Biden and two Koreas

By Choi Sung-jin

Barring some unexpected accidents, Joe Biden will move into the White House about two months from now.

Most countries are now rolling abacus to calculate their gains and losses from the Biden presidency in the next four years. Amid the rush of congratulatory phone calls and messages, some governments are remaining quiet about the U.S. change of political power. One such conspicuous case is North Korea.

Pyongyang and its state media have made no reports at all on election results in America so far. One can only guess why. For starters, North Korea has seldom been swift to deliver news related to the “U.S. imperialists.”

Moreover, its leader, Kim Jong-un, might feel uncomfortable about the election of Biden, who recently called him a “thug.” Kim's propaganda machine wasted no time returning the insult with a far cruder term ― a rabid dog. After all, Biden is replacing none other than Donald Trump with whom Kim exchanged dozens of “love letters.”

But it's time for Kim to forget Trump and learn how to get on well with Biden.

By most appearances, the North Korean issue will be on the back burner of Washington under Biden. The new administration will be busy fixing numerous things broken during Trump's reign and restoring normalcy to abnormalities, both at home and abroad. Suppose impatient Kim tries to draw Biden's attention by playing with fire. In that case, nuclear and/or missile tests ― the new U.S. leader is likely to tighten the noose around Pyongyang to nearly an unbearable level.

For better or worse, Biden will prove to be a formidable counterpart for the isolationist regime to deal with. Unlike Barack Obama, a legal expert but a diplomatic novice, let alone real estate merchant Trump, Biden has been a politician for life with abundant experience and expertise in international affairs. He knows the nuts and bolts of diplomacy and is armed with detailed knowledge of global issues, including decades of allies' efforts to denuclearize the recalcitrant regime.

North Korea and its young leader, which took to Trump's “top-down” style of negotiation, will find it frustrating to start from the ground up under Biden's “bottom-up” approach. As Kim and his coterie must know well, however, they've won nothing of substance from Trump except for getting international spotlights briefly. However, Kim may be able to repeat his moment with a new U.S. leader, too, if his country “is drawing down its nuclear capacity,” as Biden made clear while campaigning. Trump set up a rather unrealistic goal of denuclearizing the North at one stroke. With Biden, Pyongyang has only to go back to the old gradual ways of “action for action,” although narrowing the discrepancies between the two in each stage will not be easy.

And this is where South Korea's role becomes important. President Moon Jae-in and his foreign policy team should dissuade Pyongyang from making military provocations and induce it to adjust to the Biden administration's bargaining style of piling up one by one. To do so, Moon needs to show to its North Korean counterpart that he can persuade Biden, something that he failed with whimsical, self-centered Trump. Like their identical party names, Moon and Biden are centrists and liberal politicians. It is well known that Biden maintained a close relationship with the late President Kim Dae-jung and supported the latter's engagement policy with North Korea.

It has become a little difficult to apply Kim's Sunshine Policy to the present North Korea, which has become a de facto nuclear power. However, Moon should tell Biden that he stands on the shoulders of two liberal giants ― Kim Dae-jung and Kim's like-minded successor, Roh Moo-hyun. Koreans remember the Seoul-Washington teamwork regarding Pyongyang was best when liberalists led both governments. Depending on how Seoul does, there is no reason a Moon-Biden “bromance” should not resemble that of the Kim Dae-jung-Bill Clinton duo.

Excepting the U.S. military-industrial complex, the biggest stumbling blocks in this process will be right-wing politicians and media outlets here. These conservatives already call for a “reset” in the Moon administration's Washington and Pyongyang policies. Some even rebuke Moon for adhering to his peace process on the Korean Peninsula through rapprochement with Pyongyang, “despite the change of political power in Washington.” These right-wingers, obsequious to the powerful and arrogant to the weak, say Seoul must shift its policy whenever the occupant of the White House changes.

A new leader in either capital may require some policy fine-tuning on the other's part but the “reset” of a country's foreign policy principle every four or eight years is unthinkable for an independent nation. The time has long passed for Koreans to chart their course and determine their fate ― or at least try to go in that direction.

The conservatives also call for the resumption of massive ― and “wasteful” as Trump rightly pointed out ― “war games” against North Korea while delaying the takeover of wartime operational control. South Korea should not remain a mediator but should become a decider of all major events on this peninsula. However, the conservatives say Seoul should stop taking “a presumptuous mediator's role” and strengthen cooperation with the U.S. ― follow Washington's direction, in other words.

The Korean Peninsula is the theater of life and death for Koreans. Still, whenever it was belatedly known that the U.S. considered a preemptive strike against North Korea risking an all-out war without even telling Seoul in advance, few officials here lodged a protest, just sweeping down the back of their heads surreptitiously. At present, few can tell for sure exactly what Biden's policy on the Koreas will be. However, no less important than who works in the Oval Office is how Seoul will work to achieve what's good for Koreans.

Choi Sung-jin (choisj1955@naver.com) is a Korea Times columnist.