With D-Day ceremonies over, President Clinton returns Friday to the Oval Office and the somber specter of North Korea’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.
North Korea lashed out Thursday with new war threats against Japan and South Korea. They are the principal partners in the U.S.-led push for economic sanctions to punish the North for barring international inspections of its nuclear facilities.
Pyongyang’s military threats may be exaggerated-no one in Washington or Tokyo or Seoul seems sure. But so is the Clinton administration’s confidence about imposing punishing sanctions.
Tokyo, for instance, appears to be hedging its bets, because it’s worried by North Korea’s threat and by the possibility of terrorism or uprisings by the 250,000 Koreans in Japan who have links to the North. And China, North Korea’s major source of imported food and fuel, reiterated its opposition to sanctions.
That all makes it unlikely that the UN Security Council will be able to adopt anything more than a toothless resolution.
The administration is mindful of the potential catastrophic consequences of even a non-nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.
The administration is itself divided over how hard to squeeze the already-isolated regime of Kim Il Sung-the aged North Korean dictator who once invaded the South in a war that claimed 4 million lives on both sides.
In Seoul, South Korean Defense Minister Rhee Byong Tae told lawmakers that no troop activity that would indicate an imminent military strike has been detected. But he said that North Korea has stockpiled military supplies, expanded underground facilities and deployed artillery and rocket launchers just north of the demilitarized zone in the 15 months since the standoff over the North’s nuclear program began.
U.S. military commanders say they would have as little as 12 hours’ warning before an attack on the South, where there are currently 37,000 U.S. troops along with their 11,000 dependents.
The high-stakes test of wills with North Korea may lack the seeming clarity of the days 50 years ago, when young Americans, as Clinton said in his D-Day commemoration, stormed ashore at places such as Normandy and “saved the world.”
But Clinton’s vow to thwart North Korea’s efforts to build nuclear weapons is a fundamental test of the president’s leadership and American resolve to defend its allies.
It is being closely watched by Asian allies such as Japan that fear a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia, and by nations such as Iran that already buy conventional weapons from North Korea and want nuclear weapons.
North Korea has effectively used a combination of diplomacy and bluster to shield its suspect nuclear activities, which U.S. intelligence officials believe may include production of one or two nuclear weapons.
Public approval of Clinton’s handling of the North Korea issue has dropped sharply since March, according to an ABC News poll released Thursday night.
His policy drew support from 41 percent of the 813 people interviewed by telephone Tuesday and Wednesday, down from the 57 percent who approved March 27.
An overwhelming majority-78 percent-favored pressuring North Korea with economic sanctions. Forty-eight percent supported allied military action, and 44 percent did not. Survey results had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, ABC said.
On Thursday, Clinton’s first day back after his hectic eight-day tour of Europe, the president avoided the Oval Office and all official duties. He remained in the residential quarters of the White House, reading, catching up and spending time with his 14-year-old daughter, Chelsea, who skipped the trip to study for final exams, aides said.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who was attending a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Istanbul, expressed confidence that China and Japan would go along with sanctions. They are the two major powers whose economic ties with the rogue regime give them the greatest leverage over its faltering and isolated economy.
A major concern for Japan is its Korean minority, which each year sends an estimated $600 million to family members in North Korea. Japan also conducts about $500 million in cross-border trade annually with the North, mostly in fish products, used machinery and consumer products such as used cars and refrigerators.
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A foreshadowing of the social chaos that might occur if Japan cuts off bank transfers between the two countries came early this week, when hundreds of Kyoto police raided a school run by Chosen Soren, the organization for North Korean residents in Japan.
Their “crime” was failure to complete the paperwork on a land transaction in 1989. After several hundred jeering demonstrators thronged to police headquarters, a government spokesman acknowledged the raid had been a mistake.
A second major concern for the Japanese government is what actions it will have to take if the embargo takes on a military aspect, such as a blockade of North Korean ports to bar ships carrying vital commodities such as Iranian oil.
Meanwhile, China again stated its opposition to using sanctions to pressure North Korea.
“We do not agree on sanctions. Sanctions would only serve to push the opposing sides into confrontation with one another and result in a situation that no one would like to see,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang said at a news conference.