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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Noel de Leon who wrote (111311)	8/13/2003 7:33:59 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Seoul caught between the dragon and the eagle By Jamie Miyazaki Pyongyang's July 31 announcement delivered via the Russian Foreign Ministry of its acquiescence to multilateral talks on resolving the nuclear crisis appears to have broken the impasse of April's apparently fruitless trilateral nuclear talks held in Beijing. The announcement has upped the tempo for the participating six nations as they engage in a furious round of shuttle diplomacy over the next few weeks, probing one another's positions before they sit down to what probably will be a long and protracted game of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) poker. South Korea will be heavily engaged in the behind-the-scenes horse-trading prior to the talks. This week it will meet with its allies the United States and Japan to hammer out a common negotiating strategy and will host a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing. What is surprising is that until 1992 Seoul had no formal diplomatic relations with Beijing. Yet today its former Cold War adversary is a key partner in hammering out a solution to the Pyongyang problem. In little over a decade Seoul-Beijing relations have transformed from one of mutual animosity to a self-proclaimed "comprehensive cooperative partnership". From a historical perspective such a rapid thaw in relations is unsurprising considering the Korean Peninsula's cultural affinity with its larger neighbor and nearly two millennia of shared history. However, it was Cold War ideology that shaped Korean-Chinese diplomacy from 1945 until the collapse of the Berlin Wall - with Beijing recognizing only Pyongyang as the rightful Korean government. Geopolitical realities and Beijing's shift to a capitalist economy forced Seoul and Beijing to re-evaluate their relationship in 1992, and since then there has been no looking back. In 2002 bilateral trade between South Korea and China was worth US$41.2 billion compared with a paltry $19 million back in 1979. Had it not been for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) this year, China would have gone on to eclipse the United States as South Korea's biggest export market - this now does not look set to occur until next year. However, China is already South Korea's No 1 investment destination and both nations are eagerly establishing joint research centers in various fields. On August 5 the Chinese minister of commerce was in Seoul asking for South Korean firms to step up their investment in China, especially in the nearby Bohai Sea region. Burgeoning Seoul-Beijing ties are in marked contrast to an increasingly strained Seoul-Washington relationship. Last year's positive South Korean media coverage of the 10-year anniversary of normalization of ties with Beijing was in marked contrast to its coverage of the George W Bush administration's dealings with both Seoul and Pyongyang. North Korea has gone from being the bedrock of the Seoul-Washington alliance to it major dividing issue. South Korean society's democratization, with its new generation of leaders looking to question the existing US security framework, coupled with economic transformations in China and a new generation of Chinese leaders more proactive in regional affairs, has accelerated the trend toward a shared South Korean-Chinese vision of regional security. The Bush administration has always been very skeptical of the Sunshine Policy's efficacy, whereas China has long argued for a Korean resolution to the present crisis and has been supportive of the Sunshine Policy. Strained Seoul-Washington ties are also ironically mirrored by strained Pyongyang-Beijing ties. Beijing tends to view Pyongyang more as a strategic liability than an asset these days. Chinese assertions of Beijing-Pyongyang relations being closer than gum and tooth omit mentioning that it is suffering from a bad case of gingivitis. Prior to the April talks, Beijing was forced to close an oil pipeline to North Korea for three days so as to get its difficult neighbor to the negotiating table with Washington. Just before the talks commenced, General Cho Myung-rok of North Korea met with Chinese President Hu Jintao to seek an assurance of Chinese support in the event of hostilities but failed to get a definite guarantee. Pyongyang's nuclear revelations a few days later, was widely seen as a dual snub at both Beijing and Washington. One senior Chinese official conceded after the April talks that "Korea is a big problem". It is telling that this time Pyongyang chose to announce its acceptance of multilateral talks through Russia and not China. A nuclear Pyongyang could also prompt Tokyo to go nuclear and Japan's colonial legacy has made both Seoul and Beijing very wary of such a scenario. China has long identified Tokyo as a major East Asian strategic competitor, and in a February 2002 poll 66 percent of South Korean National Assembly members identified Japan as the biggest potential threat to regional stability as opposed to just 28 percent for North Korea. South Korean and Chinese mistrust of Japan has further encouraged both nations to run parallel policies in favor of dialogue and engagement with Pyongyang. US policies of fostering a more robust Japanese defense and foreign policy will probably only serve to encourage a further tightening of the South Korean and Chinese positions. South Korean sensitivity to discussing China related issues at the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) - the South Korean, US and Japanese forum for formulating a united North Korea policy, and its decision not to join the United States and Japan in developing a missile defense system has further irritated its erstwhile allies. Meanwhile Beijing and Seoul have begun complementing their strong economic ties with nascent military visits and exchanges. However, claims that Seoul may chose to depart from the US security umbrella in favor of Beijing are probably premature at this stage. Both Seoul and Beijing are having to balance their relationship with the value of security cooperation with Washington over North Korea and any regional instability resulting from a strategic realignment of Seoul. As it stands very few in Beijing, Seoul and Washington consider a complete South Korean realignment with Beijing feasible or desirable at present. As with so much to do with the Korean crisis, the major players all seem to favor the current rather messy and undefined status quo for the moment. Unfortunately, as the multilateral talks will invariably demonstrate, somewhere along the line these prickly issues will need to be tackled. As it prepares its negotiating position in the run-up to the six-nation talks, South Korea once again finds itself sandwiched between competing global powers. In order for it to secure a resolution of the current nuclear crisis that is acceptable to it, it will need to devise a workable strategic balance between Beijing and Washington. Being caught between a dragon and an eagle has rarely looked so difficult. atimes.com