North Korea

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, we all owe a great debt of thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Swire, for introducing this debate this afternoon, for having the prescience to bring it, and for bringing his immense expertise to the Chamber. Right at the outset, he raised an issue that all of us present, and those many Members who are not in their places, should think about. In the 21st century, there seems to be an issue of politics and international relations speeding up, and of Governments, politicians and the media being perhaps unable to deal with more than one crisis at a time.

It is only two and a half years ago that the United States, and with it its NATO allies, pulled out of Afghanistan. That was not an unexpected incident; your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee had written a report about the UK’s role in Afghanistan and published it in January of that year. The Government responded to that report, yet in August 2021 it seemed that the Government had been somewhat blindsided by Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. That withdrawal, and the West’s inability to remain and support the Afghans once the US left, sent messages to Russia and China. Why is that important? It is because, in many ways, nobody was looking at Afghanistan at that time. Nobody was saying, “What if there is a major change?”, yet for two and a half years, thousands of people in Afghanistan have been fleeing for their lives. Decisions made on issues that have not been adequately thought about can have major consequences.

However, we do not really talk very much about Afghanistan at the moment. Ukraine, the next big international crisis, pushed Afghanistan off the front pages and seemed to push it out of the mindset of this Chamber and the other place. Then we get Israel and Gaza.

As the noble Lord, Lord Swire, put it, there is a real issue of bandwidth. I think of it perhaps as the CNN factor but, in a conversation earlier, it was pointed out that maybe it is the TikTok generation. Well, I suspect the Minister replying to the debate this afternoon is not of the TikTok generation. I may be wrong; he may be going to say that I have got it entirely wrong and he spends much of his time on TikTok and Instagram—but I suspect not. I suspect that, like many of us, he is of a generation that is used to events happening in a somewhat slower way, taking time to evolve and not being followed by the media 24/7. In the 30 years since Bosnia and the rise of CNN, we are expected to respond to crises immediately but to switch from one to the next to the next.

One question I will ask the noble Lord is not directly about North Korea—I will come on to that in a moment. It is: to what extent are His Majesty’s Government able to take the time to think about wider threats beyond the immediate? The then Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, was blindsided by Afghanistan—being on holiday where, apparently, he could not swim because the sea was closed. That issue had been foreseen, even if it suited Ministers later to suggest that it had not.

North Korea is precisely the sort of issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Swire, pointed out, that this House and the elected Chamber spend very little time thinking about; how very different for Japan and South Korea, and I welcome their diplomats present today. There is very much a question of what His Majesty’s Government are able to do beyond integrated reviews to think about North Korea and the sorts of unintentional consequences of the fact that is has developed nuclear weapons. So my question to the Minister is on wider strategic matters, because I want to focus my remarks on the wider international.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Swire, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and my noble friend Lord Alton for repeatedly bringing questions about North Korea to our attention. Frankly, if they did not, who would? Obviously, we now have the added benefit of having the noble Lord, Lord Swire, here to do that, but we need to be reminded in this country about North Korea and the questions that we need to think about as part of the international community.

Today’s debate is about the current threat from North Korea. As defence spokesperson for these Benches, my immediate thought was of the international consequences and threats that we have rightly heard about from speakers across the Chamber and the domestic threats and human rights violations perpetrated every day in North Korea. These matter and we should be thinking about them, and I add the support of these Benches for the comments about concerns about genocide and crimes against humanity. As so often, I ask the Minister what assessment His Majesty’s Government have made of concerns about crimes against humanity and genocide being perpetrated in North Korea and of whether now is the time to be thinking about naming genocide.

In order to widen the debate, I want to think about the wider global consequences, which were well introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Swire, and touched on in particular by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Aside from the domestic threats to the individual—to the very people whom the North Korean Government should be protecting, their own citizens—North Korea’s obscene defence expenditure of 35% or 40% of its GDP ignores its citizens. It is not about protecting them; it is about the aggrandisement of the state.

The potential and actual threats from North Korea are linked to the nuclear threat, to cyber and to cryptocurrency, as the noble Lord, Lord Swire, pointed out, and there are wider questions about the potential development of chemical weapons and the use of hybrid warfare. From the perspective of Westminster, most of those threats might seem very far away, but they are threats to our allies such as South Korea, from which we recently had a state visit at which issues of defence were discussed. If the United Kingdom is to be a strong ally and partner of South Korea, and similarly of Japan, we need to think about how to support those countries in their defence, and with our defence relationships. So precisely what discussions are His Majesty’s Government having with those of North Korea’s neighbours that perceive themselves to be most under threat from North Korea in the international space?

The nuclear threat does not affect just neighbouring countries. How effective that threat is—how effective North Korea’s nuclear capability is in 2023—remains somewhat unclear, but we are hearing a lot about the six nuclear tests and the attempts to have intercontinental ballistic missiles and the ability to target the United States, our NATO ally. Have the Government made assessments of the current nuclear capabilities of North Korea and what the potential threats actually are?

We probably differ across the Chamber in our views about the implications of North Korea having nuclear weapons for our own domestic nuclear stance. If we had a world without nuclear weapons, we would all be much safer—the dangers of miscalculation would go away because the threat would have gone—but unilateral disarmament would not get us to that place. As the noble Lord, Lord Swire, pointed out in his introductory remarks, North Korea rightly looks at countries that gave up their nuclear weapons, such as Ukraine, and says, “We want a nuclear weapon”.

So the question of who has nuclear weapons and what we do with them remains pertinent. Have the Government thought about talking to the six about further discussions on the nuclear capabilities of North Korea? Is the United Kingdom in any discussions about being part of those negotiations? In the negotiations with Iran that worked effectively until the Trump regime was in government, the E3+3 had an important role. So the UK does have a role to play, but is it playing it? Do the Government see a role for us, particularly if we were able to reopen our embassy in Pyongyang?

There are many questions that reach into the wider international which the Minister might like to tackle in his 20 minutes when he is responding to these relatively few speeches. Often, we have a debate on a foreign or defence issue on a Thursday afternoon and relatively few people speak. It is wonderful to see that on this occasion—I am deliberately saying this so that it is on the record in Hansard—the Chamber is not empty apart from the speakers; we have Peers listening intently on this important issue, because it matters. The security of North Korea’s neighbours is not just a regional issue; there are global challenges here that affect the United Kingdom and our NATO partners.

I want to wind up my speech with a final set of questions about China, which could potentially play an important role. China has a mutual defence agreement with North Korea. It is also a country that has traditionally not been in favour of intervention in other countries; for example, it did not actively support Russia’s intervention in Ukraine despite it having made a bilateral agreement with Russia almost immediately before the invasion of eastern Ukraine. So, we assume that China would not support North Korea being an aggressor, but is it playing any role as a mediator? Can we have frank conversations with China about this?

Indeed, has there been a change in the FCDO’s position in the past two weeks—or is it three?—since the former Prime Minister was ennobled in order to become our Foreign Secretary? It is clear that, during the coalition Government, the UK’s relationship with China was much closer; although that was arguably too close a relationship, it is still important to remember that our relationship with China needs to include elements of co-operation; it is not just about challenge and competition. Do His Majesty’s Government see a way to talk to China about being a mediator because, at the moment, it seems unlikely that we will have any opportunities to persuade Russia to weaken its relations with North Korea, when Russia needs all the friends it can get? Assuming that China is the main potential mediator, are we having discussions?

In line with many noble Lords, I support from these Benches the ideas that we need to ensure that we have effective sanctions; and that the sanctions against North Korea should be targeted at individuals so that, as far as possible, they minimise the impact on citizens. I spoke on this issue on 5 September 2017—I went back and checked. On that occasion, Vladimir Putin had just said:

“The North Koreans will eat grass”.


That was the impact of the sanctions. We need to make sure that the impact of sanctions is on individuals, and secondary sanctions are vital so that nobody in North Korea who should be taking responsibility is able to escape that responsibility.