HONOLULU, Hawaii - This week marks the fourth
anniversary of the historic June 13-15, 2000, Pyongyang
summit meeting between then-South Korean president Kim
Dae-jung and the North's still "Dear Leader" Kim
Jong-il. It was a meeting that forever changed the
geopolitics of the Korean Peninsula. It made the
impossible - peaceful reunification - suddenly seem
possible. It did not - as history has now shown -
guarantee peace on the peninsula.
This is not to
detract from the significance of the summit or from the
positive accomplishments that have derived from Kim
Dae-jung's bold gesture. Contrary to the euphoria at the
time, the summit did not eliminate the prospects for war
on the peninsula, but it made a negotiated settlement
plausible, even likely. Both sides acknowledged that
their respective proposals for confederation, or loose
federation, provided a "common element" to build toward
eventual reunification. While the Joint Declaration
carefully avoided the topic of normalization of
relations or a South-North Peace Treaty, it nonetheless
ushered in an era of peaceful coexistence that
continues, however imperfectly, today. This was the
summit's greatest accomplishment.
The summit
also opened the door for increased economic contact
between the two sides, in keeping with Kim Dae-jung's
pledge, as part of his Sunshine Policy, to "separate
economics from politics". The North's resultant growing
economic dependency provides Seoul with increased
leverage over Pyongyang ... if it chooses to use it. It
also makes possible increased reunions by families
separated by the Korean War, even if the North's promise
to "promptly resolve" this issue has not fully been
kept, given Pyongyang's refusal to let its citizens see
what life is really like in the South.
Instead
of permitting home visits (or even continuing the
controlled visits held at hotels in Seoul and
Pyongyang), the North insisted that the South build a
costly reunion center at the North's Mount Geumgang
tourist resort area to control the reunion process
better and limit the exposure of its citizens to
Southern realities. The North also has built in
sufficient delays to the reunions, causing thousands of
elderly aspirants in the South to die before their turn
to visit their loved ones was realized.
Nonetheless, for the hundreds of families
allowed limited contact with long-lost loved ones
(Pyongyang forbids follow-up visits or contact) this
modest breakthrough alone was worth the cost of the
summit - and the cost was considerable; almost US$500
million was transferred to the North to help facilitate
the meeting. In addition, the summit reinforced
Pyongyang's belief, very much still in evidence today,
that it must be rewarded when taking cooperative
actions, even when such acts benefit the North as much
as (or more than) its eager interlocutors.
Despite the scandal associated with rewarding
Pyongyang for it cooperation, the summit was also
successful in opening up channels of dialogue between
North and South, which are now being used regularly,
including this year's direct discussions between senior
military officials, taking place for the first time.
This meeting, plus recent reports that the North is now
prepared to discuss a peace treaty directly with the
South, could indicate that the North is finally prepared
to treat the South as a legitimate interlocutor on
issues of peace on the peninsula, something it has long
resisted. If Pyongyang's recent gestures are sincere -
and this remains to be tested - then the June 2000
summit may finally be bearing some real fruit.
The biggest problem with the summit was that it
made war "unthinkable" in the minds of many in South
Koreans. This would not have been a problem - indeed, it
would have been its biggest blessing - if it had made
war unthinkable in fact. Unfortunately, that is not the
case. North Korea still possesses one of the world's
largest, most heavily fortified militaries and is
suspected of possessing a broad variety of weapons of
mass destruction (including but not limited to its
presumed arsenal of anywhere from two to eight nuclear
weapons). The North continues to challenge the South
militarily in disputed fishing waters - even after
holding military-to-military talks to avoid such
incidents - and periodically conducts missile tests to
remind the South that it is still capable of turning the
peninsula into a "sea of fire". Yet it has become
unfashionable - indeed, politically incorrect - to
acknowledge the North Korean threat for fear of
offending Pyongyang. This makes serious discussion on
the real security environment - not to mention the
importance of the US-ROK (Republic of Korea) alliance -
increasingly difficult and contentious.
Kim
Dae-jung's visit to Pyongyang also opened the door for
other world leaders subsequently to visit Pyongyang.
Without Kim Dae-jung's visit, Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi's effective diplomacy to bring back
Japanese abductees and their children would have been
unthinkable.
One unrealized hope of the summit
was the promised reciprocal visit by Kim Jong-il to the
South "at an appropriate time". Since the historic
summit, Kim Jong-il has made several visits to China to
meet with his counterparts in Beijing and to witness the
economic miracle of Shanghai. He has also taken his
specially configured train not only to Vladivostok, but
all the way across the continent to visit Russian
President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. With the rail line
between the North and the South finally moving toward
completion, perhaps the time is finally appropriate for
Kim Jong-il to honor his promise and see, first hand,
the South Korean economic and political miracle as well.
Ralph A Cossa is president of the
Pacific Forum CSIS (e-mailpacforum@hawaii.rr.com),
a Honolulu-based non-profit research institute
affiliated with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, and senior editor
of Comparative Connections, a
quarterly electronic journal.
