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NJONG-RI, North Korea - Deep in the countryside, there is no
sign of wildlife for miles. Not even a bird can be heard.
In spring, the rippling hills near this village remain brown, the
slopes denuded of trees. The rice in the paddies is spindly. Local strudge
by fallow fields. Bicycles and wooden-wheeled ox carts trundle along the
one paved road.
This is a desolate, impoverished land, so repressive that none dare
speak freely, so controlling that transistor radio dials are fixed to
receive only government channels.
But North Korea is also the isolated communist dictatorship that
President George W. Bush has placed on his ''axis of evil'' - a nation
suspected of having the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass
destruction such as cannot be tolerated in a post-Sept. 11 world.
With deadlines approaching over the next few months for a key US-North
Korea nuclear accord, Washington is pushing hard to make North Korea
disarm. This month, the Bush administration sent a message through a South
Korean envoy to the North that it must halt development and export of
dangerous weapons - or face the consequences.
Two of the administration's biggest fears are that North Korea might be
developing a nuclear missile capable of threatening the West Coast, and
that it might export nuclear weapons to US adversaries.
But Washington's get-tough stance has distressed the South Korean
government, has rattled North-South relations, and has escalated fears of
military confrontation between the United States and North Korea.
''We cannot afford another crisis on the Korean peninsula,'' said Moon
Chung In of South Korea's Yonsei University, an adviser to his government
on the North. ''North Korea is frightened and confused about this `axis of
evil.'''
A North Korean guide, working just north of the demilitarized zone,
seemed both puzzled and outraged. ''Why put us on the `axis of evil?''' he
asked a visitor. ''We haven't threatened you.''
The United States has long maintained an economic embargo against North
Korea. It also classifies Pyongyang's leadership as supportive of
terrorism, which makes it ineligible for World Bank and other loans.
The Clinton administration tried negotiations to persuade the North to
disarm. But President Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 29th - in
which he said North Korea, Iran, and Iraq form an ''axis of evil'' that
threatens world security - represented such a shift that it was
immediately interpreted on the Korean peninsula as a military threat.
In the South, where President Kim Dae Jung is pursuing a ''sunshine
policy'' of easing North-South tensions through dialogue and aid,
demonstrators reacted by staging the biggest anti-American protests in a
decade.
In the North, Kim Jong Il condemned Bush's speech, and turned a cold
shoulder toward South Korea, with which it had broken off talks in 2001.
That raised the specter of a permanent North-South rift, dampening hopes
that the 2000 summit between the two Korean leaders might lead to the
peninsula's reunification.
Those concerns eased this month, when a South Korean presidential envoy
finally met with the reclusive Kim Jong Il. But the meeting did not ease
fears of a US-North Korea showdown. An envoy, Lim Dong Wong, said he
carried a message to the North warning that if diplomacy fails, ''the US
is prepared to resort to military means to counter proliferation.''
Last week, however, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Washington
would respond to signals from North Korea that it is willing to reopen
talks about a 1994 nuclear framework agreement. Relations between
Pyongyang and Washington hinge on that accord, which seeks to persuade the
North to halt its nuclear program in exchange for having a US-led
consortium build two light-water reactors. The reactors would double the
country's faltering electricity supply.
North Korea's compliance with the accord seems to be mixed. It stopped
work at its Yongbyon nuclear facility, but it has prevented UN inspectors
from removing fuel rods and determining if plutonium had been diverted for
military use.
The CIA says the North had diverted enough plutonium for one, and
possibly two, bombs. Last August, the defense secretary, Donald H.
Rumsfeld went further, estimating that ''two to three, maybe even four to
five nuclear warheads'' might have been made.
Questions have also been raised about possible nuclear activity at
underground sites. The Bush administration, which refused last month to
certify that North Korea had adhered to the 1994 agreement, now wants
compliance with it immediately.
''If North Korea is serious, they need to start fairly quickly,'' a US
official said in South Korea.
But many South Koreans have voiced doubt about the wisdom of this
approach. In fact, questions of what weapons of mass destruction that
North Korea possesses are divisive in South Korea, particularly in a
presidential election year.
On the conventional side, Few South Koreans doubt the threat from the
North. A mere hour's drive from the South Korean capital of Seoul is the
demilitarized zone, a 151-mile barbed-wire reminder, bristling with
soldiers and weapons, that the two Koreas, after 50 years, still have only
a strained cease-fire. Within 90 miles of the DMZ stands 70 percent of
North Korea's army - 1.2 million soldiers - as well as thousands of
artillery and hundreds of multiple-launch rocket systems, capable of
instantly hitting Seoul.
Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons would make that formidable
conventional threat much more dangerous.
But the North's military might is layered atop a population that lives
in almost unimaginable poverty. About 2 million North Koreans are believed
to have died of famine in the mid-1990s. North Korea's 23 million citizens
have a per-capita income of $1,000,compared with the $13,000 of the 41
million South Koreans.
Some specialists ask whether such a nation can really be a threat.
''The country is in serious trouble,'' said Hamm Taik Young, a specialist
on North Korea at Kyungnam University in Seoul. ''Their military equipment
is obsolete, they have no fuel, and no spare parts. And we have little
reliable information about their weapons of mass destruction.''
What little visitors can see would seem to show a bleak, backward land.
(American journalists can visit North Korea only as part of a South Korean
hiking tour to Mount Kumgang, just north of the border).
Villages at night lie in darkness, with no electricity. Smoke rises
from chimneys, the country's timber gone to wood fires. There is little
livestock, few crops, and birds have flown elsewhere for food. It is as if
anything that could be consumed left long ago.
''It is like we were after the Korean war - when we were really poor,''
said Moon Song Kyo, a 65-year-old South Korean who was shocked by what he
saw on a recent hiking trip. ''It is like stepping back in time.''
Yet this border province is prosperous by North Korean standards.
Defectors and visitors to the North say suffering is greatest in small
industrial cities, where 60 percent of the population lives. There,
unemployment and decaying infrastructure plague families, stranded in
high-rise apartment buildings without electricity. Hospitals lack
equipment and drugs, blankets and food, heat and hot water. One aid worker
recalled seeing a beer bottle and a hose being used for an intravenous
drip on a recent trip. UNICEF, the UN children's aid organization,
estimated that 40 percent of North Korean children younger than five are
malnourished.
State repression ensures that few complain about such matters.
Televisions receive only two channels, one praising the country's ''dear
leader,'' the 60-year-old Kim Jong Il, the other the ''great leader,'' his
father, Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994. Signs in every village proclaim the
glory of ''our socialist regime.'' Those who disagree disappear.
Even tourists can't miss the isolation of citizens. The route tour that
buses travel is lined with high green fences and barbed wire; no contact
is allowed with the locals, save for guides. Newly erected barricades
block views into homes. No photography is permitted. Army officers line
the road to ensure compliance.
Behind those barriers, defectors and some specialists say, two parallel
economies exist - one for the military, the other for the people. Profits
from missile sales, counterfeit money, and drugs are plowed into military
development. While people die of starvation, 3,000 scientists and
researchers devoted to the country's nuclear program are well-treated. And
Kim Jong-il himself is said to live in luxury, surfing the Internet and
quaffing imported cognac.
What little is known about North Korea's weapons of mass destruction
comes from defectors' accounts as well as US and South Korean
intelligence. On questions of chemical and biological weapons, there is
little dispute. South Korean Ministry of National Defense documents
indicate that North Korea has stockpiled 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical
weapons, including nerve gas. Protective masks are issued to the
population, and the military has its own chemical platoons.
''When I served in the military, I saw many facilities with yellow
markings that indicated chemical weapons were stored there,'' said Lee
Yung-guk, a defector who served as a bodyguard to Kim Jong-il.
North Korea is thought to be capable of developing, producing, and
using biological weapons, including anthrax, officials say. Defectors have
told rights advocates that anthrax is tested on prison camp inmates.
North Korea's development and exporting of missiles also has the United
States concerned. General Thomas Schwartz, commander of the 37,000 US
troops stationed in Korea, told Congress last month that North Korea had
recently increased its exports of missile technology. ''They are the No. 1
proliferator of missiles,'' he said. North Korea reportedly earns as much
as $400 million annually from missile sales.
US officials also say that research and development continues on a
Taepodong II missile, which could possibly reach parts of the Western
United States. ''The North Koreans seem to be developing systems capable
of launching and delivering chemical, biological, and perhaps nuclear
weapons over the long term,'' said a US official in South Korea.
South Korean officials, however, say the North has observed a
moratorium on nuclear missile testing since 1998, when it test-launched
its Taepodong missile over Japan, almost touching off a regional
crisis.
Such different interpretations explain the contrasting approaches of
Washington and Seoul. South Korea wants to gently prod North Korea along,
believing its economy is so crippled that it has no choice but to agree
with the Bush administration's demands. Washington, after Sept. 11, has a
more urgent timetable. Bush administration officials, while conceding that
they have no evidence of hostile North Korean intentions, say a tough
approach is needed to ensure its weapons don't fall into terrorist
hands.
It is a stance that bewilders the average North Korean too isolated to
know much of the Sept. 11 attack.
''Was there a lot of damage?'' asked the North Korean guiding visitors
to Mount Kumgang. Assured that there had been, he seemed concerned. Then
he added: ''Bush wants to bomb all North Korea. And then, no place will be
safe.''
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