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Another crisis that could have caused an outbreak of war in Korea was avoided by a dramatic inter-Korean agreement reached on Aug. 25. The two Koreas agreed to reduce tension and avoid a military confrontation, while pursuing dialogue to improve inter-Korean relations.
The leaders of both sides, President Park Geun-hye and Kim Jong-un, welcomed the breakthrough as a new opportunity to resolve their differences peacefully through dialogue.
The latest agreement was reached after three days of intense negotiation between South Korean National Security Office chief Kim Kwan-jin and Unification Minister Hon Yong-pyo and North Korean General Political Bureau director Hwang Pyong-so and Unification Department Minister Kim Yang-gon.
For immediate mutual benefit, the main part of the agreement has been implemented: to defuse an acute military standoff that stemmed from an exchange of artillery fire following the explosion of a "wooden-box" land mine that injured two South Korean soldiers south of the Military Demarcation Line in the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
In a negotiated settlement, the South stopped loudspeaker broadcasts directed across the DMZ toward the People's Army troops, and the North lifted the preliminary state of war declared against the South. We don't really know what words the negotiators actually exchanged and what the specifics of the understanding reached between them are, other than the substance and hidden meanings of the announced five-point agreement.
The day after the announcement, the North Korean negotiators denied again that they were responsible for the landmine explosion. Point two of the agreement reads, "The North side expressed regret for the injuries inflicted on the South Korean soldiers from an explosion of a landmine in the south side of the Demarcation Line in the DMZ." This sentence does not say that the North installed the landmine. In past instances of provocation, Pyongyang has never used the term "apology" to admit its responsibility. "Apology" does exists in Pyongyang's diplomatic vocabulary.
The North expressed the term "regrettable" for some of their major provocations, including an attempted attack on the South Korean presidential office in 1968, the "ax murder" incident at Panmunjom in 1976, the Second West Sea Battle in 2002, and the fatal shooting of a South Korean tourist at Geumgang Mountain in 2008.
The North still denies its role in the infamous sinking of a South Korean naval ship in 2010, which led Seoul to impose the May 24 restrictions on inter-Korean trade and contacts, after which their relations have severely deteriorated.
At a news briefing, the State Department's spokesman John Kirby avoided characterization of the differences between "apology" and "regret", commenting, "what's important here is first and foremost an agreement between North and South, and President Park found acceptable the expression made by the North." "The important thing is dialogue brought about an agreement to decrease tensions."
During the negotiations, the South Korean government said, they would not accept any North Korean demands for suspending the loudspeaker operations, unless two clear imperatives were met: Pyongyang's admission of guilt and apology, and its promise to prevent recurrence of a similar provocation. At the end, Seoul had to be satisfied with a half yield of its objectives ― a nebulous expression of regret for the landmine explosion.
In addition, there is no mention of preventing a recurrence. Kim Kwan-jin argued that this underlined part of point 3 of the agreement, "Unless an abnormal situation develops, the South side would suspend all loudspeaker operations across the demarcation line as of 12 o'clock, Aug. 25," gives Pyongyang's assurance against recurrence. This conditional clause does not spell out what an abnormal situation is.
This writer has seen several texts of negotiated agreement taking advantage of intentional diplomatic ambiguity, allowing the parties of negotiation to interpret the text for their domestic consumption. However, the text of the latest inter-Korean agreement goes beyond the scope of linguistic acceptability.
In 2011, to seek the lifting of the May 24 restrictions, Pyongyang tried to create "a statement that sounds like an apology to Seoul but that does not to Pyongyang," in an effort to settle the issue of responsibility for the sinking of the Cheonan Navy ship. President Lee Myung-bak rejected it.
The North's negotiation goal was to stop the South Korean loudspeaker operations that slander the "dignity" of their leader Kim Jong-un. Many analysts in Seoul believe that Pyongyang's sensitivity to South Korean psychological operations is due to the vulnerability of the North Korean regime, and some of them argue that if psychological operations are effectively executed, they can even bring down the regime in Pyongyang.
These watchers overlook the reality of North Korean politics that begins and ends with their leader's dignity and authority. The most important duty of all North Korean elites is to protect Kim Jong-un and to show their utmost loyalty to him.
The upside of the latest agreement is that both sides said they would cooperate to enable reunions of separated families and to engage in dialogue to improve mutual relations and increase exchanges in various fields. Again, actions speak louder than words. What's your take?
Tong Kim is a Washington correspondent and columnist for the Korea Times. He is also a fellow at the Institute of Korean-American Studies.
