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Even by South KoreaÕs take-no-prisoner elections standards, Dec. 19 is a barnburner ø and with critical implications for the region.
Fierce regional quarrels, last minute political parties restructuring, charges of corruption, and growing generational divergences are joined this year by the complicated issue of what policy to take toward North Korea.
Outgoing President Kim Dae Jung hoped to see Roh Moo-hyun, his anointed successor, continue his Òsunshine policyÓ ø an attempt to use economic aid to draw North Korea out of its Stalinist isolation. But Lee Hoi-chang, whom Kim narrowly defeated in 1996, has sided with American policy, arguing that KimÕs policies had emboldened Pyongyang. Lee was running ahead against Roh until a third candidate withdrew in RohÕs favor. Now it is apparently neck and neck.
But while Lee has accused Kim of wasting money on North Korea, a Lee victory might not automatically bridge the differences between South Korea and the U.S.. Students have roiled Seoul with demonstrations over a decision to release two American GIs who while on maneuvers killed two teenage Korean girls in an automobile accident. The episode has stirred growing anti-American feeling in South Korea. Many of these young people blame the U.S. for division of the Peninsula, the authoritarian Syngman Rhee government in the early post-WWII period, and its military successors. They accept North Korean propaganda, accuse Washington of opposing reunification. Catholic priests have joined in a hunger strike and Protestant pastors have demonstrated before the U.S. embassy. Some Korean observers see a fundamental reorientation in South Korea opinion as these younger people come into authority.
ItÕs a sign of the volatility that while Roh has been relatively restrained about the episode, Kim has publicly warned against anti-Americanism destroying the alliance, and Lee has called for renegotiating the Status of Forces Agreement [SOFA]. ThatÕs the agreement between Seoul and Washington that governs the conduct and policy of the 37,000 GIs guarding the South Korean border. The Korean SOFA was renegotiated only two years ago in concordance with those for Germany and Japan.
Although Roh appears ahead of Lee [Korean law forbids the publication of polling during the campaign], the smart money is on Lee. Young voters historically have been lax whereas LeeÕs following is among older voters. And the Bush Administration which laid out the red carpet for Lee when he visited Washington earlier this year seem assured that with Lee there seems more hope of getting a common strategy among the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, in dealing with the North.
JapanÕs Prime Minister Koizumi, off the reservation earlier this fall when ø after Washington informed him it had evidence Pyongyang was pursuing nuclear weapons ø he visited North Korea. It was seen as preliminary to setting up diplomatic relations and possibly a large economic aid program. Koizumi went ahead even though only a few months before TokyoÕs Self Defense Forces had sunk some of the continuing North Korean infiltration boats just off Japan waters, apparently seeing it as a vote-getter for his flagging popularity. The initiative has blown up in his face after the North Koreans admitted abducting Japanese citizens but refusing to adequately account for them. Painful TV scenes of the few reunited with relatives in Japan have dominated the Japanese media -- rather than the continuing problem of nuclear weapons and the overflight into the Pacific of a Korean missile two years ago, suggesting the vulnerability of Japan to North Korean attack, even with conventional warheads.
But now Koizumi has stopped talking about an aid program, diplomatic relations appear stalled, and he has signed on to the U.S. policy of blocking shipments of fuel oil to North Korea, part of the original Clinton Administration Framework which was supposed to defuse U.S.-North Korea friction. Furthermore, despite Talmudic discussions of JapanÕs no-war constitution that, it is argued, override the UN provision for joint mutual defense, Koizumi has now okayed dispatch of a JapanÕs Aegis missile destroyer to the India Ocean. There it will defend Japanese logistics operations supporting the U.S. in Afghanistan, and according to Japanese media, support any Washington action against Iraq.
At the same time, Washington in the person of Richard Haas, head of State Department Planning, has publicly called for China to use Òold-fashioned diplomacyÓ to bring North Korea to heel on the nuclear issue, as a test of U.S.-China relations. As North KoreaÕs principal trading partner, including fuel for its bankrupt economy, China could do some arm-twisting. President Jiang Ze-min has just signed with Russian President Putin echoing his statement with President Bush last October at Crawford, Texas, urging North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program. A new South Korean government under Lee might join Japan and the U.S. in new efforts to persuade Beijing to do more than tut-tut the North Koreans.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.