June 15, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas EDITORIAL A fig leaf Korea, a long peninsula stretching from continental China to the Japanese archipelago, physically embodies the security issue of Japan, China and the whole of East Asia. In the 13th Century, Mongolian troops launched a military attack against Japan from Korea. Had there not been a mysterious storm that wrecked the fleet, the history of Japan would have to be re-written. At the end of the 19th Century, Japan, after the successful Meiji Reformation, started its territorial expansion from Korea. As a result, China and Japan were involved in their first large-scale war from the Korean peninsula to the Yellow Sea. The aftermath was that defeated China gave up Korea and the island of Taiwan to Japan, signing a peace treaty on April 17 1895. Since then, the Korean peninsula had become a Japanese stronghold from which the emerging power launched several attacks against China. Just a few years later, in 1900, China had to undergo the humiliation of watching the troops of seven Western countries plus Japan raid Beijing in the bloody crackdown of the Boxers' uprising. In the early 1950s, in the context of the Cold War, all these parties once again regarded the Korean Peninsula as a place of life-or-death. Communist China had defeated the Kuomintang Nationalist troops and was about to pursue them onto Taiwan, where the Kuomintang had fled. But war started in Korea. Beijing felt it had to protect its northeastern border and abandoned its plans to conquer Taiwan in order to stop the advance of Western troops in North Korea to its national border. Beijing somehow felt that Korea was a more important strategic issue than Taiwan. The same is true today, but with further complications. Trade and development is the battle cry of the world now, as much as it was 100 years ago. But now Japan is no longer an isolated case of development in Asia, and has been joined by most of the other countries in the region. While development has speeded up in East Asia, trade needs long term predictability, which is first and foremost political. However, the closed system of North Korea does not provide the necessary political predictability to guarantee investment and trade. Its threats, the launch of missiles, or alleged facilities for the construction of nuclear arms, all cast a shadow of instability over the whole of East Asia. Four years after the financial crisis, Asia is still under the threat of a new crisis. The sudden collapse of the Asian stock markets in March 2001 is, among other things, a reminder of the fragility of Japan's and East Asia's financial and economic structure. In some ways, this crisis has to do with the obstacles that are slowing down the process of reconciliation between North and South Korea, which started only a year ago. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who came to power after the 1997 financial crisis, and arguably also because of the crisis, tried to assuage the threats of a sudden collapse of North Korea by successfully launching his "Sunshine" policy with Pyongyang and meeting his Northern counterpart Kim Jong-il. China, Russia, the United States and Japan strongly backed the initiative. Works started in September 2000 to rebuild a rail and road link between North and South Korea, which will eventually hook Seoul onto the Trans-Siberian railroad and the markets of Western Europe. This could change the entire picture in Eurasia. An efficient and unified road and rail system across the Korean peninsula would mean that for the first time since the Bolshevik revolution, Europe and Asia will be linked together via a land bridge. This will make continental Europe closer to East Asia than to America. From this point of view, the Korean issue resembles a Gordian knot, the one Alexander the Great had to unravel to conquer Asia - which he actually did. A Eurasian travel and communication system could be the happy ending of a fairy tale, but the "Sunshine" policy is about Korea, and Korea is about Asia. The two wars fought over Korea in the past 100 years were about Chinese and Japanese security. The question is: Will the Korean peace process suffice to guarantee the security of China and Japan? So far, China's answer to this question has been yes, while Japan's has been no. Tokyo has been a staunch supporter of the project for a Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system. Even when President Bill Clinton postponed the TMD late last year, Tokyo didn't utter a word, meaning it wished to go ahead with it. Japan's idea is that TMD will bring about greater security in the region. China is concerned about TMD and firmly opposes the US National Missile Defense (NMD) system. Furthermore, the new US administration appears more concerned with China's global rise and finds it necessary to work for the NMD as an instrument to keep the US strategic technological advantage over Beijing, now and in future decades. The underlying idea is that Beijing could become a threat. But this could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as hard-nosed Singaporean Senior Minister Lee Kuan-yew says. As Korea has been for decades the fig leaf of Sino-Japanese security relations, so now NMD and TMD could become the new fig leaf of security in East Asia. What is more, George W Bush has steered for a more assertive US role in Asia and towards North Korea. Bush feels that too much was given to Pyongyang for too little in return. This approach pours cold water on Kim Dae-jung and his policy. But can TMD be an opportunity for dialogue and become the center of new East Asian security? In March, China declared that it is willing to talk about TMD, as long as it does not project defense over national borders and over Taiwan. This TMD could provide a security umbrella that could take into account the collapse of North Korea and provide for Japan's security without leading to a Japanese rearmament, which is China's main preoccupation. In any case, the real issue at stake about the Korean peninsula is political trust between the US, China, Japan and Russia. A sudden collapse of the secretive North would have a huge impact on Asia. The Korean peninsula is almost the perfect metaphor of the point were Asian forces - both benign and destructive - meet. This is why the second issue of Heartland, through the Korean looking glass, sees the developments in the peninsula in their broader reach for East Asia and the whole world. ((c) Heartland. This version has been edited by Asia Times Online.) To subscribe to Heartland, please email cassanpress@sina.com

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