By Kang Hyun-kyung
A post-sanctions Iran has stirred a debate in South Korea, which has been dealing with nuclear and other threats from its northern neighbor for decades.
The Iran deal, which involved freezing the country's nuclear facilities in return for the removal of certain sanctions, initially raised hopes that North Korea may follow in Iran's footsteps if certain conditions are met. A popular debate has followed about whether the Iran model could be replicated by the North, but naysayers have so far dominated the debate. According to them, Iran is different from North Korea, therefore the Iran deal is not something that can be applied to the North to end the Stalinist's nuclear ambitions.
The lifting of nuclear-related sanctions on Iran earlier this month has also provoked a debate about the efficacy of the decade-old six-party talks aiming to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program.
While Iran has moved forward, North Korea has not shown signs of curtailing its nuclear program; rather, its nuclear bombs have become sophisticated during the hiatus of the talks. The talks were first held in 2003 in Beijing and negotiators from the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States have since met several times. They last met in 2007.
The contrasting moves between Iran and North Korea have prompted foreign policy watchers to question the efficacy of the existing format of diplomatic engagement. They ask: Are the six-party talks doomed to fail? And, if so, does a certain player need to be kicked out or does a new player need to be invited in to get the talks going?
President Park Geun-hye officially addressed the skepticism about the six-party talks last week. "(Asking whether the current format of the nuclear talks is the right format to handle North Korea) is not an easy issue because there are other countries involved, but I think we need to be creative and look out for approaches other than the six-party talks," she said on Jan. 22 during a policy briefing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Unification, for which the North Korean nuclear program topped the agenda.
Park suggested five-party talks that exclude North Korea as one of the options that the stakeholder countries could consider to settle the nuclear issue. It has been eight years since the representatives of the six nations last met and, in the meantime, the North has had three nuclear tests and strengthened rather than dismantled its nuclear capabilities.So she indicated it may be time to consider a change in the format of the talks.
President Park's proposal did not mean the scrapping of the existing nuclear talks but indicated her hope for the flexible use of dialogue within the six-party talks if that can be helpful in moving negotiations forward, according to the presidential office.
Park is not the first high-profile political figure to be skeptical about the six-party talks. The efficacy of the multilateral talks has resurfaced following the Iran deal, which was achieved through discussions among six world powers, namely France, Germany, Britain, the United States, China and Russia.
Unlike the six-party talks, this so-called P5+1 negotiation was officially launched only in 2006 but has already achieved its goals.
On Jan. 20, German lawmaker Hartmut Koschyk said the Iran deal was the result of patience and the creative use of diplomatic options, and in this sense, it has some implications for North Korea.
"If all sides involved in the negotiations continue to make efforts to resolve the problem with the backing of the international community, I think we can solve the nuclear issue," he said through an interpreter during an interview with three media outlets, including The Korea Times. "This is what we learned from the Iran deal."
Germany factor
Koschyk visited Korea last week for a Korea Foundation ceremony, during which he received the KF Award for his decades of effort to improve Korean-German relations since the early 1990s.
The German lawmaker said the six-party talks are the appropriate format to deal with the nuclear-armed North Korea. To move the talks forward, he noted the United States and China need to cooperate and must be on the same page.
The P5+1 negotiations and the six-party talks have some similarities. They were designed to stop the two countries' plans to build or strengthen their nuclear weapons and take the form of multilateral talks involving several stakeholder countries.
Despite the similarities, the two cases are different. For one, North Korea has already tested its nuclear bombs four times, while Iran had not done any testing. North Korea has claimed that it possesses nuclear bombs and has demanded the international community accept it as a nuclear state, whereas Iran claimed that its nuclear technology is for peaceful purposes.
The role of Germany in the Iran deal is another striking difference between the two nuclear negotiations.
The five nations that are involved in the talks to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions are those that are geographically close to the communist country and, as a result, will be directly affected by the North's nuclear activities, and one that has the greatest impact in the region — the United States.
The P5+1 negotiation, meanwhile, consisted of six world powers — the five permanent United Nations Security Council members and Germany which has vital commercial interests in Iran.
Germany is a key trading partner of Iran. About 50 German companies have offices in Iran and over 12,000 more have trade representatives there. Many German companies are also involved in major infrastructure projects in Iran. According to the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, more than 10,000 jobs for Germans were affected by the nuclear-related sanctions on Iran.
Some German media reported that Germany, which has earned Iran's trust, played a certain, albeit perhaps insignificant, role in the Iran deal.
In the 2009 book "The Germans and Iran: The History and Present of a Fateful Friendship," German scholar Matthias Kuntzel described Berlin-Tehran relations as a century-old friendship that first began in the 19th century.
According to Kuntzel, Germany took an interest in Iran, then an agricultural country, as a source of raw materials and as a commercial market, whereas Iran needed a Western power that could counterbalance the forces of Britain and Russia, two imperial countries that ruled the Middle East.
Over the past century, the relationship between the two countries had seen its share of ups and downs but remained strong. Kuntzel mentioned German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's visit to Iran in 1984 to promote commercial interests amid opposition from the parliament as an example of the two countries' strong bond.
Genscher was quoted as saying Iran had no bad memories of Germany and Germany never had a colonial presence in Iran. Kuntzel described the German foreign minister's visit as "an act of solidarity against the West and America."
The German-Iranian ties and the former's role in the Iran deal sparked speculation about whether the European country, which also had diplomatic relations with North Korea, could also play a role in ending the North's nuclear program.
Germany is one of the few European countries that established diplomatic relations with North Korea in 2001. There are German activists based in the North working to improve human rights conditions there. In addition, there are cultural exchanges between the two countries, such as the showcasing of German films at the biennial film festival in Pyongyang.
Asked if Germany could consider playing a role in stopping the North Korean nuclear program as it did in the Iran deal, Koschyk said the role of Germany and the European Union, if any, would be secondary. He said Germany and the EU could help move the negotiations forward once the six nations reached a feasible outcome.
The German lawmaker singled out the United States and China as the two key players that would make or break the multilateral talks.
 |
| German lawmaker Hartmut Koschyk during an interview with three media outlets at Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul on Jan.20 / Korea Foundation photo |
The Iran deal, which involved freezing the country's nuclear facilities in return for the removal of certain sanctions, initially raised hopes that North Korea may follow in Iran's footsteps if certain conditions are met. A popular debate has followed about whether the Iran model could be replicated by the North, but naysayers have so far dominated the debate. According to them, Iran is different from North Korea, therefore the Iran deal is not something that can be applied to the North to end the Stalinist's nuclear ambitions.
The lifting of nuclear-related sanctions on Iran earlier this month has also provoked a debate about the efficacy of the decade-old six-party talks aiming to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program.
While Iran has moved forward, North Korea has not shown signs of curtailing its nuclear program; rather, its nuclear bombs have become sophisticated during the hiatus of the talks. The talks were first held in 2003 in Beijing and negotiators from the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States have since met several times. They last met in 2007.
The contrasting moves between Iran and North Korea have prompted foreign policy watchers to question the efficacy of the existing format of diplomatic engagement. They ask: Are the six-party talks doomed to fail? And, if so, does a certain player need to be kicked out or does a new player need to be invited in to get the talks going?
President Park Geun-hye officially addressed the skepticism about the six-party talks last week. "(Asking whether the current format of the nuclear talks is the right format to handle North Korea) is not an easy issue because there are other countries involved, but I think we need to be creative and look out for approaches other than the six-party talks," she said on Jan. 22 during a policy briefing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Unification, for which the North Korean nuclear program topped the agenda.
Park suggested five-party talks that exclude North Korea as one of the options that the stakeholder countries could consider to settle the nuclear issue. It has been eight years since the representatives of the six nations last met and, in the meantime, the North has had three nuclear tests and strengthened rather than dismantled its nuclear capabilities.So she indicated it may be time to consider a change in the format of the talks.
President Park's proposal did not mean the scrapping of the existing nuclear talks but indicated her hope for the flexible use of dialogue within the six-party talks if that can be helpful in moving negotiations forward, according to the presidential office.
Park is not the first high-profile political figure to be skeptical about the six-party talks. The efficacy of the multilateral talks has resurfaced following the Iran deal, which was achieved through discussions among six world powers, namely France, Germany, Britain, the United States, China and Russia.
Unlike the six-party talks, this so-called P5+1 negotiation was officially launched only in 2006 but has already achieved its goals.
On Jan. 20, German lawmaker Hartmut Koschyk said the Iran deal was the result of patience and the creative use of diplomatic options, and in this sense, it has some implications for North Korea.
"If all sides involved in the negotiations continue to make efforts to resolve the problem with the backing of the international community, I think we can solve the nuclear issue," he said through an interpreter during an interview with three media outlets, including The Korea Times. "This is what we learned from the Iran deal."
Germany factor
Koschyk visited Korea last week for a Korea Foundation ceremony, during which he received the KF Award for his decades of effort to improve Korean-German relations since the early 1990s.
The German lawmaker said the six-party talks are the appropriate format to deal with the nuclear-armed North Korea. To move the talks forward, he noted the United States and China need to cooperate and must be on the same page.
The P5+1 negotiations and the six-party talks have some similarities. They were designed to stop the two countries' plans to build or strengthen their nuclear weapons and take the form of multilateral talks involving several stakeholder countries.
Despite the similarities, the two cases are different. For one, North Korea has already tested its nuclear bombs four times, while Iran had not done any testing. North Korea has claimed that it possesses nuclear bombs and has demanded the international community accept it as a nuclear state, whereas Iran claimed that its nuclear technology is for peaceful purposes.
The role of Germany in the Iran deal is another striking difference between the two nuclear negotiations.
The five nations that are involved in the talks to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions are those that are geographically close to the communist country and, as a result, will be directly affected by the North's nuclear activities, and one that has the greatest impact in the region — the United States.
The P5+1 negotiation, meanwhile, consisted of six world powers — the five permanent United Nations Security Council members and Germany which has vital commercial interests in Iran.
Germany is a key trading partner of Iran. About 50 German companies have offices in Iran and over 12,000 more have trade representatives there. Many German companies are also involved in major infrastructure projects in Iran. According to the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, more than 10,000 jobs for Germans were affected by the nuclear-related sanctions on Iran.
Some German media reported that Germany, which has earned Iran's trust, played a certain, albeit perhaps insignificant, role in the Iran deal.
In the 2009 book "The Germans and Iran: The History and Present of a Fateful Friendship," German scholar Matthias Kuntzel described Berlin-Tehran relations as a century-old friendship that first began in the 19th century.
According to Kuntzel, Germany took an interest in Iran, then an agricultural country, as a source of raw materials and as a commercial market, whereas Iran needed a Western power that could counterbalance the forces of Britain and Russia, two imperial countries that ruled the Middle East.
Over the past century, the relationship between the two countries had seen its share of ups and downs but remained strong. Kuntzel mentioned German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's visit to Iran in 1984 to promote commercial interests amid opposition from the parliament as an example of the two countries' strong bond.
Genscher was quoted as saying Iran had no bad memories of Germany and Germany never had a colonial presence in Iran. Kuntzel described the German foreign minister's visit as "an act of solidarity against the West and America."
The German-Iranian ties and the former's role in the Iran deal sparked speculation about whether the European country, which also had diplomatic relations with North Korea, could also play a role in ending the North's nuclear program.
Germany is one of the few European countries that established diplomatic relations with North Korea in 2001. There are German activists based in the North working to improve human rights conditions there. In addition, there are cultural exchanges between the two countries, such as the showcasing of German films at the biennial film festival in Pyongyang.
Asked if Germany could consider playing a role in stopping the North Korean nuclear program as it did in the Iran deal, Koschyk said the role of Germany and the European Union, if any, would be secondary. He said Germany and the EU could help move the negotiations forward once the six nations reached a feasible outcome.
The German lawmaker singled out the United States and China as the two key players that would make or break the multilateral talks.
![[INTERVIEW] North Korean defectors bear brunt of remittance scams](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/75c261156ac7415fad92dc1d7c1b30cf.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
![[INTERVIEW] Foreign-born entertainers seek to revolutionize local industry](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/4a6b2bd3d23044d699dee3c5bb956863.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
