Koreas' summit: Handshakes and handouts
By Donald Kirk
NEW YORK - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will be able to put a high price tag
on every move he makes to reduce the threat of his huge military establishment
when he meets South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun at the second inter-Korean
summit in Pyongyang this month.
The government of South Korea, thrilled to have been able to get Dear Leader
Kim Jong-il to agree to the summit, plans to propose a vast new economic
program far beyond the scope of the six-
nation agreement in February for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
The program, under the rubric of South Korea's "Korean Peninsula vision",
includes plans for an infusion of billions of US dollars' worth of aid to open
up new economic zones in North Korea, expand tourism, and build up the North's
decrepit infrastructure. In return, South Korean officials are hoping that Kim
will not only fulfill the terms of the nuclear agreement but also scale down
his armed forces and eventually pull troops and weapons from above the
Demilitarized Zone that has divided the two Koreas since the Korean War ended
in 1953.
Analysts worry, though, that Roh, in his eagerness to appear as a peacemaker
before his people in the last months of his presidency, may return from
Pyongyang with little to show in return for the enormous infusion of aid and
expertise that he'll propose to Kim at the summit.
"I'm a big fan of North-South dialogue," said Evans Revere, president of the
Korea Society, a prestigious forum supported largely by South Korean government
and corporate funds. "There is an opportunity for President Roh to engage in
serious North-South diplomacy."
The question, however, is whether Roh will be willing to display the toughness
needed to obtain firm guarantees of a reduction of military tensions while
holding out the promise of rebuilding the North Korean economy during three
days of talks from August 28-30. "I think it will be viewed with concern if he
doesn't carry critical messages that relate to the six-party talks," said
Revere.
The most important message, according to this logic, is that North Korea,
having shut down its 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon as the first step in
fulfilling the February agreement, should itemize all its facilities for
developing nuclear weapons and, finally, get rid of the dozen or so nuclear
warheads that it is believed to have fabricated, all in accordance with the
agreement.
The fear, however, is that Roh sees the summit as his last and best chance to
shore up his diminished popularity before December's presidential election. "It
seems to be a question of legacy," said Donald Gregg, Korea Society chairman
and a former US ambassador to South Korea.
Although Roh cannot run again under South Korea's constitution, he would like
to bring about the election of a candidate who shares his left-of-center views
and will perpetuate his efforts at reconciliation with the North. Roh himself
has carried out the Sunshine Policy initiated by his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung,
who flew to Pyongyang in June 2000 for the first inter-Korean summit.
Kim Jong-il, for his part, is seen as agreeing to a second summit in part to
undermine the conservative Grand National Party. North Korea has frequently
criticized possible conservative presidential candidates, notably Lee
Myung-bak, former Seoul mayor and front-runner for the nomination.
Roh himself appears anxious in the run-up to the summit to want to touch on all
the basic issues while members of his government enumerate the financial
bonanza that North Korea is likely to receive in return for an appearance of
willingness to cooperate.
He was quoted as telling a meeting of his National Security Council to "make
preparations for the summit so that substantial progress can be made in the
fields of denuclearization, inter-Korean peace, arms control and economic
cooperation".
It seems unlikely, however, that South Korea will want to give up a program for
modernizing its armed forces while the US is pulling most its forces to a base
south of Seoul and reducing the number of its troops in South Korea from the
current level of 29,000, down from 37,000 at the start of Roh's term in 2003.
It's also unlikely, moreover, that Roh will go along with North Korean demands
for complete withdrawal of all US troops.
Nor is Kim Jong-il at all likely to agree to a deal that would call for North
Korea to reduce the size of it armed forces of more than a million troops,
400,000 more than the size of the South's military, much less to jettison its
stockpile of nuclear warheads. Kim, whose power resides in his position as
chairman of the National Defense Commission, has been visiting military units
in recent days, encouraging preparedness for war.
Kim, at the summit, may well mention unhappiness with North Korea's presence on
the US State Department's list of terrorist countries - a status that keeps
foreign financial institutions from wanting to deal with his country. The State
Department, said Jack Pritchard, the department's former envoy on North Korea,
could easily accede to the North Korean plea. But Japan has protested against
removal of North Korea from the list, citing the kidnapping of Japanese
citizens by North Korean agents.
Pritchard blamed the hardline US position for setting back efforts at
reconciliation with Pyongyang after gains during the Bill Clinton
administration. It was after the breakdown of the 1994 Geneva agreement on
North Korea, he noted, that the country built a number of nuclear warheads.
Author of a new book, Failed Diplomacy, reflecting his years with the
State Department, Pritchard said he doubts the summit will persuade US
President George W Bush to move toward real reconciliation. Bush, he said, does
not want to be remembered as "the guy who perpetuated the regime" of Kim
Jong-il.
While Kim will be reluctant to give up his nuclear warheads, he is expected to
be in favor of economic programs under which billions of dollars in South
Korean funds would pour into the economy.
Indeed, the scope of the South Korean economic proposal suggests that Seoul
officials view the program as a payoff reminiscent of the US$500 million that
moved from South Korean coffers to the North before the June 2000 summit. The
money moved through Hyundai Asan, the Hyundai Group company responsible for two
special zones in North Korea - the industrial zone at Kaesong next to the truce
village of Panmunjom and the economic zone at Mount Kumkang near the east
coast.
"South Korea is going to give North Korea a lot of gifts," said Thomas Byrne,
vice president of Moody's, for which he regularly rates the economy of South
Korea and other Asian countries.
Byrne, however, said he is "skeptical" about the summit producing other
substantive results. "It would be good if things turned out for the best," he
said, "but North Korea has yet to change its economic policies."
Byrne said North Korea now "has a big chance to embrace the South Korean
economic model but shows no propensity for serious reform".
"The problem with North Korea is there is no reformer," there's no one in North
Korea to compare to Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who revamped his
country's economy in the 1980s, or the Vietnamese leaders who moved away from
rigid theory and policies and revitalized their economy.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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