Here is the reason we are having a tough time solving the North Korea problem. Seems South Korea just wants to appease. WSJ.com
SEOUL DISPATCH
'Dialogue' Goes South
The eclipse of Korea's "sunshine" policy.
BY KAREN ELLIOTT HOUSE
Wednesday, November 13, 2002 12:01 a.m.
SEOUL--With North Korea's acknowledgment that it possesses nuclear capability, you might assume South Koreans would feel the fear and outrage that gripped Americans 40 years ago during the Cuban missile crisis. After all, Pyongyang is considerably closer to Seoul than Cuba is to the U.S., and the North Korea of 2002 is far less rational than the old Soviet Union.
But, remarkably, the country and its political leaders are more worried about George W. Bush than Kim Jong II. They fear that Mr. Bush won't have the patience to engage in "dialogue" with North Korea. Indeed, dialogue seems not to be a means to an end here but rather the endgame. "We believe dialogue is the only way," says Chung Mong-Joon, a late but popular entrant in the presidential race here. "If dialogue leads us nowhere, what do we do?" he asks rhetorically in a recent interview. "We say again, dialogue."
Pinning a foreign policy to a blind faith in dialogue is like assuming that Saddam Hussein wouldn't have developed weapons of mass destruction if the U.S. had simply been endlessly patient and babblative with him. But dialogue has been precisely the policy of South Korea's Kim Dae Jung during his five-year presidency, which ends in February. His Sunshine Policy called for dialogue with and aid to North Korea. Regardless of how badly North Korea behaved, Mr. Kim's response was more dialogue, more aid. It is this bankrupt policy that has brought South Korea to the current brink. All Mr. Kim has to show for "sunshine" is a confession by Pyongyang that it has lied repeatedly to Seoul, Tokyo and Washington about giving up its nuclear ambitions.
Yet South Koreans seem strangely eager to ignore reality. Businessmen seen during a recent visit insist nothing has changed; that South Korea has known all along the North had nuclear capabilities; and besides the conventional weapons possessed by both North and South Korea are sufficient for their mutual destruction. As for much needed economic reforms, like truly privatizing the banking sector, the status quo is also the preferred option in a country that seems to be coasting on its 6% economic growth rate. So instead of debating either foreign or economic policy, South Korea's presidential election is focused on character. It is true that since democracy returned here in 1987, all three presidents--Roh Tae Woo, Kim Young Sam and now Kim Dae Jung--have limped out of office in disgrace. So clean politics is certainly needed.
The leading contenders this election are Lee Hoi Chang, 67, a lawyer with a Mr. Clean reputation, who narrowly lost the last election. He rose through Korea's elite civil service to become a judge and eventually hold a seat on the Supreme Court. While another judge also is in the race, Mr. Lee's chief opponent is Chung Mong-Joon, 51, the handsome scion of Hyundai. A member of Korea's National Assembly since 1988, Mr. Chung attracted little notice until this summer when, as head of Korea's Football Association, he was largely responsible for bringing the World Cup to Korea. The success of the cup and of South Korea's own soccer team made Mr. Chung a national hero and catapulted him into presidential politics. He isn't a member of any political party and thus insists he is beholden to no one. Born to wealth, he argues he won't need to use the presidency to enrich himself. Tall, lanky and normally at ease with foreigners (he earned a masters at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies) he seems remarkably uncomfortable seeking the presidency.
Asked why he's running, he says former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke told him that if he didn't, "history will punish you." He goes on: "I am independent. I am not a prisoner of any faction or political clique. I can introduce politics different from the past." Asked whether further economic reform is necessary, he again strikes the tone of a dispassionate observer. "It's a kind of irony that government should emphasize economic reform," he says. "The more government preaches reform, the more we see state interference in the economy." On whether banks should continue to prop up bankrupt companies, he says, "Government should withdraw from banks but the question is when and how. I'd be very happy if that could be done in my five years but I'm not sure it can."
Unless Mr. Chung persuades a third candidate (Roh Moo-Hyun) to drop out and throw his support behind him, Mr. Lee likely will be the next president. While he lacks charisma, he seems more prepared to face up to Pyongyang. Mr. Lee, who wasn't available for an interview because of his father's death, advocates "strategic reciprocity," which means that if North Korea won't abandon its nuclear weapons program, Seoul should withhold assistance. His advisers say he believes Pyongyang has chosen to acknowledge its nuclear development program now because it believes the U.S. is distracted by Iraq and will be more willing to strike a "big deal" with North Korea, by which the North trades it nuclear program--or, following previous patterns, promises to trade it--for a nonaggression pact, U.S. recognition and aid from Japan. "Our response should not be to reward North Korea's wrong-doings," Mr. Lee says.
Who governs South Korea is crucial to the U.S. because it has 37,000 soldiers there to defend South Korea. But the U.S. is not only militarily involved, but also politically entangled. As South Korea's young grow up in a country where prosperity and democracy are givens, the desire for reunification seems the next great goal. If the 1970s brought prosperity and the '80s democracy, the younger generation believes the new millennium should bring an end to U.S. troops and to division of the peninsula. Increasingly, they see U.S. troops not as guarantors of security but as obstacles to reunification.
South Korea is going to have to get its ostrich head out of the sand after a decade of steadily burying it deeper. Seoul is going to discover it can't any longer have it both ways: depend on the U.S. for security but pretend Pyongyang can be changed through dialogue. The idea that Kim Jong Il will quietly turn over his nuclear weapons and lead North Korea peacefully down the economic reform road and, one happy day, to reunification with the South is a pipe dream.
Once Saddam is history, the Bush administration will turn its focus to eliminating North Korea's weapons of mass destruction. Whether Mr. Bush chooses to do this by economic blockade or by military action, any reading of his foreign policy would conclude he is committed to ridding the world of rogue regimes that threaten international stability. And North Korea is second only to Iraq on that list. Another alternative is that Mr. Bush, absent support from South Korea, could wash his hands of the issue, pull troops out and leave South Korea and Japan to defend themselves against a North Korea threat that is far more directed at them than at the U.S.
Whatever policy Mr. Bush embarks on, what is certain is that it will not be the discredited policy of more dialogue for the sake of dialogue. So South Korea's next president is going to face the tough choice of standing with the U.S. against North Korea or facing North Korea alone. |
