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Seoul caught between the
dragon and the eagle
By Jamie
Miyazaki
Pyongyang's July 31 announcement
delivered via the Russian Foreign Ministry of its
acquiescence to multilateral talks on resolving the
nuclear crisis appears to have broken the impasse of
April's apparently fruitless trilateral nuclear talks
held in Beijing. The announcement has upped the tempo
for the participating six nations as they engage in a
furious round of shuttle diplomacy over the next few
weeks, probing one another's positions before they sit
down to what probably will be a long and protracted game
of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) poker.
South Korea will be heavily engaged in the
behind-the-scenes horse-trading prior to the talks. This
week it will meet with its allies the United States and
Japan to hammer out a common negotiating strategy and
will host a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Li
Zhaoxing. What is surprising is that until 1992 Seoul
had no formal diplomatic relations with Beijing. Yet
today its former Cold War adversary is a key partner in
hammering out a solution to the Pyongyang problem. In
little over a decade Seoul-Beijing relations have
transformed from one of mutual animosity to a
self-proclaimed "comprehensive cooperative partnership".
From a historical perspective such a rapid thaw
in relations is unsurprising considering the Korean
Peninsula's cultural affinity with its larger neighbor
and nearly two millennia of shared history. However, it
was Cold War ideology that shaped Korean-Chinese
diplomacy from 1945 until the collapse of the Berlin
Wall - with Beijing recognizing only Pyongyang as the
rightful Korean government. Geopolitical realities and
Beijing's shift to a capitalist economy forced Seoul and
Beijing to re-evaluate their relationship in 1992, and
since then there has been no looking back.
In
2002 bilateral trade between South Korea and China was
worth US$41.2 billion compared with a paltry $19 million
back in 1979. Had it not been for severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS) this year, China would have
gone on to eclipse the United States as South Korea's
biggest export market - this now does not look set to
occur until next year. However, China is already South
Korea's No 1 investment destination and both nations are
eagerly establishing joint research centers in various
fields. On August 5 the Chinese minister of commerce was
in Seoul asking for South Korean firms to step up their
investment in China, especially in the nearby Bohai Sea
region.
Burgeoning Seoul-Beijing ties are in
marked contrast to an increasingly strained
Seoul-Washington relationship. Last year's positive
South Korean media coverage of the 10-year anniversary
of normalization of ties with Beijing was in marked
contrast to its coverage of the George W Bush
administration's dealings with both Seoul and Pyongyang.
North Korea has gone from being the bedrock of the
Seoul-Washington alliance to it major dividing issue.
South Korean society's democratization, with its
new generation of leaders looking to question the
existing US security framework, coupled with economic
transformations in China and a new generation of Chinese
leaders more proactive in regional affairs, has
accelerated the trend toward a shared South
Korean-Chinese vision of regional security. The Bush
administration has always been very skeptical of the
Sunshine Policy's efficacy, whereas China has long
argued for a Korean resolution to the present crisis and
has been supportive of the Sunshine Policy.
Strained Seoul-Washington ties are also
ironically mirrored by strained Pyongyang-Beijing ties.
Beijing tends to view Pyongyang more as a strategic
liability than an asset these days. Chinese assertions
of Beijing-Pyongyang relations being closer than gum and
tooth omit mentioning that it is suffering from a bad
case of gingivitis. Prior to the April talks, Beijing
was forced to close an oil pipeline to North Korea for
three days so as to get its difficult neighbor to the
negotiating table with Washington. Just before the talks
commenced, General Cho Myung-rok of North Korea met with
Chinese President Hu Jintao to seek an assurance of
Chinese support in the event of hostilities but failed
to get a definite guarantee. Pyongyang's nuclear
revelations a few days later, was widely seen as a dual
snub at both Beijing and Washington. One senior Chinese
official conceded after the April talks that "Korea is a
big problem". It is telling that this time Pyongyang
chose to announce its acceptance of multilateral talks
through Russia and not China.
A nuclear
Pyongyang could also prompt Tokyo to go nuclear and
Japan's colonial legacy has made both Seoul and Beijing
very wary of such a scenario. China has long identified
Tokyo as a major East Asian strategic competitor, and in
a February 2002 poll 66 percent of South Korean National
Assembly members identified Japan as the biggest
potential threat to regional stability as opposed to
just 28 percent for North Korea. South Korean and
Chinese mistrust of Japan has further encouraged both
nations to run parallel policies in favor of dialogue
and engagement with Pyongyang. US policies of fostering
a more robust Japanese defense and foreign policy will
probably only serve to encourage a further tightening of
the South Korean and Chinese positions.
South
Korean sensitivity to discussing China related issues at
the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) -
the South Korean, US and Japanese forum for formulating
a united North Korea policy, and its decision not to
join the United States and Japan in developing a missile
defense system has further irritated its erstwhile
allies. Meanwhile Beijing and Seoul have begun
complementing their strong economic ties with nascent
military visits and exchanges.
However, claims
that Seoul may chose to depart from the US security
umbrella in favor of Beijing are probably premature at
this stage. Both Seoul and Beijing are having to balance
their relationship with the value of security
cooperation with Washington over North Korea and any
regional instability resulting from a strategic
realignment of Seoul. As it stands very few in Beijing,
Seoul and Washington consider a complete South Korean
realignment with Beijing feasible or desirable at
present.
As with so much to do with the Korean
crisis, the major players all seem to favor the current
rather messy and undefined status quo for the moment.
Unfortunately, as the multilateral talks will invariably
demonstrate, somewhere along the line these prickly
issues will need to be tackled.
As it prepares
its negotiating position in the run-up to the six-nation
talks, South Korea once again finds itself sandwiched
between competing global powers. In order for it to
secure a resolution of the current nuclear crisis that
is acceptable to it, it will need to devise a workable
strategic balance between Beijing and Washington. Being
caught between a dragon and an eagle has rarely looked
so difficult.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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