By Michael Breen
Hopes for a permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula have never been higher than they are today.
But that doesn't mean, as some seem to think, that it already happened last Friday when North Korea's Kim Jong-un stepped dramatically into South Korea. Yes, it's going to be hard work, many say, but let's not be negative and dwell on that too much.
In the opposition camp in Seoul, on the other hand, many are so deeply suspicious of the North they are convinced its pursuit of peace is deceptive. They may come across as party poopers, but they have history on their side. The North's sabotage of the South's previous engagement efforts is hard to forget, even if the evidence to prove bad faith this time has not appeared yet.
In the spirit of peace and love, we should point out that there's a lot of common ground between these two positions, despite the appearance that they are in opposition to one another.
The hippy pass-the-peace-pipe giddiness and the leery reach-for-your-guns skepticism are but different parts of the proverbial elephant. Not only are analysts touching those different parts but, if they're anything like me, your individual analyst will be touching both at the same time.
Which is all another way of saying, we have never been closer to peace on the Korean Peninsula, but from where we stand, in the sunlit uplands of the democratic world, it could all go wrong.
That is because the balls are all in the North Korean court. Kim Jong-un started this and it's up to him whether it goes well.
Despite the claims of the fashionable left that America is a warmonger and opposed to Korean unification and that President Moon has managed to achieve what the previous two presidents of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, declined to do, the South Korean-American side has wanted peace for decades. It's the North that has been unable to give up its belligerent posture for the simple reason that to do so would remove the justification for the Kim dynasty's hold on power.
Now, though, it seems that Kim Il-sung's grandson may have thought through this risk and found a way to manage it.
The nature of decision-making in North Korea is such that, despite the appearance of random on-the-spot changes of strategy, there is a form of consensus building that requires the advocates of the previous failed approach, be it aggression or diplomacy, to be on board with the new.
Ironically, that means that Kim Jong-un's change of strategy that we see now was being developed through last year when the fear of war was at its height ― and perhaps not as a consequence of those fears, but of something more deeply necessary, the need to end the absurd posture that has kept North Korea too backward, politically and economically, to be a normal member of the Northeast Asia club.
It is even possible ― and we do not know this for sure ― that the execution of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, the purge of Jang's associates, and the assassination of Kim's half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, were part of the groundwork for a grand change of national strategy which we are now seeing unfolding. (The other view of this is that, as this is the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the state, the leadership wants to pull off a few "victories" ― forcing the Americans to sign a Korean War peace treaty among them ― to mark it and that next year we'll be back to the same old standoff).
So, let us see what the North Koreans are prepared to do, what they want for it, and make politically realistic and morally correct decisions as to whether we are able to go along with it.
Michael Breen is the CEO of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations company, and author of "The New Koreans" and "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader."
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But that doesn't mean, as some seem to think, that it already happened last Friday when North Korea's Kim Jong-un stepped dramatically into South Korea. Yes, it's going to be hard work, many say, but let's not be negative and dwell on that too much.
In the opposition camp in Seoul, on the other hand, many are so deeply suspicious of the North they are convinced its pursuit of peace is deceptive. They may come across as party poopers, but they have history on their side. The North's sabotage of the South's previous engagement efforts is hard to forget, even if the evidence to prove bad faith this time has not appeared yet.
In the spirit of peace and love, we should point out that there's a lot of common ground between these two positions, despite the appearance that they are in opposition to one another.
The hippy pass-the-peace-pipe giddiness and the leery reach-for-your-guns skepticism are but different parts of the proverbial elephant. Not only are analysts touching those different parts but, if they're anything like me, your individual analyst will be touching both at the same time.
Which is all another way of saying, we have never been closer to peace on the Korean Peninsula, but from where we stand, in the sunlit uplands of the democratic world, it could all go wrong.
That is because the balls are all in the North Korean court. Kim Jong-un started this and it's up to him whether it goes well.
Despite the claims of the fashionable left that America is a warmonger and opposed to Korean unification and that President Moon has managed to achieve what the previous two presidents of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, declined to do, the South Korean-American side has wanted peace for decades. It's the North that has been unable to give up its belligerent posture for the simple reason that to do so would remove the justification for the Kim dynasty's hold on power.
Now, though, it seems that Kim Il-sung's grandson may have thought through this risk and found a way to manage it.
The nature of decision-making in North Korea is such that, despite the appearance of random on-the-spot changes of strategy, there is a form of consensus building that requires the advocates of the previous failed approach, be it aggression or diplomacy, to be on board with the new.
Ironically, that means that Kim Jong-un's change of strategy that we see now was being developed through last year when the fear of war was at its height ― and perhaps not as a consequence of those fears, but of something more deeply necessary, the need to end the absurd posture that has kept North Korea too backward, politically and economically, to be a normal member of the Northeast Asia club.
It is even possible ― and we do not know this for sure ― that the execution of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, the purge of Jang's associates, and the assassination of Kim's half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, were part of the groundwork for a grand change of national strategy which we are now seeing unfolding. (The other view of this is that, as this is the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the state, the leadership wants to pull off a few "victories" ― forcing the Americans to sign a Korean War peace treaty among them ― to mark it and that next year we'll be back to the same old standoff).
So, let us see what the North Koreans are prepared to do, what they want for it, and make politically realistic and morally correct decisions as to whether we are able to go along with it.
Michael Breen is the CEO of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations company, and author of "The New Koreans" and "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader."
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