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2 War of words over Korean peace
treaty By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - South Korea and the United
States are colliding on what has emerged as one of
the more partisan issues in their already strained
relations.
The question is whether to
follow the lead of North Korea and demand a peace
treaty to replace the armistice that ended the
Korean War in July 1953. Advocates say support for
a treaty would be a relatively harmless gesture
that would soften up the
intransigent North Korean
regime; critics believe it would give North Korean
negotiators an easy opportunity to press their
long-standing demand for withdrawal of all US
troops from the South.
The issue has
neo-conservatives and liberals battling in
Washington while South Korean President Roh
Moo-hyun crashes ahead with the notion of the
peace treaty as the top talking point in his
summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-il early next
month in Pyongyang.
Victor Cha, former
Asia director of the National Security Council,
perceives "a great deal of momentum" toward
relations between Washington and Pyongyang but
says the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
first has to make good on its promises.
"If the DPRK responds," said the
conservative Cha, then "the US and the others will
push the negotiations harder" - negotiations, that
is, not for diplomatic recognition but for
fulfillment of the February agreement for North
Korea to give up its nuclear program.
Roh,
however, was busy playing down the nuclear issue
while playing up the theme of a peace treaty - and
a "peace regime" unifying the Korean Peninsula.
Dismissing North Korea's nuclear program as "being
resolved", Roh declared "the end of the Korean War
and a peace regime of the Korean Peninsula" as
"core items of the inter-Korean talks".
Conservative critics in Washington and
Seoul see such talk at the summit as devolving
into a chance for Kim Jong-il to press for a
pan-Korean "confederation" that will undermine the
South's democracy constitution, adopted in 1987 at
the height of huge protests against the military
leaders who then ruled the country.
Smelling success for the conservative Lee
Myung-bak in the presidential election in
December, conservatives believe Roh and Kim
envisage a triumphant declaration of a "peace
system" as swaying voters to a leftist or liberal
successor to Roh, who is constitutionally barred
from running for a second five-year term.
Agreement on a "peace regime", according to this
logic, will provide the North with the chance to
increase its influence among South Korean leftists
who are responsible for periodic anti-American
demonstrations at which they invariably denounce
the US-South Korean alliance.
Conservatives also charge that Roh and Kim
hope to use talk of a "peace regime" as a device
to get the South to repeal the national-security
law banning activities that might help the
communists. Although enforcement of the law has
been lax in recent years, it still has an
inhibiting effect - and provides authorities with
a tool for cracking down on protest.
Roh
spoke of his hopes for a peace treaty - and a
system for ensuring peace on the Korean Peninsula
- after livening up the closing moments of a
largely humdrum get-together of Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation leaders by attempting to
embarrass US President George W Bush into a
commitment he had no desire to make.
As
Roh and Bush faced television cameras, Roh went
way off the script, asking Bush if he could "be a
little bit clearer in your message" of when the US
is ready to sign a treaty. Bush's response, "I
can't make it any more clear, Mr President," was
not all that diplomatic. The Korean War will end,
he said, "when Kim Jong-il verifiably gets rid of
his weapons program and his weapons".
But
a debate over a "peace treaty" formally marking
closure on the Korean War is largely an exercise
in semantics.
Troops were hardly standing
in a straight line on either side of the 38th
Parallel when the truce was signed. US and South
Korean forces were dug in well to the north of the
parallel on the east, while Chinese and North
Korean troops retained positions south of the
parallel on the west, including the critical town
of Kaesong, overrun by invading North Koreans at
the outset of the war in June 1950. The
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), 4 kilometers wide, was
established where the shooting stopped as a
deterrent to a second Korean War, a buffer across
which shots are occasionally fired but where
wildlife flourishes unmolested.
The 1953
truce, however, did not set the boundary in the
Yellow (West) Sea between the two Koreas. The UN
Command established the "Northern Limit Line"
(NLL) a few years later, and North Korea has
challenged the barrier in battles, notably in 1999
and 2002, that have left a number of sailors dead
on both sides. The issue is likely to come up at
the summit - though it's not
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