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CNN Saturday Morning News
Insight and Input: Nuclear Standoff With North Korea
Aired January 11, 2003 - 08:35 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It is time now to dive a little deeper into the nuclear standoff with North Korea. We've been taking your e-mails for our I-squared segment.
Joining us now, CNN's Rebecca MacKinnon, live from Seoul, South Korea, and John Tkacik, a former State Department official now with the Heritage Foundation. Good to see you back, sir.
JOHN TKACIK, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Thank you.
O'BRIEN: And CNN military analyst Brigadier General David Grange in Chicago. Also good to have you back, sir. Good to have you all here.
Let's get right to the e-mail, shall we? Have a good one to start it off. And I -- this could really go for any of them, but we'll start off with Rebecca.
"If North Korea is a desperate nation run by a psychotic leader, why not engage them? The nonaggression guarantee and economic aid that they seek seems a small price to pay for disarmament, an inspection regime, and keeping the despot in power. If China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan join in the economic aid, the price will be manageable.
"In post-World War II history, it is not the desperately poor and isolated nations that throw off the yoke of despotism, but nations that have been partially open to the world community."
Lawrence Pohly, thoughtful question, thank you, sir.
Rebecca, why don't you start there?
REBECCA MACKINNON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that is a good question, and it is the subject of a great deal of debate around the region and between countries in this region and the United States.
Now, South Korea, the South Korean government, under the current president, Kim Dae Jung, has a policy called the Sunshine Policy of engaging North Korea. And it has really been based on that kind of idea. The idea behind the sunshine policy, they use the analogy of, if you warm up the temperature, somebody is going to take their coat off. If you keep it cold, you freeze them out, then they're just going to close in tighter.
So that has been the approach of the South Korean government, and they have been quite critical of the United States, telling the United States and saying in statements that they feel that the United States has contributed to the current crisis by isolating and not talking to North Korea in the way they feel the United States should have done.
Now, however, there are other people who feel that North Korea has not necessarily responded in the ways people had hoped when it had been engaged in the past, and so therefore they feel that isolation is the best approach.
So there is a lot of debate going on about that.
COLLINS: All right, Rebecca, thank you.
And we want to take a quick phone call now from Joe. He's in Georgia. And I believe this one is directed to General Grange.
Go ahead, Joe.
CALLER: Yes, thank you very much. Wonderful program.
General Grange, why isn't the first priority of the administration to have China and Japan put pressure on North Korea? Because they are the closest, and they have the most to lose. And also, why isn't North Korea up there on a par with Iraq as being the number one priority of our country, since they have nuclear weapons?
BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Yes. I think that China and Japan are engaged in North Korea. I think that North Korea is the -- is on the -- on a list like Iraq, but Iraq has no one around it that really can contain it. North Korea has China, as you state, stated, has Russia to the north. It has Japan to the east. It has a very powerful South Korean military to the south.
So North Korea can be contained to some extent, and I think that there -- everybody is engaging North Korea, and I think that our country will be too. Now, we've already started doing that with one of the governors, obviously, Richardson. But I think that the United States will engage North Korea to sort this out. But I think they can be contained where they are right now.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's get an e-mail in. This one will go to John Tkacik.
"The scenario was right on this morning. What if we left the situation to North Korea's neighbors, let them sort it out? The U.S. tries to help make the world safe, and we are labeled as warmongers. For a change, let their neighbors sort this out. China sits back looking for something to benefit them in the standoff, South Korea protests the U.S. being located there.
"And let's not forget the U.N. They are meant to handle things with multiple-country points of view. This time, the time has come once again. Let's see if there's a point to the U.N. It seems to me that a lot of these organizations and countries try to drop the decisions that are difficult on the U.S." It goes on a little bit.
And that one comes from -- boy, that was a long one -- from N. Smith in Georgia.
John, the question is, putting more of the onus in the Pacific Rim.
TKACIK: Well, North Korean strategy so far has been trying to make this a Pyongyang-Washington dispute. In reality, it's Pyongyang against the world. The North Koreans signed the nonproliferation treaty in order to get Russian nuclear reactors, and now they violated that. This -- the North Koreans have violated their North-South Korean peninsula denuclearization agreement, they violated that. They violated the agreed framework which was with Japan, Korea, the European Union, and the United States.
The North Koreans get tremendous amounts, and have over the last eight, nine years, gotten tremendous amounts of international food aid, as well as oil, from the West. In fact, North Korea was our top aid recipient in Asia for the last eight years. Now, and North Korea relies on China almost exclusively now for oil and imported food.
So this is not just the United States. We don't have the biggest beef against North Korea. Certainly Russia must have a stake in this, South Korea must have a stake in this, China certainly does. And the time has come to make this an international concern. It is not just an American concern.
COLLINS: All right. Thank you so much, John, Tkacik and the rest of our panel.
We're going to take a quick break, and we are going to take more of your "Insight and Input" when we come back. Keep it here.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: We are back now with our "Insight and Input" segment. We're talking about North Korea and all of the developments from this morning.
Joining us once again, CNN's Rebecca MacKinnon, coming to us from Seoul, John Tkacik, a former State Department official, now with the Heritage Foundation, eh's coming to us from Washington. And CNN military analyst Brigadier General David Grange in Chicago today.
Thanks again, guys, for being here.
I do have a question on the line from Donna. She's in North Carolina, wants to talk to General Grange.
Go ahead, Donna.
CALLER: Yes, good morning. It's my understanding that we have approximately 30,000-some troops in Korea and that on the line there, the Koreans have about a million people who, from what I understand, are as well armed as our troops are there. And I also understand that the Koreans have battlefield nuclear weapon capability.
And I was just wondering that if the administration does -- excuse me -- end up allowing or causing or getting into some type of conflict with the North Koreans, how are we going to protect our troops that are there on the line as far as providing them with proper weaponry, whether it be nuclear capability or whatever, to battle those million Koreans that are on the line so that it -- excuse me -- wouldn't end up just being a slaughter?
GRANGE: Yes. First of all, you need to add to the 37,000 GIs the South Korean military, and together, they don't come up to this amount of numbers that the North Korean army has, but they are very modernized.
The Second Infantry Division has first-class equipment and trained soldiers. It's backed by, further to the south, by the armed -- the United States's Air Force and backed by nuclear capability and other capabilities that could be projected to the Korean peninsula very quickly. And it's not just the numbers you count. You count the systems, the training, the leadership.
And obviously the cause. A democratic military, both the United States and South Korean, have more to fight for than a military that fights for a dictator. That is a big battlefield multiplier in war.
So it wouldn't be a slaughter, it would be a very tough fight. I was part of that 37,000 force at one time in my career, and you think about those things and how you're going to fight it. But there's good plans, good training, and I think they would be ready for it.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's get back to the e-mail, this one for Rebecca MacKinnon in Seoul. It comes from Dale Friesen, one of our frequent e-mailers in Burnaby.
"What is North Korea demanding in terms of oil shipments?"
MACKINNON: Well, North Korea wants a resumption of -- there is a regular series of oil shipments that had been agreed that the United States and other countries would provide to North Korea as a result of a deal that was made in 1994. They want those oil shipments to resume.
They also, of course, want more than that. They want a guarantee from the United States they will not attack North Korea, and, most importantly, they say they want a full nonaggression treaty. It's not clear at this point if they'd really agree to much less than that.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's get one for John Tkacik, another e- mail here.
"I think the leader in North Korea is a snot-nosed little kid who has to play this game so the world can take notice on how his bad -- how bad his country is suffering from the cold and lack of food. In a way, he's crying out for help. So let's help him."
That's from Rick in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. Kill them with kindness, says Rick.
TKACIK: Well, I think we've done that for the last eight years. The entire Agreed Framework was based on the North Koreans giving up their nuclear weapons program, yet they secretly kept it. We've given them food aid, we've given them fuel oil. We have -- in the Agreed Framework, President Clinton agreed that the United States had no hostile intent.
There is no hope that the United States would sign any kind of a nonaggression pact with North Korea because, frankly, the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- the Korean War of 1950s is still going on. Until the North Koreans sign a peace treaty with the United Nations, we are not going to sign a separate one with them.
I think the problem is, is that for the last eight years, we've been doing exactly what the writer has asked, which is trying to kill them with kindness, or at least actually trying to keep them -- let them survive with kindness, and they've basically kicked us in the teeth. The time has come now for the international community to step in and take the punitive measures with a stick, because the carrots, for the last eight years, have not worked.
O'BRIEN: All right. One final e-mail. Heidi, you take it. I think probably General Grange.
COLLINS: All right. It says, "What are the chances the U.S. will force a preemptive strike if the atomic rods are removed?"
Go ahead, general.
GRANGE: No, I think a preemptive strike in this case would be the last resort. Of course, the -- our armed forces has plans, I'm sure, to do that, if necessary, if called upon, and is quite capable of doing that. I think North Korea knows that.
And so the saber rattling, I don't think, is going to be that loud. I'd like to tie, though, back into another question, and that is, what I think would be very kind of neat to do is send about 10 or 12 freighters over there, right off the coast of Pyongyang, full of food, full of fuel oil, and moderators from a third pacifist type of country, and say, Here, here's the food, here's this stuff, we are not negotiating to try to starve the people. Now let's see you go ahead and get it out to the people tat need it, and of course have the media cover that.
O'BRIEN: Interesting.
GRANGE: I would love to see something like that happen, because then we put them on the spot.
O'BRIEN: I hope they are listening in the halls of power. That was a pretty good one, General Grange, appreciate it.
Rebecca MacKinnon, John Tkacik, General David Grange, thank you all three for being a part of our segment this morning, helping us understand a little bit more about the difficult problem of North Korea.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired January 11, 2003 - 08:35 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It is time now to dive a little deeper into the nuclear standoff with North Korea. We've been taking your e-mails for our I-squared segment.
Joining us now, CNN's Rebecca MacKinnon, live from Seoul, South Korea, and John Tkacik, a former State Department official now with the Heritage Foundation. Good to see you back, sir.
JOHN TKACIK, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Thank you.
O'BRIEN: And CNN military analyst Brigadier General David Grange in Chicago. Also good to have you back, sir. Good to have you all here.
Let's get right to the e-mail, shall we? Have a good one to start it off. And I -- this could really go for any of them, but we'll start off with Rebecca.
"If North Korea is a desperate nation run by a psychotic leader, why not engage them? The nonaggression guarantee and economic aid that they seek seems a small price to pay for disarmament, an inspection regime, and keeping the despot in power. If China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan join in the economic aid, the price will be manageable.
"In post-World War II history, it is not the desperately poor and isolated nations that throw off the yoke of despotism, but nations that have been partially open to the world community."
Lawrence Pohly, thoughtful question, thank you, sir.
Rebecca, why don't you start there?
REBECCA MACKINNON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that is a good question, and it is the subject of a great deal of debate around the region and between countries in this region and the United States.
Now, South Korea, the South Korean government, under the current president, Kim Dae Jung, has a policy called the Sunshine Policy of engaging North Korea. And it has really been based on that kind of idea. The idea behind the sunshine policy, they use the analogy of, if you warm up the temperature, somebody is going to take their coat off. If you keep it cold, you freeze them out, then they're just going to close in tighter.
So that has been the approach of the South Korean government, and they have been quite critical of the United States, telling the United States and saying in statements that they feel that the United States has contributed to the current crisis by isolating and not talking to North Korea in the way they feel the United States should have done.
Now, however, there are other people who feel that North Korea has not necessarily responded in the ways people had hoped when it had been engaged in the past, and so therefore they feel that isolation is the best approach.
So there is a lot of debate going on about that.
COLLINS: All right, Rebecca, thank you.
And we want to take a quick phone call now from Joe. He's in Georgia. And I believe this one is directed to General Grange.
Go ahead, Joe.
CALLER: Yes, thank you very much. Wonderful program.
General Grange, why isn't the first priority of the administration to have China and Japan put pressure on North Korea? Because they are the closest, and they have the most to lose. And also, why isn't North Korea up there on a par with Iraq as being the number one priority of our country, since they have nuclear weapons?
BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Yes. I think that China and Japan are engaged in North Korea. I think that North Korea is the -- is on the -- on a list like Iraq, but Iraq has no one around it that really can contain it. North Korea has China, as you state, stated, has Russia to the north. It has Japan to the east. It has a very powerful South Korean military to the south.
So North Korea can be contained to some extent, and I think that there -- everybody is engaging North Korea, and I think that our country will be too. Now, we've already started doing that with one of the governors, obviously, Richardson. But I think that the United States will engage North Korea to sort this out. But I think they can be contained where they are right now.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's get an e-mail in. This one will go to John Tkacik.
"The scenario was right on this morning. What if we left the situation to North Korea's neighbors, let them sort it out? The U.S. tries to help make the world safe, and we are labeled as warmongers. For a change, let their neighbors sort this out. China sits back looking for something to benefit them in the standoff, South Korea protests the U.S. being located there.
"And let's not forget the U.N. They are meant to handle things with multiple-country points of view. This time, the time has come once again. Let's see if there's a point to the U.N. It seems to me that a lot of these organizations and countries try to drop the decisions that are difficult on the U.S." It goes on a little bit.
And that one comes from -- boy, that was a long one -- from N. Smith in Georgia.
John, the question is, putting more of the onus in the Pacific Rim.
TKACIK: Well, North Korean strategy so far has been trying to make this a Pyongyang-Washington dispute. In reality, it's Pyongyang against the world. The North Koreans signed the nonproliferation treaty in order to get Russian nuclear reactors, and now they violated that. This -- the North Koreans have violated their North-South Korean peninsula denuclearization agreement, they violated that. They violated the agreed framework which was with Japan, Korea, the European Union, and the United States.
The North Koreans get tremendous amounts, and have over the last eight, nine years, gotten tremendous amounts of international food aid, as well as oil, from the West. In fact, North Korea was our top aid recipient in Asia for the last eight years. Now, and North Korea relies on China almost exclusively now for oil and imported food.
So this is not just the United States. We don't have the biggest beef against North Korea. Certainly Russia must have a stake in this, South Korea must have a stake in this, China certainly does. And the time has come to make this an international concern. It is not just an American concern.
COLLINS: All right. Thank you so much, John, Tkacik and the rest of our panel.
We're going to take a quick break, and we are going to take more of your "Insight and Input" when we come back. Keep it here.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: We are back now with our "Insight and Input" segment. We're talking about North Korea and all of the developments from this morning.
Joining us once again, CNN's Rebecca MacKinnon, coming to us from Seoul, John Tkacik, a former State Department official, now with the Heritage Foundation, eh's coming to us from Washington. And CNN military analyst Brigadier General David Grange in Chicago today.
Thanks again, guys, for being here.
I do have a question on the line from Donna. She's in North Carolina, wants to talk to General Grange.
Go ahead, Donna.
CALLER: Yes, good morning. It's my understanding that we have approximately 30,000-some troops in Korea and that on the line there, the Koreans have about a million people who, from what I understand, are as well armed as our troops are there. And I also understand that the Koreans have battlefield nuclear weapon capability.
And I was just wondering that if the administration does -- excuse me -- end up allowing or causing or getting into some type of conflict with the North Koreans, how are we going to protect our troops that are there on the line as far as providing them with proper weaponry, whether it be nuclear capability or whatever, to battle those million Koreans that are on the line so that it -- excuse me -- wouldn't end up just being a slaughter?
GRANGE: Yes. First of all, you need to add to the 37,000 GIs the South Korean military, and together, they don't come up to this amount of numbers that the North Korean army has, but they are very modernized.
The Second Infantry Division has first-class equipment and trained soldiers. It's backed by, further to the south, by the armed -- the United States's Air Force and backed by nuclear capability and other capabilities that could be projected to the Korean peninsula very quickly. And it's not just the numbers you count. You count the systems, the training, the leadership.
And obviously the cause. A democratic military, both the United States and South Korean, have more to fight for than a military that fights for a dictator. That is a big battlefield multiplier in war.
So it wouldn't be a slaughter, it would be a very tough fight. I was part of that 37,000 force at one time in my career, and you think about those things and how you're going to fight it. But there's good plans, good training, and I think they would be ready for it.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's get back to the e-mail, this one for Rebecca MacKinnon in Seoul. It comes from Dale Friesen, one of our frequent e-mailers in Burnaby.
"What is North Korea demanding in terms of oil shipments?"
MACKINNON: Well, North Korea wants a resumption of -- there is a regular series of oil shipments that had been agreed that the United States and other countries would provide to North Korea as a result of a deal that was made in 1994. They want those oil shipments to resume.
They also, of course, want more than that. They want a guarantee from the United States they will not attack North Korea, and, most importantly, they say they want a full nonaggression treaty. It's not clear at this point if they'd really agree to much less than that.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's get one for John Tkacik, another e- mail here.
"I think the leader in North Korea is a snot-nosed little kid who has to play this game so the world can take notice on how his bad -- how bad his country is suffering from the cold and lack of food. In a way, he's crying out for help. So let's help him."
That's from Rick in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. Kill them with kindness, says Rick.
TKACIK: Well, I think we've done that for the last eight years. The entire Agreed Framework was based on the North Koreans giving up their nuclear weapons program, yet they secretly kept it. We've given them food aid, we've given them fuel oil. We have -- in the Agreed Framework, President Clinton agreed that the United States had no hostile intent.
There is no hope that the United States would sign any kind of a nonaggression pact with North Korea because, frankly, the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- the Korean War of 1950s is still going on. Until the North Koreans sign a peace treaty with the United Nations, we are not going to sign a separate one with them.
I think the problem is, is that for the last eight years, we've been doing exactly what the writer has asked, which is trying to kill them with kindness, or at least actually trying to keep them -- let them survive with kindness, and they've basically kicked us in the teeth. The time has come now for the international community to step in and take the punitive measures with a stick, because the carrots, for the last eight years, have not worked.
O'BRIEN: All right. One final e-mail. Heidi, you take it. I think probably General Grange.
COLLINS: All right. It says, "What are the chances the U.S. will force a preemptive strike if the atomic rods are removed?"
Go ahead, general.
GRANGE: No, I think a preemptive strike in this case would be the last resort. Of course, the -- our armed forces has plans, I'm sure, to do that, if necessary, if called upon, and is quite capable of doing that. I think North Korea knows that.
And so the saber rattling, I don't think, is going to be that loud. I'd like to tie, though, back into another question, and that is, what I think would be very kind of neat to do is send about 10 or 12 freighters over there, right off the coast of Pyongyang, full of food, full of fuel oil, and moderators from a third pacifist type of country, and say, Here, here's the food, here's this stuff, we are not negotiating to try to starve the people. Now let's see you go ahead and get it out to the people tat need it, and of course have the media cover that.
O'BRIEN: Interesting.
GRANGE: I would love to see something like that happen, because then we put them on the spot.
O'BRIEN: I hope they are listening in the halls of power. That was a pretty good one, General Grange, appreciate it.
Rebecca MacKinnon, John Tkacik, General David Grange, thank you all three for being a part of our segment this morning, helping us understand a little bit more about the difficult problem of North Korea.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
