After the February 13th agreement, the Bush administration, who has restrained criticizing North Korea, has pressed the North for the process of the BDA remittance issue.
The U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board on the 12th, expressed satisfaction in the suspension of projects supporting North Korea by each of the nations in the world.
Secretary Rice also warned that North Korea has to keep in mind about the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1718.
Last 5th, President Bush visited the Czech Republic’s Praque before participating in the G-8 talks. He included North Korea with Belarus, Myanmar, Cuba, Sudan, and Zimbabwe as the “world’s worst dictatorships.”
President Bush emphasized, “North Korean civilians live in a closed society where people who oppose the government are inhumanely oppressed. North Korean citizens are isolated from their brothers and sisters in South Korea.”
Senator Barack Obama, one of the Democratic Party Presidential candidates, stressed at an article displayed on the international society’s expert magazine, Foreign Affairs’, website, “We must develop a strong international coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons program… In confronting these threats, I will not take the military option off the table.”
From the perspective of Kim Jong Il who has wanted cooperation with the Democratic Party rather than with the Republic Party, which has consistently pursued a power play with North Korea during its term, Obama candidate’s utterance can be perceived as a threat.
On one hand, the Wall Street Journal reported that North Korea has been drawing greater suspicion as the situation between the UN and North Korea has drawn out according to a report published by the U.S. State Department, which showed that support funds from the United Nations Development Programme has been used to purchase foreign real estate and military equipment to be used for militaristic purposes.
The accessibility of the U.S. State Department’s report by the media has led to a shrinkage of North Korean projects by the UN. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon revealed that it would actively investigate regarding the suspicion introduced by the U.S. and the plan to dispatch an inspection unit to North Korea.
Further, on this day, the U.S. House of Representatives requested that the clause designating Offshore Processing Zone (OPZ), which allows customs benefits that are the same as South Korea’s from the North’s Kaesung Industrial Complex, be excluded from the FTA resolution of agreement. This really means that the U.S. will not even deal with Kaesung Complex products.
The House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution strengthening the alliance with South Korea Instead of increasing the threat against North Korea.
This resolution evaluated that both the U.S. and South Korea preserved the peninsula through the U.S.-South Korea alliance during the last 50 years and 29,000 some troops stationed in South Korea are testifying to the solid continuance of the 1953 ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Agreement.
The U.S. political world’s and the media’s hardline attitude towards North Korea, in spite of the appeasement policy of the Bush administration, reflects the deep-seated distrust towards the North.
