Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-206)
MR AIDAN
FOSTER-CARTER
AND DR
JIM HOARE
26 APRIL 2006
Q200 Mr Hamilton: Can I bring us
back to Japan for a minute. I know that, Mr Foster-Carter, you
have written about the issue of the prisoners held in North Korea
and the fact that in 2006 the Japanese Parliament threatened to
introduce a bill, in fact, I think, did introduce a bill, to impose
sanctions on North Korea for its failure to improve human rights,
but do you not think that more important than both the issue of
human rights, which is very important, and the Japanese prisoners
held in North Korea—the people who were abducted—the
issue of nuclear weapons, albeit I accept what Dr Hoare said about
the use of those weapons, but when I was in Japan three years
ago and we met with the Japanese Foreign Minister and the Foreign
Office people there, the one issue they talked most about was
the threat that they felt from Yong-Jang pointing nuclear weapons
at Tokyo and other Japanese cities. That seemed to be much more
important to them then. It may have moved a lot since then in
the last three years, but I wonder what your take on this is now.
Mr Foster-Carter: I am not primarily
a Japan specialist, but my sense is that the priority has shifted,
again partly because Japan is a democracy. I think that if it
had been left to the political class—not that they necessarily
agree with each other—then for a long time the abduction
issue was not much heard about. Even the facts were unclear, and
the North Koreans were denying it; and, of course, the Japanese
Government prioritised, as governments do, the security threat.
I suppose there are the missile and the nuclear issues, if you
are sat where Japan is sat just across the Sea of No-Agreed-Name—as
you know, you must not call it the Sea of Japan or you will offend
all Koreans, or the East Sea—but, either way, it is not
a very wide sea and you are within range. Particularly in 1998,
when the North Koreans—in circumstances still, I think,
to be explained—fired their largest rocket yet, allegedly
to launch a satellite, which went over Japan and it is not quite
clear how far some of the bits went. That, I would have thought,
had a very real negative—from Pyongyang's viewpoint, but
that is another question—galvanising effect. It transformed
the security debate, and so on. What I understand has happened
meanwhile, though, is that the abduction case got taken up, as
it happened somewhat unfortunately, by the political right. The
same people who want to whitewash all the textbooks, and who tell
you that the Japanese just went on a nice little liberating walk
into China and Korea before 1945, are the same people, as it happens,
who are thumping the tub for these genuine victims. So that issue
came up as a top priority. Then Mr Koizumi, with his political
flair, shall we say, thought that he could do what no top Japanese
leader had ever done and actually go to Pyongyang, wave a wand
and solve it. He is still the only person who has ever got Kim
Jong-il to say sorry for anything, as far as I know, but of course
it was a sort of a half-sorry, and he is unconvinced. He got some
people back, but there were these deeply unconvincing stories
about "How come all the rest were dead?"—and it
backfired. As far as I can see, they—certainly most politicians,
Foreign Office people and so forth, I do not really know about
the security people—would rather be concentrating on the
real military, longer-term threat. Meanwhile, the abduction issue
has in a way become a token of good faith. "If they keep
lying to us about this, how will they ever tell us the truth about
where their nuclear weapons are?" and so on. But I do not
know enough about the nuances of the internal debates in Japan
on all that, I am afraid.
Chairman: I think that we can move on
to the nuclear issue now.
Q201 Sir John Stanley: Could I ask
you both, do you take the view that North Korea is currently a
nuclear weapon state or a nuclear weapon state in the making?
Dr Hoare: I honestly do not know.
If you go back to the early 1990s when, for the first time, there
began to be international concern expressed about North Korea,
we were told by 1994 that North Korea had one, four, two, three,
five nuclear weapons. Then the agreed framework came and there
was less talk about what North Korea had or did not have, although
it was still sometimes mentioned that they had nuclear weapons.
In recent years, again figures have been thrown out that they
have X, Y, Z numbers of nuclear warheads. I do not know. I have
never seen any convincing proof that they have, or that they have
not for that matter. I certainly believe that they tried to develop
nuclear weapons from at least the 1970s onwards. After the Nixon-Mao
Tse-tung summit, both Koreas, North and South, began to be a bit
worried about their allies and I think that both looked at the
possibility of developing nuclear weapons. The South Korean effort
was firmly stopped by the Americans. Whether the North Koreans
carried on—it seems likely they did—but how far they
got, I do not know. What is certainly the case is that they have
never tested anything that appears to be a nuclear weapon. I know
that nowadays you can simulate a test with computer programmes
but, to be frank, I find it very hard to believe that the North
Koreans have quite such sophisticated computer programmes that
they can do so. So I do not know. I said this recently at a conference
in Paris, and the South Koreans—some of whom came from the
defence, university side—all protested at this and said
that they now believed that the North Koreans did have nuclear
weapons. That begs a number of other questions. If they have them,
how could they deliver them? I suppose you could drive a lorry
across the demilitarised zone with a nuclear weapon on board.
That surely would be sheer suicide? If you sent a nuclear warhead
against Japan, that would be suicide. If you tried to launch something
against the United States or, nearer to home, the United States
Forces in Japan or South Korea, that would be suicide. Of all
the traits of the North Korean regime, suicide does not actually
seem to me to be a very strong one. They are desperate to survive,
not to go out in a blaze of glory.
Mr Foster-Carter: For that very
reason, that might be a reason to have it. I do not know either.
I have never been privy to any security clearance, so I probably
have had less of a chance to read things than some of the rest
of you, and Dr Hoare. But I think that it would be very unsafe
not to assume that they had it, although we do not know about
whether they could deliver it, and so on. If you think that they
have been trying for a long time—and I have great respect
for their scientific and technical abilities—it makes a
great deal of sense, both in terms of their mindset—they
feel very threatened—and also the fact that otherwise they
are subject to the overwhelming presence of United States Forces,
and so forth. You would try to get some sort of counteracting
force of this kind. So I think that one has to work on the assumption
that they may. One cannot entirely rule out that it might be—I
do not know if the comparison with Iraq is appropriate at all—when
people think people have something, and then it turns out that
they did not any more, even though they were once trying for it.
I think that it would be safe to assume that they probably do.
On the testing front, I always think that our good friends and
allies in Pakistan, or some people there, may know a little more
than they sometimes let on. I am not sure whether the CIA—I
do not suppose we would be involved—has yet got to talk
directly to Dr AQ Khan, but there were certainly reports in among
the various dealings that went between North Korea and Pakistan
on the HEU front; though I have seen the suggestion that some
testing was done on the North Koreans' behalf, but I have no idea
of the status of that rumour.
Dr Hoare: I must confess that,
having travelled on North Korean roads and on North Korean railways,
having seen the nature of the military vehicles that the army—the
most favoured group in society—drive around in, I do find
it very hard to reconcile that with, somewhere, a white-hot modern
technology, producing sophisticated weapons. I know you can produce
dirty weapons and all the rest of it, but the whole of North Korea
is decrepit. You can drive round Pyongyang—which we were
allowed to do—and round Nampo, and you see factory after
factory with trees growing out of the roofs. You go along the
east coast, and all the industrial heart of the country is dead.
The first time I went, in 1998, most of the vehicles that I saw
broken down were military vehicles and a fair percentage of those
military vehicles were actually being run on wood-burning furnaces
because they had no fuel. I find it very hard to reconcile the
picture presented sometimes, of a highly sophisticated military
machine working away on these things, with the realities of most
of what I have seen of North Korea.
Mr Foster-Carter: Could I briefly
come in on that? Could that not have been said of the former Soviet
Union? I sometimes think that in the Korean field we do not avail
ourselves sufficiently of the prior debates about communism, Stalinism,
and of course there are lots of questions as to how far North
Korea is unique. I forget who coined the unkind phrase, "Upper
Volta with rockets" for the Soviet Union, but was it not
intended to convey precisely this? That you looked around and
most of it was a complete mess; but that could be because most
of the resources were being put to make sure that, somewhere else
where you could not see, was as good as it could possibly get.
Q202 Sir John Stanley: Mr Foster-Carter,
I could answer your question, but I am only allowed to ask questions
in these sessions.
Mr Foster-Carter: Does that mean
I have to answer them?
Q203 Sir John Stanley: Could I ask
two more? British Government policy—could you give us your
views as to, first, what position you think the British Government
should be taking towards the Six Party negotiations, recognising
of course that we are not a party to those negotiations, but it
is an important policy issue? Could you give us your views on
that? Secondly, the one disturbing area on which I believe there
is no controversy at all is that North Korea has been a serious
proliferator potentially of delivery systems both of conventional
weapons, and conceivably of weapons of mass destruction—particularly
with this access to former Chinese, and indeed in some cases going
back even to Soviet missile technology? Could you give us your
view as to what the British Government should be doing to stop
North Korea being one of the most serious proliferators in the
world?
Dr Hoare: On the first point,
the Six Party Talks, my own feeling is that the Six Party Talks
are unlikely to succeed. The difficulties that have been shown
so far in trying to get them to function are not going to go away.
The North Koreans want to talk to the United States. Until you
get direct talks with the United States, I do not think that you
will make a great deal of progress. The United States does not
want to talk to the North Koreans and has, over the years, proposed
a number of multilateral fora to avoid talking directly to the
North Koreans. There were Four Party Talks; now there are Six
Party Talks. Again, I think that it is an example of the two sides
putting forward positions that they know the other cannot accept.
On proliferation of missiles, there has been some degree of restraint
since 1998. The North Koreans have stuck by undertakings they
gave not to proliferate missiles. In the past, I think you have
to look rather carefully at why they were able to do so, particularly
to the Middle East. I think the fact that North Korean missiles
went to the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War indicates that perhaps
they were being subsidised by somebody who wanted the Iran-Iraq
War to continue. I have heard it alleged that a certain other
Middle Eastern country was actually funding North Korean rocket
supplies to Iran. So if there is somebody there to pay, then the
North Koreans—who have very little else to sell now, for
a variety of reasons, whose economic outlets are very limited,
who are not actually bound by any international agreements about
selling missiles—will sell missiles. They have also said
very clearly, however, that if you want them to stop, pay them.
There are those who say, "You will never get rid of the Danes
if you pay the Danegeld", but in practice I think that you
could easily buy out North Korea on this particular issue.
Mr Foster-Carter: On the Six Party
Talks, I too wonder whether this forum is going anywhere. It would
be a shame, in a way, if it faded away as others have before,
not only because the nuclear issue remains unresolved but because
I thought that sextet was actually correct. I know that some people
would like us or the Europeans to be there; but, unless one thinks
that everybody has got to be everywhere, these are the two Koreas
and the four powers intimately involved with them by history and
geography. So one should continue to try and breathe life into
them, if we have any power at all to try and get "the West",
"our side"—if these terms have meaning, as I hope
they do—to present a united front. However, even as I say
that, and given the issues we have discussed before, it is extraordinarily
difficult. If we can bring any influence to bear on our United
States ally, to plead with them—in private no doubt—for
a consistency of approach, I think that it should not be given
up on just yet. At the same time, I think that one has to be flexible
and also imaginative. As Dr Hoare says, the North Koreans all
along have wanted to be one-on-one with the United States in certain
contexts, and I have never particularly understood why it has
been important to the Bush administration to deny them that. It
worked rather well, I think, under the Clinton administration.
Dr Hoare: That is why it is important
to the Bush administration.
Mr Foster-Carter: Yes, the ABC—"Anything
But Clinton"—but it should be past that now. One would
like to think that there are more solid bases for making policy.
On the proliferation front, again the broad task that one is trying
to do in all of this, I think—and easier to state than to
accomplish—is to persuade or cajole the North Koreans into
realising that there are better ways to be in the 21st century,
and that most of what they do probably does not really do them,
particularly in the long term, any good at all. They do sell missiles,
as Dr Hoare has said. Most of that is not technically illegal,
is it, because they are not signatories to the Missile Technology
Control Regime? It is just extremely unhelpful in various contexts.
I do not have a particular view on the Proliferation Security
Initiative. The phrase, "Send a gunboat" would be unfair.
However, although the odd shipment has been stopped—we recall
the Spanish Marines, and the Yemen Government saying, "Oi,
where's our missiles?"—that was embarrassing. Of course,
you can send stuff by air. If they are sending missiles, as one
hears, over Chinese airspace to Iran, then this interdicting business
is not really on at all. Much as one may disapprove of it—and
I like the Danegeld analogy—they were prepared to be bought
off over missiles, and they still are. I am much less clear, incidentally,
as to whether they are prepared to be bought off on the nuclear
front. That is another matter. But missiles? Yes, they have actually
said it and they have actually named a price. I feel uncomfortable
saying that one should pay bad people to stop doing bad things
that one wished they would not have done in the first place. However,
if the Six Party Talks were going somewhere; if we had the framework
of engagement that we did have under the Clinton administration,
which was negotiating on this very issue, as you probably know—President
Clinton nearly went to Pyongyang to sign an agreement, they were
that close—then we could begin, one by one, to solve all
this. I am afraid that we went up a ladder a little bit under
that administration and we have gone down a lot of snakes, I fear,
under this one.
Q204 Chairman: Can I ask you about
the safety aspects of the North Korean military programme? First,
how secure are their nuclear facilities and how dangerous are
their methods of production? Secondly, is there any evidence that
they had or still have aspirations or actual programmes on chemical
and biological weapons, and, again, the security aspects of that?
Dr Hoare: I think that if they
are doing any of these things, there is a security risk. North
Korea is a pretty casual sort of place in terms of safety. Most
normal, modern safety standards do not apply, I do not think.
I will give you one example, which is extremely poignant in a
way. Over in Hamhung there is the National Orthopaedic Hospital.
In that hospital there is an X-ray machine—the only one
outside Pyongyang that appears to be working. This is for the
whole country. This X-ray machine was supplied by the East Germans
in the 1950s. They have long since run out of film for this machine.
If somebody is X-rayed, the doctors go behind the machine and
look. They are therefore exposed to the radiation. As one of the
UN people said to the doctors—one of the doctors said that
he was thinking of giving up smoking—"You needn't bother",
because the man is going to die of leukaemia or something before
very long. The safety standards are appallingly low—where
you can see them. So I suspect that in areas where you cannot
see them they are equally low. The conditions of the nuclear plants
probably would be very poor, compared to those outside North Korea,
because everything else is very poor. I cannot believe that they
are somehow, in one particular area, so very careful. If I am
right, that casts doubts on their ability to produce enriched
uranium via centrifuges, because that requires a lot of electricity—and,
my God, it is one country where there is not a lot of electricity!
Again, it may be hidden away in the mountains, but there is no
evidence of a great deal of power. Secondly, it requires clean
water and suchlike. All those things are lacking. If they are
engaged in a nuclear programme, I think that there is very grave
potential for disaster. As to chemical and biological warfare,
the simple answer is that I do not know. There have been claims
that they have such programmes. There are claims that the two
fertiliser factories that are working—and those two fertiliser
factories are only working at about a twentieth of capacity and
they are very old, dating at least from the end of Korean War—are
actually producing chemicals for chemical warfare. Again, I do
not know. When I visited them, they said that they were for fertiliser
and we did in fact see some fertiliser being produced; but they
could have shown me anything and I would not have known. They
have certainly been detected engaged in anti-chemical precautions.
They have been seen in chemical protection suits; but, again,
there is not a great deal of other evidence.
Mr Foster-Carter: I do not have
great technical expertise on these matters, I must say. How many
times can one say, "I don't know"! On the safety aspects
of the nuclear issue, however, the KEDO—the Korean Peninsula
Energy Development Organisation—still theoretically exists,
does it not, and the EU remains on its board, and so on? I suppose
that for all practical purposes it is dead. In a sense, I would
like to record the shedding of a tear because, had we persisted
and if by any chance it comes to life again, we would—"we"
meaning outside Western powers—have had a direct input into
all of this. The new reactors that were being built for them would
have to conform to the highest global standards and, before they
were ever plugged into the existing North Korean grid, that would
have had to have been attended to as well, while the IAEA was
at Yongbyon, and so forth. But I suppose that is crying over spilt
radiation, or something like that. On the CBW, I have seen some
evidence to this Committee that seems strongly to deny it. I do
not know any more than anybody else, but my understanding is that
the consensus in all that I read, including in the South Korean
military and so forth, is that this is a regime . . . . I suppose
I regard it as a Sparta of the East, as a regime that has always
put its security first and has always had a rather singular concept.
Most small states think they would gain their security by hiding
out behind somebody else, or at least ganging together with other
small states to promote global law; whereas I think that the North
Koreans think that you arm yourself with absolutely everything
you possibly can and that is the only sure way that no nasty person
is going to come and get you. On that basis—as I understand
it, chemical and biological weapons are neither technically difficult
nor expensive—it would surprise me very much if they did
not. Joseph Bermudez, an American author who appears to be well
connected and knowledgeable, writes—regarding the numerous
artillery, 10,000 pieces at least, that they have trained on Seoul
and so on, north of the ironically named "demilitarised zone"—that
some of these are routinely supplied with chemical shells. I do
not know how he knows; I do not suppose he made it up.
Dr Hoare: I think that it would
be very hard to prove that. One just does not know, I think.
Q205 Chairman: You earlier touched
on the question of the Chinese desire for stability and also the
South Koreans' concern about a collapse. How likely is that? We
have had evidence sessions earlier on in our inquiry where people
talked about the visit of President Kim to China and reforms beginning
after that visit. How likely is economic change? How likely is
economic collapse? Is the current position one which is sustainable
or are we likely to see an even worse situation than the food
shortages, the famines and the other problems? Is there a potential
for a massive social collapse or, alternatively, an uprising?
Dr Hoare: "Don't answer on
both sides of the paper at once"! Those are very vital questions.
I think that in one sense the North Korean economy collapsed over
the period 1986-96. The old North Korean economy, the heavy industry
that was created after the Korean War has, by and large, died.
Again, if you go to the east coast, you can see the factories
closed down; you can see the equipment that once was in those
factories mounted on trucks to be sold for scrap in China, as
a means of making money. Unlike other countries where traditional
heavy industries have collapsed, North Koreans have very little
to replace it. They do not have modern service industries; they
do not have computer industries, and so on, except in very, very
small ways. It is not feasible for them to do as the Chinese did
20 or 30 years ago in terms of economic changes, because they
did that long ago. Most people in North Korea are urban dwellers.
They are not people you bring in off the farm; they have come
off the farm long ago. So what you are seeing in the last few
years is an acceptance—and I think that is actually very
important—by the regime that they have to allow a certain
degree of independence to people, whether in collective farms
or in cities, to develop their own economic bases. So you have
a lot of small stalls springing up in Pyongyang, and in other
places as well. You have the development of what was previously
totally forbidden: individual people offering services, like repairing
bicycles. Very small-scale but actually important, in that it
indicates a new approach. You have, in 2002, a decision to admit
that the currency was in fairyland really, and to move towards
a more realistic base on which you would form your currency and
on more realistic exchange rates. The moves are having an effect,
I think. There is more money about; the move towards the beginnings
of a cash economy. This was a society where people did not have
money, except a tiny bit of pocket money to buy an ice cream.
Everything was supposed to be supplied by the state. The state
has had to admit it cannot do that, and so since 2002 there has
been a more realistic approach, if you like, to economic development.
But they lack the means to do anything very large-scale. They
lack the training; they lack the skilled people who can bring
about the required changes. Although North Korea has suffered
a lot in recent years, I think that it is still politically strong
domestically. The security system is still very powerful. The
indoctrination system is still very thorough, and it runs from
about six months to about 30. You are under a constant stream
of indoctrination, whether you are in a kindergarten, primary
school, secondary school, university or the military—and
everybody is now supposed to go into the military for seven years.
So this is a huge support for the regime in ideological terms.
How many people are convinced of what they are taught, I do not
know; but, as they have very few alternatives, it seems that many
will accept or go along with it, even if some people are getting
more and more cynical about it. The Chinese are engaged in economic
terms. There are a lot of Chinese small entrepreneurs; there are
lot of Chinese provinces that have offices in Pyongyang and elsewhere;
there is a lot of Chinese tourism where, partly, the Chinese go
and say, "It's like it used to be in our country and we've
come to see what the past was like". That keeps the whole
thing going. It may not be kept going at a very high level, but
it is going; it is functioning. I think that is deliberate Chinese
policy. Occasionally, the Chinese will rap the North Koreans on
the wrist. They did in 2002, over the Sinuiju special administrative
region which was being created. It is a long story and I will
not go into it, but essentially, as the Chinese Ambassador put
it to me, "We warned our North Korean friends and they wouldn't
listen"—so the Chinese put the screws on. For the present,
therefore, I do not think that we are seeing the risk of a social
collapse, but it could happen. If North Korea is allowed no means
to develop further, then the rising expectations of the population
might lead to some decision amongst some of the leadership to
overthrow the present leadership. Whether that would lead to fundamental
changes in North Korea, I do not know. I doubt it. If you get
rid of Kim Dae-jung, which may be President Bush's policy—he
said he loathes him . . . I am sorry! Kim Jong-il. Get rid of
the right president; get rid of Kim Jong-il. The most likely successors
are going to be in the military, because they hold most of the
cards and see themselves as the bulwark against outside pressures,
and defenders of the state—like the military in most countries,
but they have this special effect. If you did have a collapse,
I think that the consequences for the surrounding countries would
be pretty grim. A lot would go into China, but a lot of the North
Koreans have links to Japan and some would try to go to Japan.
I do not think that the Japanese want that. Many will try to come
into South Korea. I think that all the countries in the region
would prefer something like the present set-up to continue, at
least for some time.
Q206 Chairman: Do you want to add
to that, Mr Foster-Carter?
Mr Foster-Carter: Briefly, yes.
This is an absolutely key area and it is complicated. I am cautious
now, because I was incautious in the past. I am on record and
in print as having predicted that North Korea would collapse definitely
by the year 2000, probably by 1995. So one is now a little bit
cautious. At the same time, the Maoist concept of contradiction
still has its uses, and they are acute. Yes, politically it is
an extraordinarily powerful regime. It has its grip, as Dr Hoare
has said, on people's minds from a very early age. At the same
time something very crucial has happened in the last decade or
so and continues, which is that it was a regime that, in its terrible
way, looked after you. It demanded complete control over your
body and mind but it did give you a job, and so forth. That all
collapsed with the famine, and people have actually had to fend
for themselves. It would seem to me to be strange, no matter how
ignorant you are kept of the outside world, and that begins to
be breached in all sorts of ways—up on the border you can
use hidden mobiles, secret mobile telephones, using Chinese networks
and so forth . . . . People realise that this government has not
done an awful lot for them. So I do not rule out that there might
be unrest. It is curious that there seems to have been so little.
Perhaps I could add one thing in particular. There will be a succession
issue. We know these are Achilles heels for regimes of this nature.
Kim Jong-il has just turned 64 or possibly 65; he has had a complicated
marital history, resulting in two or three sons—daughters
appear not to count in this revolutionary society. Anyway, without
going into all the details, we know this is sort of Borgia territory
in such regimes. I think that everybody wants a smooth transition
because the alternative may well be worse. Imagine warlords; imagine
the degree of lawlessness that we have, dare I say, in present-day
Iraq, if there were loose nukes around. Kim Jong-il is not the
worst possible thing that one can have. One wishes it to be smooth;
it does not mean that it will necessarily be so.
Chairman: Thank you very much. I would
like to thank you both for a very interesting session for us.
It has given us a lot of food for thought. Sadly, we do have another
session immediately, to talk about energy and environment issues
in China, so I am afraid we have to conclude now, but thank you
both for coming.
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