As the Korean pot bubbles: The Sakhalin gas pipeline peace plan

---

See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

WashingtonÕs almost total preoccupation with Iraq has put the Bush AdministrationÕs effort for a multilateral approach to the Korean crisis on a backburner. Unfortunately the new South Korean government appears to be blundering ahead with its own agenda, continuation with new wrinkles of the appeasement policies of the previous Kim Dae Jung presidency.

It turns out National Security Adviser Ra Jong-yil secretly met North Koreans in Beijing shortly before President Roh Moo-hyun took office Feb. 25. Ra, a former Korean intelligence agency deputy, became security advisor by selling Roh on a ÒNortheast Asia VisionÓ. What Ra is cooking up is an elaborate politico-economic project, ostensibly with a bone for all the participants in the complex Northeast Asian crisis, which PyongyangÕs fragile economy, its nuclear blackmail, and its bellicose rhetoric continues to escalate.

Ra is trying to work around PyongyangÕs virtual ignoring South KoreaÕs role with its calls for bilateral talks with the U.S. by picking up on summitry between the Koreas. KimÕs precedent breaking visit to Pyongyang in June 2000 netted little other than a Nobel Peace Prize and North Korean kind words for a few weeks. The return visit for more conclusive agreements never came. Ra is again pushing the visit, offering as bait an elaborate project to solve North KoreaÕs crippling energy shortage.

RaÕs plan is a multinational project to bring Sakhalin gas through a pipeline that would traverse the Russian East Asian Maritime Provinces, pass through North Korea, and hook into South KoreaÕs national gas network. In exchange, Pyongyang would dismantle its nuclear program, and a step by step settlement would be made with Kim Jong Il.

Ra thinks he has something for everyone. He apparently counts on U.S. corporate interests helping to sell the deal in Washington. It is no secret that while ExxonMobileÕs finds in Sakhalin have been promising, the original market projected for Japan has notmaterialized. A Sakhalin-Japan pipeline would be enormous costly. Japan already has extensive contracts for liquefied natural gas [LPG] in Indonesia and the Middle East. And, of course, a deal for Russian oil and crude on that level probably demands solution of Òthe Northern IslandsÓ problem, the Lower Kuriles which the Soviet Union grabbed in 1945, and which have defied settlement holding up a peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union/Russia.

On the other hand, Ra counts that a market for Sakhalin gas ø and perhaps eventually oil ø would go over big in Moscow, especially if President Putin could find someone else to foot the pipeline bill It would offer some development hope in the Russian Far East where the declining population, economic stagnation, and the ever-present cloud of Chinese immigration hangs over the scene. ItÕs not clear Russian gas would be economically sound for South Korea, who like the Japanese have already have invested heavily in LNG. But the South Korean Kim regime ø with its half billion under the table payment to the North for setting up the original 2Kim Conference ø has shown just how far South Korean ideologues/ÓpeaceÓ advocates will go to make a deal with the North.

The fact that Ra met his North Korean friends in Beijing suggests Chinese blessing for any hope to get Beijing off the hook as Washington increasingly insists PyongyangÕs only benefactor reign them in, as the supplier of the greater part of food and energy that keep the bankrupt economy afloat. But with a government transition in progress in China, the difficulties Beijing has in putting the screws to the North Koreans are evident: how does one get a bankrupt but heavily armed, rogue state on your doorstep, to take a conciliatory position by threatening to cut off their water without endangering the whole structure, risking a flood of refugees, the unknowns of a Korean reunification, etc., etc.?

The upshot of RaÕs fantasies is that it will be just that much harder for Washington to reach an understanding with Roh when Vice President Cheney is scheduled to make an East Asia tour in April or the inaugural trip of Roh, himself, to Washington sometime this spring. Secretary of Defense RumfeldÕs public musings ø too public by half one would have said had it not been deliberately intended to shake Seoul up ø on the Defense Dept.Õs ÒtransformationÓ plans for the 37,000-man force on the frontline in Korea has had its desired effect. Not only soothing public statements by Korean military but by members of the Roh government have catapulted backward from calls only a few months ago for the withdrawal of American forces. But it will take a good deal more cold water to wet down the fantasies of the Roh team before a solution to the North Korean problem can take shape through effective American-South Korean collaboration [as well as with China, Japan, and perhaps Russia]. Meanwhile, on to Iraq.