Seoul and Washington closer to
divorce By Lee Kyo-kwan
SEOUL - South Korea and the US have
drifted so far apart on North Korea policy there
is now speculation the longtime partners are
getting close to divorce.
Kurt Campbell,
former US deputy assistant secretary of defense
for Asia and the Pacific, reportedly likened the
two to a king and queen who live separately but
pretend to be happy before their
subjects. The allies do not
want to announce their divorce because it would
have enormous consequences, he said at a seminar
in Washington on February 27.
It is
believed US officials no longer trust their South
Korean counterparts on North Korea policy. Fueling
that speculation has been the recent friction
between Seoul and Washington over how to deal with
US allegations North Korea is counterfeiting US
dollars. While Washington has stepped up financial
pressure on Pyongyang in an effort to defend the
US currency, Seoul appears to have opposed such a
move.
The US Treasury Department charged
in September that Banco Delta Asia in Macau is one
of the foreign financial institutions being used
by North Korea to launder illegal money, including
counterfeit currencies. The Treasury Department
reportedly came up with a measure designed to
prevent foreign banks with North Korean accounts
from carrying out transactions with US banks.
So far, US pressure appears successful.
South Korean banks have followed their Japanese
counterparts in carrying out the US tactic - by
last month the Korea Exchange Bank, Shinhan Bank
and National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives
had stopped all transactions with Banco Delta
Asia.
However, unlike its banks, the South
Korean government has been reluctant to support
the US financial pressure on the North.
South Korean Unification Minister Lee
Jong-suk last month said his country still needs
to make a strategic judgment based on relations
between North and South Korea over how much will
it support the US measure against Pyongyang.
The government of President Roh Moo-hyun
is known to have urged the US administration of
President George W Bush to stop putting financial
pressure on the Kim Jong-il regime.
Michael Green, former senior director in
charge of Asia and the Pacific for the White
House's National Security Council (NSC), said
early last month that Seoul has sent Washington
signals several times suggesting that the US
lessen pressure on Pyongyang over the counterfeit
issue.
Sending such signals seems to be in
line with Roh's US policy. In his New Year's
address in late January, the president said that
if the US tries to solve matters with North Korea
by methods aimed at the regime's collapse, it will
cause a feud between Washington and Seoul. This
suggests he sees US financial pressure on North
Korea as a hardline scenario aimed at toppling the
Kim regime.
Two weeks after Roh's address,
friction between the two allies increased. South
Korea and the US disagree over the origins of
counterfeit US$140,000 found in April at the
Namdaemun market in Seoul. Washington says it told
Seoul the counterfeit dollars were printed in
North Korea. But Seoul countered that it hadn't
received any notice from Washington.
Since
the US Treasury Department identified Banco Delta
Asia as one of Pyongyang's money-laundering
channels, most North Korean trading companies have
suffered difficulties in foreign exchange
transactions.
If the US measure aimed at
preventing foreign banks with North Korean
accounts from doing transactions with US banks is
successful, nearly all North Korea's
foreign-exchange transactions are forecast to be
paralyzed, according to the diplomatic
sources.
If such a scenario materializes,
Pyongyang may have difficulty maintaining its
political and economic system. North Korea as a
result has called on the US to halt the pressure
as a precondition of its return to the six-party
talks on its nuclear program.
And if
Pyongyang is seriously affected by the US tactics,
Seoul's feud with Washington is likely to worsen.
Meanwhile, the number of South Korean
officials voicing concern over US financial
pressure is increasing. If US sanctions designed
to contain North Korea economically work, there is
a strong possibility of a severe diplomatic
conflict between South Korea and the United
States. Such a diplomatic split could be a death
blow to the half-century-long alliance, diplomatic
sources say.
Meanwhile, the US State
Department insists pressure on North Korea and the
six-party talks (involving the two Koreas, Russia,
Japan, China and the US) are separate matters.
This suggests that regardless of the alliance's
future, the US will continue its pressure on North
Korea to stop the country printing counterfeit US
currency.
Speculation that the alliance is
in trouble is also precipitated by Seoul's
three-year objection to Washington's policy aimed
at enabling US Forces Korea (USFK) to be moved
about freely beyond the Korean Peninsula.
The US Defense Department since 2003 has
called on the Roh government to allow US forces to
be dispatched to regions near the peninsula - such
as the strait between mainland China and Taiwan -
whenever there is a security crisis in the region.
The Pentagon calls the policy "strategic
flexibility".
But the Roh government had
refused permission, based on a long-standing
agreement involving US forces based on South
Korean soil, because of its deep worry that South
Korea could be unwillingly involved in military
conflict between the United States and China.
Seoul decided early this year to accept a
limited version of the Pentagon policy of
strategic flexibility. South Korean Foreign
Minister Ban Ki-moon and his US counterpart,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, signed an
agreement in late January in Washington. According
to the deal, the US is required to obtain
permission from Seoul before deploying South
Korea-based troops to other areas near the
peninsula.
However, two weeks after the
deal was signed, it ran into strong opposition
within the South Korean government and the ruling
Uri Party. Opposition is being led by lawmakers
and some Foreign Ministry officials who have
sought security policies more independent from
Washington.
Uri Party Representative Choi
Jae-chon produced a confidential NSC document
showing that in late 2003 senior officials of the
Foreign Ministry and the NSC sent Washington a
memorandum spelling out their intention to permit
USFK's strategic flexibility without Roh's
permission. The document was made public with the
help of some Foreign Ministry officials working in
the presidential office who have reportedly
advocated independent foreign policy.
It
would appear that officials seeking independent
foreign policy are accelerating their attack on
their counterparts who have placed more emphasis
on policy coordination with Washington.
With the South Korea-US alliance rapidly
deteriorating, USFK is having difficulty securing
training fields across the nation. US General Leon
LaPorte last month expressed concern about the
alliance's future in a speech before leaving his
office as commander of both USFK and the South
Korea-US Joint Forces.
"In the coming
years, the ROK-US alliance will be tested," he
warned, referring to South Korea by its official
name, Republic of Korea.
If a conservative
candidate supporting the alliance fails to win the
Korean presidential election of 2007, the US is
forecast to withdraw its forces from South Korea,
according to diplomatic sources. In fact,
speculation the allies' split may be imminent has
begun spreading since Roh took office in 2003 -
mainly because his government has officially
sought much more autonomy from Washington in its
North Korea and military policies.
Such a
policy shift has contributed to widening the rift
in the 53-year alliance. The split began with
former president Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy,
which advocates peaceful cooperation between North
and South with short-term reconciliation in
advance of eventual unification of the peninsula.
Kim, Roh's predecessor, provided Pyongyang
with economic support. Washington's
neo-conservative hardliners lashed out at the Kim
government for weakening their efforts by economic
containment to prevent Pyongyang from making
weapons of mass destruction. The policy rift is
believed to have led to North Korea beginning its
highly enriched uranium (HEU) nuclear-weapons
program in the 1990s.
James Kelly, then
assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the
Pacific, told North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister
Kim Kye-kwan during a visit to Pyongyang in
October 2002 that Washington knew North Korea had
an HEU nuclear-weapons program. Kim denied the
accusation, though the next day North Korean First
Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju admitted to
Kelly that his country had the program.
Two weeks after Kelly left Pyongyang, the
White House announced North Korea's admission. But
Pyongyang denied acknowledging existence of the
program and called on Washington to sign a
non-aggression pact in return for abolishing all
nuclear-weapons programs. Washington rejected the
proposal.
Since the end of 2002, the Kim
Jong-il regime has adopted brinkmanship policies
such as withdrawal from the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The Roh
government as part of its effort to seek
independent foreign policy, has refused to join
the Bush administration's diplomatic and military
pressure on North Korea.
For example, the
Roh government so as not to irritate North Korea
hasn't participated in the June 2003 US-led
Proliferation Security Initiative to
diplomatically and militarily prevent weapons of
mass destruction from proliferating. The
initiative is believed aimed at blocking North
Korea's proliferation of fissile material and
missile technology.
Seoul has also blocked
Washington's plan to present Pyongyang's violation
of the 1994 US-North Korea Agreed Framework on
nuclear issues to the UN Security Council. North
Korea has maintained that if the United States
brings the issue before the council, it will
regard the move as a provocation of war.
As proved by these disagreements in North
Korea policy coordination, South Korea and the US
seem to be having difficulty keeping a minimum
alliance.
In South Korea, the progressive
camp continues to seek a security policy much more
independent of the United States regardless of
concern over the weakening partnership, while the
conservative camp strives to resurrect the
struggling alliance.
The former maintains
the current North Korean nuclear crisis originates
from the US military goading the North. But the
latter contends the South Korea-US alliance has
prevented North Korea from provoking a war over
the past five decades.
Arguably, the most
important question for South Korea is whether it
can succeed in peacefully solving the social and
political conflict.
Lee Kyo-kwan
is a Seoul-based writer covering Korean political
and business affairs. He has worked for the Chosun
Ilbo, the Korea Herald and the Sisa Journal.
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