'Abject failure' on North Korea

By Tong Kim

One positive outcome of President Park Geun-hye’s recent visit to Washington was that it brought Washington’s attention back to the Korean peninsula issue, which had long been on the backburner due to other urgent issues around the globe _ including Crimea, ISIS, Iran, and Syria.

In Asia, the Obama administration is struggling to prevent China’s hegemony over the so-called Nine Dash Line in the South China Sea, while exploring ways to insure a peacefully rising China that will comply with international law and the rules that were established largely by the United States after the end of World War II.

The American rebalance to Asia is based on the rationale that a state’s strategic interests are protected by the support of military strength and diplomatic effort. This is one reason why the United States is strengthening its alliances with Japan and South Korea and increasing cooperation with other nations of the Asia Pacific region.

At the joint press conference with the South Korean president, President Obama dispelled concerns about President Park’s attendance at the military parade in Beijing last month, by saying, “there is no contradiction between the Republic of Korea having good relations with us _ and having good relations with China.”

However, Obama added, if China fails to abide by international rules and norms, Washington would “expect the Republic of Korea to speak out”. Seoul has not spoken out on the delicate issue of the South China Sea. Some critics complained that the last summit did not even discuss deployment of the THAAD system to Korea.

The Park government insists that a close cooperation with China is essential to achieve the denuclearization of North Korea and a peaceful unification. In Washington, Park said that nobody knows when unification may come. This sounded like an admission that given the current state of inter-Korean relations and her shrinking term in office, her advocacy for unification is a dream as it has been for all Koreans for the past 70 years.

Before, during and after Park’s U.S. visit, various institutions of Washington revived their interest in the Korean issue --discussing denuclearization, deterrent, human rights, North Korean provocations, unification scenarios, China’s role in the ultimate resolution of the Korean issue, and trilateral cooperation between Japan, Korea, and the U.S. Several think tanks held special conferences on Korea.

Seoul and Washington have reaffirmed their joint denuclearization strategy built on a three-prong approach of deterrent, dialogue, and pressure. As Pyongyang does not show any interest in responding to preconditioned “credible and authentic” or “serious and meaningful” negotiations that would produce verifiable steps to denuclearization, emphasis of the strategy has shifted from dialogue to deterrent and sanctions.

There is a consensus that China is on the same side with the U.S., Japan, Russia, and South Korea, in opposing the DPRK’s nuclear development. But, some believe that China is neither implementing UN sanctions against Pyongyang nor using its political and economic influence fully to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. Some attribute such Chinese reluctance to its long historic relationship with North Korea, the potential cost to China of a North Korean collapse, or to its geo-strategic interest in North Korea as a buffer state against Western forces.

Since the six-party process ended eight years ago, U.S. North Korea policy has made little progress for denuclearization. Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, holding a hearing October 20 on the persistent challenges of North Korean denuclearization, called the U.S. policy “an abject failure” by the Obama administration and by its predecessors.

During the hearing, the administration’s North Korea policy representative Sung Kim tried to convey that “Strategic Patience” was not really the official description of the administration’s policy. However, the phrase is a fitting description of the current policy, under which Washington will wait patiently for North Korea to come to negotiations under U.S. conditions that would lead to “a complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement” of Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

Enhancement of deterrent prolongs the uneasy state of peace on the peninsula, but it does not directly contribute to denuclearization. Sanctions make it harder for the North - to develop its economy, and it hurts the livelihood of the North Korean people.

Toughened implementation of multilateral and unilateral sanctions by the United States, including the new sanctions by presidential executive orders issued in response to North Korea’s cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, no doubt increase the cost of the North Korean nuclear and other provocations. It also aggravates Pyongyang’s animosity against Washington.

The administration does not exactly claim that the end of sanctions is to bring the North to the negotiating table, as was the case in the Iranian deal. North Korea shall be more isolated, as it continues to seek its nuclear and missile development. The question is at what point would the North succumb to the pressure of sanctions? It has not succumbed for the past 10 years, and it may not at all in the future, as long as it survives.

On the issue of human rights, the UN Commission of Inquiry report of February 2014 brought pressure on the North Korean regime and contributed to international awareness of the human rights situation in the North. When the UN human rights commission moved through the UN procedures to take its findings to the International Criminal Court, accusing Pyongyang of committing a crime against humanity, Pyongyang reacted aggressively at various venues of international forum. It should also be noted that none of these efforts has resulted in the actual improvement of human rights in North Korea.

To prevent future North Korean provocations, Pyongyang is on notice for more isolation and sanctions. However, the North may well commit more provocations at the absence of a new creative overture from Washington. What’s your take?

Tong Kim is a Washington correspondent and columnist

for The Korea Times. He is also a fellow at the

Institute of Korean-American Studies.