Pyongyang watches as friends fall out By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - President George W Bush may have difficulty disguising his
annoyance when he meets the leaders of China and South Korea on Saturday in
Hanoi during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting.
Just when the US appeared to have gotten somewhere in enlisting their
cooperation in combating the North Korean nuclear threat, both of them said
"forget it" when it came to interdicting North
Korean vessels on the high seas.
The most humiliating rebuff was at the hands of South Korea, which finally said
no to US entreaties to sign on to the
Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), an amorphous project for international
cooperation on North Korea's weapons of mass destruction.
South Korea's view appears in line with that of China, which has paid lip
service to PSI but is dead set against using military force to make it work.
Bush, in his meeting with President Hu Jintao, will have to sublimate his
frustration on PSI and focus on insuring Chinese cooperation in persuading
North Korea to make good on its commitment to return to the six-party talks in
Beijing on its nukes.
Bush may be less circumspect, however, when he sees Roh, who has angered US
neo-conservatives by what they see as his weak-kneed response to North Korean
threats.
The fact that North Korea had test-fired a volley of missiles in July and then
exploded a nuclear device in October was not enough to convince South Korean
leaders of the need to sign on to PSI.
In fact, confirmation of North Korea's rising prowess in developing nuclear
warheads - and the means to deliver them to targets as far away as the US West
Coast - may have driven policymakers in Seoul in the opposite direction, away
from anything to do with the US-sponsored plan for frustrating North Korea's
nuclear ambitions.
That was the unmistakable impression after South Korea's top policymakers
decided that acquiescence to US pressure to sign on to PSI would only
antagonize North Korea - and jeopardize their unremitting efforts at
reconciliation.
The decision was a blow to the US while Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice were gearing up for the annual gathering of national leaders of APEC in
Hanoi. Rejection of the US plea for South Korea to join PSI represented a
direct rebuff of pressure exercised by Robert Joseph, under secretary of state
for disarmament, who had trouped from Tokyo to Seoul to Beijing just a week
proselytizing for PSI.
The formal word from the White House and the State Department was that the US
"respected" the South Korean position, but US officials saw it as a betrayal -
and further evidence of the deterioration of the US-Korean alliance.
South Korean officials also left no doubt that the US mid-term congressional
elections - and the demise of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary - played
into their thinking. Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, quoted one official
as saying "recent political changes in the US", including the end of Republican
control of both houses of the US congress and Rumsfeld's resignation, "could
also be taken into account".
Analysts noted that the decision to spurn PSI came after a meeting of three top
South Korean leaders, all of them opposed to a tough position on North Korea.
Song Min-soon, replacing Ban Ki-moon as foreign minister while Ban prepares to
take over as United Nations secretary general, was viewed as primarily
responsible for dismissing the US request. He was joined by Kim Geun-tae, the
left-leaning chairman of the Uri Party of President Roh Moo-hyun, and Han
Myeong-sook, who holds the almost honorific post of prime minister.
Song upset conservatives - and US officials - by remarking at a forum in Seoul
that the US had been involved "in the largest number of wars in the history of
mankind" and warning against "giving up our own destiny" by entrusting "our
fate in the hands of the US".
A conservative member of the National Assembly, Park Jin, said that Song
exemplified "the government's optimism on the North Korean nuclear issue" and
doubted he should serve as foreign minister. Song denied, though, that he was
anti-American, saying that in 31 years as a diplomat he had never "made any
anti-American comments or acts".
US officials were hardly mollified by South Korea's decision to support a
vaguely stated, non-binding UN resolution on human rights in North Korea. The
decision initially appeared to mark a surprising reversal of South Korea's
policy not to offend North Korea by taking a stand on its abysmal human-rights
record, but the resolution bears all the earmarks of a typical UN pronouncement
that the UN has no way of enforcing.
The Unification Ministry, responsible for dealings between the two Koreas, left
no doubt the South Korean position was basically a sop to critics in the US and
elsewhere who frequently accuse South Korean of doing far too little by way of
condemning the North for human-rights abuses.
Predicting North Korean "uneasiness over our move", a Unification Ministry
official said he believed North Korea would come to "understand why we made
such a painful decision". The purpose, he said, was "just to express sympathy
for the international community's worries" - nothing more.
The incoming minister at the Unification Ministry appeared if anything more
anxious for reconciliation with North Korea than his predecessor, often accused
of toadying to the North. Lee Jae-jeong, a target of conservative criticism in
South Korea, repeated the same criticism of US policy that other members of
Roh's administration have been voicing for years.
The US, said Lee, should "step away from a one-sided North Korea policy" and
"depart from policies that pursue the demolition of the North Korean regime" -
a goal the US has repeatedly disavowed. Instead, Lee recommended the US enter
into the same type of dialogue that he said had "changed socialist Vietnam".
US military officials responded privately with shock to this pronouncement,
noting that North Vietnamese forces overran South Vietnam after the signing in
January 1973 of the Paris peace agreement engineered by Henry Kissinger and
North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho under which the last US troops left South Vietnam in
1974.
"So does South Korea now want the US to negotiate a deal under which North
Korea takes over the South," asked one distressed US analyst. "And does he want
a one-party system that brooks no dissent?"
Lee, like US critics of the Bush administration, was not all that impressed by
the prospect of six-party talks. While multilateral talks were "important" he
said, "profound discussions on detailed issues is needed" with the Bush
administration offering "far-reaching" incentives, including a security
guarantee.
North Korea's nuclear test appeared to have been forgotten except in the minds
of Bush and Rice, who warned North Korea of the consequences of another test.
Rice also called on North Korea to return to the table with the intention of
making a real deal rather than engaging in the usual rhetoric. That wish,
however, appeared downright fanciful.
Jack Pritchard, US negotiator on North Korea during the Bill Clinton
administration and now president of the Korea Economic Institute, funded by the
South Korean government, said he believed North Korea was after "short-term
gains", including the lifting of financial restrictions imposed by the US
Treasury Department on banks dealing with North Korea. The North Koreans, he
said, were "not in this to give up their nuclear weapons".
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
