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US-Korea talks: Prelude to peace
treaty?
By Jaewoo Choo
SEOUL
- I have always been a big fan of American sports: Major
League Baseball, the National Basketball Association,
National Football League, and National Hockey League.
Growing up, I dreamed of becoming a sportswriter
covering Boston sports teams. But after graduating from
college and realizing my responsibility as a citizen to
make my society a better place by paying income tax, I
thought of going into the sports-agency business.
Had I realized that dream, today I would
probably be talking to George Steinbrenner, the owner of
the New York Yankees baseball team, about Pedro
Martinez, the ace pitcher of the Boston Red Sox,
perennial arch-rival of the Yankees. In a one-on-one
talk with Steinbrenner, it would not be easy to attract
his attention for other players. It would be a different
case, however, with Martinez, whom he covets very much.
After the fruitless first round of talks, what if I
approached him in a corridor on the way out and whipped
out Martinez' card? Obviously I would be making a very
bold move, expressing my willingness to continue our
talks. Would I be delivering a slap to the face of the
Red Sox? Maybe not, because I would be making a deal in
two ways, not just one.
After or during the
first round of the recent trilateral talks among China,
North Korea, and the United States in Beijing, the North
Korean negotiator, Li Gun, was reported to have
approached his US counterpart James Kelly in a corridor
at the meeting place and said his country had atomic
bombs that it was willing to test or sell to other
states. In addition, Li was reported to have suggested
some "bold proposals" to Kelly. As to the contents of
the proposals, no one knows. There is a growing
speculation, however, that the North may have asked the
US to consider ways to guarantee the regime's security
and the nation's safety by promising not to invade.
Many, including the US administration as well as
South Korea and Japan, received Li's confession with
much confusion. Was it pure coincidence that such a
confession was delivered to the same person twice in six
months? The North could have done so during earlier
meetings with US representatives in New Mexico, New
York, Geneva or Vienna. But the timing of the message
was not as awkward as claimed by some critics who viewed
it as a slap in the face of China, which had worked so
hard and long to arrange the trilateral meeting.
What is ironic is that it was these same critics
who reported that there was sufficient understanding and
communication between North Korea and China regarding
their positions on the trilateral meeting prior to its
realization. In addition, China was all too familiar
with its role in the talks from its experience in the
Four-Party Talks from 1997-99. To understand truly the
intentions and purposes of Li's whisper to Kelly, we
need to look at the talks in a much broader context. In
my dream about Steinbrenner, my intention was
comparable: to make an offer out of an understanding of
my counterpart's desire to win, as well as of the
free-agent market, while thinking beyond the short term.
At this stage, there is one thing that North
Korea wants to extract from the United States: a
guarantee of its regime's survival. It is a guarantee
that has to be legally bound by international standards.
A treaty of non-invasion is what North Korea wants.
Whether or not this is possible all boils down to
whether the US can trust North Korea. The US, for now,
will not yield to Pyongyang's suggestion because it
first wants Pyongyang to accept its demand of total
elimination of the threat posed by any North Korean
nuclear program. It is a matter of how they are going to
interpret such a question as egg or chicken first.
However, there is one strong development around the
Korean Peninsula that may substantiate the possibility
of such a pact between the two nations.
This is
the US scheme to redeploy its troops stationed in South
Korea. The scheme has been under a review since late
last year by the US administration and the US Department
of Defense. The scheme includes moving of the
headquarters of the South Korea-US Combined Forces
Command and the United Nations Command (UNC) to the
south of Seoul, namely in the Osan-Pyongtaek area, which
is a hub for the US Army and Air Force. It is also
reported that the so-called the US "Trip Wire" forces
based along the 38th parallel will all be removed to
either Osan-Pyongtaek or the Daegu-Busan area, another
hub for US military forces.
The plan will be
carried out in accordance with the changes in US global
strategy, and not on account of the ongoing
anti-Americanism. The United States, for one thing, is
in need of ground troops for building a new regional
international order in the Middle East after
successfully toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
According to South Korean military analysts, the US
needs at least 20,000 additional men and women to
safeguard its interests in the Middle East. To meet this
end, it will have to resort to redeploying its troops in
Germany and South Korea where withdrawal of manpower can
be replaced by advanced military systems. The importance
of the military system in today's warfare was confirmed
by Major-General James Soligan, deputy chief of staff of
UNC/USFK, at a news conference after his meeting with
his South Korean counterparts on the redeployment issue.
The United States' redeployment decision may be
worrisome in the context of South Korean military
strategy. It leaves the defense of the 38th parallel as
the sole responsibility of the South, while it will
significantly reduce the US role to a supporting one.
The US move, however, provides a much brighter prospect
for the stability and peace of the Korean Peninsula in
the long term, if and when the talks between North Korea
and the US fall through. It fulfills the long-sought
proposition for the so-called "peace treaty", a treaty
long insisted on by the North and South to replace the
armistice treaty that buttresses the current situation
of the Korean Peninsula, a remedy for the Korean War
half a century ago.
For the peace treaty to be
realized, the North wants the complete withdrawal of US
troops from the peninsula. However, at the end of the
Cold War, the North made a drastic change in its
position on the matter by suggesting not a complete
withdrawal, but a mutual move of conventional weapons
beyond a certain line. If that claim is still valid, and
it seems that it is, the US troops' southern deployment,
combined with the North's northward reeling-in of its
conventional weapons and troops, would lay a solid
foundation for talks leading to a treaty that includes
non-aggression and non-invasion clauses, as in its
original context when proposed in 1980s.
South
Korea does not necessarily have to be part of this
negotiation, for two reasons. One is the fact that the
sole purpose of the treaty, as far as Seoul is
concerned, is to replace the armistice treaty, of which
the co-signatories are the US/UNC, China and North
Korea. The other reason is the fact that the South and
North have already concluded a treaty that guarantees
non-aggression, the "Mutual Non-aggression Treaty"
signed in 1991. Thus, North Korea, once it gets its wish
from the US on the peace treaty, will gain a much
greater sense of security, thereby enabling it to trust
and have much more confidence in international community
surrounding itself.
In this respect it is safe
to assume that the ball is now in Washington's court. If
Washington now decides to guarantee the security of the
North for the sake of the talks, it will have to think
hard about how to do so. If it were to give some
consideration to the long-proposed peace treaty, it
would have to confront a serious challenge in handling
the labels it has placed on North Korea, as a "rogue
state" and member of an "axis of evil".
The
situation in the Korean Peninsula is far different from
that of Iraq in particular and the Middle East in
general. As will be revealed during the series of summit
talks among the United States, Japan and South Korea
next month, Tokyo and Seoul do not want to see the North
Korea problem deteriorate any further, and neither does
Beijing. Further US economic penalties against North
Korea would merely be a short-term answer - tantamount
to asking South Korea and China to share more financial
responsibility on behalf of North Korea. Remember, North
Korea always makes its demands in two ways, as reflected
in its recent demand for food and fertilizer from the
South and in the ongoing ministerial talks between the
two Koreas in Pyongyang.
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,
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