North Korea: Aid as bait does not seem to work with North Korea, according to new information emerging from Cold War archives, reports Jasper Becker
Material emerging from secret archives opened in Moscow and other East bloc capitals is shedding light, mostly unfavourable, on the question of whether handing out aid to the North can buy any meaningful compliance.
South Korea believes the North can be nudged into concessions. The White House does not, but a string of visitors have returned from meetings with President Kim Jong Il convinced that there is a deal out there waiting to be done.
The latest group to return from Pyongyang were six Congressmen, led by Republican Curt Weldon, who last Monday proposed giving Pyongyang up to $5 billion a year in aid as part of a deal to end its suspected nuclear weapons programme.
Last month, Weldon also recommended that the United States sign a one-year non-aggression pact with the North, recognise the communist nation and establish a mission in Pyongyang.
A multinational group of scholars trawling through the Czech, Hungarian, Soviet and East German archives, led by the Wilson Centre's Cold War International History Project, is producing the first clear picture of North Korea's relationship with its key allies.
"It shows how dependent North Korea has always been - and how extremely skilful it has always been at getting enough aid," says Dr Kathryn Weatherby who runs the project's Korea Initiative in Washington. "It also shows that, over the decades, China and Russia gave a lot of aid but gained very limited leverage," she says.
Soviet experts built over 60 industrial plants in North Korea and kept it supplied with large quantities of weapons, oil and grain. The East Germans and others also built industrial plants, trained North Koreans and brought high-ranking North Koreans to the GDR for medical treatment.
"It was totally reliant on outside help. Even in the 1980s they could not produce enough clothing for themselves," said Dr Bernd Schaefer of the German Historical Institute.
Ever since the end of the Cold War ended the supply of aid from Moscow and its allies, North Korea has been set on trying to make up for the loss by extracting aid from its erstwhile enemies - the United States, South Korea and Japan.
According to Hungarian scholar Balazs Szalontai, who is studying the Hungarian diplomatic archives, there are clear parallels to be drawn.
"There is a long-term pattern. They are playing the same game they played with the USSR and China," he says.
"They set out to get the technology they needed, but gave little back in return. Even the manufactured goods they shipped in payment were almost worthless, with the Soviets insisting they could not accept such museum pieces," Szalontai said.
Reports filed by diplomats stationed in Pyongyang show how the North Koreans managed to frustrate most efforts by the Soviets or the Chinese to control and influence Kim Il Sung's behaviour, both his economic policies and his attempts to start a second Korean conflict.
"It also clear they did not trust their East European allies or the Soviets and told them as little as possible," Szalontai said.
From the mid-1950s, the government prevented the Soviets, Chinese and others from direct contacts with local Koreans, including those who had returned from studying abroad.
Even East European diplomats were surprised by people were very much afraid to give information to foreigners and how people would just disappear. Foreign diplomats were afraid to help them in case they made things worse.
Far from expressing gratitude for the aid, the North Koreans also angered their allies by ignoring their contributions on domestic news reports and sometimes blaming the foreigners for their own economic failures.
The Soviets fell out with the North Koreans in mid-1955, when the Soviets warned them against seizing half the grain harvest by brute force during the collectivization of farming.
As predicted, it led to famine and forced Kim Il Sung to go to Moscow and plead for food aid. In response, the Soviets gave aid and the agricultural policies were changed, but only temporarily.
Szalontai also says that the Koreans could be flexible if necessary, much more so than the Albanians who led by Enver Hoxha became ever more isolated.
"Whenever they had to be, they made some superficial reforms to please their donors and get assistance," he said. "They can be more flexible than you assume." The Koreans systematically harassed the Soviet and East Europeans living in North Korea in 1963-64, but Moscow swallowed this and Pyongyang's blatant opposition to many of its foreign policy goals. It would make concessions to stop the North from joining the Chinese camp when the two giants were bitter rivals for the leadership of the Communist bloc.
The archives show that the North's Juche ideology of self-sufficiency was originally conceived of largely as a ruse to appeal to nationalistic pride among the South Koreans.
Archives reveal Kim Il Sung explaining to Soviet Premier Andrei Kosygin in 1965 that "We have to show that we are the true nationalists". While the South was supposed to be totally subservient to the Americans, the North portrayed itself as independent and free of foreign influence.
The Soviets constantly reminded the Koreans that they would not support them if they mounted an offensive action, so the North tried to provoke the South into initiating hostilities.
It is also now clear from the archives that North Korea's commando raid to assassinate President Park Chung Hee at the South Korean presidential residence in January 1968 was designed to trigger an uprising or a military coup. The North believed a leftist regime would then take power and call on the North for help.
The aggressive policy was reversed under Chinese pressure when, in 1972, President Richard Nixon paid his visit to China. At the same time, the North opened the first direct talks with the South, leading to Red Cross family exchanges and other contracts.
"There is a direct link between the two. China put pressure on the North," says Schaefer. "North Korean officials also tried to arrange a meeting with Nixon in Beijing. They thought the Chinese might sell them out."
North Korean policy soon swung back to open hostility. Transcripts of Kim Il Sung's talks with East Germany's Erich Honecker, especially during his visit in 1984, show that Kim was scornful of President Carter's soft policies, describing him as "deceitful" and a "conman".