Inter-Korean ties are likely to be strained further as Pyongyang continues to step up its attacks on President Lee Myung-bak's tougher policy toward the reclusive country. The latest came Tuesday when the Rodong Shinmun, an organ of the North Korean Workers' Party, ran a lengthy article denouncing Lee for impeding national reconciliation by coming up with his pragmatic policy based on reciprocity. It marked the first time that the party mouthpiece has used the name of the South Korean President to berate him on his hardened stance on inter-Korean relations.
The article is sure to reflect the North's official reaction to Lee's departure from his predecessors' Sunshine Policy of active engagement with the world's last Stalinist country. The Kim Jong-il regime might have been waiting for an excuse to undo its commitment to denuclearization after Lee won a landslide victory in the Dec. 19 presidential election. There are growing suspicions that the North passed the Dec. 31 deadline without declaring all its nuclear programs and proliferation activities deliberately.
In other words, Pyongyang has apparently taken a wait-and-see attitude toward the nuclear disarmament process and South-North rapprochement until Lee's North Korea policy takes shape. It took the North just about one month to test Lee's policy and chart a new course for returning to its outdated brinkmanship tactics. It can be said that President Lee's hard-line position has provided incentive for Pyongyang to escalate tensions with Seoul.
Thus, Lee now faces a major test of his policy that set denuclearization as a precondition for better ties with and more economic aid to the impoverished communist state. There is no doubt that the North is totally responsible for aggravating the situation because it is only trying to return to square one. However, President Lee and his policymakers should have been aware of possible North Korean reactions to his tougher policy. After all, Lee's repeated stress on the ``denuclearization first'' policy would inevitably invite a backlash from the recalcitrant North.
It's too early to tell if Lee's hardened policy will eventually succeed in applying more pressure on the North to move toward complete, irrevocable and verifiable denuclearization. But right now, he seemed to have failed to take the initiative in relations with North Korea. Lee should have been more cautious in dealing with the precarious regime, desperate to survive with a make-or-break mentality. He ought to remember that U.S. President George W. Bush and his neo-conservatives have failed to persuade the North into nuclear disarmament with their hard-line positions.
However, the Washington establishment has come to realize that the U.S. cannot win over North Korea with threats of force or by branding it as a member of the ``axis of evil.'' Thus, the U.S. has shifted to a conciliatory approach toward the North after suffering a setback in Iraq. The Lee administration is required to take advantage of the changed U.S. policy to realize the North's denuclearization. Lee ought to learn how to use carrots and sticks at the same time to encourage Pyongyang down the path of nuclear disarmament toward peace, national reconciliation, and co-prosperity on the Korean Peninsula. Using either carrots or sticks unilaterally will only bring about unpredictable consequences.