Who will lead NK in from cold?

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Wed, September 27, 2017 | 03:14

Stephen Costello

Who will lead NK in from cold?

Posted : 2016-10-09 17:17

Updated : 2016-10-14 15:42

By Stephen Costello

The U.S. and South Korean presidents seem to be trying to topple the DPRK government through sanctions. This may work, but it probably won't. It will certainly provoke strong retaliatory actions from the North Koreans. There are new reports of activity at three nuclear test sites there. Despite these alarming signals, and the greater threat of mistakes leading to violent clashes, little will likely change for the next two months.

South Korea or US

The public discussion about Korea in the U.S., and primarily in Washington, assumes that the next U.S. president will have the power and authority to change the dynamic with North Korea. The current dynamic is as dangerous, heated and unstable as it has been in almost 20 years. So the new president will choose among three available options: increase economic and military pressure, do nothing, or engage with the North in a serious manner for the first time in 16 years. We should hope that the third option gains the president's support. That option would mean that the U.S. would credibly offer to work toward win-win goals like ending the Korean War, assisting in preparing for the DPRK to join the international monetary system, reducing most sanctions, and establishing diplomatic relations.

There is a fourth option, and there are both political and practical reasons for the U.S. leader to choose it. That option would be to attempt half-hearted engagement, while ramping up sanctions and maintaining heightened military pressure. In such a case, there would be new background U.S.-DPRK talks, but the basis would be short-term, and based on the most immediate needs of the governments. Despite repeated calls from the most experienced and informed specialists, recognition of the U.S. history of flip-flopping policies and strategic mistakes, and new realities in North Korea, would be ignored. The symbolic needs of the U.S. administration will be insisted upon, so that a deal would be unlikely. If one is achieved at all, it will be smaller, take longer, and have less chance of success.

All of this means that Washington's next Korea policy is unclear. It also means that the kind of Korea policy from the White House that would be needed to begin to secure the long-term interests of North Koreans, South Koreans and Americans ― among others ― is unlikely. This is true even while we may urgently wish for such a change and work hard to make it happen. At meetings in New York last week, I had long discussions with three people involved in serious Track II discussions with Pyongyang. All three were cautiously optimistic that a new President Clinton would get the input, and choose an approach to the Korea issues, that would be more bold and realistic than Obama's or Bush's. I very much hope they are right.

Even in the best case, with the new U.S. administration putting together a good, senior team and working on big changes in thinking, it will be a year before they could have a full diplomatic partner in South Korea. During that year, the U.S. president would be dealing with President Park Geun-hye, and her apparent commitment to North Korean regime change, as well as with the extensive industry of coercion-only/anti-diplomacy interest groups at home. All senior Republicans in the U.S. Congress oppose the nuclear agreement with Iran. They oppose the diplomatic opening to Cuba. They would surely oppose new negotiations with North Korea. A new U.S. approach will not be easy.

So who will lead North Korea in from the cold? It won't be Beijing or Tokyo. The North Korean leaders do not look to either of them to solve their most important and fundamental strategic challenges. And neither has the leverage to move the North Koreans by themselves.

Matter of life and death

Could South Korea take a leading role in helping North Korea in from the cold? For Korea to play this role again, after 10 years, Koreans would have to elect a new president who is even more bold and experienced than his or her U.S. counterpart. After all, the North Korea problem is existential for Seoul. As Kim Dae-jung said to Kim Jung-il in June 2000, important strategic decisions by North and South Korea are "Korean business." On his first day as President in February 2003, Roh Moo-hyun was criticized by a former American diplomat at a long table in the Blue House, who implied that his outreach to North Koreans in his inauguration speech was a betrayal of U.S. sacrifices in the Korean War. Roh barely waited for the translation before pointedly answering. "It can be fun to play with these concepts in a seminar or at college. But for U.S. this is a matter of life or death. We will take these issues seriously."

But not all parties across the political landscape in South Korea agree that the North-South divide is existential and is "Korean business." In 2008 President Lee Myung-bak attempted to eliminate the Ministry of Unification. In February this year President Park closed the Gaeseong Industrial Complex. Her Foreign Minister has traveled the world asking other countries to help isolate North Korea. The U.N. Secretary-General's office has greater power to convene and to propose solutions than almost any in the world. Yet during his term Ban Ki-moon was never able to create any initiative to restart talks with North Korea. He made no discernable effort to balance the many UN sanctions with pressure for a real solution.

Like the U.S., South Korea is divided between two major political groups who see the issues in starkly different terms. In both places the prospect for forward movement on security and development issues surrounding North Korea and the northeast Asia region depends on which group wins the presidential election. For South Korea, the issue is already a top priority. Depending on who wins the Korean election of December 2017, Seoul could drag its heels and be dragged around by other powers, giving up its natural interests in leading diplomacy with North Korea. Or it could take the lead once again, helping or prodding its ally to be supportive. The behavior of Korean political parties, as they address the proper role for diplomacy in inter-Korean relations, will be especially important over the next 14 months.

Sixteen years ago in December Kim Dae-jung received the Nobel Peace Prize in the ornate Oslo City Hall. The award was primarily in recognition of Kim's decades of principled leadership of the democratic movement in South Korea, and of his sacrifices. But both he and the Norwegian legislators who chose him that year hoped the prize would help him overcome all the obstacles to pursuing a fundamental resolution of the North-South divide. They could not have known that at the same moment in Florida the U.S. presidential election was being decided in favor of George W. Bush, who would go on to destroy what Bill Clinton and Kim Dae-jung had so carefully and successfully built in the Agreed Framework and North-South engagement.

Elections can make a difference. It is just possible that the alignment of political forces in Washington in 5 weeks, and then in Seoul in 14 months, will again allow Seoul to help lead North Korea in from the cold.

Stephen Costello is a producer of AsiaEast, a web and broadcast-based policy roundtable focused on security, development and politics in Northeast Asia. He writes from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at scost55@gmail.com.

jykwon@koreatimes.co.kr

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