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The Perpetual Crisis: Two Decades of Diplomacy with North Korea
L.Gordon Flake
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| Gordon Flake addresses members of the World Affairs Council of the Florida Palm Beaches.
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Speaker's Remarks:
Gordon Flake gave us an excellent analysis of the United States' past diplomatic relations with North Korea. We tried to prevent the country from becoming a nuclear power but failed, and now we find ourselves in a diplomatic impasse.
Mr. Flake pointed out that North Korea has been seeking to become a nuclear power since at least 1948. It was persuaded to sign a series of non-proliferation treaties in 1985, 1992 and 1994, but we suspected that it was continuing its program. In 2000, our diplomatic relations soured. We proclaimed the country to be a member of the "axis of evil." We refused direct talks and limited ourselves to persuading China, Japan and South Korea to join us in negotiating a settlement.
All this time, North Korea has been actively developing and testing nuclear weapons, and they are known to have launched several long-range missiles. They now think of themselves as being one of the nuclear powers and want to be treated as such. This makes diplomacy even more difficult. As a further complication, some South Koreans feel that reunification is the answer. Others hope that China will take charge of the problem. Still others hope that the North Korean government will collapse.
As to the future, Mr. Flake feels that the Obama Administration is pessimistic about North Korea. It is concentrating its efforts on the Middle East and other more important problems. It would prefer to leave the problem to North Korea's neighbors who have much more at stake.
Julian Peterson
5 November 2009
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| WAC Board member Enid Pollak and WAC member Bobby Dougherty talk with Gordon Flake before his presentation
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Speaker's Biography:
L. Gordon Flake joined the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation in February 1999. He was previously a Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the Program on Conflict Resolution at The Atlantic Council of the United States and, prior to that, Director for Research and Academic Affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America.
Mr. Flake is co-editor with Park Roh-byug of the book, New Political Realities in Seoul: Working toward a Common Approach to Strengthen U.S.-Korean Relations (Mansfield Foundation, March 2008) and co-editor with Scott Snyder of the book Paved with Good Intentions: the NGO Experience in North Korea (Praeger, 2003) and has published extensively on policy issues in Asia. He is a regular contributor on Korea issues in the U.S. and Asian press and has traveled to North Korea numerous times. He is a member of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and serves on the Board of the United States Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (USCSCAP) as well as on the Board of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and the Advisory Council of the Korea Economic Institute of America.
Mr. Flake was born in Rehoboth, New Mexico. He received his BA degree in Korean with a minor in international relations from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He completed his MA at the David M. Kennedy Center for International and Area Studies, also at B.Y.U. He speaks both fluent Korean and Laotian. He has seven young children and is married to Pakayvanh Sisoutham of Vientiane, Laos.
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World Affairs Council of the Florida Palm Beaches
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