Advent of Obama Doctrine

By Kim Jong-chan

The election of Barack Obama of the liberal Democratic Party as president of the United States has triggered speculation that South Korea's conservative Lee Myung-bak administration will have to soften its hard-line policy on communist North Korea.

Obama, who won the election by promising change, is expected to bring a new vision to foreign policy affairs, including dealing with North Korea's nuclear weapons. The Obama camp says the President-elect favors principled, direct diplomacy to complement the six-party denuclearization process.

Obama, who is critical of the George W. Bush administration for not engaging North Korea, may send a special envoy to Pyongyang to seek a breakthrough in talks on North Korea's nuclear dismantlement. On several occasions, he has said he is ready to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

He believes that Bush's hard-line approach toward the Stalinist North has led to the North's first test of a nuclear weapon, the spread of its nuclear technology to Syria and the build-up of its nuclear arsenal. The new U.S. administration will likely engage North Korea more intensively than the Bush administration.

Obama's aggressive approach toward North Korea might collide with the Lee administration which has pledged not to seek inter-Korean reconciliation unless the North abandons its nuclear programs _ a stance on Pyongyang the Lee administration has taken since its inauguration in February after 10 years of liberal governments led by Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun.

If the Lee administration objects to Obama's policy toward North Korea when the United States and North Korea are improving their relationship, it could bring discord between the two traditional allies, South Korea and the United States. Some are worried that if South Korea remains unchanged in its tougher stance on the North, the South could be further alienated, while the Pyongyang and Washington move to mend ties. But South Korean officials have dismissed as groundless worry the possibility of the North intensifying its ``Tongmi Bongnam'' tactics of communicating with the United States and isolating the South.

Inter-Korean relations have been sour since President Lee took office about eight months ago. The impoverished communist state has not accepted South Korea's repeated proposal for food aid, saying that the North Koreans could live without the South's aid under the leadership of the ``Dear Leader'' Kim Jong-il. Moreover, Pyongyang ousted all South Korean officials from the joint industrial complex in the city of Gaeseong and the Mount Geumgang tourist resort in the North.

To make things worse, the North Wednesday announced plans to shut their border with the South from next month to protest what it calls Seoul's confrontational policy. It was apparently referring to the dropping of propaganda leaflets by conservative South Koreans NGOs over the border.

Prospects for resumption of inter-Korean dialogue are cloudy as neither side has shown signs of backing off from their stance. Making an accurate evaluation of the past decade of the engagement policy toward North Korea may help find a way out of the deadlock. Let independent think tanks do the job in an objective manner. Critics, mostly conservatives, say the engagement policy only gave an enormous amount of aid to the Stalinist state with few rewards. But few people can deny that it contributed to easing tension on the Korean Peninsula.

President Lee said in an interview last week that he is not opposed to President-elect Obama holding a summit with the North Korean leader after taking office. The remarks were construed as his intention to avoid possible discord with the United States over North Korean issues.

When President Lee attends the G-20 summit in Washington D.C., this weekend, he will have to bid farewell to President George W. Bush who put North Korea on an ``axis of evil'' and softened his stance on the North later. South Korean policymakers will have to read the Obama doctrine and study the prospect of his camp's policy of engaging North Korea, and map out strategies to meet the changing situation surrounding the peninsula.