Ji-hoon’s uncle nodded slowly, looking off into space as if he were intrigued by his brilliant nephew’s scheme. “Are you saying we only continue the rare earth mining partnership if China supplies us with ICBMs?”
Choi Ji-hoon said, “Exactly that, Uncle.”
The uncle had known his nephew for his entire life. That he had to couch his words carefully to him, just as he had his brother, was still odd, but he knew what was good for him. “I think this is wise and shrewd diplomacy on your part, Dae Wonsu. I only wish the Chinese shared your brilliance. I am afraid that the Chinese diplomats are unrealistic, and they might jeopardize the lucrative mining operation if they refuse our reasonable request.”
Ji-hoon waved the comment away as if it were a trifling concern. “You have excellent relations with the gang-jae.” It was a derogatory word for Chinese, akin to calling them Chinks. Ji-hoon’s uncle fought back a wince. “You must see that they do not refuse, Uncle.”
The negotiations happened in Pyongyang; several of China’s top leaders came, hats in hand, ready to offer almost anything to continue the rare earth mining contract with North Korea.
Almost anything.
When Choi’s negotiators explained the Chinese contract would be invalidated if they did not provide the DPRK with a ballistic missile manufacturing center, including the materials and the expertise to run it, the Chinese went home to Beijing, spoke with the Central Committee in secret, and returned. They offered more food, more money, more conventional weaponry, marine military technology on par with China’s own Navy. They offered expanded trade rights, and better terms on China’s processing of the rare earth minerals after extraction. They offered high-profile diplomatic official visits by the Chinese leader to increase North Korea’s cachet on the world stage, and they extended invitations for Choi to come to China as a guest of the president.
But Choi had not been raised in a manner conducive to producing a diplomat. He’d been given virtually everything he wanted since birth; those around him knew crossing him could be punishable by death. He was therefore a truly awful negotiator. He was intractable, inflexible, and impatient.
Choi rejected it all. He wanted the means to deliver a nuclear device to the United States. In his mind it was the only way to be safe from attack and assassination.
China refused to allow the DPRK access to the technology to create their own long-range ICBMs. It wasn’t that China was trying to protect the United States, far from it. It was simply that China realized what North Korea would do once they had the most dangerous and most valuable bargaining chip in international affairs. They might or might not use the device, but the death of millions of Americans in nuclear fire was of lesser concern to the Chinese than the certainty that the ostracized pariah North Korea would exercise their newfound power on the world stage recklessly and threaten the region.
The destabilization of the Korean Peninsula was hardly in China’s self-interest.
One month to the day after the negotiations for the Chongju mine began in Pyongyang, the Chinese were notified that every Chinese national at the mine had seventy-two hours to leave the country. The executives of Minmetals and Chinalco, China’s state-owned mining operators, tried to reason with the North Koreans, but no North Korean official dared read any flexibility in Choi’s demand where none existed. The Chinese at Chongju rushed out of the country, leaving much of their equipment behind, though the Chinese geologists and engineers had done a remarkable job getting as much of it out of the DPRK as possible.
The open-pit mine went dormant overnight despite Choi’s demand to the director of the government’s mining arm, Korea Natural Resources Trading Corporation, to keep the mine open and operational.
The truth was the North Koreans had neither the equipment nor the know-how to operate a rare earth mineral mine on their own. On top of that, the Chinese had taken their generators with them, and the power lines into Chongju were inadequate for the operation.
The director of the mining concern explained all this calmly and carefully to Choi Ji-hoon, and this candor benefitted him greatly.
He was only thrown into a labor camp. He wasn’t executed.
There was one more piece of fallout from the Chinese rare earth mine negotiations. Choi had decided that his uncle, North Korea’s ambassador to China, had not been an honest broker in the affair. He held him personally responsible for the breakdown in negotiations with the Chinese, although it was Ji-hoon’s own uncompromising demands that had doomed the negotiations.
His uncle, his father’s brother, a man who could have ruled the DPRK had the cards been dealt differently, was relieved of his position and thrown into the internment camp at Chongjin in the northeast of the nation.
7
President of the United States Jack Ryan stepped out of the Oval Office while slipping on his suit coat. He passed through his secretary’s office and entered the adjacent cabinet room as he fixed his lapel and straightened his tie. In front of him he found a dozen men and women already waiting for his three p.m. meeting, and they stood as he appeared, but he waved them back to their seats quickly as he sat down at the head of the table and reached for a cup of coffee already positioned there for him.
His wife, Cathy, wasn’t crazy about his afternoon cup, but his blood pressure had been so good during his last checkup he’d successfully negotiated five ounces of black Jamaican light roast five days a week.
And Ryan was especially proud of this diplomatic coup.
He looked around to confirm the attendance of the usual suspects for most meetings involving national security: Secretary of State Scott Adler, CIA director Jay Canfield, Director of National Intelligence Mary Pat Foley, National Security Adviser Joleen Robillio, and Secretary of Defense Bob Burgess all sat near Ryan at the northern end of the table and, farther away, more men and women of the military, intelligence community, and Department of State sat with papers and tablet computers in front of them.
Also in attendance was Arnie Van Damm, Ryan’s chief of staff. Arnie wasn’t a national security official, but he, more than anyone else, had the President’s ear, and he had the President’s stopwatch. He had a lot of control over who got face time with Jack Ryan, and for this reason Ryan wanted him in important meetings of national security so Arnie could have an understanding of the stakes and give those involved in any crisis the access they needed to the Chief Executive. Ryan had heard of other Presidents being slaves to the agendas written up by lesser chiefs of staff, with the Girl Scout who sold the most cookies for the year getting more attention than an undersecretary of defense on a day when a world crisis loomed.
Ryan did his share of low-priority meet-and-greets, but he had no problem shooing away the Girl Scouts when he needed to give his attention to an impending catastrophe.
This meeting had been on the schedule for a few days; originally the topic had been a series of aggressive troop movements in Russian-held Eastern Ukraine, but Ryan had been given the heads-up this morning that the troubles in Central Europe would have to take a backseat today in favor of an even more pressing crisis. Ryan caught himself wishing the problems he faced on the world stage would all line up and approach in single file, but he’d been involved in government work for decades, and he knew emergencies preferred attacking simultaneously along a wide and coordinated front.
Ryan had learned through experience that good leadership meant staying versatile, flexible, and ready to put out fires as they flared, and the last-minute changeup that had been called for in today’s meeting was just one more example.