Asia Times: South Korea: Between a rock and a hard place


	February 24, 2001	atimes.com

Editorials

South Korea: Between a rock and a hard place

... And a soft economy, we should add.

What's caught in that three-way discomfort is President Kim Dae-jung's "sunshine policy" of engagement and reconciliation with North Korea. In part that's due to the policies of the new US administration. As an unnamed government official put it after a recent Seoul National Security Council meeting which - off the agenda - considered Bush government plans for National Missile Defense (NMD), "We are caught between a rock and a hard place. Supporting the [US NMD] project would provoke Pyongyang and opposing it would definitely strain ROK-US relations." In part, Seoul's discomfort is caused by the fact that after growing by 10 percent in 2000, the Korean economy, over-dependent on electronics exports to the United States, is in for a dramatic growth decline in 2001 and will have trouble growing at half the pace of last year. Under those circumstances, Seoul's and Korean companies' ability to extend generous economic assistance to the North will have to be curtailed as southern workers and the opposition will object to give-aways from a shrinking pie.

The National Security Council official's forebodings about being trapped have come true even faster than most expected. On Thursday, the Pyongyang Korean Central News Agency released the text of a North Korean Foreign Ministry statement (see below for the full text) saying that the Bush administration's "hardline stance" toward Pyongyang "once again disclosed the US aggressive and brigandish true intention to stop the DPRK-US relations from developing in the direction of reconciliation, cooperation and improved ties in keeping with the present international trend towards peace and stability and break the DPRK's will with 'strength'." And the operative phrases in the statement were that, "As there is no agreement between the DPRK and the US, we will not be bound to our pledge related to the missile issue raised during the previous US administration. We decided not to launch long-range missiles while the missile negotiations are under way but we will not indefinitely maintain this moratorium."

There you have it. And to Seoul's added chagrin, US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice immediately responded to Pyongyang in kind. "So it's not helpful for the North Koreans to threaten to have missile tests in order to get us to do something to give up missile defense. That's actually counterproductive," she told reporters. It remains to be seen whether or not President Kim's sunshine policy can survive in light of hardening Pyongyang and Washington attitudes and in face of a weakening South Korean economy and growing domestic opposition to "too many concessions" to the North without reciprocation. First indications will come in early March when Kim travels to Washington for a summit with George W Bush.

You have to give it to North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, explicitly linking the threat of ending the moratorium on missile launches to US missile defense plans is a clever ploy. Kim knows very well that China, his main ally, and Russia, his principal former ally, are strongly opposed to US NMD and Theater Missile Defense (TMD) programs while at the same time Chinese (and to some extent Russian) intermediation were significant in North-South Korean rapprochement. Kim North is in effect attempting to force Kim South to choose between Washington and continuation of the peace process. Minimally, he hopes to get more money from Seoul in this divide and conquer game.

Let's hope that Kim South refuses to play. While his Pyongyang visit last June was a positive sign that nearly half a century after the end of the Korean War reconciliation between and eventual reunification of the Koreas might be possible, there is no huge hurry, and lasting peace in Northeast Asia can not be achieved just on Pyongyang's terms. What Kim Dae-jung will hear in Washington is that the new administration will want to take a more cautious approach than Mr Clinton's and will want to change at least some of the terms of the peace process. That includes stressing reduction of North Korea's armed forces and their retreat from forward positions at the Demilitarized Zone as well as building thermal power plants rather than light-water nuclear reactors for North Korea in exchange for termination of the North's nuclear programs. And he will also hear that Washington will proceed with missile defense even if that should create a new chill in relations with Pyongyang. President Kim, in turn, will have to persuade Bush that economic aid to the North will not simply strengthen the North's military.

We expect and hope that a common Kim-Bush policy line will emerge from the Washington summit which embodies both sides' concerns: Bush is right to insist on focusing on North Korean conventional forces' strengths and deployments. Kim is right in insisting that economic aid programs must continue for the peace process to go forward. On that basis, if Pyongyang is serious in wanting continued rapprochement, progress should be possible. Resolution of the irksome missile issue can await a time when progress on other fronts helps instill some renewed measure of mutual trust.

Full text of the KCNA release

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