Author: Bernard K. Gordon, University of New Hampshire

President Obama’s twice-deferred trip to Indonesia is now scheduled for the week after next, and will be combined with a visit to Australia. In the familiar phrase, these visits come at the ‘best of times and the worst of times.’ It is the best of times because US relations with both Jakarta and Canberra have never been better. In 2008, President Yudhoyono announced his ‘Comprehensive Partnership with the US‘ — a sea-change for Jakarta—and it will be further formalised and intensified during Obama’s three-day visit.

The goal will be both to ‘catch up’ in sectors that have been relatively neglected in recent years, and to open up new fields for Indonesia-US cooperation. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale

The tension on the North Korean Peninsula is as high as it has been for many years. Not many in South Korea worried greatly about North Korea’s nuclear test or missile tests in the last few years, but 46 servicemen were killed in the sinking of the Cheonan, the corvette was lost and South Korean vulnerabilities are raw. Many prominent conservatives in South Korea want to strike back. President Lee has played it with a cooled head.

A retaliatory strike has enormous risks. It exposes Seoul. There are serious dangers of escalation. It sets the course of engagement even further back. Read more…

Author: Jong Kun Choi, Yonsei University

The South Korean Navy’s 1200 tonne Cheonan (PCC-722) was a Pohang-class corvette vessel commissioned in 1989. Its primary mission was coastal patrol with an emphasis on anti-submarine operations. It sank at 21:50 local time on Friday, March 26 about 1 nautical mile off the southwest coast of Baengnyeong Island near the disputed Northern Limit Line between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea. The ship had a crew of 104 men, 58 crewmembers were rescued. 46 sailors sank with the ship, later found to be dead. This is one of the deadliest incidents since the end of the Korean War. During the rescue efforts, one veteran non-commissioned UDT officer also died in the water. The ship was craned out of the ocean and found to be split into two halves.

South Korea has been shaken by the tragic incident and the government is now trying to determine the cause of the ship’s sinking. Tension, and a growing sense of uncertainty, loom large around the Korean peninsula. Read more…

Author: William Tow, ANU

Two developments critical to Asia-Pacific security transpired during early May 2010: the opening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (REVCOM) at the UN Headquarters in New York and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il’s visit to China.  They are inter-related by North Korea’s disregard of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) guidelines prohibiting its development of nuclear weapons.  A nuclear North Korea clearly threatens Australian interests. Any major conflict that explodes on the Korean Peninsula in the absence of North Korea’s denuclearisation, and that spreads throughout Northeast Asia, would cut Australia off from key trading routes, possibly involve Australian combat forces, and heighten prospects that Australia’s joint installations with the United States would be attacked by hostile regional powers.

Events leading up to both REVCOM and Kim’s trip underscore the challenges facing Australian policy-makers and other regional countries intent on realising regional peace and stability. Read more…

Author: Tom Rafferty, Peking University

Kim Jong-il was in China last week, his first overseas trip since he made the same journey in 2006. Entering China via train, the North Korean leader visited Dalian and Tianjin before journeying to Beijing for a rare high-level summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao and members of the Politburo’s Standing Committee. The visit was widely reported as yielding an ambiguous commitment from Kim ‘to discuss creating favorable conditions’ for restarting the Six-Party Talks on denuclearisation. This will be considered of little value in Seoul and Washington considering the ongoing investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan.

Although official rhetoric about the ‘traditional friendship’ between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and China suggests the contrary, Kim was a reluctant visitor to Beijing. Read more…

Author: Andrei Lankov, Kookmin and ANU

So after months of rumours and a couple of false reports, Kim Jong-il finally departed for China. This time his visit produced a palpable irritation in Seoul. Suspicions about Pyongyang’s involvement in the Cheonan disaster are mounting, so some South Korean politicians saw China’s willingness to invite the North Korean leader as a sign of tacit support for Pyongyang’s policy. This led to an outpour of critical statements, which are certain to have no impact on China’s actions, of course.

To start with, China ― in spite of all rhetoric of ‘eternal friendship’ ― is no admirer of Kim Jong-il’s regime and is frequently annoyed by the North Korean antics. Read more…

Author: Narushige Michishita, GRIPS, Tokyo

If North Korea did indeed sink the South Korean frigate Cheonan, it must have had three major objectives in mind.

First, Pyongyang wanted to create a situation where the signing of a peace agreement appears to be a strategically good option for the United States. Historically, whenever North Korea has proposed a peace agreement, it had raised tensions in the Yellow Sea and the demilitarised zone (DMZ). In 1973 North Korean naval vessels started to cross the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the quasi maritime demarcation line. Read more…

Author: Ralph A. Cossa, Pacific Forum CSIS

As it becomes more and more obvious the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan was sunk on March 26 by a North Korean torpedo, more and more voices are calling for cooler heads to prevail. Except, that is, for those who are calling for a strong, if not massive, military response to what, if confirmed, will be a clear act of aggression which violates the 1953 Armistice and thus invokes the US-ROK security treaty.

I say ‘if confirmed’, as the South Korean government has been very careful not to jump to any official conclusion, as increasingly obvious as it appears to be becoming, without a thorough investigation of the wreckage. Read more…

Author: Andrei Lankov, ANU and Kookmin University

On the evening of March 26, Cheonan, a 1,200 tonne South Korean corvette, was on patrol in coastal waters near the disputed border with North Korea when its stern was suddenly torn away by a powerful explosion.

The warship sank within a few minutes, taking the lives of 46 sailors. The South Korean government initially assumed the warship was attacked by a North Korean submarine and put its military on high alert. Read more…