in any direct fora. Obviously,

North Korea knows that the threat of transfer of fissionable material or nuclear weapons would be an extremely serious matter, or

at least I expect that they know it and we have made that clear.

But exactly what the response would be has got to remain with all

options on the table.

The CHAIRMAN. Do our partners around the table share that view

of the seriousness of that export?

Mr. KELLY. I believe they do, Mr. Chairman, yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. I have one last question, Mr. Chairman. It has

been prompted by the exchange between Senator Brownback, who

has done an incredible amount of work on this issue. I want to

make sure I understand.

If there was a complete, verifiable disarmament of the nuclear

program, abandonment of a nuclear program by North Korea, as I

understand your statement, we would sanction non-U.S. participation by the other five that would provide heavy fuel oil, that upon

acceptance by the DPRK of a declaration, the parties, including us,

would provide multilateral security assurances which would become more enduring as the process proceeded. We would participate in a study to determine the energy requirements. We would

begin a discussion with others of the steps necessary for lifting economic sanctions and the steps necessary for removal for the DPRK

from the list of state sponsored terrorism. So they are the things

we would be prepared to do either sign on to others providing and

not object to and what we would participate in considering. Is that

correct?

Mr. KELLY. That is the nature of the proposal that we offered in

the last session. It may be possible that some things would be

added to that, but essentially, sir, you have described it accurately.

Senator BIDEN. So these things, as we have proposed it, if it were

accepted, could go forward notwithstanding the fact there was no

alteration of North Korea’s conduct relative to the human rights

abuses cited by my colleague, Senator Brownback.

Mr. KELLY. We have not made that a condition for solving the

nuclear weapons issue, but we made it clear that it is an issue that

would have to be dealt with in terms of a normalization of our relationship at some time in the future. And when and how that sort

of talk could begin—after all, that was the presentation that I was

taking to North Korea in the early part of 2002.

32

Senator BIDEN. By the way, I have no doubt that the President

and the Secretary of State and all the administration feels extremely strongly about these human rights abuses and I have no

doubt that there would be no normalization absent remedying this,

full normalization. But so I am not confused anyway, we are making a distinction here between the full normalization of relationships and what would flow from a dismantlement of verifiable assurances that they were no longer engaged in their nuclear program, that they are distinct. They may overlap. They could be the

same. But some things can move forward based upon total

verifiable disarmament of nuclear capability, but the whole of the

relationship cannot be mended without other things occurring, as

well as disarmament. Is that a fair statement?

Mr. KELLY. Yes, sir. And this is really the start of the nuclear

dismantlement process that our proposal addresses in some detail.

There is much more detail that is going to have to be filled in for

this to succeed.

Senator BIDEN. I thank you very much.

Senator BROWNBACK. Mr. Chairman, could I ask one more question?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, Senator Brownback.

Senator BROWNBACK. I very much appreciate, Senator Biden, you

getting to the bifurcation of the issue there.

Secretary Kelly, I am sure you have talked about this a lot,

about putting the human rights issues on the table now to get

them in the negotiations. It sure seems to me that that is really

the key in driving this. When we look at past negotiations with the

Soviet Union at another time, it was the set of human rights issues

at the front end of it that really drove the radicalized change in the

regime and in the country. And these are critically important.

I understand the difficulty, but why not put these in the first

tranche and not on the bigger package of normalized relations

when you have such a horrific set and such a useful tool actually

to talk about with them?

Mr. KELLY. Human rights issues are out there, and the work you

have done, Senator, the reports that you cite are a part of this.

This is not completely ignored in other parts of the world, although

I do not think it receives the attention that it really needs to. So

the movement of refugees into China and on to South Korea and

other countries is something that goes on. There is this in the background.

Whether or not we should make the nuclear issue co-dependent

and co-equal with the human rights issue is really a question of

tactics as to what would come first. In our consultations with the

allies and partners, they feel that it is best to try to get movement

on the nuclear weapons issue first if only because of the additional

progress that is being made in developing ever-greater amounts of

fissionable material.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Senator Brownback.

Mr. DeTrani, I understand that you discuss regularly the human

rights issues. Will you describe what you are doing?

Mr. DETRANI. Mr. Chairman, that is correct. We usually are in

a working group, and certainly when we have direct contact with

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our North Korean colleagues, we get into the whole panoply of the

issues, in addition to the nuclear issue. We do speak about what

you just spoke about, Senator Brownback. And certainly human

rights is right on top of the list there. Our North Korean counterparts are very much aware of this, sir, understanding that these

issues, certainly the human rights issue, have to be addressed as

we move toward normalization.

And we see the DPRK looking toward normalization as the ultimate goal for international legitimacy, what it means for the economic reforms, and so forth. So the word that was used this morning—‘‘incentive’’—there is an extreme incentive out there for them

to move on all these issues, indeed, to include the human rights

issue. With more transparency and the greater knowledge we have

about these, the more pressure on them to rectify some of this very

unfortunate behavior.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. I thank both of you for

your testimony today. We are looking forward to inviting you again

because these negotiations will continue. We really appreciate your

availability. Obviously the committee is very supportive of your

work as you proceed on behalf of our country. Thank you for coming.

Mr. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the committee. We

really appreciate the support and the intense interest that you and

so many other Senators have had at every step of this way. Thank

you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir.

I would like to call now Dr. Carter and Ambassador Pritchard to

the witness stand.

We welcome the Honorable Ashton B. Carter, former Assistant

Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, now Professor of Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy

School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His testimony will be followed by that of the Honorable

Charles L. Pritchard, Visiting Fellow of The Brookings Institution

in Washington, DC.

Dr. Carter.

STATEMENT OF HON. ASHTON B. CARTER, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY POLICY; PROFESSOR OF SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Dr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, for inviting me to appear before you today to speak about

the implementation of a possible agreement with North Korea for

the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement, that is,

CVID, of its nuclear weapons program.

As you know, I was very much involved in the original NunnLugar program, which was a very successful effort established by

you, Mr. Chairman, and Senator Nunn. It accomplished CVID in

Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus and also diminished, dismantled, and secured a large portion of the nuclear weapons legacy of

the Soviet Union inherited by Russia. These very same methods,

Nunn-Lugar methods, are at work today in Libya, in Iraq, and in

34

securing highly enriched uranium around the world. We all hope

that something similar can be done in North Korea.

I would like to share with you nine recommendations about how

we might do that. But before I get there, I do not want to put the

cart before the horse. I have to say that in my estimation, we are

a long way from an agreement with North Korea on CVID. I do not

know whether at this point North Korea is susceptible to a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis at all. President Bush is correct

to give diplomacy a try before moving to other more coercive paths,

but I think we have to look at it as only a try.

The alternatives to diplomacy are dangerous because they could

spark a violent war on the Korean Peninsula. Additionally, they

cannot be fully effective unless others join us in implementing

them. For example, economic penalties cannot be effectively imposed on North Korea, if diplomacy fails, unless China, South

Korea, and Russia agree not to undercut those penalties. We need

international support on either path, whether diplomatic or more

coercive. This is not a matter of getting a permission slip from anyone; it is a matter of making our policy more effective. And we are

not going to get that support for a more coercive path unless and

until the diplomatic path has been tried and has been shown to

have failed.

The last time I appeared before this committee, I called for a

total overhaul of U.S. counter-proliferation capabilities. I argued

that President Bush was absolutely right when he said that keeping the worst weapons out of the hands of the worst people was the

highest national security priority for any American President. But

I also pointed out that U.S. policy in recent years has focused mostly on the worst people and far too little on the worst weapons. We

have waged a war on terrorism but have not yet begun a parallel

war on weapons of mass destruction. In fact, the only major action

taken against weapons of mass destruction was the invasion of

Iraq, which was an action I supported, in the firm conviction that

Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction would be found

after the war. But it turns out that pre-war intelligence falsely

overstated Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

Meanwhile, as all eyes were on Iraq, North Korea and Iran

plunged forward with their nuclear programs. Efforts to secure materials in Russia and worldwide proceeded at their pre-9/11 bureaucratic pace, and the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and the intelligence community continued to give

inadequate attention to overhauling their counter-proliferation programs to deal with the age of terrorism.

The most adverse of all these recent developments in counterproliferation has taken place in North Korea. The North quadrupled its stock of plutonium in the most significant proliferation

disaster since Pakistan went nuclear in the 1980s under the scientific leadership of A.Q. Khan. Letting North Korea go nuclear

would represent a security catastrophe for the United States in no

fewer than five ways.

First, it would weaken deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and

make destructive war there both more likely and more destructive.

35

Second, it could lead to a domino effect of proliferation in East

Asia, as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and others reconsider their

decisions to forego nuclear weapons.

Third, it would undercut the global nuclear Non-Proliferation

Treaty regime.

Fourth, North Korea might well sell plutonium as it sells ballistic missiles.

And fifth, if North Korea collapses, we will need to worry about

where its plutonium goes during the upheaval.

These last two points alone illustrate why a nuclear North Korea

is unacceptable to U.S. and international security, because they

show that proliferation to states is also a potential route to substate nuclear terrorism.

For these five reasons, the United States must put stopping the

nuclear program first in its priorities in dealing with North Korea,

above reducing North Korea’s conventional forces, and above transforming its repressive political system and backward economic system. Strategy is about priorities. These other objectives remain important U.S. goals, but the Bush administration is correct to put

nuclear CVID at the center of its negotiating strategy.

Unfortunately, the U.S. negotiating position has deteriorated significantly since the crisis began in late 2002, when North Korea’s

plutonium program was unfrozen and its uranium enrichment program revealed. For the 8 preceding years, the 8,000 fuel rods containing several bombs’ worth of weapons grade plutonium were at

Yongbyon, where they could be inspected—or, for that matter, destroyed—and were months away from being converted into bomb

form. Now they are out of Yongbyon, location unknown, and presumably at least some of them have been reprocessed to extract

bomb-ready plutonium.

The U.S. position among other parties in the region has also

taken a turn for the worse. South Korea and China have the power

to reward and coerce North Korea—they possess carrots and sticks

that are at least as potent as ours—if they can be persuaded to

wield them in the nuclear diplomacy. But in the absence of a clear

U.S. negotiating strategy, each of these partners has begun to go

its own way.

In South Korea, a younger generation seems to have lost its strategic bearings entirely, wishing away the North Korean threat and

even going so far as to make the astonishing suggestion that the

United States is the greater threat. The older generation of South

Korean leaders has done too little to educate the younger generation about the South’s actual interests and responsibilities. The

United States has exacerbated this situation through 31⁄2 years of

delay in formulating a negotiating strategy, and by its clumsy handling of its plans to rebase U.S. forces on the peninsula.

China should apply its full weight to pressuring North Korea to

agree to a reasonable U.S. negotiating position. But in the absence

of a clear U.S. position, China has also been looking the other way

as North Korea advances its nuclear program. In fact, China and

South Korea appear to be collaborating closely. This is a symptom

of a larger trend in East Asia, where China’s power and influence

grow and regional states find themselves tempted to align with

China and move away from the United States. Our government’s

36

near-total focus on the Middle East has kept us from countering

this trend toward the erosion of the U.S. strategic position in East

Asia.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I therefore approach my assigned task in this hearing with grave doubts. But in

the spirit of hope, allow me to make some observations on how the

Nunn-Lugar method might be applied in implementing a

denuclearization agreement with North Korea.

First, Nunn-Lugar-like assistance with CVID is a reasonable carrot for the United States to offer North Korea. This Nation, always

loath to bribe North Korea, and burned once in the Agreed Framework by North Korean cheating, can hardly be expected to give

North Korea large tangible rewards for stepping back from the nuclear threshold. It is likely that South Korea, China, Russia, and

Japan will do so but not the United States.

But the U.S. can reasonably offer two carrots. The first is an intangible: namely, a pledge not to attack North Korea if it foregoes

nuclear weapons. This simply makes explicit what should be our

policy anyway. The second is Nunn-Lugar-like assistance with

CVID. Such assistance, like the Nunn-Lugar program in general,

should be seen as an investment in our own security, not a reward

to North Korea. Secretary of Defense Bill Perry used to call the

Nunn-Lugar program in the former Soviet Union ‘‘defense by other

means.’’ Second, while CVID must be the end state prescribed in any

agreement, as a practical matter this state will be approached in

stages. Recall that the Agreed Framework also prescribed CVID of

North Korea’s plutonium infrastructure. Its uranium provisions

were not verifiable and, sure enough, North Korea cheated on

them. The problem with the Agreed Framework’s plutonium provisions was not that it did not have the right goal, or that it approached that goal in stages. The problem was that implementation

never progressed beyond the first stage, the so-called freeze. We

need to make sure any new agreement does not get stuck in an

early stage of implementation. The agreement will need to build in

penalties to North Korea for stalling. On our side, Congress especially will need to support the implementation of the agreement

over time and over successive administrations until CVID is

achieved. With the Agreed Framework, first Congress and then the

Clinton administration betrayed signs of buyer’s regret soon after

the agreement was signed, and this played into the hands of North

Korea’s desire to stall at the freeze stage.

Third, the United States should begin program design for CVID

now. The program design should include technical objectives and

milestones, supply and construction plans, estimated costs, and a

program management structure giving clear authority and accountability to a single U.S. official. This last point is important. Over

the history of the Nunn-Lugar program, its projects have been implemented by Defense, State, Energy, and Commerce. These Departments have developed expertise in these types of projects and

it would be imprudent not to exploit it for the North Korea program. But we cannot confront North Korea with the same bureaucratic chaos with which the states of the former Soviet Union still

contend.

37

The program design should be shown to the North Koreans and

their input solicited. Doing so will smooth things down the road if

an agreement is reached, and it might even whet their appetite for

such an agreement in the first place.

Obviously a program plan can only be notional at this stage and

will need to be refined as we learn more about North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure. Without a specific program plan, it is difficult

to estimate costs. But a reasonable estimate would be that the

North Korea Nunn-Lugar program would be a factor of ten smaller

than the former Soviet Union program—that is, tens of millions of

dollars per year for a 10-year period.

Fifth, by far the preferable role for congressional oversight is to

review the program plan in advance as it considers the overall wisdom of any agreement the executive branch reaches with North

Korea. To the extent possible, we should avoid a situation in which

every stage of implementation and every needed appropriation for

assistance becomes a mini-crisis in U.S. politics. The North will exploit such crises to stall and re-bargain the agreement. The result

will be to the U.S. disadvantage in the long run. Well-intentioned

but totally counterproductive congressional restrictions have greatly damaged the denuclearization effort in the former Soviet Union.

To yield results that are complete, the ‘‘C’’ in CVID, and irreversible, the ‘‘I’’ in CVID, the Nunn-Lugar concept for North Korea, like

that for Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, should cover all portions of the nuclear infrastructure: weapons and materials, production and storage facilities, R&D centers, and the scientists and

workers who populate it.

Seventh, verification, the ‘‘V’’ in CVID, will be aided by a NunnLugar approach. A cooperative effort in which the United States is

deeply involved, on the ground and in person with North Korean

technologists, will give important insights and confidence to complement formal verification measures and national intelligence collection.

Eighth, while in principle other nations in the six-party talks

could also provide Nunn-Lugar type assistance to implement an

agreement, it is probably preferable that the program to implement

the agreement be U.S. only. The United States has the expertise

of the existing Nunn-Lugar program under its belt, an enormous

incentive to see CVID succeed, and a disinclination to provide other

types of assistance to North Korea that China, Russia, South

Korea, and Japan might provide.

Ninth and finally, elimination of chemical and biological weapons

and ballistic missiles can be added to the agreement and to the resulting Nunn-Lugar program, though with lesser priority than nuclear weapons. Chemical weapons are not much more destructive,

pound for pound or liter for liter, than conventional weapons and

hardly deserve the mass destruction designation. Biological weapons are a true weapon of mass destruction, but the United States

must formulate strong counters against biowarfare and bioterrorism irrespective of North Korea, and these countermeasures, if

taken, will likely provide comparable protection against North Korean bioweapons. And ballistic missiles are a poor way for an

attacker to spend money unless they carry nuclear and biological

warheads. So our concerns about missiles end up being derivative

38

of these weapons. For these reasons I think it is safe to sequence

these other weapon types after nuclear weapons from a purely military perspective.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, let me close by

stressing that policymaking and implementation are different processes requiring different skills. Too often our policy is brilliant, but

when it comes to spending the taxpayers’ money on complex and

novel technical projects, especially in foreign lands, our performance is less than brilliant. Joint military operations are, fortunately, an exception to this observation. But when one considers

the fumbling in the early years of the Nunn-Lugar program in the

former Soviet Union, to which I can attest personally, the first year

of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, the first 3 years of

the U.S. Homeland Security program, one can easily see that successful implementation is not always assured even when the policy

objectives are crystal clear. The complexity of a North Korea CVID

program based on the Nunn-Lugar precedent, together with the inimitable qualities of the North Korean Government, mean that implementation will require stamina and finesse on the part of both

the executive and legislative branches.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Carter follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ASHTON B. CARTER

IMPLEMENTING A DENUCLARIZATION AGREEMENT WITH NORTH KOREA

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you to discuss the implementation of a possible agreement with North

Korea for the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement (CVID) of its nuclear weapons program. I was deeply involved in the Nunn-Lugar program from

1991 to 1996, a very successful effort established by the Chairman of this Committee and Senator Nunn. The Nunn-Lugar program accomplished CVID in

Ukraine, Kazakstan, and Belarus, as well as the dismantlement and securing of a

large portion of Russia’s nuclear weapons legacy from the Soviet Union. Currently

the methods it pioneered are also at work in Iraq and Libya, and in securing highly

enriched uranium around the world.

We all hope something similar can be accomplished in North Korea. I must begin,

however, by warning that in my estimation we are a long way from an agreement

with North Korea on CVID. I do not know whether at this point North Korea is

susceptible to a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis at all. But President Bush

is correct to give diplomacy a try before moving to other, more coercive paths. The

alternatives to diplomacy are dangerous because they could spark a violent war on

the Korean Peninsula. Additionally, they cannot be fully effective unless others join

us in implementing them. For example, economic penalties cannot be imposed on

North Korea unless China, South Korea, and Russia agree not to undercut them.

This needed international support is not a matter of a ‘‘permission slip,’’ it is critical

to making U.S.-led policy effective. We will not get this support unless the diplomatic path has been tried and been shown to have failed.

The last time I appeared before this Committee I called for an overhaul of U.S.

counterproliferation capabilities. I argued that President Bush was dead on when

he said that keeping the worst weapons out of the hands of the worst people was

an American president’s highest national security priority. The worst weapons are

nuclear and biological; the worst people are rogue states and increasingly terrorists.

But I also pointed out that U.S. policy in recent years has been focused mostly on

the worst people and far too little on the worst weapons. We have waged a war on

terrorism but have not yet begun a parallel war on weapons of mass destruction

(WMD). The only major action taken against WMD was the invasion of Iraq, an action which I supported in the firm conviction that Saddam Hussein’s WMD would

be found after the war. But it turns out that pre-war intelligence falsely overstated

Iraq’s WMD capabilities. Meanwhile, as all eyes were on Iraq, North Korea and Iran

plunged forward with their nuclear programs; efforts to secure nuclear materials in

Russia and worldwide proceeded at their pre-9/11 bureaucratic pace; and the DeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
39

partment of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and Intelligence Community continued to give inadequate attention to overhauling their counterproliferation

programs to deal with the age of terrorism.

The most adverse of all these recent developments in counterproliferation has

taken place in North Korea. The North quadrupled its stock of plutonium, in the

most significant proliferation disaster since Pakistan went nuclear in the 1980s

under the leadership of scientist A.Q. Khan. Letting North Korea go nuclear represents a security catastrophe in no fewer than five ways. First, it would weaken

deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and make war there both more likely and more

destructive. Second, it could lead to a domino effect of proliferation in East Asia as

South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and others reconsider their decisions to forego nuclear

weapons. Third, it would undercut the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)

regime. Fourth, North Korea might sell plutonium, as it sells ballistic missiles. And

fifth, if North Korea collapses we will need to worry about where its plutonium goes

during the upheaval. These last two points alone illustrate why a North Korean nuclear program is unacceptable to U.S. and international security, because they show

that proliferation to states is also a potential route to sub-state nuclear terrorism.

For these five reasons, the United States must put stopping the nuclear program

first in its priorities when dealing with North Korea—above reducing North Korea’s

conventional forces, and above transforming its repressive political system and backward economic system. Strategy is about priorities. These other objectives remain

important U.S. goals, but the Bush administration is correct to put nuclear CVID

at the center of its negotiating strategy.

Unfortunately, the U.S. negotiating position has deteriorated significantly since

the crisis began in late 2002, when North Korea’s plutonium program was unfrozen

and its uranium enrichment program revealed. For the eight preceding years, the

8,000 fuel rods containing several bombs’ worth of weapons grade plutonium were

at Yongbyon, where they could be inspected (or, for that matter, destroyed) and

were months away from being converted into bomb form. Now they are out of

Yongbyon, location unknown, and presumably at least some of them have been reprocessed to extract bomb-ready plutonium.

The U.S. position among other parties in the region has also taken a turn for the

worse. South Korea and China have the power to reward and coerce North Korea—

they possess carrots and sticks—that are at least as potent as ours—if they can be

persuaded to wield them in the nuclear diplomacy. But in the absence of a clear

U.S. negotiating strategy, each of these partners has begun to go its own way.

In South Korea, a younger generation seems to have lost its strategic bearings

entirely, wishing away the North Korean threat and even going so far as to make

the astonishing suggestion that the United States is the greater threat. The older

generation of South Korean leaders has done too little to educate the younger generation about the South’s actual interests and responsibilities. The United States

has exacerbated this situation through three and a half years of delay in formulating a negotiating strategy, and by its clumsy handling of its plans to rebase U.S.

forces on the peninsula.

China should apply its full weight to pressuring North Korea to agree to a reasonable U.S. negotiating position. But in the absence of a clear U.S. position, China

also has been looking the other way as North Korea advances its nuclear program.

In fact, China and South Korea appear to be collaborating closely. This is a symptom of a larger trend in East Asia, where China’s power and influence grow and

regional states find themselves tempted to align with China and move away from

the United States. Our government’s near-total focus on the Middle East has kept

us from countering this trend towards the erosion of the U.S. strategic position in

East Asia.

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I therefore approach my assigned

task in this hearing with grave doubts. But in a spirit of hope, allow me to make

some observations on how the ‘‘Nunn-Lugar method’’ might be applied to implementing a denuclearization agreement with North Korea.

1. Nunn-Lugar assistance with CVID is a reasonable ‘‘carrot’’ for the United

States to offer North Korea. This nation—always loath to ‘‘bribe’’ North Korea, and

burned once in the Agreed Framework by North Korean cheating—can hardly be

expected to give North Korea large tangible rewards for stepping back from the nuclear threshold. It is likely that South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan will do so,

but not the United States. But the U.S. can reasonably offer two carrots. The first

is an intangible: namely, a pledge not to attack North Korea if it foregoes nuclear

weapons. This simply makes explicit what should be our policy anyway. The second

is Nunn-Lugar-like assistance with CVID. Such assistance, like the Nunn-Lugar

program in general, should be seen as an investment in our own security, not a reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
40

ward to North Korea. Secretary of Defense Bill Perry used to call the Nunn-Lugar

program in the former Soviet Union ‘‘defense by other means.’’

2. While CVID must be the end-state prescribed in any agreement, as a practical

matter this state will be approached in stages. Recall that the Agreed Framework

also prescribed CVID of North Korea’s plutonium infrastructure (its uranium provisions were not verifiable, and sure enough North Korea cheated on them). The problem with the Agreed Framework’s plutonium provision was not that it did not have

the right goal, or that it approached that goal in stages. The problem was that implementation never progressed beyond the first stage, the so-called ‘‘freeze.’’ We

need to make sure any new agreement does not get stuck in an early stage of implementation. The agreement will need to build in penalties to North Korea for stalling. On our side, Congress especially will need to support the implementation of the

agreement over time and over successive administrations until CVID is achieved.

With the Agreed Framework, first Congress and then the Clinton administration betrayed signs of ‘‘buyer’s regret’’ soon after the agreement was signed, and this

played into the hands of North Korea’s desire to stall at the ‘‘freeze’’ stage.

3. The United States should begin program design for CVID now. The program

design should include technical objectives and milestones, supply and construction

plans, estimated costs, and a program management structure giving clear authority

and accountability to a single U.S. official. This last point is important. Over the

history of the Nunn-Lugar program, its projects have been implemented by Defense,

State, Energy, and Commerce. These departments have developed expertise in these

types of projects, and it would be imprudent not to exploit it for a North Korea program. But we cannot confront North Korea with the same bureaucratic chaos with

which the states of the former Soviet Union still contend.

The program design should be shown to the North Koreans and their input solicited. Doing so will smooth things down the road if an agreement is reached, and

it might whet their appetite for such an agreement in the first place.

4. Obviously a program plan can only be notional at this stage and will need to

be refined as we learn more about North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure. Without a

program plan, it is impossible to estimate costs. A reasonable estimate would be

that the North Korea Nunn-Lugar program would be a factor often smaller than the

former Soviet Union program—that is, tens of millions of dollars per year for a ten

year period.

5. By far the preferable role for Congressional oversight is to review the program

plan in advance as it considers the overall wisdom of any agreement the executive

branch reaches with North Korea. To the extent possible, we should avoid a situation in which every stage of implementation and every needed appropriation for assistance becomes a mini-crisis in U.S. politics. The North will exploit such crises to

stall and re-bargain the agreement. The result will be to the U.S. disadvantage in

the long run. Well-intentioned but totally counterproductive Congressional restrictions have greatly damaged the denuclearization effort in the former Soviet Union.

6. To yield complete (the C in CVID) and irreversible (the I in CVID) results, the

‘‘Nunn-Lugar’’ concept for North Korea, like those for Ukraine, Kazakstan, and

Belarus, should cover all portions of its nuclear infrastructure: weapons and materials, production and storage facilities, R&D centers, and the scientists and workers

who populate it.

7. Verification (the V in CVID) will be aided by a Nunn-Lugar approach. A cooperative effort in which the United States is deeply involved, on the ground and in person with North Korean technologists, will give important insights and confidence to

complement formal verification measures and national intelligence collection.

8. While in principle other nations in the Six-Party talks could also provide NunnLugar-type assistance to implement an agreement, it is probably preferable that the

program to implement the agreement be U.S.-only. The United States has the experience of the existing Nunn-Lugar program under its belt, an enormous incentive

to see CVID succeed, and a disinclination to provide the other types of assistance

to North Korea that China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan might provide.

9. Elimination of chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles can be

added to the agreement and to the resulting Nunn-Lugar-like program, though with

lesser priority than nuclear weapons. Chemical weapons are not much more destructive, pound for pound or liter for liter, than conventional weapons and hardly deserve the ‘‘mass destruction’’ designation. Biological weapons are a true WMD, but

the United States must formulate strong counters against biowarfare and bioterrorism irrespective of North Korea, and those countermeasures—if taken—will likely provide protection against North Korean bioweapons. Ballistic missiles are a poor

way for an attacker to spend money unless they carry nuclear or biological warheads, so our concerns about missiles end up being derivative of these weapons.

41

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, let me close by stressing that policymaking and implementation are different processes requiring different skills. Too

often our policy is brilliant but when it comes to spending the taxpayers’ money on

complex and novel technical projects, especially in foreign lands, our performance

is less than brilliant. (Joint military operations are fortunately an exception to this

observation.) But when one considers the fumbling in the early years of the NunnLugar program in the former Soviet Union (to which I can attest personally), the

first year of the Coalition Provisional Authority and ‘‘stability operations’’ in Iraq,

and the first three years of the U.S. Homeland Security program, one can easily see

that successful implementation is not always assured even when the policy objectives are crystal clear. The complexity of a North Korea CVID program based on

the Nunn-Lugar precedent, together with the inimitable qualities of the North Korean government, mean that implementation will require stamina and finesse on

the part of both the executive and legislative branches.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Carter.

Ambassador Pritchard.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES L. PRITCHARD, VISITING

FELLOW, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

Ambassador PRITCHARD. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for

the opportunity to speak here today. I am very pleased that this

committee has taken the lead in educating the American public on

such a critical issue.

You have asked me to address the energy component of a theoretical resolution of the current nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. While I am not an energy expert per se, I did have the opportunity to serve as the U.S. Representative to the Korean Peninsula

Energy Development Organization for about 21⁄2 years. So I am

going to use that as a springboard to move forward to answer your

question. But first, I thought I would review a little bit why energy

is so important in this particular situation and why I think it is

going to be critical in the resolution of anything that we are able

to achieve.

In 1985, the former Soviet Union was able to get the North Koreans to agree to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in exchange for the concept that Moscow would sell to North Korea four

light water reactors [LWRs] for the provision of energy. That particular reactor that went into the NPT was a 5 megawatt reactor

that Mr. Luse and I visited this past January. It is now back on

line. It originally came on line in 1986 and, as we later found out,

was taken off line for several months between 1989 and 1990 while

the North Koreans removed several hundred spent fuel rods and

ultimately extracted enough plutonium to create perhaps one or

two nuclear weapons.

That same reactor was ultimately covered in the 1994 Agreed

Framework which froze the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. It was

shut down and the spent fuel rods removed and safely stored under

IAEA supervision. As part of the negotiated deal, the United States

pledged to organize under its leadership a consortium to finance

and to supply two light water reactors and provide interim fuel in

the form of heavy fuel oil until the first light water reactor came

on line. In practice, the South Koreans pledged to finance 70 percent of that light water reactor operation while the Japanese

pledged a dollar amount of $1 billion. It did not quite add up to

100 percent, but it was close. For our part, for the United States’

part, we pledged to organize and to supply the heavy fuel oil that

42

was calculated by what was going to be the foregone amount of energy that the North Koreans would lose by freezing their nuclear

facilities, both the 5 megawatt and what they calculated was under

construction at the time, a 50 megawatt reactor and also a 200

megawatt reactor. That amount was set at 500,000 metric tons of

fuel oil per year.

Following Assistant Secretary Kelly’s trip to Pyongyang in October of 2002 to confront North Korea over their secret highly enriched uranium program, I led an effort as the U.S. Representative

to KEDO, upon instructions, to suspend KEDO’s provision of heavy

fuel oil to North Korea until there was a resolution of the HEU

program. We later then suspended the construction on the two

light water reactor programs.

What happened in rapid succession after that was the North Koreans’ response to that November 2002 suspension of heavy fuel oil

was for the North Koreans to declare that the United States had

effectively killed the Agreed Framework and they then began to

toss out the IAEA inspectors, as you know, and began to restart

their 5 megawatt reactor in January 2002, unfreezing their facilities at Yongbyon. Their initial rationale that they provided me was

they needed to provide energy as a replacement for the heavy fuel

oil that had been suspended.

In this latest round of six-party talks, North Korea is reported

to have demanded that the United States, at the point that the

freeze goes into effect, take part in energy aid of some 2 million

kilowatts, in addition from removing them from the list of state

sponsors of terrorism and lifting the economic sanctions as part of

its reward for freeze program.

This gap, I would point out, between the United States and others may simply be termed as something that would be predictable

at this stage of negotiations and not something I would be extremely concerned about. North Korea is attempting to devalue the

U.S. offer while they increase the demand that it is making for its

own settlement. But more importantly, it highlights the important

role that energy plays in any settlement, particularly from a North

Korean point of view.

What I also need to do at this point is to point out to you, before

we get any further into this discussion on energy, that there are

several private and quasi-official efforts proceeding in the area of

possible provision of energy to North Korea. One of these efforts involves the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy to

North Korea. I will leave it to him to explain how, if at all, his efforts have been coordinated in the ongoing multilateral talks and

how it may or may not support a negotiated settlement.

What is clear, Mr. Chairman, is that North Korea has a severe

energy shortage that has affected all aspects of national and individual life. Industrial capacity is down. Electricity for agricultural

use is insufficient. Basic necessities of life, such as heating and

electricity, are unreliable. This was the same situation that U.S.

negotiators used as leverage in 1994 that led to the Agreed Framework and it is the same situation that can provide U.S. negotiators

a similar level of leverage today.

Energy that was supplied to North Korea, as a result of the

Agreed Framework, was both short- and long-term. It was conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
43

trolled and reversible in the event North Korea reneged on its commitments. As I mentioned earlier, we suspended further deliveries

of near-term energy assistance in the form of heavy fuel oil in November 2002 and later suspended the longer-term energy assistance in the form of LWR projects in December this past year. It

is appropriate that future deliveries of energy that are part of a

diplomatic resolution of the current crisis likewise be phased and

tied to North Korean performance of its objectives and obligations.

That being said, the situation today requires full consideration be

given to all variables we face. For example, it would be easy from

an American point of view to declare the Agreed Framework dead,

ending any and all support of the LWR project at Kumho. I believe

that would be short-sighted. While personally I do not envision any

scenario in which the current LWR project is completed as originally contemplated and the keys of an operational LWR nuclear facility turned over to Pyongyang, I do think we must look further

down the road to a point in time when reunification of North and

South Korea is a reality. My assumption is that when the time

comes, a reunified peninsula would be ruled by a democratic government allied to the United States. That reunified nation, let

alone the projected needs of the current Republic of Korea, will

have vastly greater energy requirements. It stands to reason that

some of that energy may well be supplied by nuclear facilities yet

to be built. In that regard, I can see value to preserving the current

LWR work at Kumho or even advancing it under a formula that

keeps control in the hands of the ROK or some other international

entity until reunification occurs.

Since I have mentioned KEDO and the LWR project, let me continue on that theme, if I may. I must confess that when I worked

on the National Security Council for about 5 years, I functioned as

the deputy to Ambassador Chuck Kartman who first as the chief

negotiator and concurrently as the U.S. Representative to KEDO

urged me to be more fully involved with KEDO. I viewed that as

a tar pit and did my best to stay away from it to my regret, for

as you know, I succeeded him in that job as U.S. Representative

to KEDO.

What I learned very quickly, once in that job in May 2001 and

had reinforced over the next 21⁄2 years, is that KEDO has an extremely strong international staff composed of experts from each of

the consortium’s countries, the United States and Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the European Union. I worked closely with

each of the consortium board members, as well as its executive director, Ambassador Kartman. I have concluded that KEDO as an

organization is well placed to transition with minimal effort to an

organization that could contribute to the procurement and distribution of non-nuclear forms of energy assistance to North Korea as

a part of a diplomatic resolution to the current nuclear crisis.

KEDO has years of experience in purchasing HFO on the world

market and having it delivered to North Korea. It has negotiated

tough protocols with Pyongyang requiring internationally acceptable behavior and the development of responsible internal regulations governing conduct and the rights at the LWR site at Kumho.

Equally important, the KEDO staff has established a professional,

non-political relationship in doing business with its North Korean

44

counterparts. Moreover, the North Koreans have had 9 years of experience in dealing with KEDO. They have developed confidence in

the ability to work with its people, both from a policy and operational standpoint. In addition, they have established a bureaucratic counterpart to KEDO with enough standing in their own system to get decisions carried out.

Before KEDO can be restructured as a tool of six-party diplomacy, the EU needs to be brought into the current nuclear resolution process, if only on an informal basis. As a voting member of

the board of directors, having EU approval for the future transition

of KEDO is essential. Any organization, in my opinion, that was

created to replicate KEDO’s expertise would be an unnecessary

waste of time and energy.

Having established that a key element in the provision of energy

to North Korea already exists, let me turn to potential energy packages that could be considered.

When talking about energy assistance to North Korea, you have

to expand your initial thoughts that normally turn to coal or oil to

all aspects of the energy system that would be beneficial and therefore of value to North Korea. First of all, North Korea’s infrastructure is obsolete and inefficient. Basic upgrades from insulating

homes and businesses, to grid improvements, rehabilitation of old

plants and mines, to construction of new power plants would play

an important role in the equivalent delivery of energy assistance to

North Korea. I think that is important.

Natural gas has been mentioned earlier. Natural gas via pipeline

from Russia is another possibility, but one that could be part of a

longer-term package. However, that has been thrown around as

though it is an easy remedy. The cost involved might very well be

prohibitive in a shorter-term solution and therefore might necessarily be part of a longer-term solution and very well might need

to be part of a government commercial mix or simply an entirely

commercial venture.

For negotiating reasons, a phased approach providing energy assistance is best. Near-term provision of energy could easily come in

the form of heavy fuel oil, and that is what I believe is probably

the most wise thing to do. I do not think it is wise for the United

States to exclude itself from participation in the provision of HFO,

as was explained in the U.S. proposal today. Nor do I think North

Korea would find such a proposal acceptable. North Korea has the

capacity to handle and convert HFO to electricity if provided on a

scheduled basis.

One of the problems that we have had in the past with HFO is

the delivery. We have had problems finding the money, getting the

money on time, purchasing, having it delivered. Usually it came at

the end of the calendar year and it came in great quantities. It

overwhelmed the North Korean system. They were unable to plan

and use the HFO efficiently. So any effort to provide HFO ought

to be done on a scheduled and regular basis. It would be the most

efficient thing to do.

In addition to HFO, pilot projects designed to repair existing

mines and conventional power plants could be undertaken. One

novel idea is the first construction of a new conventional power

plant could occur at Kumho, which is the site of the current LWR

45

project. The infrastructure at Kumho already exists. I was there in

August 2002, and I can tell you it is a world-class facility. Moving

forward on another project using those existing facilities would

save time and effort rather than replicate them someplace else.

Longer-term projects that could be phased in as progress is made

in fulfilling non-proliferation obligations would include transmission grid rehabilitation. As Assistant Secretary Kelly mentioned, their grid system was created by the Japanese at the beginning of the last century. It is dilapidated. They lose up to perhaps

25 percent of their energy just through the transmission over that

grid system. Increases in natural gas pipeline construction, modernization of existing facilities, and construction of hydroelectric

power plants should be considered.

A long-term rehabilitation of the energy infrastructure would be

enormously important to South Korea. When reunification takes

place, the cost of bringing North Korea up to minimum South Korean standards will be enormous. Any opportunity for Seoul to get

started in infrastructure rehabilitation in North Korea before reunification would be a welcome head start.

Key to any longer-term energy assistance, as Assistant Secretary

Kelly has pointed out, would be a serious energy needs survey of

North Korea. I would say that that survey must be validated by

South Korea.

All the programs I have mentioned have costs that have to be

calibrated to the value that the six parties must agree upon in connection with the elimination of North Korea’s nuclear program. I

do believe energy assistance will be an important component in the

eventual resolution of the nuclear crisis.

If I may, let me just reiterate and perhaps expand a bit on some

of the things that I just said in way of conclusion.

First, I think we already have an organization in existence that

could be used on short notice and that is KEDO. It requires only

that we find a way in which the European Union is brought in in

some way to the current six-party process, whether it is as an observer or not. It has an added benefit that Senator Brownback

might find acceptable in that the European Union probably, even

though it is embryonic, has had far better success in discussing

with North Korea matters of human rights and humanitarian affairs. They could bring that dimension into the current process as

well.

I do believe the United States should be involved. I cannot imagine that we would want an organization that would have an independent voice in how HFO is purchased and delivered that does

not include the United States. We would lose our influence and leverage. I do not think, as I mentioned earlier, that North Korea

would accept anything less. It shows a less than full commitment

by the United States and it is one in which I think on principle we

ought to be involved in.

I do believe HFO is the initial way to go, and it ought to be

phased. And I also believe that it ought not to exceed the 500,000

metric tons that was originally part of the Agreed Framework. As

you do recall, the 500,000 metric tons was geared to the plutonium

portion of the nuclear program. The fact that the North Koreans

have cheated on that program, to suggest that we would do more

46

because there is an HEU component does smack as though we are

purchasing the HEU component rather than have the North Koreans acknowledge their violation of the Agreed Framework. So I do

think the initial limitation should be no more than 500,000 metric

tons of fuel oil.

And I think we need to look beyond, as I mentioned, the short

term to infrastructure development. That certainly would be of

long-term assistance to South Korea. It would help in our development of our relationship with South Korea.

The energy survey that I mentioned needs to be done. I think it

needs to be done concurrent at the initial phase, not later at some

date prior to the dismantlement or during the dismantlement, but

an initial phase in which the North Koreans would be able to ascertain the intentions of the United States and understand that we

were serious about the longer-term benefits of energy provision

that would flow their way.

Finally, if possible, in the longer term, I would look to expand

the participation to include China and Russia. Right now, the Chinese have their own bilateral assistance of energy to North Korea.

It would be better if a portion of that were included in the resolution of this nuclear issue.

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Pritchard follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES L. PRITCHARD

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to speak today on an important

topic. I am also pleased to see this committee take the lead in educating the American public on such a critical issue. I have been asked to address the energy component of a theoretical resolution of the current nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

While I do not claim to be an energy expert, per se, I had the privilege of serving

as the United States Representative to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development

Organization (KEDO) from May 2001 until the end of August 2003. In that capacity

and from my previous experience of working the North Korean issue from the National Security Council staff, I have had the opportunity to talk to a number of more

qualified people about what an energy component to an overall settlement might

look like.

I propose to provide you today with some thoughts on what might be possible and

to point out problems that will have to be addressed along the way. First, let me

briefly review how energy has come to play such a prominent role in past and future

dealings with North Korea.

In exchange for agreeing to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in December

1985 and put its 5 MW(e) reactor under international supervision, Moscow promised

to sell Pyongyang four Light Water Reactors (LWRs) for energy purposes. The existing reactor went on line in 1986 and, as we learned later, was shut down for a few

months in 1989 and 1990 while the North Koreans removed hundreds of spent fuel

rods and extracted enough plutonium for 1 or 2 nuclear weapons. This 5 MW(e) reactor was covered in the October 1994 Agreed Framework which was designed to

freeze and eventually eliminate North Korea’s fissile material production program.

The reactor was shut down and its spent fuel rods removed and safely stored under

IAEA supervision. As part of the negotiated deal, the United States pledged to organize under its leadership a consortium to finance and supply 2 LWRs and provide

interim Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) until the first LWR came on line. The practical

breakout of responsibilities resulted in South Korea and Japan agreeing to build

and principally fund the LWRs while the United States provided Heavy Fuel Oil.

The amount of HFO was related to the notional electrical output of the facilities

that North Korea was to freeze. That amount was set at 500,000 metric tons per

year.

Following Assistant Secretary Kelly’s trip to Pyongyang in October 2002 to confront North Korea over their secret Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) program, I led

an effort as the U.S. Representative to KEDO, upon instructions, in November 2002

47

to suspend further deliveries of HFO by KEDO pending resolution of the HEU issue.

In response to that suspension, Pyongyang declared that the United States had effectively killed the Agreed Framework and then proceeded to unfreeze their nuclear

facilities at Yongbyon. Part of Pyongyang’s initial rationale for restarting its 5

MW(e) reactor in January 2003 was for the production of energy to replace the now

suspended HFO.

In the latest round of Six Party Talks, North Korea is reported to have demanded

that the United States, at the point that the freeze goes into effect, take part in

energy aid of two million kilowatts, in addition to removing them from the list of

states sponsoring terrorism and lifting economic sanctions as part of its ‘‘reward for

freeze’’ proposition.

This gap between what the United States and others may be prepared to provide

as part of an initial step toward complete resolution of the current nuclear crisis

and what the North Koreans are demanding can be described as routine and predictable at this stage of diplomacy. North Korea is attempting to devalue the U.S.

proposal while increasing the price it is demanding for settlement. But more importantly, it highlights the important role energy will play in any settlement.

I must point out now before we get much further into the discussion of energy

that there are several private and quasi-official efforts proceeding in the area of possible provision of energy to North Korea. One of these efforts involves the United

Nations Secretary General’s special envoy to North Korea. I will leave to him or others to explain how, if at all, his efforts have been coordinated with the on going multilateral talks and how it may or may not support a negotiated settlement.

What is clear is that North Korea has an energy shortage that has affected all

aspects of national and individual life. Industrial capacity is down, electricity for agricultural use is insufficient and basic necessities of life such as heating and electricity are unreliable. This was the situation that gave U.S. negotiators certain leverage in 1994 that led to the Agreed Framework and it is the same situation that

can provide U.S. negotiators a similar level of leverage today.

Energy that was supplied to North Korea as a result of the Agreed Framework

was both short- and longer-term. It was controlled and reversible, in the event

Pyongyang reneged on its commitments. As I mentioned earlier, we suspended further deliveries of near-term energy assistance (HFO) in November 2002 and later

suspended work on the longer-term energy assistance (the LWR project). It is appropriate that future deliveries of energy that are part of a diplomatic resolution of the

current crisis likewise be phased and tied to North Korean performance of its obligations.

That being said, the situation today requires full consideration be given to all the

variables we face. For example, it is easy from an American point of view to declare

the Agreed Framework dead, ending any and all support for the LWR project at

Kumho. That would be short-sighted. While I personally do not envision a scenario

in which the current LWR project is completed as originally contemplated and the

keys to an operational nuclear facility turned over to Pyongyang, I do think we must

look further down the road to a point in time when reunification of North and South

Korea is a reality. My assumption is that when that time comes, a reunified peninsula will be ruled by a democratic government allied to the United States. That reunified nation, let alone the projected needs of the current Republic of Korea, will

have vastly greater energy requirements. It stands to reason that some of that energy might well be supplied by nuclear facilities yet to be built. In that regard, I

can see value to preserving the current LWR work at Kumho or even advancing it

under a formula that keeps control in the hands of the ROK or some other international entity until reunification occurs.

Since I have mentioned KEDO and the LWR project, let me continue on that

theme. I must confess that when I worked on the National Security Council staff

for several years and functioned as Ambassador Charles Kartman’s deputy in negotiations with the DPRK, he tried his best to get me involved in KEDO. To my regret, I resisted his wise counsel, for in May 2001, I succeeded Ambassador Kartman

as the U.S. Representative to KEDO.

What I learned very quickly then and had reinforced over the next two and half

years is that KEDO has an exceedingly strong international staff composed of experts from each of the consortium’s member countries: the United States, Japan, the

Republic of Korea and the European Union. I worked closely with each of the consortium’s Board Members as well as its Executive Director, Ambassador Kartman.

I have concluded that KEDO, as an organization, is well placed to transition with

minimal effort to an organization that could contribute to the procurement and distribution of non-nuclear forms of energy assistance to North Korea as part of a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear crisis.

48

KEDO has years of experience in purchasing HFO on the world market and having it delivered to North Korea. It has negotiated tough protocols with Pyongyang

requiring internationally acceptable behavior and the development of responsible internal regulations governing conduct and rights at the LWR site at Kumho. Equally

important, the KEDO staff has established a professional, non-political relationship

in doing business with its North Korean counterparts. Moreover, the North Koreans

now have nine years of experience dealing with KEDO. They have developed confidence in their ability to work with its people, from both a policy and operational

standpoint. In addition, they have established a bureaucratic counterpart to KEDO

with enough standing in their own system to get decisions carried out.

Before KEDO can be restructured as a tool of Six Party Diplomacy, the EU needs

to be brought into the nuclear resolution process, even if only on an informal basis.

As a voting member of the Board of Directors, having EU approval for the future

transition of KEDO is essential. Any organization that was created to replicate

KEDO’s expertise would be an unnecessary waste of time and energy, in my opinion.

Having established that a key element in the provision of energy to North Korea

already exists, let me turn to potential energy packages that could be considered.

When talking about energy assistance to North Korea, you have to expand your

initial thoughts of oil or coal to all aspects of the energy system that would be beneficial, and therefore of value, to North Korea. First of all, North Korea’s infrastructure is obsolete and inefficient. Basic upgrades from insulating homes and businesses, to grid improvements, to rehabilitation of old plants and mines to new constructions of power plants would play a role in the equivalent delivery of energy assistance to North Korea. Natural gas via a pipeline from Russia is another possibility but one that could be part of a longer-term package. However, the cost involved may dictate that it be a mix of government-commercial if not an outright

commercial venture.

For negotiating reasons, a phased approach to proving energy assistance is best.

Near-term provision of energy could easily come in the form of Heavy Fuel Oil.

North Korea has the capacity to handle and convert HFO to electricity, if provided

on a scheduled basis. In the past, North Korea complained that U.S.-provided HFO

inevitably was unpredictable and arrived in quantities too large for them to handle

efficiently. In addition to HFO, pilot projects designed to repair existing mines and

conventional power plants could be undertaken. The first construction of a new conventional power plant could occur at Kumho, the site of the current LWR project.

The infrastructure at Kumho already exists, thus shortening the time that otherwise would be required to begin such a project.

Longer-term projects that could be phased in as progress is made in fulfilling nonproliferation obligations would include transmission grid rehabilitation, natural gas

pipeline construction, the modernization of existing power plants, and construction

of hydroelectric power plants throughout the country. The longer-term rehabilitation

of the energy infrastructure is of enormous importance to South Korea. When reunification takes place the cost to bring North Korea up to minimum South Korean

standards will be enormous. Any opportunity for Seoul to get started in infrastructure rehabilitation in North Korea before reunification would be a welcome head

start. Key to any longer-term energy assistance would be a serious energy needs

survey of North Korea validated by South Korea.

All of the programs I have mentioned have costs that have to be calibrated to the

value that the Six Parties must agree upon in connection to the elimination of North

Korea’s nuclear weapons program. I do believe energy assistance will be an important component in the eventual resolution of the nuclear crisis.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear this morning

and look forward to answering any questions you may have.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Ambassador Pritchard.

In this round of questions, Senators will have 10 minutes. I will

commence my part of that questioning by commenting that, Secretary Carter, you mentioned at the outset, before you got into the

constructive phase of your program, a certain degree of pessimism

about how the negotiations are proceeding. You put that on the

record, but you said that even notwithstanding this, down the trail

things still may get better.

49

On the other hand, without underscoring it, you mentioned the

fact that we might not be successful. There could be military action, economic sanctions, in other words, some activity on the part

of our government or others because of the seriousness of the proliferation problem. You have listed five crises that occur if things

remained in the status quo. That is an ominous overtone, but nevertheless one based on your own experience.

In view of that, I am struck by the fact that you suggested that

if a so-called Nunn-Lugar approach was to be adopted here, one

thing that we might think about would be the careful design of

that program now, as a part of the negotiations, if there is a North

Korean Nunn-Lugar program. We have a pretty good idea of who

does what in this situation. We acknowledge the importance of the

continuity of such a program. It ought not to go through all the

hazards of the programs with regard to Russia or the Newly Independent States which you point out, from your own experience, and

which I know from my own, led to many congressional restrictions.

There were pauses during which there was no activity at all for a

while, followed by waivers by the President to get it all going

again. The problem of dealing with the North Koreans in this matter is that they might very well take advantage of these intervals,

or of the lack of decision, the lack of continuity on our part. Having

gone down that trail before, understanding hazards of something

that starts from scratch, we need not go through all of that this

time.

It is important that we have the organization all set up. The

North Koreans can look at it. In the negotiating situation, as it

stands, we are discussing the fact that at the end of the trail there

may be some of these discussions. This would pertain likewise to

the energy component. But the specifics of this are not very clear

for us or for them. So as a result, this is almost bound to cause

more delay in the negotiations as the parties try to flesh it out.

To pick up a subject that you have talked about, Ambassador

Pritchard, with KEDO, we have an entity that people have heard

about and has worked. However, if we eliminate KEDO, what happens if fuel comes again, heavy fuel or otherwise?

Let us take the worst case scenario, as I think through your testimony, regarding the six-party talks, assume negotiations do not

work. Time goes on and there comes from one source or another

more evidence that nuclear weapons are being formed in whatever

form and, furthermore, that there may be proliferation.

Is there not some value in having these designs set up in light

of the point you make, Ambassador Pritchard, of how this might

ultimately be integrated into the energy components or programs

of South Korea?

For example, let us say that at the end of the day the North Korean regime is in fact overthrown. Now, many have said, this

would be a catastrophe, because if Iraq was a problem, in terms of

lack of planning about what happens the day after, then North

Korea, in its current status of starving people, with a total lack of

energy needs for development and so forth, would be in even worse

shape. Physically, who does what? In either case, war or peace—

preferably peace, because you have the credibility of planning—

there is real value in having these designs physically available.

50

They show that we have done our homework. They demonstrate

the concentration of American and international expertise as we

bring the process along. It brings a new dimension, to these negotiations, as opposed to us simply hoping at the end of September

that people will be in a better mood than they were in when we

last met.

Does this thinking strike any chords with either of you?

Dr. CARTER. It certainly does with me, Mr. Chairman, both on

the up side and on the down side. I am referring to the formulation

that former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry used in the North

Korea policy review, in which I participated. We talked of the upward path and the downward path for North Korea; that is, painting for them a portrait of how things get better for them if they

forebear in the nuclear area, but also of how things can get worse

for them, and distinctly worse, if they do not. The essence of diplomacy of the kind in which we are engaged is to create the fork in

the road in which they need to choose that upward path or the

downward path. The more vividly we can portray both of those

paths, the more effective our diplomacy will be. So on the upward

path, I absolutely agree with you that the more we can show them

what a Nunn-Lugar ingredient of a solution might be, what an energy ingredient of a solution might be, the better will be our test

of whether they are willing to give up their nuclear weapons.

And as you point out, even if diplomacy does not succeed, the

North Korean regime is not going to be around forever, but the plutonium is, or essentially forever, because plutonium lasts 24,000

years. So even if Kim Jong-il’s regime goes away, we still have the

problem of safeguarding the material his regime made. So the

plans that we devise now would be pertinent in that scenario also.

I think painting the downward path vividly is important as well.

Economic sanctions are on that path. As you know 1994 was the

year of my first acquaintance, within the Department of Defense,

with the North Korean previous nuclear crisis. We did consider, in

different circumstances from today, I will grant, military action

against North Korea’s nuclear program, specifically a strike upon

the Yongbyon complex at that time, because we felt that the consequences of North Korea going nuclear were so grave that they

were worth the risk attendant upon military action in the Korean

Peninsula. And I do not think that is something that ought to be

taken off the table by the United States now.

If I may just make one other comment. Another thing you said,

with which I agree absolutely and to which I alluded in my statement, is that threat reductions, stability operations—these are

things that we are not very good at. We are tremendously good at

joint military operations. I am very proud that we are, and that is

the paramount capability that we have for action overseas. But

when it comes to doing other things, we do not always accomplish

them very well. Your idea, in the matter of stability operations,

and also threat reduction, to learn from our experience and bottle,

so to speak, the experience we have in the former Soviet Union for

Nunn-Lugar, and in Bosnia and Iraq for stability operations, for

the future, is terribly important. Otherwise, every time we do this

kind of thing, we are going to stand up all over again and fall down

51

all over again and have to pick ourselves up. I completely agree

with that point you made also.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have thoughts?

Ambassador PRITCHARD. Mr. Chairman, I could not agree with

you more in terms of the preparation that needs to be there. It will

help in the negotiations. It will help in the long run.

What is striking about the six-party talks is that any kind of element of concrete that has been put forward we have taken as a

very positive sign. The North Koreans likewise are looking for anything, whether it is a negative concrete or a positive concrete likewise.

Two years ago when I had the job as Special Envoy, I went to

see Senator Nunn, thinking ahead of the process of how NunnLugar might apply to North Korea, to pick his brains on how it

could be applied, thinking along the lines that you are now. Unfortunately, that was subsumed by the HEU revelation and we were

not able to move anywhere. But I think that was a mistake. We

should have done so early on.

I would also say as an example of standing up KEDO or any kind

of mechanism, whether it is Nunn-Lugar or something else, shows

the North Koreans there is a long-term prospect in place. It gives

them the incentive to continue to either cooperate or, in this case,

one of the things that is missing that was asked of Assistant Secretary Kelly was the establishment of red lines. There have been

no discussions with the North Koreans about what would occur

should the North Koreans transfer fissile material or technology.

That ought to be established early. It should have been established

2 years ago and it is not too late to do so now to put in place the

concrete nature of the downward path that we might ultimately be

faced off with. I hope we are not, but it needs to be there.

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate those answers. Let me just say that

it has certainly been the thrust of our committee efforts to think

about structures for nation-building for procedures that we need to

follow. We will continue to pursue this in our modest way, in the

hope that we can spur activity by the administration.

Likewise, we are appreciative of the fact that for the first time, a year ago, the Nunn-Lugar funds were available, at least $50 million, for application outside the former Soviet Union. So even

though theoretically thoughts have arisen about having these programs somewhere else, inexplicably until this time, it was very,

very difficult for all of our colleagues in the Senate and the House

to agree that this program might be useful somewhere else. That

has finally come about, mercifully.

Even if the endeavor would be more modest than it was in Russia, it could still be expensive. You are suggesting, Secretary

Carter, a 10-year period of time, or at least some period that requires some continuity of thought and some bipartisan cooperation

through several administrations, Congresses, and so forth, if our

foreign policy in this very critical area is to be effective.

Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much. I will be brief, gentlemen.

I know we have kept you a long time.

Ambassador Pritchard, if the United States does not want to assist North Korea’s energy sector, are the other parties of the sixVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:03 Dec 10, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 97122 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
52

party talks capable of putting an enticing enough package on the

table in return for North Korea’s nuclear disarmament?

Ambassador PRITCHARD. The answer is probably not in terms of

the overall package in the long term of the total removal of the

North Korean—certainly—— Senator BIDEN. The total removal of North Korean?

Ambassador PRITCHARD. Nuclear program.

Senator BIDEN. So then this is a non-starter.

Ambassador PRITCHARD. Well, let me suggest the initial phase,

in terms of provisions of heavy fuel oil or interim energy, Japan

and South Korea are capable of doing. There are other ways in

which to skin this cat, when you take a look at the value of energy,

when you take a look at rehabilitation efforts, not simply the provision of concrete coal or other things that would be of significant

value, the rehabilitation of mining, new construction. Others can do

that.

Senator BIDEN. But the bottom line is, are you saying that if Secretary Kelly’s position, as he stated it here today, were a concrete

position held by this administration, that we will not participate in

providing any of the energy needs of North Korea in return for a

commitment, as I understood it, for total disarmament of the nuclear capability, then what is there that—I mean, is this not a nonstarter?

Ambassador PRITCHARD. If I may, sir. There are two parts to

that, one of which is the absolute. Could the others come up together with absolute packages of energy that might be able to entice in absolute terms North Korea to do x, y, or z?

Senator BIDEN. Not x, y, or z. Total disarmament is specifically

my question.

Ambassador PRITCHARD. Theoretically perhaps. I would tell you

as a negotiator that it is a non-starter from a North Korean point

of view——

Senator BIDEN. That is what I am saying.

Ambassador PRITCHARD [continuing]. That the lack of U.S. commitment and involvement in this process, allowing others to do

this, where the only commitment from a North Korean point of

view in the 1994 Agreed Framework in terms of the provision of

benefits was the U.S.—— Senator BIDEN. Provision of energy. I am just trying to focus specifically. I asked Secretary Kelly are we prepared to provide for

what I called incentives and he was calling incentives in the nature

of fuel or money. And he said no, we are not prepared to do that.

We will not reward them for doing the right thing, which is to disarm or end their nuclear program. So if your expert opinion is

there is no reasonable circumstance in which the North Koreans

would be prepared to agree to forego their nuclear program and nuclear capability because they could not get a sufficient commitment

on their energy needs, absent a U.S. commitment as part of their

energy needs, then this is a non-starter in your view.

Ambassador PRITCHARD. It is a non-starter, but it is not solely

linked to energy. It is the commitment by the United States to be

part of the process and it is simply insufficient for a North Korean

to accept that the only U.S. commitment is the provision of a security guarantee.

53

Senator BIDEN. No. They said they would do other things. They

said they would consider other commitments.

But at any rate, I do not want to beat this to death. I was just

trying to get a sense of this.

Secretary Carter, you have criticized the Bush policy, as I have

I might add, toward North Korea as being ineffective, lacking carrots and sticks. How do you view this latest round of negotiations,

particularly the new U.S. proposal as laid out and as articulated

by Secretary Kelly today? Is it good, bad, indifferent? Is it sufficient? How would you characterize it? Is it still ineffective policy?

Dr. CARTER. Senator, it is not even possible to say whether the

policy has been effective or not, because in my observation, the administration has been divided within itself for the last few years.

Senator BIDEN. Well, that is clear.

Dr. CARTER. That is the basic reason why a proposal has not

been tabled up until now.

Senator BIDEN. Well, they tabled the proposal, though.

Dr. CARTER. Now they have a proposal tabled.

Senator BIDEN. How about the present proposal? Is it an effective

proposal? Is it the way you would be moving? Given the circumstances as they have unfolded in the last 21⁄2 years, notwithstanding what I happen to believe are your legitimate observations

of the mistakes made and the opportunities lost, notwithstanding

that, tomorrow the President of the United States or a future

President of the United States says to you, Carter, you are in

charge of this policy. What do you do now today? You are in charge.

What do you do relative to North Korea or the five other parties

that is not being done now, or is what has been recently tabled a

sufficient and the appropriate starting point from this day forward?

Dr. CARTER. I do not know whether it is sufficient, but I think

it has the right ingredients in it, namely on our part the offer of,

first of all, the security assurances, which I think are very significant to North Korea, coming from us. They are intangible. As I

said, I think there is something we should be prepared to offer, and

I think we have substantial leverage with that.

Second, the provision of Nunn-Lugar type assistance with dismantlement, as I said, is not a reward but is a defense by other

means, as I quoted from Bill Perry to characterize that kind of assistance.

When you get to what else we, the United States, might offer

that is tangible, I think it is still not clear in this proposal, and

it was not clear to me anyway from the testimony just given.

Senator BIDEN. Would you put forward——

Dr. CARTER. Let me just finish that thought.

One of the strengths, Senator Biden, of the six-party talks and

in the past of working with our allies was that together the portfolio of things that we, being different countries with different proclivities and different historical traditions and so forth, are willing

to offer North Korea, and also the penalties that we can impose,

are different for all our different negotiating partners. That is a

strength of the six-party approach. So it may be that Japan, it may

be that South Korea, it may be that Russia, it may be that China

are prepared to do things in the energy field that the United

States, at the end of the day, is not prepared to do. That is fine.

54

They can still be part of the deal. I am not prepared to say now

that if the United States is not the provider of energy assistance,

that energy assistance will not be an effective part of this package.

So I am comfortable with the mix of ingredients that are in here,

as you characterized. I absolutely agree. I regret that years have

passed and we have not been exploring this path. I think this is

a reasonable mix of things to put in an initial package before North

Korea. Whether they will go for it, as I said, at this point I am not

sure.

Senator BIDEN. Right. I think we are all in that same position.

Let me conclude with one more question, Mr. Chairman. I remember early on when the Clinton administration concluded the

original deal, the Agreed Framework, with North Korea talking to

then Secretary of Defense Perry, and I asked him what the most

important element was, and he said staying on the same page as

the South Koreans and the Japanese. It struck me as both self-evident and elusive, that notion. I had not thought of it in those

terms. I just subconsciously assumed that was necessary, but I did

not think of it in terms of a need for a proactive and sometimes

difficult undertaking.

Are we on the same page now, do you think? Is this administration now on the same page as Tokyo and Seoul as it relates to

North Korea?

Dr. CARTER. I do not think we have been fully on the same page

in the last few years. I hope this begins to put us on the same

page. You are right. Bill Perry was right. No American policy toward North Korea can succeed unless it has the support of at least

Japan and South Korea. Both in the carrots area and in the sticks

department, as I mentioned earlier, we are stronger if we are working with them, because they have carrots and they have sticks that

we do not have, and as a phalanx, we are a more powerful force

in dealing with——

Senator BIDEN. And conversely our ultimate stick does not have

much stick if it is clear that Japan and South Korea do not support

it.

One of the things that I find interesting, after having had the

honor of serving with seven Presidents, is that Presidents or administrations never like to acknowledge that they are changing

course on anything. But it seems to me that one of the benefits of

the six-party talks has been that the South Koreans and the Japanese have basically said, hey, we ain’t continuing down this road

you have been going. We are going to start to explore outside these

six-party talks a different and emerging relationship with North

Korea, which it seems to me was a bit of an epiphany for this administration and brought us to the point we are now of having tabled something that has the elements that in my view should have

been tabled on day one.

I draw some sense of optimism about not what North Korea will

or will not do, based on the time squandered and how far behind

the 8 ball we are now, but on the notion that at least we seem to

be over, within this administration, what was an extremely difficult ideological conflict that was taking place which was to even

think about guaranteeing security. No matter what a member of

the ‘‘axis of evil’’ did, they were still per se evil, and how can you

55

sign an agreement or sign onto a multiparty agreement that provides security assurances for an evil empire?

That seemed to me to be the ultimate difficulty this administration faced. They knew any part of any agreement, any possibility

of an agreement with North Korea required a security assurance,

and how do you do that? How do you do that if you have already

decided—whether or not they have nuclear weapons, no matter

what they do, the people in power are bad guys? I hope this reflects

that that debate has been settled within the administration, but I

do not know.

Dr. CARTER. May I comment on one thing you said?

Senator BIDEN. Yes, please respond.

Dr. CARTER. I also believe that the fact that our partners and allies were beginning to stray and seek their own separate channels

to North Korea was a factor that lent urgency to the need for us

to—I will not say change course—but to chart a course in these negotiations which we had had difficulty doing. So both for that reason, and because of the paramount reason, which is that North

Korea is reprocessing plutonium, it is urgent to chart this course

and get on with it; to do the experiment of seeing whether North

Korea can, in fact, be persuaded diplomatically to give up its nuclear program.

Senator BIDEN. I thank you both very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you again, Senator Biden.

We had good questions raised by our colleague, Senator

Brownback, about human rights, as well as an assertion by Assistant Secretary Kelly that this is an extremely important point. However, there are priorities with regard to all of this, in the context

of the nuclear problem. Nuclear proliferation is the prime focus of

our negotiators. I mention this because reference has been made to

our experiences with the former Soviet Union, and then the successor states. Many times during the Nunn-Lugar debates, people

would bring up, how can you possibly think about sending assistance of any sort, technical or money, to a regime that has caused

the loss of its own people? How can you deal with this?

That is going to be a recurring problem. Regarding the Soviet

Union, we decided that we should deal with this in terms of our

security, so that warheads and missiles that are aimed at us,

13,000 of them would not be aimed at us. It is a tough call. As you

can see in our own dialog today, we have different points of emphasis, although you always hope it all comes out in the same way.

Being on the same page with South Korea and Japan is an optimum situation. Dr. Carter mentioned that the young people in

South Korea are not really on the same page with us, and might

not be for a while. In other words, in the timeframe of how we all

get to the same page, some very bad things could occur. Now, that

does not call for unilateral action on our part. But I appreciate the

problem of our negotiators, who are trying to move along in the sixparty talks with a high degree of unity, which I think they are attempting to achieve.

Having said that, our committee has, as it was indicated earlier

today by my friend, Joe Biden, been spurring our negotiators for

some time to move toward the position that apparently they now

56

have. So there is some satisfaction in seeing that kind of movement. We are grateful to our negotiators for coming to the committee in public session. But the fact is we have had today a hearing about very serious American diplomacy in a public session with

very well informed people from the past administrations as well as

the current one.

So I call upon that as an achievement of sorts in itself. We have

heard some very good ideas that we might pursue, including these

designs that you have suggested about the explicit nature of what

might be more credible in terms of our own negotiating procedure.

Perhaps we can assist our own negotiators in trying to formulate

some of those ideas even further in concrete terms that will be

helpful to us.

I thank both of you very much for your testimony, for your excellent papers, and for your forthcoming responses. We look forward

to visiting with you both again.

The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, 12:15 p.m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene

subject to the call of the Chair.]

STATEMENT SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF U.S. COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA

PART THREE

SUMMARY OF TORTURE AND INFANTICIDE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY FORMER

PRISONERS AND DETAINEES INTERVIEWED FOR THIS REPORT

I. Torture Summary

• According to almost all of the former-prisoner testimony gathered for this report—from All Lamada’s 1967 Sariwon prison testimony to the post-2000 testimonies of North Koreans forcibly repatriated from China—the practice of torture

permeates the North Korean prison and detention system.

• Former Detainee #1 was beaten unconscious for hunger-related rule infractions

in 1997 at the Nongpo jip-kyul-so (detention center) in Chongjin City. He also reported that detainees there were beaten with shovels if they did not work fast

enough.

• Former Detainee #3 reported the use of an undersized punishment box at the

Danchun prison camp in which camp rule-breakers were held for fifteen days, unable to stand-up or lie down. He also reported that beatings of the prisoners by

guards were common.

• LEE Young Kuk reported that he was subjected to motionless-kneeling and

water torture and facial and shin beatings with rifle butts at the Kuk-ga-bo-wi-bu

interrogation/detention facility in Pyongyang in 1994, leaving permanent damage in

one ear, double vision in one eye, and his shins still bruised and discolored as of

late 2002.

• KANG Chol Hwan reported the existence of separate punishment cells within

Kwan-li-so No. 15 Yodok, from which few prisoners returned alive.

• Former Prisoner #6 reported that prisoners were beaten to death by prison

workunit leaders at Danchun Kyo-hwa-so No. 77 in North Hamgyong Province in

the late 1980s.

• AHN Myong Chol, a former guard, reported that all three of the kwan-li-so at

which he worked had isolated detention facilities in which many prisoners died from

mistreatment, and that at Kwan-li-so No. 22 there were so many deaths by beatings

from guards that the guards were told to be less violent.

• Former Detainee #8 reported that male prisoners were beaten by guards at the

Chongjin jip-kyul-so in mid-2000.

• Former Detainee #9 reported that detainees at the Onsong ro-dong-dan-ryeondae (labor-training camp) were compelled to beat each other.

• KIM Sung Min reported that in 1997 at the Onsong bo-wi-bu (National Security

Agency) detention center, his fingers were broken and he was kicked and beaten on

the head and face until his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth bled.

57

• RHYU Young II saw, in 1997, that out of six persons in an adjacent cell in the

bo-wi-bu interrogation facility where he was detained in Pyongyang, two were carried out on stretchers, two could walk only with the assistance of guards, and two

could walk out by themselves. Detainees who moved while they were supposed to

be sitting motionless and silent for long periods were handcuffed from the upper

bars of their cells with their feet off the floor. Detainees who talked when they were

supposed to be sitting motionless and silent were compelled to slap and hit each

other. • Former Prisoner #12 reported that at Hoeryong kyo-hwa-so in the early to middle 1990s, minor rule-breakers were beaten by their cellmates on the orders of the

guards, and major rule-breakers were placed in a 1.5-meter-square (16.5-feetsquare) punishment cell for a week or more. • LEE Min Bok reported being beaten ‘‘many times’’ on his fingernails and the

back of his hands with a metal rod during interrogation at the Hyesan detention

center in 1990. He also reported that at the Hyesan In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) detention facility, where he was subsequently held, prisoners were

compelled to beat each other. Lee witnessed one prisoner, KIM Jae Chul, beaten to

death. • Former Detainee #15 reported that he was beaten with chairs and sticks at

both the Hoeryong and Onsong In-min-bo-an-seong jails in early 2002. • LEE Soon Ok reported that she experienced beatings, strappings, and water

torture leading to loss of consciousness, and was held outside in freezing January

weather at the Chongjin In-min-bo-an-seong pretrial detention center in 1986. Her

account of beatings and brutalities in the early to middle 1990s at Kaechon women’s

prison, Kyo-hwa-so No. 1, (in her prison memoirs) are too numerous to detail here.

• JI Hae Nam confirmed the existence of miniature punishment cells at Kyo-hwaso No. 1 and reported that beatings and kicking of women prisoners were a daily

occurrence in the mid-1990s. She also reported beatings, during interrogation or for

prison regulation infractions, in late 1999 at the Sinuiju bo-wi-bu jail, where she

was required to kneel motionless, hit with broomsticks, and required to do standup/sit-down repetitions to the point of collapse, in her case in thirty to forty minutes.

• KIM Yong reported that he was beaten at the bo-wi-bu police jail at Maram and

was subjected to water torture and hung by his wrists in the bo-wi-bu police jail

at Moonsu in 1993.

• KIM Tae Jin reported that he was beaten, deprived of sleep, and made to kneel

motionless for many hours at the bo-wi-bu police detention/interrogation facility in

Chongjin in late 1998/early 1999.

• YOU Chun Sik reported that he was kicked, beaten, and subjected to daylong

motionless-sitting torture at the bo-wi-bu police jail in Sinuiju in 2000. He described

the motionless-sitting as being more painful than the beatings.

• Former Detainee #21 reported that she was beaten unconscious in mid-1999 at

the In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) ku-ryu-jang (detention/interrogation

facility) at Onsong, where detainees were beaten so badly that they confessed to

doing things they had not done. Women were hit on their fingertips. She witnessed

one very ill woman who was compelled to do stand-up/sit-down repetitions until she

died.

• Former Detainee #22 reported that he was beaten with chairs at Onsong bowi-bu (State Security Agency) police jail in late 2001, and beaten even worse at the

Chongjin In-min-bo-an-seong detention center in early 2002.

• Former Detainee #24 reported that there were beatings at the bo-wi-bu police

jail in Sinuiju in January 2000.

• Former Detainee #25 reported that one woman, a former schoolteacher who had

been caught in Mongolia and repatriated to China and North Korea, was beaten

nearly to death at the Onsong In-min-bo-an-seong detention center in November

1999, and then taken away either to die or, if she recovered, for transfer to Kyohwa-so No. 22.

• Former Detainee #26 was made to kneel motionless at the Onsong bo-wi-bu police jail in June 2000 and was made to sit motionless for six days at the Hoeryong

bo-wi-bu police jail in July 2001.

• Former Detainee #28 reported that prisoners were beaten to death at the Kyohwa-so No. 12 at Jeonger-ri in North Hamgyong Province in 1999.

II. Ethnic Infanticide Summary

There are sporadic reports of forced abortions and baby killings at the kwan-liso, where, except for a very few privileged couples, the prisoners were not allowed

to have sex or children. There are also sporadic reports of forced abortion and baby

killings at the kwan-li-so, where sex between prisoners is prohibited.

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And there are sporadic reports of killings of pregnant women who were raped or

coerced into sex by prison guards. However, this report focuses on the forced abortions and baby killings directed against and inflicted on women forcibly repatriated

from China, because of the ethnic and policy components of those atrocities.

• CHOI Yong Hwa assisted in the delivery of babies, three of whom were promptly killed, at the Sinuiju do-jip-kyul-so (provincial detention center) in mid-2000.

• Former Detainee #8 witnessed six forced abortions at Chongjin do-jip-kyul-so in

mid-2000.

• Former Detainee #9 witnessed ten forced abortions at Onsong ro-dong-danryeon-dae (labor-training camp) in mid-2000.

• YOU Chun Sik reported that four pregnant women at the bo-wi-bu (National

Security Agency) police station in Sinuiju were subjected to forced abortions in mid2000.

• Former Detainee #21 reported two baby killings at the Onsong In-min-bo-anseong (People’s Safety Agency) police station in late 1999.

• Former Detainee #24 helped deliver seven babies who were killed at the

Backtori, South Sinuiju In-min-bo-an-seong police detention center in January 2000.

• Former Detainee #25 witnessed four babies killed at Nongpo In-min-bo-anseong police detention center in Chongjin in late 1999, and another six pregnant

women subjected to forced abortion.

• Former Detainee #26 witnessed three forced abortions and seven babies killed

at the Nongpo jip-kyul-so (detention center), Chongjin City, in May 2000.

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