By Kim Ji-soo
Staff reporter
There is a lot happening in the country this week. Both U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were in town for the first-ever ``2+2” meeting. The talks place Clinton and Gates at the table with their respective South Korean counterparts, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and Defense Minister Kim Tae-young.
While Clinton arrived Wednesday morning just hours ahead of the meeting, Gates arrived Monday for a four-day visit. Such a lengthy stay in South Korea by a high-ranking U.S. official is nearly unprecedented. Gates was quoted as saying that it was the longest he has stayed in one country. He extended the initial three days to four.
After getting in on Monday, Gates gave moral support to the U.S. troops at Camp Casey, where he announced an even bigger “surprise” gift for the South Korean government - he and Secretary Clinton would visit, along with their counterparts, the Demilitarized Zone and the Joint Security Area.
So the four high-ranking officials went to the buffer zone, that long strip of land dividing the Korean Peninsula. The 250-kilometer-long, 4-kilometer-wise DMZ is a vestige of the tragic, fratricidal Korean War (1950-53). It was established when, on July 2, 1953, the U.S.-led United Nations Command, China and North Korea signed the Armistice Agreement that ended the three-year conflict. Well, “ended” meaning putting the two Koreas facing each other in a technical cease-fire state.
So the top chiefs of each country’s defense and foreign affairs went there, visiting the Observation Point Ouellettee. The observation point is close to the Military Demarcation Line and the North Korean guard post. Then they went on to the Freedom House, taking photos with both Korean and U.S. soldiers and then to the JSA Conference Row.
Then the U.S. officials visited the War Memorial of Korea in Yongsan, Seoul, where they paid tribute to U.N. troops killed in the Korean War and to the 46 sailors killed in the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan.
Alongside these ceremonial events, the two defense ministers announced after their Tuesday talks that four F-22 Raptors will be employed for the joint South Korea-U.S. exercise July 25-28 in the East Sea to demonstrate the deterrence ability of the two allies against North Korea.
Dubbed ``Invincible Spirit,” the exercise will be of one of the largest in scale, bringing 8,000 South Korean and U.S. Army, Air, Navy and Marines forces together. In addition, 200 fighter jets, naval aircraft and helicopters will fly in training missions. The U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington docked in the southern port city of Busan on Wednesday.
All in all, even to a casual observer of defense and security matters, it is apparent that the two allies have gone to great trouble to show their solid and firm alliance.
But just how far these efforts will go in prompting North Korea to acknowledge and apologize for the Cheonan attack and denuclearize remains largely elusive. The presidential statement adopted by the U.N. Security Council while ``condemned” the Cheonan attack did not directly place the blame on any specific country or group.
The North is making subtle overtures of hoping to return to the six-party talks, which South Korea believes is an attempt to defuse any possible responsibility over the Cheonan attack. And it recently notified Seoul of its plans to discharge water from a dam after being pounded by torrential rains.
And then there is the question of whether these efforts can ensure deterrence of any further attacks or incursions. James Clapper, who has been nominated as the next U.S. director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that the Cheonan attack may signal the beginning of a new era in which the reclusive North Korea will again directly attack South Korea to achieve its political goals. Defense experts agree that Korean corvettes generally lack anti-submarine capabilities.
If the joint drills and security talks do not address this problem, where will the real deterrence come from?