부추연 > 핫이슈 > 미국의 북한 핵시설 폭격계획

뉴욕타임스는 2.28일자 컬럼니스트 니콜라스 크리스토프가 쓴 "가공할 비밀 계획(Secret, Scary Plans)" 라는 제하의 컬럼에서 체니 부통령과 렘스펠드 국방장관을 중심으로 북핵 시설을 폭격하는 계획을 수립 중이라고 보도하였다.

그 공격계획을 보면, 북한의 핵시설들을 목표로 한 미사일 폭격, 철퇴폭격(sledgehammer bombing), 서울을 겨냥한 포대를 무력화시키기 위한 공격 등이 포함되어 있으며 이 공격에 핵무기도 사용할 가능성이 있다고 보도하였다. 이는 미국이 점점 강경 노선을 취할 것이며 외교적 노력을 적극적으로 추진하지 않을 것이며 올여름 쯤 부시 대통령은 어쩔 수 없이 북한공격을 명령할 수도 있다고 보도하였다.

미국이 공격하면 김정일이 보복할 우려가 있지만 보복은 자살행위에 해당하기 때문에 그런 일은 없을 것으로 전망하고 있다.

북한은 현재 영변원자로를 가동하고 있으며 주변 시설의 활동이 정찰위성에 의해 감지되고 있는데 이는 핵재처리시설 가동을 준비하는 것으로 해석할 수 있다는 것이다. 따라서 북한은 올 여름까지 핵폭탄 5개를 만들 수 있는 플루토늄을 생산하게 된다는 것이다.

미국 관리들은 이런 계획들이 비상 계획일 뿐이라고 말하지만, 부시 행정부는 외교가 실패할 경우 군사공격을 진지하게 고려하고 있다고 주장했다. 즉, 외교로 북핵 문제가 해결되지 않으면 올 여름쯤 제2의 한국전쟁의 위험을 감수하고라도 그 같은 공격을 지시할 가능성이 점점 커지고 있다고 주장했다.

그는 칼럼에서 "역설적이지만 '서울'이나 '일본'은 상황의 심각성을 아직 판단하지 못하고 있는데, 그들은 미국이 북한에 대해 설마 그런 군사 공격을 할 정도로 앞서가지 않았다고 생각하기때문이다. 그러나 그들은 잘못 생각하고 있다!" 라고 결론을 맺었다.

이 칼럼을 쓴 크리스토프는 1959년생으로 하버드대와 옥스퍼드대에서 경제학과 법학을, 이집트에서 아랍어를 배웠으며 '더 타임스' 북경, 일본, 홍콩 지국장을 지냈고 현재는 뉴욕타임스 메인 칼럼니스트로 있다. 1990년에는 부인과 공동으로 천안문사태 보도 기사로 퓰리처상을 수상하기도 하였다.

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<뉴욕타임스 기사 원문>

Secret, Scary Plans
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Some of the most secret and scariest work under way in the Pentagon these days is the planning for a possible military strike against nuclear sites in North Korea.

Officials say that so far these are no more than contingency plans. They cover a range of military options from surgical cruise missile strikes to sledgehammer bombing, and there is even talk of using tactical nuclear weapons to neutralize hardened artillery positions aimed at Seoul, the South Korean capital.

There's nothing wrong with planning, or with brandishing a stick to get Kim Jong Il's attention. But several factions in the administration are serious about a military strike if diplomacy fails, and since the White House is unwilling to try diplomacy in any meaningful way, it probably will fail. The upshot is a growing possibility that President Bush could reluctantly order such a strike this summer, risking another Korean war.

The sources of information for this column will be as mystifying as the underlying U.S. policy itself, for few will discuss these issues on the record. But it seems those interested in the military option ? consisting primarily of raptors clustered around Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and in the National Security Council ? have until recently been slapped down by President Bush himself.

Recently Mr. Bush seems to have become more hawkish. He is said to have been furious when Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (one of the few senior Bush aides who know anything about Korea) told Congress that the U.S. would have to talk to North Korea.

So the White House has hardened its position further, swatting away its old willingness to engage North Korea bilaterally within a multilateral setting. Now the administration has dropped the bilateral reference and is willing to talk to North Korea only in a multilateral framework that doesn't exist. The old approach had a snowball's chance in purgatory; now it's less than that.

"We haven't exhausted diplomacy," one senior player noted. "We haven't begun diplomacy. . . . We could have a slippery slope to a Korean war. I don't think that's too alarmist at all."

Other experts I respect are less worried. James Lilley, an old Korea hand and former ambassador to Seoul and Beijing, says my concerns are "much too alarmist." He says the State Department controls Korea policy and realizes that "the military option is almost nonexistent."

Maybe. But meanwhile, North Korea is cranking out provocations and plutonium. This week it started up a small reactor in Yongbyon. More worrying, America's spooks detected on-and-off activity at a steam plant at Yongbyon, which may mean that the North is preparing to start up a neighboring reprocessing plant capable of turning out enough plutonium for five nuclear weapons by summer. Look for reprocessing to begin soon, perhaps the day bombs first fall on Iraq.

Dick Cheney and his camp worry, not unreasonably, that the greatest risk of all would be to allow North Korea to churn out nuclear warheads like hotcakes off a griddle. In a few years North Korea will be able to produce about 60 nuclear weapons annually, and fissile material is so compact that it could easily be sold and smuggled to Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and Al Qaeda.

The hawk faction believes that the U.S. as a last resort could make a surgical strike, even without South Korean consent, and that Kim Jong Il would not commit suicide by retaliating. The hawks may well be right.

Then again, they may be wrong. And if they're wrong, it would be quite a mistake.

The North has 13,000 artillery pieces and could fire some 400,000 shells in the first hour of an attack, many with sarin and anthrax, on the 21 million people in the "kill box" ? as some in the U.S. military describe the Seoul metropolitan area. The Pentagon has calculated that another Korean war could kill a million people.

So if the military option is too scary to contemplate, and if allowing North Korea to proliferate is absolutely unacceptable, what's left? Precisely the option that every country in the region is pressing on us: negotiating with North Korea.

Ironically, the gravity of the situation isn't yet fully understood in either South Korea or Japan, partly because they do not think this administration would be crazy enough to consider a military strike against North Korea. They're wrong.
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