Third Inter-Korean Summit

By Tong Kim

Clearly at this point, neither Washington nor Seoul wants to discuss a peace treaty with the North Koreans before they return to the six-party talks without conditions.

The Obama administration's ``strategic patience" certainly seems to shift the blame to Pyongyang for the continued delay in restarting multilateral nuclear talks. Pyongyang has called for the discussion of a peace treaty and the lifting of the U.N. sanctions that had been imposed on the North in the wake of its long-range rocket and its second nuclear test last year.

South Korea and the United States, along with Japan, China and Russia, are not even sure when North Korea will come back to the six-party process. Yet, Seoul and Washington stay the course of a two-tract policy of ``sanction and dialogue."

However, there may be a chance of a new development. A familiar ranking Chinese Communist Party official, Wang Jiarui, is expected to meet with Kim Jong-il this week in what seems to have become an annual Chinese exercise to squeeze some positive statements from the North Korean leader.

Any resumed denuclearization process would take a long time, as the North is a proven tough negotiator with a record of backtracking. South Korea, Japan and the United States are legitimately concerned about the threat of North Korea's nuclear weapons. They would not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, regardless of the size of its nuclear arsenal.

On the other hand, neither China, which chaired the six-party talks, nor Russia, which first supplied nuclear technology to the North, regards a de-facto nuclear North Korea as a direct security threat to them. The two Cold War allies of the DPRK say the six-party process is the best path to the resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue.

The Seoul government has been sending conflicting messages to the North by offering its willingness of engagement and by expressing at the same time its toughness to maintain a ``principled policy" in dealing with the provocative behavior of the North Korean government.

President Lee Myung-bak has reiterated his readiness to meet with Kim Jong-il, if the next inter-Korean summit would be ``genuine and not politically motivated" in order to make a real difference in the interests of both Koreas.

Nevertheless, statements coming out of the Lee government are as confusing and conflicting as those that were coming out from the George W. Bush administration signaling a mixed message between dialogue and regime change. The two years of Lee's policy on North Korea has yielded no meaningful record of progress, and it seems that the administration is still muddling through an experiment on the North Korean front.

In a recent interview with the BBC, the Korean president said, ``I can't say it will be sooner or later, but within the year, I will likely meet (with Kim Jong-il) and there should be no preconditions. This statement has been consistent with his New Year's message that the year 2010 ``should become a new turning point in inter-Korea relations."

At a Wilson Center conference in Washington, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg quickly expressed U.S. support for the prospect of an inter-Korean summit in the belief that it will support the process of denuclearization. However, the Korean president's wishful or inadvertent statement on the prospect of an inter-Korean summit was toned down first by the president's staff and later by the president himself.

The Blue House spokeswoman had altered President Lee's words from ``I will likely meet with Kim Jong-iI" to ``there is no reason not to meet with Kim Jong-il if it would help secure peace on the Korean Peninsula and if it would contribute to the North Korean denuclearization." Her deviation was later confirmed to be the official position of the Lee government. It rejected Lee's suggestion that ``there should be no conditions for a summit." From this episode it was learned that President Lee's language sometimes is not as precise as it should be and that inadvertent language creates unwarranted speculation.

On the issue of an inter-Korean summit, there are some known facts: (1) for whatever reason, the North is interested in having another summit with the South, (2) there has been contact between Seoul and Pyongyang to explore a summit possibility, including a meeting between high level officials from both sides in Singapore last fall, and (3) there is general support in the South for a summit, with strong support from the opposition camp, and despite some objections from the far right.

Proponents of a summit, including former officials and supporters of the two previous liberal governments, argue that Lee's face-to-face meeting with Kim will help increase Seoul's role in the process of denuclearization and improve inter-Korean relations to stabilize peace in Korea. They believe the president of South Korea, having a definite advantage in economic power and international standing, should persuade the North Korean leader to come out of isolation and rejoin the six-party talks as a first step toward denuclearization.

Cautious supporters of a summit, including the policymakers in the Lee government and moderate conservatives on the right, insist that a third inter-Korean summit must discuss the issues of denuclearization and South Korean prisoners of war from the Korean War to make some concrete progress on these issues. They argue the previous summits failed in denuclearizing the North and produced empty political gestures in which the South only provided huge amounts of cash and economic aid to the North, and that some of the cash was used for North Korea's nuclear programs.

Opponents of a summit, mostly on the extreme right, believe strongly that it would be futile to work with ``the North Korean Communists, who would never keep their word or give up their nuclear weapons." They see an imminent collapse of Kim's system and a chance for democratic unification under South Korean control. They believe the South has given the North too much already.

Lee Myung-bak has maintained that he is always ready to meet with his North Korean counterpart if such a meeting would genuinely help denuclearize the North and benefit both the North and the South. He said he will not demand that the North Korean leader visit the South in return for the two previous summits that took place in Pyongyang. The next summit can take place at Gaeseong or Mt. Geumgang.

He has offered a ``grand bargain," which will greatly help North Korea adopt a modern, prosperous economy, once it gives up its nuclear weapons. Of course, the question still remains. At what point of progress in denuclearization will the South start providing the massive economic assistance package envisioned in Seoul's ``Opening 3000" plan, to the poverty-stricken North Korea?

One thing we know, as President Lee said, there is no sign of an imminent fall of North Korea. A further clarification of Seoul's plan for the North, as well as the holding of another inter-Korean summit would be helpful to end the seemingly endless question of the Korean Peninsula. No action, no initiatives will yield nothing in time. 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.