WASHINGTON - The imminent takeover of the
South Korean government by conservative leadership
has resurrected heated debate between
neo-conservative and moderates here over whether
the decade-long Sunshine policy of reconciliation
with North Korea can survive.
A corollary
question is whether President George W Bush is as
anxious now as he was last year in a show of North
Korean compliance with its agreement to give up
its nuclear weapons - or has he lost interest in
North Korea as a chance to burnish a
legacy
already tarnished in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Much of the debate focuses on the extent
to which South Korea's conservative
president-elect, Lee Myung-bak, will want to build
on the agreements reached in October between
outgoing President Roh Moo-Hyun and North Korea's
leader Kim Jong-il. Conservatives see Lee's pledge
of aid for North Korea only after the North has
given up its nukes and his promise to raise the
previously banned topic of human rights in North
Korea as a clear reversal of the Sunshine policy
initiated by Roh's predecessor, Kim Dae-jung.
Lee's outlook may become more clear in
March, when he considers how to respond to North
Korea's annual request for several hundred
thousand tons of food and fertilizer. He may
waffle on a decision until meeting President
George W Bush to coordinate on what to do as long
as North Korea balks at revealing details of its
nuclear program.
US analysts predict Lee
in the end will want to soften his position while
pursuing economic projects with North Korea, but
tensions may escalate in a time of transition and
uncertainty in Korea as well as in the US.
Although Korea is hardly mentioned by any
candidates for the Republican or Democratic US
presidential nominations, North Korea may prefer
to wait until the next US president takes office a
year from now before going ahead with serious
talks.
Lee himself has somewhat confused
matters by talking a far tougher game than either
former president Kim Dae-jung or Roh, while
extending what looks like his own personal olive
branch of friendship.
Thus he has promised
to strengthen South Korea's defenses, possibly
canceling a plan to reduce the size of South
Korea's armed forces, while telling South Korean
defense officials that such moves "do not mean we
will neglect reconciliation between South and
North Korea" but "can secure peace and deter a war
on the Korean Peninsula when we reinforce our
defense".
And he said on Monday he, like
his two reconciliation-minded predecessors, will
be glad to meet Kim Jong-il, but with
preconditions that might make another summit with
Kim all but impossible.
For one thing, he
said the next summit has to take place in Seoul,
rather than Pyongyang, where Kim Jong-il hosted
his summits with Kim Dae-jung in June 2000 and
again with Roh in October. Considering that Kim
Jong-il ignored repeated pleas by Kim Dae-jung for
a return summit in Seoul, Lee's insistence on a
Seoul summit in effect rules out another
inter-Korean summit, at least as long as he's
president.
Lee has also added another
qualification that's not likely to please
Pyongyang, namely that his government will have to
review the agreements made between Roh and Kim at
the October summit for economic and other forms of
cooperation. That whole deal, he said on Monday,
was "sealed in principle" but "lacking in
details".
Lee's ambivalence is just about
as confusing to the US nuclear envoy, Christopher
Hill, as is that of the Bush administration in
Washington. Hill, on a fence-mending mission to
the region, said he and Lee had had "a very good
discussion", but Hill wants North Korea to come
through with an inventory of all its nuclear
facilities, as promised in six-party talks, before
Lee's inauguration on February 25.
Hill's
explanation is that negotiators can then move on
to the much more complicated phase of getting
North Korea to dismantle all its nuclear programs,
including highly enriched uranium, which the North
steadfastly denies developing while disabling the
Yongbyon facilities for fabricating plutonium for
warheads.
Hill himself leaves plenty of
room for analysts to interpret his remarks as
hardline, even though he has exerted substantial
influence over the past two years in getting Bush
to soften his policy toward North Korea. As he put
it before leaving Washington for Beijing, host of
the six-party talks, "We can't have a situation
where we pretend programs didn't exist," or "a
process that goes forward on the basis of not
being honest with each other".
Critics of
the Bush administration believe Hill, though given
considerable latitude in negotiations, still has
to deal with opposing views in his own government.
Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under
Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, told me at a
recent book-signing for her newly published
Memo to the President Elect, a compendium
of advice for whoever succeeds Bush, that she
approved of Hill's efforts to get the North
Koreans to live up to their word but believed he
was held back by the policies of his government.
That remark reflects the view of Bush's
many critics, including Albright, that his
"hardline" policy was responsible for the failure
of the 1994 Geneva framework agreement and North
Korea's revival of its nuclear program at
Yongbyon. Critics note, however, that Albright's
book overlooks the highly enriched uranium program
that led to the breakdown of the Geneva agreement
and remains the critical sticking point.
Albright's newly published tome, moreover,
betrays doubts about the whole issue of human
rights in North Korea that Lee promises to
confront. "Your administration should push for
progress on human rights," she advises the next US
president, but "if we refuse on moral grounds to
negotiate with the North Koreans on security
matters, we may end up with no improvement on
either security or human rights - hardly the
outcome you will desire."
Stripped to bare
bones, that remark provides the rationale used by
Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun for ignoring the
unpleasant topic of human rights in hopes of
bringing North Korea to terms on weapons of mass
destruction. US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice has adopted Albright's philosophy, persuading
Bush and others to wait patiently for the North to
come around.
Conservatives in both Seoul
and Washington worry, however, that moderates will
be taken in by the negotiating skills of Kim
Jong-il and his underlings. As an example, they
cite Albright's own mission to Pyongyang in
October 2000 in the waning months of the Clinton
administration.
Albright's biggest
blunder, they say, was to consent to let Kim
Jong-il escort her into May First Stadium for a
mass propaganda show. On this occasion, she had to
watch as a section of poster holders in the packed
stands flipped the cards to portray the
test-launch of a long-range Taepodong missile two
years earlier.
"In our meetings, Kim and I
mixed tough talk about human rights and military
intentions with more reflective discussions about
the reasons for our lack of mutual trust," she
wrote in her memoir. "It became evident to me,"
she concluded, "that Kim was prepared to trade
military concessions for a combination of economic
help and security guarantees."
Imagine,
then, Albright's disappointment when North Korea,
after agreeing in early October, a year after
conducting an underground nuclear test, to a
timetable for disabling its nuclear complex and
itemizing its entire nuclear inventory, failed to
come up with the list.
"Frankly, I was
surprised," she told me as she signed copies of
her books. When I asked her whether she had really
believed Kim Jong-il would reveal his nuclear
program, she said, "Yes, I did."
Journalist Donald Kirk has been
covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces
in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
