Washington pushes Seoul

By Tong Kim

After a long period of waiting and inaction, the United States is finally showing some dissatisfaction with the lack of progress in inter-Korean dialogue. Washington had set improvement of North-South relations as a precondition to the resumption of the six-party talks. At its inception, the Obama administration determined that it would not move forward on the North without concurrence of South Korea. That made sense then.

However, two and a half years of the Obama administration and three and a half years of the Lee Myung-bak government has been a stalemate in the dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear program. This does not mean that there has been no diplomatic activity. In fact, there have been a significant number of policy coordination trips by senior diplomats between Washington and the capitals of the participating nations in the nuclear talks.

These trips included the first trip to Pyongyang by U.S. Representative for North Korea Policy Stephen Bosworth in December 2009 and a recent trip by Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues Coordinator Robert King. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and all of her senior officials responsible for the Korean Peninsula made several trips to Seoul and other capitals in the region. For all their efforts at the cost of taxpayers’ money, they have produced nothing, other than sticking to the same old position of ``strategic patience” and pressure on the North.

While North Korea comes first to blame for building a nuclear arsenal by both means of plutonium and uranium enrichment in defiance of its international obligations, the failure on the part of the United States and its allies in South Korea and Japan to do something about the problem has become too serious to overlook. Given the ideological intransigency of the South Korean government and the relentless belligerency of the North Korean regime, any improvement of inter-Korean relations was unlikely from the beginning, if anybody had really hoped for it.

At the July 7 daily briefing by the State Department, Spokesperson Victoria Nuland shed the first glimpse of U.S. frustration with Seoul’s failure in making progress in dialogue with the North. She did volunteer to reveal this publicly, until she was asked by a reporter, who must have been well aware of the concerns of many sound minds. The reporter asked:

Question: What is the U.S. strategy for North Korea? …is it doing nothing while waiting for North Korea to do something? Or are you just waiting for South Korea to improve relations with North Korea?...we all know North Korea is [a] bellicose, hard country, but some people say the U.S. should do more ― I mean more proactive in trying to restart dialogue with Pyongyang. So what is your policy at the moment?

Spokesperson: The Secretary...spoke to this very clearly barely a week ago, when Korean Foreign Minister Kim was here. We want to see North-South dialogue improved so that we can get back to the table on Six-Party Talks. Our diplomacy has been very active. We’ve just had consultations with China...We had a Japanese counterpart to Kurt Campbell here yesterday. They spent a lot of time on North Korea….

Question: [T]here’s … an impression that you’re getting a little impatient in terms of what it’s going to take to get this North- South dialogue going... is the South … holding out unrealistic expectations of how … this new relationship is going to be? …are you pushing them … to engage the North so that we can move forward?

Spokesperson: “Again…it was a subject of the discussion when Foreign Minister Kim was here. We think both sides have some work to do... and we want to see that work done….We need to keep pushing.” (Underlines added).

Question: … are you leaving it up to the South to determine the criteria and pace and scope of this North-South dialogue? ….It’s almost like the [six-party] talks are being held hostage in a way for this North-South dialogue…does the South have the final say about what constitutes enough dialogue so you can get back to the talks?”

Perhaps, we can get more out of the questions than from the answers about the limits of the failed policy of ``strategic patience.” Yet, it is interesting to note that the spokesperson said the United States was working on ``both tracks” meaning working with South Korea on one track and with other parties of the talks on the other, but excluding North Korea. A realistic answer to the reporter’s last question, of whether the decision is up to the South, should have been ``yes”.

As long as the Seoul government wants improved relations with the North only under its own terms, the United States has no choice but bear with the South’s decision. Washington just cannot afford to alienate Seoul over the North Korean issue at a time when the North launches provocations, China’s influence keeps rising, and Japan’s role is shrinking in the region in the wake of the tsunami disaster. There is a bigger U.S. strategic interest involved in dealing with the North Korean issue.

The United States has led itself into an uncomfortable situation of its own creation. The best thing Washington can do is to persuade the South as well as the North to talk to each other to improve their relations. The conservative Seoul government may not like it, but Washington should realize that neither does the North want to talk to the South now.

Another option is for Washington and Seoul to skip the stages of inter-Korean dialogue and U.S.-North Korea talks as the conditions to the six-party talks. All six parties meet in Beijing and start from scratch there. Reconvening of the talks itself should not be a gain or a loss to any party. If the process of restarting the talks is this difficult, how can we expect to accomplish anything from the talks? What’s your take?

Tong Kim is a research professor with the Ilmin Institute of International Relations at Korea University and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He can be reached at tong.kim8@yahoo.com.