The launch appears to have been undertaken to test the Obama Administration’s intentions toward, and perception of, North Korea. The US regarded the rocket as a missile and accused the North of violating the UN Security Council Resolution 1718. Despite North Korea’s claim that it launched a satellite as part of its commitment to the peaceful use of space, the act was interpreted as a provocation, which threatened the US and her allies in the neighbourhood. Compounding this, a second nuclear test on May 25 underscored the interpretation that North Korea now appears determined to act on its own accord, following its own timetable. This has heightened diplomatic pressure from Japan and South Korea, and forced the US to harden its stance on inducing North Korean policy change through tougher policies centered on isolation and containment.
Should North Korea continue to reject international pressure and persist with provocative actions, the US might have to entertain a resolution to the nuclear issue through regime change in the North. The US has even given the impression that it would be willing to take military action through close US-South Korea cooperation should any military conflict arise as events unfold. The deep concern is that any military escalation might not end in a conventional military conflict as North Korea nears the possession of operational nuclear weapons.
The June 16 US-South Korea summit meeting seems to have further aggravated situation on the Korean peninsula. The South Korean government might have pacified security concerns of its own people by securing American reassurance of ‘extended deterrence’ including a US nuclear umbrella over South Korea. But the move ended up justifying and recognizing fait accompli of the North as a nuclear state and would inevitably trigger a nuclear arms race on the Korean peninsula. The opening of such a Pandora’s Box would spell a security disaster from which there would be no easy exit that would embroil the region and the world.
The United States for the first time officially supported the Korean reunification based on market economy and liberal democracy at the summit meeting. North Korea views it as a hostile move to foster regime transformation in the North and to facilitate ‘Korean reunification through absorption’ a la mode Germany. And Seoul’s move to isolate the North has become all the more explicit during the summit as President Lee Myung-bak proposed to hold five party talks excluding North Korea. Overall, the June ROK-US summit meeting reaffirmed a strong alliance between the two countries at the expenses of improved inter-Korean and North Korean-US ties, clouding peace and security on the Korean peninsula.
Pressures alone cannot help resolving the North Korean nuclear problem. There are a number of issues in defining an alternative way forward that the Obama administration could well consider:
1. The Obama administration might reflect on the lessons learned from the ‘five lost years’ of the Bush administration and re-examine the merits of the ‘Clinton-Kim Dae-jung’ model. In particularly, it should look to the successes of the first and second inter-Korean summit meetings and consider seeking a breakthrough based on summit diplomacy.
2. Resolution of the North Korean issue requires, as a prerequisite a symbolic and substantive paradigm shift. President Obama’s speech delivered at Cairo University on June 4 touched the entire Islamic world and laid the groundwork for severing what has been a cycle of ‘suspicion and discord’ between the US and Islamic countries. The US needs also to make a similar political gesture of comparable scale and scope to North Korea, through which it can restore a sense of hope and possibility. At the same time, the US needs to send explicit signals that it will change its North Korean policy to back up the rhetoric. Only a bold and comprehensive approach will be able to resolve the current impasse.
3. The Obama administration needs greater empathy in evaluating the situation from the perspective of North Korea. It needs to acknowledge North Korea’s position and identity, in order to create and coordinate a more appropriately targeted stance against North Korea. Washington needs to listen not only to functional experts who specialize in the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction but also those who specialize in North Korean affairs. Washington has many amateur generalists on North Korea: the specialists now need to be heard.
4. The current structure of the Six-Party Talks lacks an adequate system of checks and balances. China and Russia have been increasingly diminished in the face of the concerted hard line position adopted not only by the US, South Korea and Japan, but also by North Korea. Without the prospect of a middle ground, the Six-Party Talks have lost their bearing and are at risk of losing legitimacy. The US needs to immediately re-establish the equilibrium, and China, as the host of the Six-Party Talks, needs a more active diplomacy. South Korea needs to realize that its tough stance against North Korea is not the whole solution.
5. The people of South Korea would not approve of a strategy of hostile neglect based on isolation and containment nor any consequent military action. If tension builds on the Korean peninsula as North Korea is relentlessly pushed into a corner, the anti-American sentiment witnessed between 2002 and 2003 is likely once again to spread like wildfire. The Obama administration needs to take action based on negotiation to resolve the issue, or the Korean peninsula may well become the Obama administration’s first diplomatic failure.
Chung-in Moon is Professor of Political Science at Yonsei University, has been Korea’s Ambassador for International Security Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asian Cooperation Initiative, a cabinet-level post, under president Roh Moo-Hyun. He attended the first and second Korean summit as a special delegate.
If the current situation is that “the deep concern is that any military escalation might not end in a conventional military conflict as North Korea nears the possession of operational nuclear weapons”, then imagine what would hold for the future if North Korea’s nuclear programs are more advanced and it becomes a full nuclear power? What could the international community do then if North Korea continues to act in the way as it has done recently?
The summit diplomacy by US, the two Koreas only is unlikely to work in the long term, but only generates short term confusions. While there have been short comings of the six party talks, that forum may be the only effective way to further progress the denuclearisation issue in the Korea peninsular, because Japan, China and Russia will also be affected by what will happen to North Korea and in the Korea peninsular.
It seems a little too early and premature to specify how the two Koreas should be unified at this moment. As the article states already, North Korea views the US stated support of unification on those conditions as a hostile move to foster regime transformation in the North and to facilitate ‘Korean reunification through absorption’ a la mode Germany. It is unlikely to accept that in the short term.
The issue of unification should be deferred until the denuclearisation issue has been resolved successfully. The unification issue should be left for the two Koreas to decide, but for the foreseeable future, the interests of the two sides need to be respected.
The 1994 ‘horse purchase’ was in essence crueled by Jesse Helms, who put a block on proceeding with the reactors. (‘We mustn’t reward bad behaviour’). Clinton didn’t stand up to him. Meanwhile, Pyongyang complied with the Framework for six years during which time US inspectors were allowed into Yongpyon and much good work was carried out in safeguarding plutonium (see diary entries of US nuclear scientists on the spot in contemporary Bulletins of the Atomic Scientists). In the end Pyongyang ran out of patience when the US and its allies failed to fulfil their part of the deal.
The 2007 deal was stymied by the Japanese insisting on linking kidnapped Japanese into the new deal, by Lee Myung-bak’s strong anti-Kim Jong-il line, and by the Americans adding more verification procedures.
Yes, it is too late for ‘benign neglect’, but not for further active diplomacy, this time leading to a deal without the kind of unexpected add-ons that infuriate the North. Maybe Obama’s administration can pull it off, but I think there is a strong neo-conservative set of nay-sayers in Washington intent on stifling another attempt. But what is the alternative? Harsher sanctions? Interceptions of ships? Shooting down test-fired missiles? (How would the Americans react if one of their missiles was shot down?) All heighten the probability of an unintended military clash leading to awful concequences. And Japanese antagonism doesn’t help.
If what Richard Broinowski says is true and I don’t have any reasons not to assume so, then it is disturbing to see three of the six party members (presumably in addition to whatever the North has done) to have contributed to the failures of the international efforts.
While the US, Japan and the South have tended to say that China has been too soft to the North, they perhaps need to reflect on their own strategies and their effects. The six party members all need to work together realistically and effectively, with well defined and clear objectives. No members should “violate” reached agreements.
It seems there are lessons for all members.