How North Korea bungled its nuclear timing
By Donald Kirk
October 10, 2006
SEOUL - North Korea's nuclear test has altered the landscape of alliances and enmities in East Asia, suddenly putting Japan in common cause with two terrible foes, China and South Korea.
If Kim Jong-il deliberately timed the test to coincide with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit first to Beijing and then to Seoul, he may have dreadfully miscalculated. The leaders of all three countries could hardly agree more - the test is a "provocation" and they have to act together to do something about it.
The verbiage from South Korea was startling. There, after his summit on Monday with Abe, was President Roh Moo-hyun declaring that South Korea would find it "increasingly difficult to stick by its engagement policy" with North Korea. Is Roh really prepared, however, to do away with nearly 10 years of efforts at reconciliation with North Korea?
The answer, in the view of increasingly restive conservatives in South Korea, is that Roh's presidency has been a failure and that the "sunshine policy" initiated his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, has failed to deliver on any of its promises.
For all the strong words, though, the future of engagement now rests on whether Roh is willing to suspend a bundle of economic and social programs that have proliferated in recent years.
And are South Korea and China ready to advocate economic sanctions against North Korea after having strenuously opposed them even after North Korea test-fired seven missiles in early July?
Shinzo Abe, at a final press conference here before returning to Tokyo, called on the "international community" to adopt "harsher measures" - an implicit rebuke of the soft line that China and South Korea have been following.
By his manner and words, Abe conveyed the sense that the North Korean test, announced by Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency shortly after he arrived in Seoul, had helped immensely in resolving deep differences between Japan and South Korea as well as China. "We saw eye to eye," he said flatly after his meeting with Roh.
No doubt about it, the news of the North Korean test came as a devastating blow to nearly a decade of efforts at North-South Korean reconciliation - and also as a huge loss of face for China, widely viewed as having pivotal influence in Pyongyang in view of North Korea's reliance on China for aid and trade.
China's response was that of betrayal by a trusted follower. Denunciation of the test as a "brazen" act suggested the vengeance that China might contemplate. How, Chinese leaders seemed to be asking, could Kim Jong-il treat us with such disrespect after all the aid we've been pouring into his dilapidated economy, including fuel, food and cash?
More than face was at stake. North Korea's nuclear test rekindled fears of a regional nuclear arms race, one in which Japan could threaten everyone else in the region, reviving memories of the days of Japanese empire beginning in the late 19th century.
There was no trace, however, in statements from Beijing or Seoul after the announcement of the test of the kind of anti-Japanese sentiment that has been reverberating through the headlines in the past few years.
North Korea's display of nuclear prowess "will bring about some new perspectives on regional security", said Park Young-ho, senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of National Unification. "Maybe Japan and even South Korea may have some temptation to develop nuclear weapons."
The contentious question of whether Abe would follow the lead of his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, in visiting Japan's Yasukuni shrine honoring Japan's war dead, including the war criminals who led the Japanese empire to conquest over China and Korea, was barely mentioned. And neither Roh nor Abe seemed to want to quarrel over those rocky islets in the East Sea/Sea of Japan that are known as Dokdo to the Koreans whose police occupy them, and as Takeshima to the Japanese who claim them.
The impression was that Abe, while hardly giving up his right to visit the shrine, much less yielding on Japanese claims to Dokdo/Takeshima, might put off a display of such overt nationalism in the interests of new-found friendship with China and South Korea.
Roh, who inherited the "sunshine policy" formulated by Kim Dae-jung, said his government would find it "increasingly difficult to stick to its engagement policy". While South Korea would not abandon its desire for peaceful dialogue, he said, "we may not continue to be patient and to yield to North Korea's demands". Roh's remarks reflected rising conservative pressure for his government to give up what are seen as leftist policies, and to consider closing down business and tourist programs.
While warning of possible "stern measures", however, Roh did not specify exactly what he might do. Options included suspension of permission for South Korean companies to operate in a special economic zone at Kaesong, across the line between the two Koreas about 40 miles north of Seoul, and to bar South Koreans from going on tours to the Mount Kumkang resort region in which South Korea's Hyundai group has invested about US$1 billion.
The North Korean test also seemed likely to bring South Korea closer to the United States after increasingly strained relations in which South Korea has opposed what was seen here as the "hard line" of the Bush administration ever since President George W Bush included North Korea in an "axis of evil" in 2001.
"Korea and the US will get closer to convergence in putting pressure on North Korea," said Kim Sung-han, professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, an adjunct of the foreign ministry. South Korea, he said, "might join the Proliferation Security Initiative" - a US-sponsored effort to get nations to band together in an effort to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. South Korea has so far refused to join PSI, preferring observer status at exercises.
Another option, said Kim, would be for the Seoul to "consider joint missile defense" with the US and possibly even Japan - a level of interdependence that the Roh government had previously opposed.
Yet another question is that of the basic US-Korean alliance. A South Korean spokesman reminded North Korea of the strength of that alliance in a critical period in US-Korean relations.
Roh seemed almost hurt as he spoke of the "common and broad approach" that he had forged with Bush during their meeting at the White House last month. Out of that meeting came a new "comprehensive" proposal for North Korea - on which the North never commented. Now, said Roh, that approach would have to change.
It's not clear if that approach offered anything new, but there's no doubt Roh's policy toward Washington will undergo revision if not transformation. One place to begin may be on the controversial plan for changing the agreement under which South Korean troops would remain under South Korean leadership in case of war rather than under a single US command. South Korean conservatives, including former defense ministers and army commanders, have zealously opposed the whole idea, seen as proof of Roh's leftist anti-Americanism.
In the aftermath of the nuclear test, anti-Americanism may be falling out of fashion in South Korea.
