How North Korea bungled its
nuclear timing By Donald
Kirk
SEOUL - North Korea's nuclear test
has altered the landscape of alliances and
enmities in East Asia, suddenly putting Japan in
common cause with two terrible foes, China and
South Korea.
If Kim Jong-il deliberately
timed the test to coincide with Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe's visit first to Beijing and
then to Seoul, he may have dreadfully
miscalculated. The leaders of all three countries
could hardly agree more - the test is a
"provocation" and they have to act together to do
something about it.
The verbiage from
South Korea was startling. There, after his
summit on Monday with Abe,
was President Roh Moo-hyun declaring that South
Korea would find it "increasingly difficult to
stick by its engagement policy" with North Korea.
Is Roh really prepared, however, to do away with
nearly 10 years of efforts at reconciliation with
North Korea?
The answer, in the view of
increasingly restive conservatives in South Korea,
is that Roh's presidency has been a failure and
that the "sunshine policy" initiated his
predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, has failed to deliver
on any of its promises.
For all the strong
words, though, the future of engagement now rests
on whether Roh is willing to suspend a bundle of
economic and social programs that have
proliferated in recent years.
And are
South Korea and China ready to advocate economic
sanctions against North Korea after having
strenuously opposed them even after North Korea
test-fired seven missiles in early July?
Shinzo Abe, at a final press conference
here before returning to Tokyo, called on the
"international community" to adopt "harsher
measures" - an implicit rebuke of the soft line
that China and South Korea have been following.
By his manner and words, Abe conveyed the
sense that the North Korean test, announced by
Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency shortly
after he arrived in Seoul, had helped immensely in
resolving deep differences between Japan and South
Korea as well as China. "We saw eye to eye," he
said flatly after his meeting with Roh.
No
doubt about it, the news of the North Korean test
came as a devastating blow to nearly a decade of
efforts at North-South Korean reconciliation - and
also as a huge loss of face for China, widely
viewed as having pivotal influence in Pyongyang in
view of North Korea's reliance on China for aid
and trade.
China's response was that of
betrayal by a trusted follower. Denunciation of
the test as a "brazen" act suggested the vengeance
that China might contemplate. How, Chinese leaders
seemed to be asking, could Kim Jong-il treat us
with such disrespect after all the aid we've been
pouring into his dilapidated economy, including
fuel, food and cash?
More than face was at
stake. North Korea's nuclear test rekindled fears
of a regional nuclear arms race, one in which
Japan could threaten everyone else in the region,
reviving memories of the days of Japanese empire
beginning in the late 19th century.
There
was no trace, however, in statements from Beijing
or Seoul after the announcement of the test of the
kind of anti-Japanese sentiment that has been
reverberating through the headlines in the past
few years.
North Korea's display of
nuclear prowess "will bring about some new
perspectives on regional security", said Park
Young-ho, senior research fellow at the Korea
Institute of National Unification. "Maybe Japan
and even South Korea may have some temptation to
develop nuclear weapons."
The contentious
question of whether Abe would follow the lead of
his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, in visiting
Japan's Yasukuni shrine honoring Japan's war dead,
including the war criminals who led the Japanese
empire to conquest over China and Korea, was
barely mentioned. And neither Roh nor Abe seemed
to want to quarrel over those rocky islets in the
East Sea/Sea of Japan that are known as Dokdo to
the Koreans whose police occupy them, and as
Takeshima to the Japanese who claim them.
The impression was that Abe, while hardly
giving up his right to visit the shrine, much less
yielding on Japanese claims to Dokdo/Takeshima,
might put off a display of such overt nationalism
in the interests of new-found friendship with
China and South Korea.
Roh, who inherited
the "sunshine policy" formulated by Kim Dae-jung,
said his government would find it "increasingly
difficult to stick to its engagement policy".
While South Korea would not abandon its desire for
peaceful dialogue, he said, "we may not continue
to be patient and to yield to North Korea's
demands". Roh's remarks reflected rising
conservative pressure for his government to give
up what are seen as leftist policies, and to
consider closing down business and tourist
programs.
While warning of possible "stern
measures", however, Roh did not specify exactly
what he might do. Options included suspension of
permission for South Korean companies to operate
in a special economic zone at Kaesong, across the
line between the two Koreas about 40 miles north
of Seoul, and to bar South Koreans from going on
tours to the Mount Kumkang resort region in which
South Korea's Hyundai group has invested about
US$1 billion.
The North Korean test also
seemed likely to bring South Korea closer to the
United States after increasingly strained
relations in which South Korea has opposed what
was seen here as the "hard line" of the Bush
administration ever since President George W Bush
included North Korea in an "axis of evil" in 2001.
"Korea and the US will get closer to
convergence in putting pressure on North Korea,"
said Kim Sung-han, professor at the Institute of
Foreign Affairs and National Security, an adjunct
of the foreign ministry. South Korea, he said,
"might join the Proliferation Security Initiative"
- a US-sponsored effort to get nations to band
together in an effort to stop the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction. South Korea has so
far refused to join PSI, preferring observer
status at exercises.
Another option, said
Kim, would be for the Seoul to "consider joint
missile defense" with the US and possibly even
Japan - a level of interdependence that the Roh
government had previously opposed.
Yet
another question is that of the basic US-Korean
alliance. A South Korean spokesman reminded North
Korea of the strength of that alliance in a
critical period in US-Korean relations.
Roh seemed almost hurt as he spoke of the
"common and broad approach" that he had forged
with Bush during their meeting at the White House
last month. Out of that meeting came a new
"comprehensive" proposal for North Korea - on
which the North never commented. Now, said Roh,
that approach would have to change.
It's
not clear if that approach offered anything new,
but there's no doubt Roh's policy toward
Washington will undergo revision if not
transformation. One place to begin may be on the
controversial plan for changing the agreement
under which South Korean troops would remain under
South Korean leadership in case of war rather than
under a single US command. South Korean
conservatives, including former defense ministers
and army commanders, have zealously opposed the
whole idea, seen as proof of Roh's leftist
anti-Americanism.
In the aftermath of the
nuclear test, anti-Americanism may be falling out
of fashion in South Korea.
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