Bush and Lee talk T-bones and
bombs By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - The two conservative presidents
had heard the "compromise" word so often when it
came to North Korea's coming clean on its nuclear
inventory that they decided to dance around the
issue.
That was the net result, at least
on that unpleasant topic, of two days of talks in
which US President George W Bush flattered South
Korea's Lee Myung-bak by making him the first
Korean president ever invited to the presidential
retreat at Camp David in the Maryland woods north
of Washington, DC.
If the US and North
Korean nuclear envoys have already agreed on a
secret deal that waffles on North Korea's listing
all its nuclear activities, neither Lee nor Bush
was going to spoil the atmosphere
by
endorsing such a sign of weakness.
The
reason for avoiding a commitment on what they're
going to do about North Korea's stall tactics
seemed clear. Lee has been adopting what he calls
a "pragmatic" policy toward North Korea in
contrast to the Sunshine approach of his two
left-leaning predecessors, and he didn't want to
appear to be backing down on his first overseas
mission.
That should have seemed just fine
by the equally conservative Bush, except that
Condoleezza Rice's State Department for the past
few years has been temporizing with North Korea on
the theory that's how to get the North really to
abandon its nuclear program.
That strategy
was driven in part by South Korean pressure, first
under Kim Dae-jung, the author of Sunshine, and
then under Lee's predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, for
the US to get away from the confrontational
approach of Bush's first term and go along with
South Korea's desire for reconciliation.
As the ruckus over North Korea's
reluctance to say publicly that they've been
working on developing warheads with enriched
uranium has made clear, the Lee government just
doesn't care for the secret memorandum drafted by
US envoy Christopher Hill and North Korea's Kim
Kye-gwan. Apparently, all North Korea need do,
under this still unannounced deal, is say "we
understand" what the US is saying while admitting
nothing.
Lee especially doesn't like this
idea when it makes it appear as if he does not
mean it when he demands "reciprocity" from the
North along with "verification" of whatever it
does about disabling and dismantling its program.
The US may insist there's no other way to
move past the list issue and get on with the rest
of the thorny process of North Korea abandoning
its nuclear program. And South Korea may have
little choice but to go along, especially if Lee
hopes to make good on his "Vision 3000" promise -
that is, a program to elevate the average income
of North Koreans to $3,000 a year.
Lee's
skepticism, however, came across at Camp David
when he warned that failure to verify North
Korea's nuclear declaration, whatever it contains,
would be "disastrous" and that acceptance of a
"temporary achievement" would fail to solve
"long-term problems".
South Korea leaders
are convinced, moreover, that North Korea, by
negotiating with the US, is trying to "look over
our shoulder", and they swear it won't work. Bush
held off on attempting to ram the contents of the
secret memorandum down Lee's throat, saying it
does look as if the North Koreans want to "stall"
but he's still "hopeful" and will "make a
judgment" on whether North Korea is living up to
its promises.
That remark, hardly a
commitment, leaves room for an interpretation
under which the US would settle for less than a
complete list from North Korea, including whatever
it did to help Syria build the facilities that
were bombed last year by Israel. Neither Bush nor
Lee talked publicly about the aces the US holds -
removal of North Korea from the US State
Department's list of "terrorist" countries and
lifting of economic sanctions, a prelude to
another infusion of economic aid, including much
needed fuel.
Bush and Lee were on much
safer ground when it came to happy talk about
chances the of ratification of the free trade
agreement (FTA)reached last year, after a year and
a half of extremely difficult talks.
Korea's National Assembly is expected to
approve the FTA after much debate. Lee's Grand
National Party has a small, but crucial, majority
of 153 of the 299 seats, and should find support
among two small conservative groupings as well as
a few conservative independents.
The much
more difficult issue will be the response of the
US Congress in a presidential election year when
the two leading candidates of the Democratic Party
nomination both oppose a FTA for the perceived
threat to American workers from imports.
Bush, no doubt to keep the FTA from
becoming a headline-grabbing campaign issue, said
he's hoping for ratification by the end of this
year - a deadline that his administration can try
to make in the weeks between the November election
and the Christmas holidays.
The chance for
serious tension at the Bush-Lee summit was removed
when Korean and American negotiators agreed in the
final hours beforehand on a deal for South Korea
to open up its beef market to US beef imports.
South Korea now will accept boned US beef - ribs
and T-bones - as long as the cattle are less than
30 months old.
The deal on beef means the
US can resume shipments that were cut off entirely
several years ago after the discovery of mad cow
disease in one American cow. The market opened up
to bone-free beef last year but closed again after
X-ray scrutiny revealed bone chips in the first
few shipments.
The American Chamber of
Commerce in Korea was ecstatic about the beef
deal. Several hours after hearing about it, the
chamber produced a statement expressing confidence
that "the US agriculture industry and US business
community will now come out in full force and work
hard" to make sure FTA makes its way through
Congress successfully.
AmCham president
William Oberlin personally applauded "the
leadership and courage that President Lee has
shown" and urged the US Congress to ratify the FTA
"as soon as possible". But controversy looms even
as beef shipments begin next month to arrive in
Korea, once the third-largest market for US beef.
American motor vehicle manufacturers
cannot believe they will find it all that much
easier to ship US cars to South Korea after
tariffs and non-tariff barriers are eased, and
they fear an onslaught of Korean cars onto the
American market. Pharmaceutical manufacturers,
among others, also doubt if the Korean drug market
will be that much easier to penetrate than it is
now.
Lee wasted no time dashing hopes for
a revision of the FTA that might assuage some of
the fears. As far as he was concerned, he said,
the deal was done and no more changes were needed
or even possible.
The US and South Korea
face other sensitive issues on the level of South
Korean support for the US-led wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and on US troop strength in South
Korea. Bush brushed aside the contentious question
of the Korean military contribution in the Middle
East by saying he didn't view it as a "litmus
test" of the US-Korean relationship.
South
Korea may be more prone to cooperate in the US if
the American side addresses some of their deepest
concerns about security vis-a-vis the North. Easy
though it is to ignore the rhetoric from
Pyongyang, a showdown is possible if Lee insists
on conditions on the nuclear issue and aid for the
North's starving people.
Under the
circumstances, the South Koreans attach some
urgency to their plea for the US to stop reducing
the number of American troops, now down to 28,500,
and don't care for the plan for a South Korean to
take command of all forces in Korea in event of a
second Korean war.
South Korea, meanwhile,
gets one big consolation prize. The US is going to
waive the visa requirement for South Koreans
visiting the US.
That means any South
Korean can go to the US for 90 days without a
visa. With 2.5 million Koreans already in America,
including those who have become US citizens or
hold green cards, the visa waiver may offer
evidence of the enduring nature of the
relationship.
Journalist Donald
Kirk has been covering Korea - and the
confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for
more than 30 years.
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