SEOUL - North Korean Foreign Minister Paek
Nam-sun had a message for the ASEAN Regional Forum
(ARF), an annual gathering that attracts the
foreign ministers of just about any country with a
stake in the region.
Paek's message at the
gathering in Kuala Lumpur last week wasn't that of
reconciliation, or desire for talks, or talk about
talks, or talks on the sidelines or any of the
other terms bandied about by hopeful diplomats and
journalists.
Stolidly silent, refusing to
attend a separate confab of 10 other ministers
trying to entice him back to six-party talks on
North Korea's nuclear program, Paek had just the
opposite news for anyone yearning for an easing of
tensions since his country test-fired missiles in
early July.
We're going to tough it out,
he seemed to be saying, and we're
not
yielding to anyone until the United States removes
its "sanctions" on financial firms doing business
with North Korea. There would be no quick
tete-a-tete with Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who flew in frantically from the
uproar in the Middle East, no handshake, no trace
of a smile for journalists and think-tanks to
analyze.
Paek's instructions, presumably
straight from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who
has been out of public sight since before the
test-firing, were clearly to avoid the slightest
nuance of a hint that Pyongyang, having gotten the
world's attention with the missile shots, was now
ready to deal. As Rice passed within centimeters
of him for a photo-shoot of the assembled
ministers, he managed only a scowl.
Probably no one was more disappointed than
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, who is
bucking for the post of secretary general of the
United Nations and eager to demonstrate his own
skills as a peacemaker on a world stage.
But Ban can pride himself on getting the
forum to come up with meaningless disapproval of
North Korean missile-testing. Ban, who sometimes
appears to have modeled his bland, boring
statements after those of current UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan, was just as anxious to see
that no harsh language reverberated around the ARF
as he was trying to bring the North to the table.
Having gotten nowhere in Kuala Lumpur,
Rice flew back to Israel while that country's
planes were bombing the hapless city of Qana in
southern Lebanon, leaving her assistant secretary
for East Asia and the Pacific, Christopher Hill,
to moan over North Korea's deepening "isolation".
Hill warmed to the theme at a weekend retreat in
the Philippine hill resort city of Baguio, telling
reporters outside another conference that the
United States was ready to isolate North Korea
still more if that was the game Pyongyang wanted
to play.
Seen as a skilled diplomat not
given to intemperate outbursts, Hill no doubt
carefully measured his words for maximum
intimidating effect. His words, though, were
clearly the diplomatic equivalent of "Bring 'em
on."
The United States could well press
switches and pull levers that might deepen North
Korea's agony. For starters, the US could play on
that "unanimous" tut-tutting by the UN Security
Council over Pyongyang's weapons program. Didn't
the resolution not only spank North Korea for
firing the shots, but abjure member nations not to
buy, sell or otherwise deal in anything to do with
weapons of mass destruction or missiles going to
or from that country? And didn't all that verbiage
also call a halt to sending funds to North Korea
that might be used for its missile program?
The resolution has no teeth, though, and
Chinese diplomats, also in Kuala Lumpur, said no
way would they support a move toward imposing UN
"sanctions" on North Korea. The US might talk on
and on about "isolating" North Korea, but where
does China really stand?
The White House
was ecstatic when Chinese banks finally "froze"
North Korean accounts - supposedly before the
missile shots - in retaliation for counterfeiting
not only US but Chinese currency.
The
impact of the Chinese move, though, remains
unclear. How much was really in those accounts,
and haven't North Korea and China worked out a
complex web of other relationships and connections
on either side of the Yalu River?
Talk of
isolating North Korea lost real meaning, moreover,
in the aftermath of the bombing of Qana. US and
Israeli diplomats might argue that Iran and Syria
were all to blame for having spurred on their
surrogate force, the band of Hezbollah guerrillas,
but the vast majority of the rest of the world
isn't buying that argument. It's the United States
that faces isolation - the United States and
possibly Japan, as Tokyo's conservative leaders
nerve themselves up for both changing the no-war
constitution, dropping Article 9, which renounces
the use or threat of force as a way of settling
international conflicts, and setting the stage,
eventually, for defensive strikes against North
Korea.
US isolation on North Korea means
the United States and Japan have no real allies at
all when it comes to getting tough on Pyongyang.
Nor can the United States begin to think of a real
war in the region without a vast change in the US
mood, already turned off by war in Iraq and
hostile toward any notion of reviving the draft.
For now, the US needs to fight through its
own surrogate armies - how else can one
characterize the Israel Defense Forces, armed with
tanks, aircraft and almost everything else by the
United States?
US policy also calls for a
surrogate defense force in South Korea - that is,
a South Korean military establishment that's
strong enough to take on the North and anyone who
might rush to the North's defense, mainly China.
That's why the United States has committed US$11
billion to modernization of South Korean forces,
and that's the rationale for pulling back US bases
and scaling down forces to maybe 25,000 troops in
two years from the current level of 29,500 -
already down from 37,000 five years ago.
The United States, however, is isolated in
South Korea as well. No doubt South Korea is
turning conservative; radical demonstrations have
lost much of their appeal and most people would
like to preserve the diplomatic and military
status quo while worrying about the perception of
a weakening economy. The government of President
Roh Moo-hyun, anxious for appeasement, is highly
unpopular, but that's mainly because of unease
about the economy and distaste for his political
and personal style.
The last thing South
Koreans want to risk is a second Korean War -
especially one they would have to fight to prove
the US point about North Korea's isolation.
Anti-Americanism smolders here. A US move toward
military action against the North might be all
that's needed to ignite a conflagration.
Kim's strategy rests in part, it seems, on
encouraging his own isolation. Quite aside from
disappearing from view for more than a month now,
he's closing down to the outside world in other
ways. Last weekend, the North canceled the Arirang
Festival, a display of Mass Games with a cast of
tens of thousands, to which 7,000 South Koreans
flew on overnight trips last year. This year
thousands of foreigners were also supposed to go,
all at rather exorbitant rates for tightly guided,
guarded tours, but they'll have to wait until
April.
The excuse for the cancellation was
the damage caused by flooding, but that's probably
a pretext. The cancellation came right after
Paek's display of standoffishness in Kuala Lumpur
and before a military exercise called Ulchi Focus
Lens in which thousands of US and South Korean
troops play computer games. North Korea clearly
wants to show off its petulance, to demonstrate
the power of isolation - and challenge China to
stand on its side in a showdown.
No one
doubts North Korea is isolated, and possibly
getting more so. It's also possible Kim faces
severe internal forces of which no one really has
any knowledge. The fighting in Lebanon, though,
echoes here in the sense of rising US isolation -
and America's inability to do much about it
without risking grave, unforeseen consequences.
The images of suffering inflicted by US bombers -
piloted by Israeli surrogates - carry an indelible
message for South Korea: our US ally is
responsible and we can't let it happen to us.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been
covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces
in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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