Korea's silver linings playbook

By John Burton

Every cloud has a silver lining as the saying goes and North Korea’s recent bellicose rhetoric might provide one example. Pyongyang’s war-like threats coming after its successful rocket launch and testing of its third nuclear bomb could provide an opportunity for regional cooperation in Northeast Asia, distracting China, Japan and South Korea from territorial disputes among themselves that threatened to escalate with the recent leadership transitions in all three countries.

Pyongyang’s behavior has put the region on notice that the North Korean government might be undergoing a more volatile leadership transition than first thought as Kim Jong-un attempts to shore up his legitimacy and placate a potentially restive military after he reshuffled its top ranks and stripped the armed forces of some of its economic privileges last year. The cocky attitude currently displayed by Pyongyang shows that it is unlikely to abandon its missile and nuclear programs.

North Korea’s unruly behavior is likely to focus minds in Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul that they face a far more serious issue than the apparently intractable maritime territorial and historical disputes that until recently consumed public attention. This would lead to an acknowledgement that the time has come to promote cooperation to achieve the regional stability that is in their common interest. The hope is that the North Korean threat will now lead to closer dialogue and engagement among China, Japan and South Korea, including discussing ways to resolve the crisis and bring Pyongyang into the international fold.

If such joint efforts succeed with regard to North Korea, it could provide the foundation for an improvement in conditions related to the territorial disputes among the three countries that have been aggravated by nationalist feelings. North Korea is the first big test for the new leaders in all three countries and a positive outcome would do much to bolster their confidence in cooperating on other regional matters.

There are signs of a convergence of their views on North Korea by adopting a tougher stance. Japan remains the most hawkish under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But China has hardened its position as well by voting last week to support a U.N. sanctions resolution against North Korea that it helped draft with the U.S. South Korean President Park Geun-hye initially backed away from the hardline position of her predecessor Lee Myung-bak, although it will be interesting to see whether the current crisis will enable her to proceed with her plans to provide humanitarian aid to North Korea in the future.

The evolving consensus on North Korea could break the logjam on regional cooperation that had been blocked by rising nationalism. For example, will South Korea now be willing to go ahead with the proposed agreement with Japan on sharing military intelligence on North Korea? The measure was abandoned last June after South Korean politicians criticized the Lee Myung-bak government on nationalist grounds for promoting defense cooperation with the country’s former colonial ruler. Tensions rose further with Tokyo after President Lee visited the Dokdo islands in August.

Another factor favoring closer cooperation among China, Japan and South Korea was that the heightened rhetoric over maritime territorial disputes last year, including the Senkaku/Diaoyu and Dokdo island issues, was influenced by electoral posturing in Japan and South Korea in the run-up to the December elections in both countries as well as the impending leadership transition in China. Now that the new leaders have been installed, nationalist feeling could subside as the domestic political situation becomes more stable.

A more interesting question is whether regional cooperation on the North Korea will lead to growing acceptance of Korean reunification by China and Japan. Reservations by Beijing and Tokyo on a unified Korea are similar to those that once applied to German unification, summed up in a memorable phrase by the French novelist Francois Mauriac, “I love Germany so much I’m glad there are two of them.”

China has feared that a united Korea under a Seoul government allied with the U.S. might pose a strategic threat on its border, while Japan has feared an unified Korea could create a resurgent regional rival. But an increasingly unstable North Korea may convince China and Japan that a united Korea ruled by Seoul might be the lesser of two evils.

The current crisis offers an opportunity for South Korea to persuade its neighbors that reunification can bring tangible benefits, starting with the removal of a military threat and a resulting reduction in South Korea’s military spending as the country shifts to devoting more resources to social services to take care of its rapidly aging population as well as assimilating the North Korean population. Reunification would also increase access to the North’s mineral resources and reconnect transport and energy supply links between South Korea and China and Russia, promoting the region’s prosperity.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant. He can be reached at johnburtonft@yahoo.com.