the international organization, which would allow North and South Korea to participate in the transition process.

Permanent membership in the Security Council gives the United States, Russia, and China a mechanism to protect their interests in the Korean peninsula while providing leverage in the North and South Korean governments to press for compromise and guarantee the enforcement of a comprehensive peace agreement. The large UN peacekeeping force that would be required, and the economic assistance that would be necessary, would engage Japan, other Asian countries, and Western Europe in the process. In the end, despite years of protestations to the contrary, North and South Korea may turn to the United Nations for assistance in achieving peaceful reunification.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is sponsoring a regional program of cooperative economic development with China, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia and Russia called the Tumen River Area Development Program (TRADP). The vision is to transform the Tumen River basin into an international shipping, trading, and manufacturing center.

Korea's Tumen River basin has been of economic and strategic interest to China, Russia, and Japan for hundreds of years. In the 1930s, the Japanese had ambitious plans to develop the area, but they were not implemented. The TRADP can trace its origins to 1979, when the UNDP established an office in Pyongyang to help North Korea improve its international trade efforts. North Korea gradually began to increase participation in UN-sponsored economic programs.

In July 1990, a UNDP-sponsored Northeast Asia academic and business conference, attended by representatives of the U.S., Japan, China, the Soviet Union, Mongolia, South Korea and North Korea, stated that the Tumen River is the key to the economic development of the region and there was "great potential for economic cooperation" (UNDP c). The UNDP endorsed a 20-year plan to develop the Tumen River area. Then the UNDP, China, Mongolia, Russia, South Korea, and North Korea, with observers from Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank,

met in Pyongyang in 1991 and formed the first intergovernmental organization in Northeast Asia for economic and trade cooperation. Funding was provided by the UNDP, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Canada, Finland and South Korea. The project was named the Tumen River Economic Development Area (TREDA) and efforts to attract foreign investors began in earnest (Carter: 11).

North Korea's contribution to the TREDA is access to the ice-free ports of Najin-Sonbong at the mouth of the Tumen River on the Sea of Japan. North Korea has devoted scarce resources to develop a Free Economic and Trade Zone (FETZ) at Najin-Sonbong. This FETZ development is assisted by the UNDP and coordinated with the other TREDA nations as part of a 20-year, three-phase plan.

Why would the communist North Koreans, with a history of isolation and hostile intentions to outsiders, be interested in cooperation with the United Nations and capitalist countries for economic development?

NORTH KOREA'S INTENTIONS

North Korea has been politically controlled by the Korean Workers Party led by Kim Il Sung, and now by his son, Kim Chong Il, since liberation from Japan in 1945. The cornerstone of the Kims' power has been the Chuche policy of self reliance. To justify their harsh suppression of any dissent, the Kims have fostered hatred of their rivals in South Korea and their supporters in the UN, the U.S., and Japan.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and free market reforms in China, North Korea has lost her political allies and barter-based trade arrangements, and has been increasingly forced to deal with the realities of the international marketplace. North Korean leaders have two main goals in establishing their free trade zone: first, to gain hard currencies to buy food, fuel, and consumer goods, and then to learn market economic mechanisms and international trade.

Need for Food

In a recent North Korean videotape, Kim Chong Il stated "I feel we need to expand to the western world to feed the people" ("Kim Chong II": 37). Hunger and discontent are widespread in North Korea. The leaders must address food, heating oil, and consumer goods shortages to remain in

power. North Korea must gain the level of foreign trade needed to meet the basic food, shelter, and heating needs of its isolated people.

Despite lip service to their Chuche philosophy of self-reliance, North Korea has accepted shipments of South Korean and U.S. rice. So far they have received only a small part of the 70,000 tons needed to overcome an

"increasingly desperate" situation largely provoked by widespread flooding that destroyed a significant portion of the 1995 harvest (R. Smith b: Al). Some in South Korea say that the North is exaggerating the damage done to crops by last summers floods and that food aid will only increase the Army's stocks, but meanwhile there are unprecedented flows of hungry refugees into China.

International Trade and Market Reforms

North Korea is also using the TREDA as a vehicle to earn cash and learn international trade. Deputy Director-General for the Bureau for Cooperation with International Organizations, Choi In Yon, said that

Sonbong is very important to the development of Northeast Asia and can become an important gateway to Europe. It is time not for confrontation but rather understanding. DPRK's traditional trading relationships are changing. There has been much internal discussion on the issue since 1988. The DPRK's centrally planned economic system will not change (UNDP e: 4).

Many analysts say that North Korea's tentative new openness is driven purely by economic necessity and is limited to damage control. There are compelling reasons to think that its ideas for economic reform are more permanent. North Korea's self-imposed isolationism has left it vulnerable, and it has set in motion changes in international economic policy. The government will channel all foreign investment through a single DPRK governmental agency and restrict it to a free trade zone (Zumwalt: B4). China and Vietnam took similar early steps as they made economic reforms without political reform (Shirk). Kim Il Sung signalled these changes in his economic philosophy in 1991. when he announced a policy of encouraging foreign investment within North Korea (Zumwalt: B4). Kim seemed to follow the Chinese in this regard. One of Deng Xiaoping's goals in China in the late 1970s was to acquire foreign technologies, and he began to establish "windows" with foreign partners in coastal cities (Gurtov: 218, 222). North Korean propaganda began to acknowledge the need for increased trade with capitalist countries and began to state that this was not necessarily a contradiction of Chuche policy. This was justified by saying that trade would first benefit ethnic Koreans outside of North Korea (“Equality": 22).