Focus on Security |
||||||
| Volume
4 No.2 April 3, 2001 |
||||||
|
Since the visit of President Kim Dae Jung to Pyongyang last June with a following series of actions and dialogs between North and South Korea, how the reunification process in the Korean peninsula can be successfully moved on is still in question. Analyses and concerns in many respects globally debated in different levels. Yet any developments seems to be halted for the time being owing to the Bush administration’s reaction during the South Korean president’s recent visit to Washington, voicing its opposition towards a reconciliation. Not to mention the NMD and TMD plans which promisingly pursued by the new administration, creating more tension in North Korea. The voices from Pyongyang seemingly showed how seriously the unification procedure was devastated. In association with the Korean and non-Korean groups, Focus on the Global South will be jointly holding the international conference entitled “The Challenge of Korean Reunification for International Civil Society”, in August 2001, in Seoul. The meeting will tackle security, political, and economic issues related to reunification with the intention of harnessing the energies of Korean and international civil society to move the process forward. Focus on security, thus, presents here two different perceptions of prominent authors who have pointed out what factors encouraging or declining the procedure. In addition, excerpts from various sources on this particular issue also repeatedly quoted hereby. It is interesting to witness a diversity of investigations towards such a remarkable transition
by Henry Kissinger The Missing Dimension in Kim Dae Jung’s Sunshine Policy
Excerpts
by Henry Kissinger The Straits Times webpage, March 8, 2001
For his country, the focal point of Asian crises for a century may now prove pivotal in the emergence of a new and more stable Asian order. Korea's history has been violent. Between 1904 and 1905, the Russo-Japanese War was fought over its future. Occupied by Japan in 1908, liberated in 1945, partitioned in the same year along the 38th parallel, invaded by North Korea in 1950 and by Chinese armies in 1951, saved by its own exertions and American forces, South Korea has faced since then what is arguably the most repressive communist regime anywhere across one of the most absolute dividing lines in the world. In the last months of the Clinton presidency, a sudden thaw occurred. South Korea's President was invited to visit the capital of North Korea. The second-highest-ranking military officer of North Korea, Vice-Marshal Jo Myong Rok, was received in Washington by United States President Bill Clinton and hosted at an official dinner by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who followed up with a return visit to Pyongyang. And in his last weeks in office, Mr Clinton was eagerly trying to arrange a presidential trip to Pyongyang, thwarted only because North Korea would not accept his condition to stop the export of missiles. Did all this herald a fundamental change, or was it primarily new tactics to achieve familiar goals, including undermining America's case for a missile defence? It is important that we get the answer straight, for on it may depend the future not only of South Korea but of America's entire position in the western Pacific. Over 50 years, North Korea has turned into a caricature of Stalinist tyranny, while South Korea has evolved into a genuine democracy and has reached the threshold of being an advanced industrial country. Even in the Internet age, the North has sealed off its population from the rest of the world. Its economy is a shambles. Agriculture has collapsed, producing widespread starvation and malnutrition. Nevertheless,
by devoting an unprecedented proportion of its gross national product
to military purposes, North Korea has created large forces of tanks and
artillery, many of them deployed within range of South Korea's capital
of Seoul. The long-term objective has not been war, which North Korea could not sustain, but to demoralise South Korea and undermine its US relations by discussing the future of the Korean peninsula directly with America. If North Korea succeeds in establishing itself as the legitimate representative of the Korean national interest, Seoul will be marginalised as an American auxiliary. For a while, this policy was not without some measure of success. In 1994, the US conducted separate negotiations with North Korea, on the basis of which Japan and South Korea agreed to build two heavy-water reactors for North Korea and the US agreed to supply heavy oil for North Korea's power plants, in return for a suspension - but not abandonment - of its nuclear programme. Though the deal was put forward as a contribution to non-proliferation, it probably had the opposite effect. It may have encouraged other rogue states to initiate nuclear-weapons programmes to gain a comparable buy-out. It may also have accelerated other aspects of North Korea's proliferation problem. For shortly afterwards, North Korea tested a long-range missile that flew over Japan under the pretext of space exploration. This set off another negotiation that brought Mrs Albright to Pyongyang to explore the price of stopping that programme. President Clinton's aborted visit in his last month in office would have been part of that political price. Negotiations with North Korea did achieve a suspension of its plutonium production, but at the price of implying that the future of Korea might be settled directly between Washington and Pyongyang, excluding Seoul. Two events arrested the trend. The first was the death in 1994 of North Korea's dictator, President Kim Il Sung, which limited Pyongyang's manoeuvring room. The second was the election of Mr Kim Dae Jung to the South Korean presidency, which increased Seoul's diplomatic scope. President Kim's so-called 'sunshine policy' of encouraging economic cooperation, family reunification and other exchanges re-established the balance with the US in contacts with the North. The key issue, however, is the content of that diplomacy. If
it is confined to a changed tone and economic support for the North Korean
economy, it will perpetuate the very regime whose threat has been one
justification for the US missile-defence programme. Though Mr Kim Dae Jung received little more than promises of a return visit by the North Korean leader to Seoul and a very limited opportunity for family reunification, the outside world reacted euphorically. Exchanges of visits culminated in the attendance of Mrs Albright at a mass rally celebrating the 55th anniversary of the North Korean Communist Party. Other nations eager not to be left behind were straining to beat a path to Pyongyang. The collective rush to Pyongyang may have the ironic consequence of tempting Mr Kim Jong Il to return to the previous policy of isolating Seoul, because he could draw the conclusion that he no longer needs direct talks with South Korea to solve his internal problems. President Kim Dae Jung's visit to Washington provides the opportunity to coordinate US and South Korean strategies. Neither America nor South Korea can want to preserve Pyongyang's control system or to perpetuate its military capacities simply on the basis of a gentler tone. Progress in relations with Pyongyang must be based on clear standards by which it can be measured. At the same time, Seoul and Washington must be receptive if North Korea's actions provide evidence that it is seeking to graduate from the status of a rogue state. Two principles should govern any common strategy: That the American alliance with South Korea, and not the rapprochement with North Korea, is the key to stability in the peninsula; and that South Korea should play the leading role in inter-Korean negotiations. Pyongyang must be convinced that the road to Washington leads through Seoul and not the other way around. If these priorities are reversed - if America upstages Seoul with dramatic gestures - North Korea may restore its economy partially, not from or via South Korea but through outside countries jockeying for a preferred position in Pyongyang. But Korea is also where the interests of several major powers intersect. Neither China nor Japan is eager for a rapid, if any, unification of Korea. Both consider a unified Korea a potential security threat, especially if it inherits North Korea's nuclear and missile technology. China entered the Korean War to prevent unification, and Japan has permitted American bases on its soil in large part to defend the status quo in Korea. China
is concerned about the impact of a united Korea on the Korean minorities
in Manchuria, while Japan fears a unified Korea's foreign policy will
rally its public by appealing to long-standing Korean antipathies. They are aware of the volatility and recklessness of Pyongyang's rulers and of their possession of nuclear weapons. No neighbour of Korea can benefit from military turmoil on the peninsula, even if there are differences about the nature and pace of a desirable evolution. An important start would be coordination to end Pyongyang's blackmailing tactics with respect to weapons of mass destruction. For, whatever their differences, none of the interested powers can wish to be drawn into a conflict by proliferation measures that could have been avoided by joint action. Consultation is necessary also because other outcomes are possible than the the repressive Pyongyang regime's continuation or its collapse. Countries uneasy about Korean unification may well be prepared to encourage a more benign Pyongyang while favouring its remaining separate from Seoul. But in the real world, such options are limited. Any democratic government in North Korea will seek unification. Any authoritarian government will repeat the existing dilemmas. In the end, it will be no more possible to keep Korea divided by the actions of outside powers than proved to be the case in Germany. Of course, the North Korean regime may collapse, as East Germany did, because Mr Kim Jong Il loses control over events. In many respects, this is probably Seoul's nightmare. A rapid unification process for Korea would dwarf the monumental problems Germany faced for a decade. The ratio of the populations of West to East Germany was about three to one; in Korea it is closer to two to one. The ratio of the per capita gross domestic product in Germany was approximately two to one; the ratio in Korea is closer to 10 to one - meaning that the economic challenge of unifying Korea is even more daunting than in Germany. At that point, the four outside powers - the US, Russia, Japan and China - would have to discuss the international status of Korea, while the two Koreas settle the internal arrangements, a procedure similar to the one preceding German unification. As for the US, it has no reason to oppose and every motive to support unification. But far more is at stake for America than Korea's future, for Asia's future will importantly depend on what happens to US forces now stationed along the 38th parallel. While the North Korean leader has been quoted by his southern counterpart as favouring the continued presence of American troops, this is not an assurance on which long-range policy can be built. Nor will the future of American troops in Korea depend entirely on the two Korean leaders. Were tensions to ease dramatically, the presence of American troops could become highly controversial within South Korea. In turn, if these forces were removed, the future of American bases in Japan would become problematic. And if US troops left the Asia rim, an entirely new security and, above all, political situation would arise all over the continent. Were this to happen, even a positive evolution in the Korean peninsula could lead to a quest for autonomous defence policies in Seoul and Tokyo and to a growth of nationalism in Japan, China and Korea. The US may not be able to arrest such trends, but it should not slide into them through preoccupation with the tactics and headlines of the moment.
by
Walden Bello This article originally appeared in the Bangkok Post, March 15, 2001.
This became crystal clear during Kim’s recent visit to Washington where US President George W. Bush and his aides all but spelled out disapproval of his bold rapprochement with North Korea. Even before his visit, the Sunshine Policy was already in danger from the new administration’s expressed determination to build an anti-ballistic missile defense (ABM) system--one that would include a “theater missile defense (TMD) system” for Japan and the region. Fearing that this move would derail its effort to convince North Korea to give up its ballistic missile program, Kim joined visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin in issuing a joint statement of support for the the 1972 US-Soviet treaty that bans anti-missile weapons systems. Though Seoul later tried to dilute the meaning of its gesture, it was clear to the rest of the world that, for the first time in over five decades, the two allies had experienced an open break in security policy. Withdrawal Syndrome Though its concerns were muted during the Clinton administration, the US security establishment was never comfortable with Kim’s reconciliation policy with the North. The big fear was that rapprochement would bring into question the presence of the large US military presence on the peninsula, where 37,000 American troops are forward-deployed. South Korea, as noted expert Chalmers Johnson has pointed out, is a Pentagon colony. Continuing occupation, however, demands a credible justification. So long as South Koreans shared Washington’s image of North Korean chief Kim Jong-Il as a megalomaniacal despot, there was no problem. But when Kim Jong-Il was transformed into a long lost beloved brother during Kim Dae-Jung’s visit to Pyongyang in June, the nightmare of an eventual pullout began to haunt the Pentagon, and no amount of soothing words from the South Korean leader about the need for US troops and bases into the indefinite future could reassure the US military establishment. But the reasons for the hardening US position go beyond the Pentagon’s wishing to maintain its position on the peninsula. Since the mid-1990’s, US military strategy, at both the global and regional level, has gradually reoriented been reoriented around the premise of a deepening strategic rivalry with China. The Asia 2025 Study, which the Pentagon hardly kept confidential, identified China consistently as the main threat to US interests in six war-game scenarios covering South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Even during the Clinton administration, the security elite had evinced discomfort with the Democrats’ China policy, which put the emphasis on “engagement” rather than containment. With the Bush administration, containment has become the dominant aspect of the policy, and a central thrust is tightening the military cordon sanitaire around China. The troops and bases in Korea--the only US beachhead on the Asian mainland--are vital elements of the American noose. Fundamental Flaw The
South Korean leader has the choice of freezing the process and pleasing
the Americans or going forward and risking not only non-cooperation but
possibly even Washington-supported destabilization.. This dilemma highlights
the fundamental flaw of the policy: that it has been for the most part
a highly controlled, personality-driven process where most of South Korean
society was relegated to the sidelines, with Not surprisingly, most Koreans, while obviously cheered by the reconciliation process, felt detached from it, feeling no personal responsibility for its success or failure. This personal distance from the process was driven home to me while discussing future economic strategies for Korea with progressive Korean economists. Even when taking the long view, none of them brought the integration of the North Korean market into their calculations. For all intents and purposes, a unified Korea remains a distant dream, and the lack of significant domestic protest against Washington’s recalcitrance is the most damning proof of this. Not too Late It is not too late, however, to bring the Korean people along. Kim should now reach out to all sectors of society, not to ask them to have faith in him and his judgment, but to actively bring them into the process, to encourage them to make their own unique contributions to this patriotic enterprise. In addition, President Kim should solicit the active backing of the governments and peoples of the Asia-Pacific region, underlining how a reconciled, if not reunified, Korea is one of the most critical keys to lasting regional peace. Mobilized domestic and regional constituencies for reconciliation and reunification are key to cracking the stalemate between Kim and Washington.
New York Times Service
For Pyongyang, a capital struggling with electricity shortages, this has created an unaccustomed parade of officials from countries including Australia, Britain, Germany and New Zealand. Western diplomats say the ties are helping outsiders to break important ground with one of the world's most mysterious and isolated governments. The most visible product of the opening was the European Union's surprise announcement last week that it would soon begin a high-level effort to promote reconciliation between North and South Korea. The move came as the Bush administration signaled a pause in U.S. efforts to engage North Korea. Following a time-honored pattern in which diplomatic missions pave the way for commercial interests, major European companies like Siemens of Germany and ABB Asea Brown Boveri, the Swedish-Swiss electrical-engineering firm, have reportedly begun prospecting for business opportunities in North Korea. They are focusing their efforts on the dilapidated electricity industry. A notable diplomatic shift came this month when Germany negotiated a protocol calling for its diplomats to enjoy freedom of movement in North Korea. The protocol, which is already being taken up by other European countries, would also give free movement to German relief workers and free access to German journalists. The German-North Korean accord calls for overland access to the country via China for the first time. It also provides for talks on human rights and arms proliferation issues, both past U.S. priorities. "We don't know whether this will be like Ostpolitik, and take a long time, or not," said Oliver Schramm, a German diplomat in Seoul, referring to the former West Germany's longtime policy of engagement with Communist East Germany, leading to German reunification. "Somehow, at least on paper, it looks like we have made a big breakthrough." U.S. officials, asked about the opening, have sought to share the credit. "Blame it on us," said a Western diplomat in Seoul, who said the Clinton administration had urged U.S. allies to establish ties with the North. But European officials also said the rush of diplomats into Pyongyang raised delicate issues for the Bush administration. Most immediately, it seems likely to spark a familiar debate over whether to use isolation or engagement in dealing with undemocratic states. Aware of this tension, many European diplomats have sought to play down their differences with Washington while pursuing a starkly contrasting policy. "We want very visibly to show that we support the process of closer engagement between the two Koreas, and we have been speaking with our American colleagues and our Japanese colleagues to search for ways to do that," said Antony Stokes, a British diplomat in Seoul. "We want to use our bilateral relationship with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to support this process." North,
South Korean reconciliation councils to meet 2 April Text of report in English by South Korean news agency Yonhap Seoul, 29 March: Officials from North and South Korea's organizations for inter-Korean reconciliation will meet next week, the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation (KCRC) said Thursday [29 March]. KCRC said it will hold working-level talks with North Korea's National Reconciliation Council (NRC) near Mt. Kumgang between 2 and 3 April. The North Korean NRC will have meetings with other South Korean civic organizations between 2 April and 6 April, including the Unification Alliance for Implementation of the June 2000 Inter-Korean Joint Declaration and Peace on the Korean Peninsula. It will also hold working-level talks with officials from South Korea's South Chungchong Province. Strictly not government agencies, KCRC and NRC are financed by South's and North's governments, respectively.
Text of report in English by North Korean news agency KCNA Pyongyang, 28 March: The Bush administration is intentionally letting loose a spate of adventurous remarks, getting on the nerves of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] and hurting its feelings in a bid to block the movement for Korean reunification. In this regard Nodong Sinmun today in a signed commentary says: The US ruling quarters are talking about a "hardline", raising silly questions as to the DPRK. This cannot be construed otherwise than a premeditated move to realize their ambition to dominate the whole of Korea. They seek to hold up the process for reconciliation and reunification on the Korean Peninsula by pursuing a hardline policy towards the DPRK and strain the situation there again in a bid to carry out their strategy to invade it. This is a vicious challenge to and anachronistic provocation against the desire of the Korean nation for reunification. What the Bush administration should do as regards the Korean issue is to honestly implement the DPRK-US agreed framework, withdraw its aggressor forces from South Korea and take its hands off the Korean issue. The US reactionary conservatives' moves against the DPRK and reunification have put into a danger Korea's reunification and the security of the nation. The US imperialists' moves to stop the process for reconciliation and reunification of the Korean nation under the absurd pretext of "threat" from the DPRK should be checked. If the US imperialists are allowed to keep Korea divided into two parts forever and seek their interests in it, the Korean nation will never achieve the reunification of the country nor escape from serious disasters.
Text of report in English by South Korean news agency Yonhap Seoul, 26 March: The composition of the foreign affairs and security team launched at Monday's [26 March] cabinet reshuffle clearly shows President Kim Dae-jung's strong intention to continue his policy of engagement with North Korea. Lim Dong-won, re-appointed the unification minister, is a "preacher of Kim's sunshine policy," and new Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo is a US specialist who is well acquainted with officials in US President George W. Bush's administration. The head of state is expected to aggressively pursue the engagement policy by making use of the ministers' capabilities to negotiate with the United States and the North. In particular, Kim is expected to use the new security team to address the recent diplomatic conflicts with the United States and Russia that developed as a result of the president's apparent flip-flop on the national missile defence (NMD) system currently being pursued by the United States. One problem the team will have to overcome is North Korea's rigid and strident approach to its dealings with the outside world. Of late, the isolated communist nation, stung by the Bush administration's hard-line stance against it, has been conducting a harsh "propaganda war" against the United States while at the same time expressing a clear desire for dialogues. In addition, North Korean national pride will make it unlikely to soon give in to the United States' demands for transparency and verification regarding its missile development. Kim's "sunshine policy" will also face obstacles at home. With opposition to the policy growing among some lawmakers and the public, the new security team will need to be highly sensitive to the opinions of opposition and conservative forces here. New Defence Minister Kim Dong-shin and new National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director Shin Kuhn will have to ensure a high level of national security in order to ease conservative lawmakers' concerns about Kim's engagement policy. In addition, the NIS will have to strive to dispel criticism that it spends too much time trying to open dialogues with the North and not enough time hunting down North Korean spies. In order to ease this criticism, the security team will need to make noteworthy headway on security issues with the North. In this context, the new team is expected to place more weight on "substantial outcomes" in future dialogue with the North. |
||||||
|
|
||||||