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In North Korea, small signs of policy debate

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 11, 2007

BEIJING - North Korea is a totalitarian state where simply mishandling a portrait of leader Kim Jong Il is considered a crime. That doesn't mean there is no internal debate as the regime weighs whether to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

At the North Korean nuclear negotiations in Beijing, the U.S. envoy alluded to disputes in the communist nation over whether the regime can give up its most potent weapons without sacrificing its security.

Some in the North "understand that these weapons have done more to isolate and endanger and impoverish the DPRK than they will ever do to protect" it, Christopher Hill said Friday, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name. "Alas, I don't think this is a universal view in the DPRK."

Hill said there was one group with a "very antiquated and, I would say, isolated view that somehow nuclear weapons of this kind can create prestige."

He did not give names. But analysts believe there are divisions between the North Korean military and diplomats, a tug-of-war that sends mixed signals to an outside world with little information about the country's internal policy struggles.

The United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea are trying to win a commitment from the North to take its first tangible steps toward abandoning its nuclear programs since the negotiations began in 2003. That goal has become more pressing since the North tested its first nuclear bomb in October, during one of the many deadlocks in the talks.

For Kim, going nuclear has been one way to solidify his authoritarian rule among the military.

He has generally favored the armed forces under his proclaimed "military-first" policy, in which the military has the primary role in society.

The military has quashed past diplomatic initiatives, including efforts at detente between North and South Korea. Last year, it refused to allow a test run of trains across the peninsula's heavily fortified border because security arrangements had not been made.

[Last modified February 11, 2007, 01:36:53]