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Grand design for a Korean 'peace structure'
By Jaewoo Choo
SEOUL - While
the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
has fervently denied a report on Friday by Japan's
Mainichi Shinbun that Seoul is thinking about supplying
North Korea with gas in exchange for the latter's
abandoning its nuclear program, the report has offered
observers of Korean affairs a clue to what
President-elect Roh Moo-hyun means by solving the
nuclear crisis in "multilateral ways".
The timing
of the
report is also interesting. It appeared at the conclusion of
US assistant secretary of state James Kelly's visit to
China and before his arrival in Seoul, and just before
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov's arrival in Pyongyang.
Against this background, we can assume that there is a
far-reaching deal - or set of deals - behind Roh's grand
strategy of a multilateral approach to the problem of
North Korea's nuclear program.
Adding to the
peculiarity of Roh's approach is his recent statement on
South Korea's relations with the United States on a
television program on Saturday. Despite his comforting
remarks during his visit to the ROK-US Combined Forces
Command (CFC) stressing the importance of the
Seoul-Washington alliance, on the TV program he, once
again, took an abrupt turn on his view of the
relationship. Roh said he intended to make changes to
the current bedrocks of bilateral relations, such as the
mutual defense treaty, the Status of Forces Agreement
(SOFA) and the format of the two countries' alliance.
His stance is substantiated by his prior announcement on
Friday of building a so-called "peace structure" on the
Korean Peninsula. "Peace structure" is nothing new. It
has long been proposed as one of the most viable and
effective measures to settle the military-confrontation
problems lingering from the Korean War armistice treaty
concluded by the United States, China and North Korea.
In all these developments, one thing can lead to
another. If Roh is really to solve the Korean Peninsula
problem in the context of a peace structure, it will
require a great deal of wheeling and dealing involving
the numerous players, namely the United States, Russia
and Japan, as well as North Korea. The blueprint of the
so-called peace structure is to create a peace on the
Korean Peninsula by reciprocal recognition of the two
Koreas by the neighboring states, including Russia,
China and Japan, as well as the US. Based on this
cross-recognition of the South and North, the theory
calls for a floor where disarmament and/or conventional
arms reduction, a settlement of the military
confrontation along the 38th parallel, and
confidence-building measures can all be discussed and
negotiated. Settling these scores, however, requires
first that the Korean War armistice is replaced by a
peace treaty, which would have to include South Korea as
a signatory state. To guarantee the peace created by
such a treaty, a non-invasion clause would have to be
inserted, because confidence measures and trust between
the concerned parties are very much lacking at this
stage.
In theory, establishing a peace structure
seems feasible. In practice, unfortunately, it is not.
The United States and Japan have yet to recognize North
Korea diplomatically. That makes it much harder for
South Korea to be included in a peace treaty replacing
the armistice. In addition, the US still regards North
Korea as one the "axis of evil" nations on top of being
a rogue state. Even if North Korea were to be
emancipated from the axis of evil label, it would still
have to confront the reality of being a rogue state on
the United States' blacklist, a label that only the US
public and Congress have the right to remove.
Furthermore, since there is no mutual trust or
confidence between Washington and Pyongyang,
implementing arms reduction would be a very difficult
task, not to mention bringing the North into such a
dialogue.
If a peace structure is to be realized
as the South Korean president-elect would like to think,
he will need a handful of cards. These cards must have
an appealing, yet appeasing, effect on all concerned
nations, North Korea, the United States, Japan and
Russia. It is currently speculated, with much caution,
that Roh could realize this end by undergoing four
different phases of dealing and wheeling.
Roh
obviously has to deal with the United States first.
Under his leadership, his government will have to carry
through a seemingly impossible mission to sell its
belief in the necessity of arms reduction that would
have to include reduction of US military forces in
Korea, if not their complete withdrawal. To sweeten this
proposal, Roh could make a few offers to Washington. As
a tradeoff for reducing the US force, he could propose a
buildup of South Korea's military system with a big
purchase of US military hardware. There is a precedent
for this, in what South Korea did at the end of the
Desert Storm campaign in 1991. That conflict so
effectively demonstrated so many new weapons that US
allies ended up purchasing them. The United States'
impending attack on Iraq may have similar consequences
in promoting new weapons. Roh could utilize the
opportunity to his advantage to work out a deal with the
United States, a tradeoff of arms reduction and
restructuring the current military system with a bulk
purchase of new weapons.
If such a deal with the
United States were struck, Roh could then move on to
North Korea with much more flexibility and
maneuverability. With an agreement for arms reduction in
terms of both conventional weapons and US military
forces in his hands, Roh would be able to offer a
guarantee that North Korea would not be invaded by any
nation that it perceived to be a threat. In exchange, he
would be able to demand that the North accept inspection
on its nuclear system and, subsequently, give up all its
nuclear-development programs, thereby realizing the
spirit of the agreement concluded in 1991 between the
two Koreas to denuclearize the peninsula. The North's
acceptance of such a scheme would enable Roh to upgrade
the scale and degree of his pursuit of a "Sunshine
Policy", meaning greater economic aid and support for
the North. To achieve this end, he would have to be much
more lenient on South Korean firms investing and
engaging in economic activities in the North. Naturally,
constitutional reform in respect to activities
concerning North Korea would have to follow.
China would favor this kind of scenario, as it
dearly wishes to see a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula as
well as a peaceful Korea. However, one thing China would
give serious thought to is the extent to which declining
US influence and presence on the peninsula would allow
Japan to become a "normal" state. Nonetheless, since the
peace-structure scenario is conditioned by a
multilateral security arrangement, ie, a multilateral
cooperative system, Chinese anxiety over Japan's
militarization could be soothed.
As for Russia
and Japan, there are a couple of cards Roh could play.
He could help Russia's economic recovery through the
development of gas pipelines. There are two potential
gas-reserve areas that attract South Korea's attention
and interest, one in Kovyktinskoye/Irkutsk and the other
off Sakhalin. At the moment, the latter seems more
favorable as its developer is a US firm, ExxonMobil,
while the former's developer is British Petroleum (BP).
As well, Sakhalin is geographically much closer to the
Korean Peninsula. In the end, South Korea's investment
in the Sakhalin pipeline could be a win-win situation
for both Russia and the United States: while Russia
would benefit from an estimated US$2.7 billion project,
the US would secure a permanent consumer.
As far
as Japan is concerned, with North Korea's nuclear
program scrapped and a multilateral cooperative security
system at work, it couldn't be much happier, for a
couple of good reasons. One is that it could also become
a beneficiary of the gas-pipeline project carried out by
South Korea. While offering a connection to the
pipeline, South Korea could be assertive in its demand
for other assistance and support to the North's economic
development. Another possible incentive that South Korea
could present to Japan is an offer to speed up
feasibility studies on a free-trade agreement. As both
states wish to complete the study at the earliest
possible time so as not to lag behind the international
trend to FTAs, they could do so with a much more lenient
posture from the South Korean side. Other cooperative
issues such as sharing the burden of economic assistance
and aid to the North could also be pushed through at a
dramatic pace.
All these developments and
scenarios will be contingent upon the United States'
future stance on the Korean Peninsula affairs. The
recent statements by US government officials and
President George W Bush on North Korea, however, give
some reason for confidence. They indicate a significant
change in the United States' position on North Korea,
retreating from its hardline policy and adopting a more
conciliatory approach. From the beginning of this year,
it was Bush who proclaimed his desire to solve the
nuclear crisis through dialogue and revealed his
unwillingness to take any kind of military action. These
principles of dialogue and no invasion were reiterated
and confirmed by Kelly throughout his entire tour of
East Asia, and once again by Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage in Washington on Sunday.
Under
the current softened circumstances, Roh's special envoys
are scheduled to visit the United States, China, and
Russia next month, and a visit by Roh himself to
Washington is tentatively set for March. If things go
smoothly, Roh will be placed in a much better bargaining
position to realize his grand design of establishing a
peace structure on the Korean Peninsula.
Jaewoo Choo, PhD, is a research fellow
with the Trade Research Institute, Seoul. The opinions
expressed in this article are his own.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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