Ping-pong on dialogue

Koreas cannot engage in blame game for long

As the year has changed, North Korea has also changed its tactics ― from artillery shells to olive branches. The Unification Ministry is understandably busy analyzing the intentions of Pyongyang’s sudden shift and working out countermoves. As Winston Churchill famously said, ``jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” But hopeful presumptions will prove premature, given the still too weak sincerity and eagerness of both sides to move these signals past mere gestures.

It is not hard to guess why the North has abruptly shifted toward a peace offensive. First of all, it actually is vintage Pyongyang to try to mollify Seoul after insulting it. This time around, it is also inevitable for the North Korean leadership to give a good impression to both the U.S. and China, both of which called for mending fences with the South first before reopening the multilateral process. If the South accepts the olive branch, economic aid will come as a bonus. If not, Pyongyang can always pass the buck for the stalemate to Seoul, a no-lose situation for the communist regime.

But the North should do at least two things before hoping to reopen the talks. It must take the responsibility and apologize for the unprovoked attacks on a civilian-inhabited West Sea island, and explain the sinking of a South Korean battleship killing 46 sailors if Pyongyang still denies its involvement. These are the two preconditions for any bilateral talks, set by not just the South Korean government but by its people.

Seoul is justified in making these demands, therefore. But it would appear to be only posing another stumbling block in the way to the resumption of talks if it unduly adheres to tabling the denuclearization issue in bilateral meetings. Even without this, the Lee Myung-bak administration has given enough impression of a dialogue breaker, rather than maker, to objective third-party onlookers.

By most appearances, the inter-Korean talks will not be resumed until late this month at the earliest, after the U.S. and China hold another summit and the United Nations clarifies its position on North Korea’s new uranium-enrichment programs.

Yet the Koreas, especially the South, need not wait until their respective patrons tell them to do this or that. The times have long past for Seoul to stop being mired in military and diplomatic tit-for-tat with Pyongyang with an economy about 2.5 percent the size of its own. If the North makes acceptable measures concerning the frigate Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Island, the South should push ahead with a bold initiative of resuming one-on-one contact starting with humanitarian matters.

It has long proved the Lee administration’s ``strategic patience” ― a euphemism for having no practicable plans ― is a total failure, as it has succeeded to neither bring the North to its knees nor make this divided peninsula safer and more peaceful.

Any government that cannot handle an adversary about 40 times smaller than itself, both by force and words, is either timid or stupid, or both.