'Third Man' overshadows
Korea's election
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has become a central player in
South Korea's presidential campaign with postponement of the North-South Korean
summit from late this month to early October.
The question, though, is whether he will really host South Korean President Roh
Moo-hyun in Pyongyang or advance another reason for putting off a meeting that
is sure to have a bearing on
the election for Roh's successor on December 19.
Critics of the whole show say both leaders want to use the summit to elevate
Roh's diminished popularity - and that of whomever Roh and his allies put up as
their "pan-major party" candidate to succeed Roh, barred under South Korea's
constitution from seeking a second five-year term.
The controversy over the summit is sure to intensify with the nomination by the
opposition Grand National Party (GNP) of Lee Myung-bak, the former mayor of
Seoul whom the North Korean media have repeatedly attacked. Lee, who made a
fortune as the hot-shot young chairman of Hyundai Engineering and Construction
in its heyday in the 1980s, remains South Korea's most formidable and popular
contender for the presidency despite a past of shady land deals.
The GNP, having initially endorsed the summit, now is demanding its
postponement until after the election so it will not become a central campaign
issue or interfere in the election process. That plea, however, will clearly
get nowhere, since there would be no reason for Kim to want to receive Roh in
the last month or two before the inauguration of his successor in February.
A post-election Kim-Roh summit would be all the more meaningless if Lee defeats
the candidate of the "pan-major party" - an amalgam formally named the United
New Democratic Party that Roh and others are trying to piece together from the
fragmented Uri Party that lofted him to victory in 2002.
Other elements in the pan-major party include what's left of the Democratic
Party of Roh's predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, author of the Sunshine Policy with
North Korea, who flew to Pyongyang in June 2000 for talks with Kim Jong-il in
the first and so far only inter-Korean summit.
The next summit, if it is held in the first few days of October as planned,
will polarize conservatives and leftists in South Korea - and provide the
dynamism that a pan-major-party candidate will need to stand up against Lee, a
shrewd and tireless campaigner. Lee's popularity rating stands at about 35%,
far higher than any of his possible foes but not high enough to ensure his
victory in a last-minute drive spurred on by success for Roh at the summit.
Kim Jong-il could, however, put off the summit if conservative outcries in the
South reach such a level as to suggest that it might have such a negative
impact as to upset more voters than it pleased. Indeed, Kim may try to insist,
in secret talks with South Korean emissaries, that Seoul clamp down on
demonstrations by conservatives, many of them aging Korean War veterans who
have regularly burned his image in effigy.
Kim could also decide against a summit on any number of other pretexts. Among
them: punishment for South Korea's going through with annual military exercises
with US forces this month that North Korea warns could have a "catastrophic"
impact on North-South relations. Such rhetoric assumes greater significance in
the run-up to the summit - and may have contributed to Pyongyang's decision to
postpone it.
The ostensible reason for the postponement, of course, is severe flooding that
is likely to leave the North in need of 400,000 tonnes of rice beyond all it's
able to get from China, South Korea and other sources. Roh, anxious to do all
possible to keep up the summit momentum, needs to increase emergency shipments
in a pre-summit display of goodwill to guarantee the summit really happens.
While North Korea is undoubtedly suffering from floods that have left several
hundred thousand people homeless, Kim also stands to reap increased benefits
from the postponement.
Besides getting South Korea to jack up aid, he can appear as a leader who
steered his country through another crisis when or if he receives Roh on
October 2, just eight days before the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the
ruling Workers' Party. Kim, who wields his real power as chairman of the
National Defense Commission, celebrates his 10th anniversary as general
secretary of the party on October 8.
In such a sensitive period, a number of other factors may also play into Kim's
final decision on a summit.
One consideration may be the six-nation talks in which Pyongyang is under
pressure to disclose details on its entire nuclear program as a prelude to
bringing it to a complete halt. North Korea stands to receive another 950,000
tonnes of heavy fuel oil as a reward for doing as agreed in addition to 50,000
tonnes already shipped from South Korea for shutting down its 5-megawatt
reactor at Yongbyon last month.
North Korea, however, has demanded "action for action" - meaning rewards in
terms of aid at every step of the process - and also wants to open diplomatic
relations with the United States and come to terms on a peace treaty in place
of the armistice that ended the Korean War in July 1953. US officials, while
now willing to talk about such matters, say North Korea must first shut down
its nuclear program.
South Korean officials and advisers to Roh have supported the idea of a
four-party peace treaty in which China and the US join South and North Korea
even though Seoul never signed the Korean War armistice. The reason was that
Syngman Rhee, president from the founding of the Republic of Korea in 1948
until his ouster in 1960, lambasted the truce for permanently dividing the
Korean Peninsula, which he had pledged to unite on his own terms.
Roh's conservative foes accuse him and his advisers of selling out to the North
by considering a peace treaty - a prelude, they say, to a Korean
"confederation" that North Korea will try to use as a cover for gaining control
of the South. They fear that a summit would endorse this concept while barely
touching on the issue of denuclearization, which North Korea prefers to reserve
for the six-party talks. Lee Myung-bak, although not the most outspoken of
conservatives, has excoriated Roh as a "leftist", and he and his followers are
likely to increase their attacks on the summit in the coming weeks.
North Korea in the past has warned that a GNP victory in December would
severely damage inter-Korean relations and has attacked Lee in language
reminiscent of its harangues of South Korean conservatives before Kim
Dae-jung’s defeat of a conservative foe in December 1997.
For Kim Jong-il, the summit may be a gamble in which North Korea exerts
influence among Southern leftists, tipping the balance in the election in favor
of a malleable successor to Roh. The gamble, however, could turn into disaster,
jeopardizing much-needed aid and trade, if Pyongyang's rhetoric further
alienates a majority of South Koreans who see the business-minded Lee as best
qualified to deal with the issue at the heart of Roh's unpopularity, not North
Korea but his economic policies.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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