North Korea’s third nuclear test seems no longer to be an assumption but an unavoidable fact. The focus of discussions among regional powers is also shifting from its prevention to ex post facto responses. Yet, should this be the natural course of things?
Of course not. But watching how Seoul is coping with what it calls the "crisis” situation, one can’t help falling into pessimism.
Yes, the days are numbered for the incumbent administration, but its diplomacy-security team is apparently going too far. Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan is currently mired in a turf war to retain his ministry’s trade-bargaining function; Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin left for Saudi Arabia for not very urgent business; Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik has long forgotten his role; and the National Intelligence Service is busy defending itself from alleged meddling in the presidential election.
President Lee Myung-bak, whose hard-line North Korea policy has only ended up enlarging Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal, still refuses to admit the policy mistakes and sticks to his preference of ever-tighter containment.
President-elect Park Geun-hye, way behind schedule in forming her cabinet, mostly because of her unproductive and secretive style, also seemed to have no time to think of any other thing but picking her first chief of staff and prime minister ― until she called for a bipartisan emergency conference Tuesday to discuss the looming nuclear crisis.
Not only should the ruling and opposition parties huddle together to discuss short- and long-term measures at the proposed meeting, but the outgoing and incoming governments need to closely coordinate their national security policies to prevent giving confusing signals to the North and other countries. President Lee and his aides should take maximum care not to inadvertently restrict the maneuvering room needed by their successors.
It should be President-elect Park and her national security team that takes the initiative in inter-Korean affairs from now on. There are roughly three paths, with varying degrees of toughness, ahead of Park for dealing with the recalcitrant, desperate regime in the other half of this divided peninsula. First, she can follow the footsteps of her predecessor and continue to drive the North into a corner. Second, Park may adopt a more conciliatory policy by separating nuclear and other inter-Korean issues. Third, she could take a most comprehensive and engaging route.
A majority of experts, both local and foreign, who attended a security forum hosted by Yonhap News Agency and Stanford University Monday, recommended the third option, not least because it has become clear that the first two methods have simply not worked so far. And this also seems to be the best way the President-in-waiting can put her "trust-recovery process” to a real test.
The general consensus among participants was the U.S. and South Korean diplomacy to denuclearize North Korea over the past two decades has ended in a fiasco. That means now is the time to try an untrodden path. Park should be able to persuade hawkish opponents in Seoul, Washington and ― even in Pyongyang ― to do so.
That will require enormous conviction and courage, but she has no other choice.