By Heo Mane
The South Korean and U.S. intelligence services had little information on the sudden but long-expected death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. His death was reported to have happened on his luxurious train at 8:30 a.m., Dec.17. No one detected this fact in Seoul.
The immobilized intelligence services of both countries panicked us all. Kim’s death was a different style of passing unlike other dictators in the world. The opinion of the international community was somewhat muted to it.
He was notorious for developing nuclear weapons, and in recent times demonstrated a sprawling plant to enrich uranium to an American nuclear scientist. The enrichment facility operated undetected for a year and a half until Pyongyang revealed it. North Korea exploited, in the meantime, the six-party nuclear talks for the regime’s sake, not for regional peace and stability.
During his entire dictatorial rule, hundreds of thousands of innocent people were sent to concentration or labor camps. Millions of people starved to death in the mid-1990s, and a large number of North Koreans fled to China to merely avoid starvations.
North Korean defectors were forced to lead beggar-type lives in the dark in China and other countries. Such acts of rule led to merciless violations of human rights. It is reported that the “Great Successor,” Kim Jong-un, will follow on to equip the country with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), which his father left as a last instruction.
South Korea has long had conflicting relations with North Korea ever since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The U.S. has too; both countries still maintain frozen relations with the Pyongyang regime. But Seoul and Washington are now appearing to be forging flexible ties with Pyongyang by not agitating the latter but by using soft words instead of hard ones.
Especially the Lee Myung-bak government hopes that peace and stability will be maintained on the peninsula and that better and far reaching cooperation between Seoul and Pyongyang will follow this plan. The government sincerely hopes that the North’s father-to-son power transition will smoothly proceed and Kim Jong-un’s power will be stabilized at an early date.
Seoul allowed the widow of the late President Kim Dae-jung and the chairwoman of Hyundai Group to travel to Pyongyang to pay their respects to the deceased North Korean leader, probably hoping for improved ties with the North.
It should be noted that Seoul, Tokyo and Washington alike did not uttered hard words with regard to Pyongyang’s acts of aggression, and that they began to use soft words in expressing their intentions to mend ties.
Especially, China expressed its most sincere grief over Kim’s death by defining it as an unfortunate passing. Russia hoped that the death will lead to more friendly ties with Pyongyang. Japan also demonstrated behavior that matched soft words which carefully expressed the wish to stabilize the new leadership and not affect bilateral ties negatively.
What really matters at this juncture is that the junior Kim’s power succession will proceed without trouble or a revolt from above and below. It is hoped that internal stability may be established through collective rule based on the cooperation of the party, cabinet and military.
Seoul seems to hope that this type of rule would pave the way for opening up the reclusive communist country as China and Vietnam have done. A successful opening-up is likely to forge a better future image of the state, which in turn will allow foreign capital to flow in, helping Pyongyang undergo fast economic development.
As a result, Kim’s new cabinet can, I believe, create better relations with firstly Seoul, secondly the U.S., and thirdly Tokyo, eventually reinforcing stable diplomatic and political cooperation with the European Union. More importantly, uttering soft words continuously toward Pyongyang is likely to enable confidence-building, which is an essential factor to show an image of a peace-loving state having nothing to do with terrorism.
Last but not least, this opening and reform will be a driving force to push forward the long-stalled nuclear talks. The people of the world have not abandoned yet their hopes that the six-party nuclear talks can bring denuclearization to the peninsula. This is a crucial part of the missions left by Kim Jong-il, although the possession of WMDs was stressed as a last instruction of his father.
It is because if denuclearization does not materialize, there will no longer be hopes for economic development and for diplomatic normalization with Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo. In a nutshell, I’d like to remind people once again that denuclearization is closely linked not only to Northeast Asia but also to Asia-Pacific.
Viewed from his educational background in Switzerland, I am confident that new Kim will accept these opening and reforms step by step through a viable collective rule in the digital era. The shifting from hard words to soft ones matters that much.
Heo Mane is president of the Korea-EU Forum. Contact him at mane398@naver.com. The views expressed in the above article are the author’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.