Dangers to avoid amid Olympic thaw

By Stephen Costello

There are dangers to beware of as President Moon Jae-in tries to incorporate the North Korean initiative into his partly-formed structure for a new engagement, tension-reduction and development strategy.

The conservative press in South Korea is aghast at the boldness of the new group, which contrasts starkly with the outdated, subservient and counter-productive policies of Lee Myung-bak and Park Guen-hye. Moon’s caution and the contradictory elements of his approach to foreign affairs have provided opportunities for criticism.

In the U.S., both the administration and the conservative mainstream on these issues are warning that the PyeongChang Olympics could drive a wedge between the allies and relieve the military pressure, diplomatic isolation and economic strangulation that constitute the only tools the Trump administration can use.

The line is that these pressures are “finally working.” More than a decade of fearing diplomacy and relying instead on coercion toward North Korea has had these deep and wide impacts on journalists, policy specialists and the public in both South Korea and the U.S.

In addition, the continuing revelations of government corruption and all-out ideological warfare in the South that are now daily front-page news reveal that the previous decade included a 1950s’ mind-set, and that scholars, journalists and others were blacklisted for ideological reasons.

On the other hand, modern South Korea has a strong civil society and a history of activism, and its people know far more about nasty and authoritarian governments than Americans do. They are fully capable of dealing with this. Nevertheless, that decade has impacted everybody, and the Moon government will have to acknowledge their concerns.

Many of the fears provoked by the Olympic thaw can be explained by today’s style of politics in the two capitals. However, on a deeper level, the real dangers are of a different sort. Three stand out as possibly limiting South Korea’s options, and limiting the two Koreas’ opportunities for a better relationship.

First, there is a danger that the Seoul administration thinks it must subordinate its own view of Korea’s interests to the line and tactics of the current U.S. president. This is a bizarre approach, partly because this U.S. administration is uniquely incapable and unhelpful in its approach to Northeast Asia.

But the idea has taken hold that the South Korea-U.S. alliance is a mythical thing, at once precious and fragile. This itself is a myth, but the Trump group is loudly proclaiming it. There is debate within the Moon government, but uncritical subordination is a serious concern. If it prevails, then South-North engagement stands no chance of succeeding.

A second danger is that the Blue House will continue to believe, in a strategic sense, that North Korea needs increased pressure of various kinds in order to “make the right choice” or abandon its nuclear program. This analysis was embraced by the U.S. administration that destroyed the Agreed Framework, beginning in 2001.

It was necessary at that time to justify such recklessness, and has been used to explain the U.S.’s avoidance of realistic diplomacy ever since. The record shows, however, that the U.S. walked away from that agreement, not North Korea. Books by key figures, including Bush and many others, support this.

Therefore, much of the underpinning for years of U.S. and South Korean strategy falls away. The utility of pressure on North Korea is already discounted by most responsible analysts. But the justification for pressure is also questionable.

Only by appreciating this could the South Korean administration have the flexibility to choose mutually beneficial actions rather than pressure tactics in coming negotiations. The DPRK is unlikely to make significant progress toward tension reduction while it is under extreme pressure.

Thirdly, there is the danger that the Moon administration has embraced the sanctions imposed since the first North Korean nuclear test in 2006 as somehow ironclad and immovable. These sanctions are seen by some as the voice of the “international community” and something close to “international law.”

Aside from their justification or legality, the sanctions have a far more complex history than simply one of united condemnation of the North. Most were bullied out of a United Nations unable to fully assert its principles or to play its role in the face of U.S. institutional condemnation and threats to pull funding.

Most of the U.N. resolutions were unbalanced, in the sense that the U.S. refused to accept any responsibility to engage in serious negotiations without preconditions in the resolutions. Today, sanctions relief is one of the two main deliverables that Seoul could help provide to Pyongyang, if there were commensurate actions from that side.

So President Moon will need to be able to pause some sanctions as part of his medium-term negotiations with Kim Jung-un. This could only be done if broad international and U.N. support were created first.

The choice that confronts President Moon is between continuing his embrace of U.S. demands for a coercive approach to the North on the one hand, and growing expectations for South Korea’s middle-power role as the central organizer and agent of Korean Peninsula solutions on the other. He never could have pursued both.

Now Kim Jung-un’s PyeongChang initiative has forced him to choose. The visit to PyeongChang of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. Vice President Michael Pence is specifically designed to stop Moon’s diplomacy and enforce the pressure/surrender position of the White House.

Regardless of one’s opinion of various sanctions, the hope that they could be maintained while North Korea makes meaningful concessions is unrealistic. They will either be maintained or there will be the beginning of honest talks between the two Koreas. There will not be both.

Stephen Costello (scost55@gmail.com) is a producer of AsiaEast, a web and broadcast-based policy roundtable focused on security, development and politics in Northeast Asia. He writes from Washington, D.C. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.