Well, North Korea is all ready to launch the Unha-3, in all likelihood carrying the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite to a fiery demise that the regime in Pyongyang will vigorously deny.

We’ve posted a FAQ on North Korea’s Upcoming Space Launch at the MIIS website, but I wanted to round up some of the reporting and suggest something provocative about why North Korea might be doing this.

1.

First, the wonkporn: North Korea allowed journalists to view, and photograph, the Unha-3 launch vehicle and Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 satellite.

We already expected the Unha-3 to look like the Unha-2 with a larger third stage based on the “splashdown” locations provided by North Korea to the International Maritime Organizations.  (NorthKoreaTech has provided invaluable coverage of information provided to the IMO, ITU and so forth.) The images, particularly those released by AP, BBC and MSNBC confirm that the first and second stages appear the same as in 2009, while the third stage is slightly longer.

There is a small debate at SatObs over North Korea’s claim that the satellite will be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit, although I tend to share Jonathan McDowell’s view that North Korea will be happy if the satellite works for just a few days.

2.

After North Korea announced the satellite launch, Kim Gye Gwan sent a letter to Glyn Davies asking for a meeting to explain.  The Administration rejected the overture.

Chris Nelson has now published the full-text of Kim Gye-Gwan’s letter, noting “This is the translation…?…being circulated.”  Take that for what it is worth:

March 20, 2012

Dear Ambassador Davies,

I was very disappointed of the US counter position dated March 21st, 2012.

The DPRK had taken part in the last three round of the DPRK-US high level bilateral talks and moved very quickly for implementing the February 29 Agreement.

Early this month in Beijing, our side displayed the maximum magnanimity and archived an agreement in the working meeting on the DPRK-US nutrition assistance. We also suggested the IAEA to hold a technical meeting to discuss ways of moratorium on our uranium enrichment and invited its officials. Our relevant agency had already entered technical preparation works to stop the operation of centrifuges at the Nyong-byon uranium enrichment plant.

Nonetheless, the US side took counter measures in haste to suspend the implementation of the DPRK-US bilateral deal, blaming our peaceful satellite launch as a violation of the deal, which is regarded as an action without discretion and fairness.

The DPRK needs badly exploring and using the space science and technology for its economic construction and thus it can not be deprived of and abandoned. We have never hided or lied about it.  Since the first round of the DPRK-US high level bilateral talks, I had made very clear that the moratorium on long range missile launch did not include our peaceful satellite launch and that provided us with a fundamental base for our deal.

In order to show our sincerity and transparency that our launch does not aim at aggravating the situation and breaking the deal but at resolving our peaceful necessity on the occasion of the DPRK’s greatest national holiday, we invited satellite experts exceptionally from countries with advanced space exploration including the US to visit the launching station.

The US should not judge our peaceful satellite launch as a ballistic missile fire a view of confrontation and should send its experts at our invitation to the launching station and let them have an chance to see the launching and operation with their own eyes and make objective and fair assessment on our intention unless it has any hostile intend as affirmed in the DPRK-US deal.

We are concerned of the US decision to suspend the nutrition assistance process because it is a clear violation of a core element of the DPRK-US deal. We recall the US policy not to link humanitarian aids with politics and US side had mentioned that the nutrition assistance was the “irreversible step” in the previous talks.  The US should not take a very indiscrete and unfair measure of stopping the nutrition aids unless it hopes to break all items of the deal with our peaceful satellite launch.

It is our position that our satellite launching is totally separate matter from the DPRK-US agreement and DPRK is in a position to implement to the end.

Regarding this, I would be willing to meet you at the earliest dates in Beijing or other convenient place to explain our position personally and discuss ways to control the situation following the launch.

Your response on this suggestion would be highly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Kim, Kye Gwan

 

I underline one passage, because it got me thinking.

3.

The best thing written so far on this whole fiasco has been Georgy Toloraya’s essay for 38 North, in which he concludes the US and the DPRK “did not quite grasp each others’ real intentions or reach the right conclusions.”

That much seems obvious.  Let’s try to grasp at intentions for a moment.  Why did North Korea agree to this deal?

Many of us — myself included — have implicitly placed the nutritional assistance at the center of the discussion of North Korean motivations, as though North Korea’s strategic calculations might be altered by 240,000 tons of plumpy’nut and other sundries. Toloraya mocks that notion, which is pretty stupid when you think about it, asking”Was anybody so naive as to presume the North would cancel such a prestigious project by silently including its ‘cost’ into the ridiculously low price of 240,000 tons of food?”

That’s a good point.  If not the food, then what the hell was Kim Gye Gwan doing in Beijing?  If we look at Kim’s letter to Davies, an interesting alternative emerges: Kim describes the ability of North Korea to launch a satellite as ”a fundamental base for our deal.”

What happens if we read Kim literally and put the rocket launch at the center for Pyongyang’s strategic calculations?

Last fall, it was fashionable to argue that Pyongyang would seek a period of strategic calm during the centenary celebrations for Kim Il Sung.  That seems wildly incorrect right now, but perhaps it wasn’t so far off the mark.

It is an interesting problem for Kim Il Sung’s progeny.  How does the regime in Pyongyang do something really big for his 100th birthday without triggering another regional crisis that will mar all the fun?  When your main technical achievements as a nation are missiles and nuclear weapons, your options aren’t that great.

What if the DPRK concluded that celebrating Kim Il Sung’s birthday with a space launch was the best chance to celebrate juche, while simultaneously making efforts to reduce the political costs associated with such an act.  In other words, what if the space launch wasn’t a bargaining chip, but Kim Gye Gwan’s primary strategic objective?

It is possible that Pyongyang engaged in this entire process in the first place largely to avoid the sort international reaction that, in retrospect, seems unavoidable.  That might explain why, having gotten thisclose, the North Koreans decided to call and see if Obama was bluffing.  What would they have to lose?

I can’t assert with any confidence that this is what happened, but nor do I find any basis on which to exclude the possibility.

4.

One of the interesting little stories in all of this is how Track II observers heard — or think they heard — something different from the North Koreans.

Evans Revere, for example, has written an article in which he suggests that North Korean officials during Track II discussions heavily emphasized the satellite launch to him:

First, last week was not the first time that the DPRK spoke of its plans to launch a satellite. I first became aware of this possibility on December 15, 2011, during an exchange with a DPRK official. The official spoke at length about the DPRK’s “sovereign right” to conduct such launches and warned that any U.S. effort to interfere with or oppose this plan would make the DPRK even more determined to carry it out.

My North Korean interlocutor was well aware that a launch would violate a series of UN Security Council resolutions and would lead to serious consequences. This conversation convinced me that the DPRK was determined to carry out a launch in the near future.

The Obama administration had already heard similar statements from North Korean counterparts, and had already delivered a strong warning to the DPRK. The warning included specific statements that a launch would violate of the U.S.-DPRK understandings that eventually resulted in the Leap Day agreement.

Equally or even more important, my conversation took place three days before the death of Kim Jong-il. It thus seems likely that the decision to announce a launch had already been taken by the now-deceased Kim. After his death, the only question that remained was when to announce it.

Revere has also given a few interviews (1|2).

What is interesting about this is that Revere notes “This conversation convinced me that the DPRK was determined to carry out a launch in the near future.”  That is a telling phrase — “convinced me.” In other words, Revere had to do a little intellectual work to draw the (correct) conclusion about the meaning of the North Korean remarks.  It is, of course, completely possible that Davies and Hart, sitting in Beijing, simply did not read between the lines as Revere had done.  They may not have understood why Kim Gye Gwan was sitting in the room in the first place and completely misread what he was saying.

That’s not that hard to believe.  Face-to-face negotiations, across language and culture, are not easy.  This isn’t a simple misunderstanding, but it is a misunderstanding all the same.  A big, fundamental misunderstanding about what each party hoped to achieve from this engagement.

What is harder to understand is how long that misunderstanding persisted.  Chris Nelson added an important detail from a conversation with Revere, namely “that he passed on this information to the appropriate Administration officials, and that they appeared to already be aware of the situation.” Of course, those same officials were very dismissive of reporters who pointed out obvious discrepancies in the North Korean and US unilateral statements.

I point all this out not to lambaste Davies and Hart, so much as to ask whether anyone — inside the Administration or participating in the Track II process — spent much time considering why the North Koreans might be engaging at all. I know I didn’t. Did they really all think that this was about 240,000 tons of food aid?  Or simply pressure by the Chinese?

Of course, perhaps this is simply a complicated way of saying that the US did not understand why North Korea agreed to the Leap Day Deal in the first place.  I guess we knew that the moment the DPRK announced the satellite launch.