North Korea is engaged in a blitz of diplomatic activity, summed up by the New York Times as Pyongyang’s “Diplomatic Charm Offensive.” Earlier this month, North Korea dispatched a high-level delegation to South Korea. This past Monday, one of North Korea’s senior envoys to the United Nations spoke about human rights at the Council on Foreign Relations. On Wednesday, North Korea freed Jeffrey Fowle, one of three Americans known to be imprisoned in the country.
It’s tempting to speculate, as some analysts are doing, that North Korea’s regime is signaling an urge to reform its totalitarian nuclear-bomb-building ways. Secretary of State John Kerry has welcomed North Korea’s version of charm, saying the U.S. hopes “the dynamics can develop in the next weeks, months perhaps, where we could get back to talks.” He added that if North Korea comes to the bargaining table ready to discuss denuclearization, “we are prepared to begin the process of reducing the need for American force and presence in the region.”
The obvious caveat is that North Korea has a long record of bamboozling the U.S. and its allies. Since 1994 Pyongyang has agreed to a series of nuclear freeze deals, collected aid and concessions in return, cheated, walked away and carried on building bombs (and ballistic missiles to deliver them). The most recent nuclear deal, reached in 2007, collapsed in late 2008. Instead of stopping North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the nuclear talks, with their Western payolas, became pit stops on North Korea’s road to a nuclear arsenal. North Korea has by now conducted at least three nuclear tests -- in 2006, 2009 and 2013 -- and this past March threatened to conduct a fourth test, for which satellite photos at the time suggested the preparations were pretty much complete.
But is there perhaps something even more troubling at work here? A problem broader than North Korea?
Just over a year ago, there was a diplomatic charm offensive launched by another rogue despotism, a regime which like North Korea’s is under U.S. and U.N. sanctions for its wayward missile and nuclear programs. That charmer was Iran, which in mid-2013 swapped out its apocalyptic and badly dressed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the smoother and more comely “moderate” President Hasan Rouhani, one of Iran’s former nuclear negotiators. There was no change in the real power on the throne, Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, Ali Khamenei. But for audiences abroad, Rouhani and his smiling veteran-diplomat foreign minister, Javad Zarif, became the new faces of Iran’s regime.
That translated swiftly into an interim deal last November for Iran to engage in nuclear talks with the U.S. and five other world powers. These talks were hailed by the Obama administration as an historic breakthrough that could lead within six months to a “comprehensive agreement” ensuring Iran would not get the bomb. The talks have now dragged on for almost a year, with the deadline extended to Nov. 24.
At the bargaining table, Iran has been following North Korea’s zig-zag path toward nuclear weapons, exploiting nuclear talks to gain time and concessions without actually abandoning routes to the bomb. Iran’s regime is enjoying substantial easing of sanctions, some of which have been suspended, while others are less tightly enforced. Iran has acquired a new aura of international legitimacy conferred by the repeated spectacle of its chief nuclear negotiator, Zarif, hob-nobbing in Geneva, Vienna and New York with such high-level western officials as Kerry, Under-Secretary of State and lead U.S. negotiator Wendy Sherman, and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
Even without reaching a “permanent” deal to date, Iran has also wrested de facto concessions on the nuclear front. For instance, Iranian officials, during the interim talks, have doggedly insisted that their country has an “inalienable right” to enrich uranium. The U.S. and the its cohorts, in their efforts to keep the talks alive, appear to have surrendered on this vital point of enrichment. Instead of demanding that Iran dismantle its entire bomb-fuel infrastructure, they have been haggling over how many thousands of centrifuges Iran can keep. On the current course, Iran could emerge from the talks having cleaned up at the bargaining table, and still get the bomb.
For North Korea, it is surely of interest to observe that this familiar brand of spineless and desperate U.S. nuclear diplomacy is still on offer, given the right inducements. Small surprise, then, if North Korea now rounds out a year of nuclear threats and missile tests by taking a page from Iran’s playbook, and launching its own strange variation on diplomatic charm.
For North Korea, another round of nuclear talks could have the added benefit of deflecting U.S. criticism of North Korea’s human rights abuses. Human rights have become an especially sore point for Pyongyang this year, following the release in March of a scathing report by a special U.N. Commission of Inquiry. The commission documented monstrous violations by North Korea’s regime, amounting to “crimes against humanity,” and laid out a case for referring North Korea’s tyrant, Kim Jong Un, to the International Criminal Court. This is now a hot issue at the U.N., pressed by the European Union and Japan.
North Korea’s government has countered by denying all accusations, circulating a draft resolution to that effect at the UN, issuing its own lengthy report exonerating itself of any human rights abuses, and has warned that there must be no referral to the ICC. North Korea’s self-critique states that in North Korea the people enjoy “a worthwhile and happy life without any social and political uncertainty” under “the wise leadership of the respected Marshal Kim Jong Un.”
Upon North Korea’s release this week of the imprisoned Jeffrey Fowle, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency put out a statement highlighting not only Kim Jong Un’s clemency, but his newfound willingness to cooperate with the White House. KCNA reported that Kim, in taking this “special measure” to release a detained American, was “taking into consideration the repeated requests of U.S. President Obama.”
That same day, Kerry told reporters that there was “no quid pro quo” for Fowle’s release. But there has been a shift in Kerry’s message on North Korea. Last month, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly’s annual opening in New York, Kerry delivered a searing statement about North Korea’s human rights abuses, calling on the North Korean government to close its prison camps and “shut this evil system down.” Kerry demanded that North Korea’s government comply with the recommendations of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, including such steps as “holding those responsible to account.”
There’s no sign that North Korea has shut down any part of its evil system. Rather, Kim has released one American, who should never have been imprisoned in the first place -- Fowle’s offense apparently having been to bring a bible into North Korea and leave it in a bar. Now, while nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman describes the protracted Iranian nuclear negotiations as being still at a “difficult” stage, Kerry is talking hopefully about the dynamics of reviving the North Korean nuclear talks.
Is it possible that North Korea and Iran not only share an interest in gaming Washington’s nuclear diplomacy, but talk with each other about how to do it? Both governments have by now had their close encounters with Sherman and her negotiating style -- North Korea during the second term of the Clinton administration, and Iran during the second term of President Obama. Sherman has yet to deliver a successful deal, on either front.
And according to reports by Iran’s state-controlled media, Iran and North Korea certainly talk with each other about their nuclear programs. Last month, North Korea’s foreign minister, Ri Su Yong, spent several days in Tehran, where he met with both foreign minister Zarif and president Rouhani. Iran’s Fars News Agency filed reports on these meetings that imply they were centered almost entirely on nuclear issues. Fars described Zarif updating Ri at some length on the status of the Iran nuclear talks, and declaring that “no one in Iran accepts to give up the Iranian nation’s inalienable right for the sake of the unfair sanctions.” Fars further reported that North Korea’s Ri, in his meeting with Rouhani, “hailed the firmness and insistence of the Iranian nation on its righteous nuclear rights, and said ‘The Korean government and nation support the standing up and resistance of the Iranian government and nation.’ ” Rouhani, speaking to Ri during the same meeting, praised the “friendly and very good ties” between Iran and North Korea, and said “The two countries’ relations can be further consolidated through a rise in consultations and cooperation between the Iranian and Korean officials.”
North Korea and Iran have different ideologies, different diplomatic styles, disparate resources and inhabit different parts of the globe. But when it comes to exploiting diplomacy in the pursuit of weapons of mass murder, they are both in the business of pushing the envelope. And it does appear they are learning lessons from each other. There is nothing charming about it.
Ms. Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.
