Childish but Dangerous

Both Koreas Ought to Think About Nation, History

It is not very hard to guess what Kim Jong-il has in mind with Pyongyang's intensifying saber rattling these days.

The North Korean leader badly needs a diplomatic breakthrough to tide over the economic and social deadlock gripping the communist country, which is worsening amid the worldwide recession. Even without the global economic crisis, however, the North's denuclearization would not exactly top the new U.S. administration's diplomatic agenda. Moreover, the South Korean government has maintained its North Korea policy of ``benign" neglect for a year.

So it would be like killing three birds with one stone, Kim might have thought ― grabbing Washington's attention, wresting concessions from Seoul and stabilizing Pyongyang's atmosphere. Except it will hardly turn out to be like that.

Pyongyang's recent pledge not to abandon its atomic bombs unless Washington ceases to pose a nuclear threat against the isolationist regime is nothing but its time-old demand for turning the present armistice into a peace treaty and recognizing it as a nuclear power, reiterated upon the launch of the Barack Obama administration.

These moves, accompanied by a reported preparation to test-fire a Daepodong-2 missile that can reach America, seem aimed at taking a shortcut by beefing up the stakes, instead of muddling through the time-consuming six-party process. True, the Obama diplomatic team has vowed to utilize ``tough, direct" diplomacy, but this kind of sounding out of a new counterpart has a considerable risk of backfiring, especially when the other side is firm in principle while flexible in approach. Pyongyang is urged to take the slow and steady ― if tedious ― course, at least until Washington finds some time for breath.

The long-range missile test will likely end up to be much ado about nothing, but Pyongyang's threat to scrap all inter-Korean political and military accords may not, in view of the North's past records and present signals. In the run up to the first naval clash that took the lives of more than 30 North Korean sailors in 1999, the North's military made similar threats followed by support from the governmental propaganda machine.

But there is one big difference between then and now, which the Seoul government must understand. A decade ago, the military collision took place despite ― not because of ― the existence of a dovish administration in Seoul, and it was the Kim Dae-jung administration's Sunshine Policy that reduced the damages of the two naval battles to a minimum through an inter-Korean ``hot line."

Now, however, there is no channel of direct communication at all between the Koreas, meaning there is always the possibility that an accidental, local skirmish could escalate into a full-blown conflict at any time before Beijing or Washington intervenes.

This is not to say North Korea's moves can be justified in any way, as Kim Jong-il is making worse responses to bad moves by the Lee Myung-bak administration. As President Lee seemed to ignore two summit accords, Chairman Kim decided to hit back by neglecting the earlier, more basic agreement. It seems harder sometimes to fathom what's in the mind of Lee than in that of Kim. Lee's reform-openness policy on North Korea is little different from the failed ``regime-change" policy of the George Bush administration by confusing the precondition and ultimate goal.

It's not certain whether Lee is wanting to just differentiate from his predecessors or make clear who is the real master of this divided peninsula. But history will record both leaders as those who tried to perpetuate Koreans as the only people on this planet who hate one another by placing ideology before the nation.