Tension is growing on the Korean Peninsula as the founding anniversary of the North Korean Workers’ Party on Oct. 10 is approaching.
Of course, regional powers are not just watching with their arms folded. The Presidents of the U.S. and China made it clear they would neither recognize North Korea as a nuclear state nor allow the North to violate the U.N. resolution that bans Pyongyang from launching another long-range rocket. President Park Geun-hye, in her address at the U.N. General Assembly, also advised against the North’s nuclear and/or missile provocation. Foreign ministers of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan met to discuss how to deal with the reclusive regime’s reckless act.
We hope, as many analysts here think, that the concerted warnings and pressure would dissuade the North’s leadership from making another set of self-inflicting moves, economically and diplomatically. If China gets more positive in punishing Pyongyang’s violations, even the isolated North Korean economy will suffer serious damage.
Yet the possibility still remains that the tightening encirclement by these countries might backfire and provoke the cornered regime to take risks both to shake off deepening diplomatic isolation and to reaffirm its sense of existence, aimed mostly at its domestic audience.
Should Pyongyang take this strategically suicidal step, it will have to undergo severe pains accompanying enhanced sanctions, after a brief euphoria. The problem is, South Korea will also pay a huge price if it fails to prevent the North’s provocation.
Already, the North’s state propaganda machines are putting forth barrages of attacks on President Park’s U.N. address, threatening to stop the hard-won dialogues between the Koreas and scuttle even the reunions of dispersed families tentatively scheduled for mid-October. North Korea is wrong to link humanitarian events to political and military issues, but Pyongyang is nothing if it does not discard agreements out of whim.
Disruption of inter-Korean dialogue may not be the only reason. If the North pushes ahead with the launch of an inter-continental ballistic missile disguised as a satellite or makes its fourth nuclear test, Seoul will have to sit and watch the reclusive regime’s nuclear capability increase. It was regrettable in this regard that President Park’s U.N. speech, albeit going in the right direction in the long run, was lacking in more immediate and concrete incentives to keep the North from turning its words into actions.
President Park and her diplomatic team seem to be encouraged, perhaps a little too much, by her recent summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the inter-Korean agreement of Aug. 25, when the North yielded to the South’s hard-line stance. But Seoul can ill afford to remain complacent with small victories. President Park ought to get ready for a long process of dealing with a recalcitrant North and bringing it back to the dialogue table, bilaterally and multilaterally. Park needs to even refrain from mentioning the word unification too frequently, which the North regards as unification through absorption.
Few deny Seoul ought to take the lead in bringing Koreas toward eventual unification. However, that will, and should, be a tedious, painstaking process, moving by one slow and small step by step. What Seoul will and can do in the next 10 days or so, should be a good litmus test.