President Lee Myung-bak's four-day visit to the United States starting today comes at a most delicate moment for both countries.
On Saturday, North Korea responded to new, tougher United Nations sanctions by defiantly vowing to push ahead with its nuclear programs, saying it will begin ``weaponizing" all of its plutonium stockpiles and even add a new formula of uranium enrichment, and take ``resolute" military action against efforts to blockade the Stalinist country.
Pyongyang deserves little sympathy. Attempting to get out of its political and economic quagmire through securing weapons of mass destruction is neither justifiable for global peace nor even a good national strategy in practical terms. Nothing illustrates this better than the U.N. Security Council's latest resolution to punish the North's bad behavior.
Of course, the isolationist country might as well ``feel (all this) is somewhat unfair," as former President Kim Dae-jung said Thursday ― tacitly referring to the U.S. recalcitrance toward full engagement despite the North's repeated and unrequited courtship. But it defies the understanding of even objective watchers why Pyongyang opted to stay out of U.S. President Barack Obama's round of reconciliatory diplomacy with old foes, however urgent it might have felt to solidify the power base for waning Kim Jong-il and his son and heir apparent, Jong-un.
That the North fell into its own trap of hastiness does not mean that Washington has been doing everything right, even since President Obama took office. Foreigners could hardly take issue with what cynics call Obama's ``one-and-a-half peace strategy" ― doing all he can to attain peace in the Middle East while remaining content with simply preventing war in Northeast Asia. If America has its own reasons for not fully engaging the communist country on the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, others can't help it, either.
Yet Obama should see what the similar strategy of his predecessor has attained ― North Korea's emergence as a nuclear power ― which Washington acknowledges internally and denies externally. If the United States sticks to a sanctions-only strategy, no country in the world can keep Pyongyang, armed with nearly the world's largest deposits of uranium and possibly the technology to enrich it, from becoming a ``mass producer" of atomic weapons by the time the U.S. leader ends his first term at the latest.
What matters is what role Seoul should play at this moment. President Lee, in an interview with one of the most conservative U.S. dailies, has just said he would push for a ``five-party" meeting that excludes North Korea.
It is more than just regrettable that a South Korean President is taking the lead in further provoking the North by trying to deepen the latter's isolation, instead of trying to dissuade others like Japan, which has been a wet blanket throughout the process. It's true, the North has pledged not to return to the multilateral dialogue table, but taking those statements at face value would be either brainless or heartless.
Lee then ruled out the possibility of an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula, meaning he is bracing for a limited conflict. A leader should only take his or her country to war if it is justifiable and inevitable. We are skeptical that most Koreans ― except for some ultra-rightists ― would think Korea should get involved in another fratricidal war, large or small, at this moment.
If the incumbent government can rest assured that there would be no full-scale war here, that may ironically be thanks to the engagement policy of the past decade. Which is why Seoul should return to the spirits of the June 15 Joint Declaration. We just hope the government did not schedule the President's departure date to coincide with the anniversary of the 2000 summit.