If North Korea was off Obama's radar screen, where does that leave Seoul?
Friday, February 27, 2009 E-Mail this story Free Headline Alerts
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON Ñ President Barack Obama's State of the Union address seemed to cover all the issues facing the country. Or so a number of commentators told us in the post-address yak sessions.
There was one problem. He did not seem to have mentioned Korea.
Could this really be? No, wait a moment. Korea did come up in a riff on "the power of clean, renewable energy". He wanted Americans to consider the example of China's "largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient", the danger of the U.S. falling behind Germany and Japan on solar energy and, yes, the embarrassment of having "batteries made in Korea" run "plug-in hybrids" rolling off American assembly lines.
Considerably more noteworthy than the passing mention of Korean-made batteries, however, was that he forgot to allude to another made-in-Korea product Ñ the missiles and nuclear warheads produced in North Korea and the threat they now pose to peace and stability in the region. How could the American president have overlooked what had been in the news just the day before, that North Korean technicians were busy preparing a missile for another launch, that the missile, according to the North Koreans, would put a satellite into orbit?
It is possible Obama and his advisers may deem North Korea a sideshow, best to skip while worrying about the Middle East and the economy. It's also possible his advisers did not want to tip the American hand, to offend North Korea, to throw off yet another bid at going along to get along with the 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il while he's poised to press the button on a long-awaited, much publicized missile launch.
Now, with the imminent dispatch of the newly appointed chief American envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, former ambassador to South Korea, along with the U.S. envoy on six-party-talks, Sung Kim, who held the same post in the final year of the presidency of George W. Bush, North Korea, is about to get some of the attention it craves.
Just as North Korea was busy cranking up the missile on a long trajectory to liftoff, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Bosworth and Sung Kim at her side said she was sending them both to Northeast Asia for another attempt at "engagement" with North Korea. Whether they get to North Korea at all, however, is uncertain. North Korea has not indicated it is prepared to receive Bosworth, who went there with an American delegation last month on an "unofficial" trip Ñ a precursor to the mission to which Clinton officially appointed him during her own recent trip through the region.
The thinking in Washington is that Bosworth can at least coordinate on strategy and tactics as he follows the same path blazed by Clinton, stopping off in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing. He's hedging bets, though, on whether he gets into North Korea, saying "yes, we plan to engage" with the North but, "no" on "whether on this particular trip remains to be decided".
North Korean strategists could not have succeeded more admirably in dragging out the drama while proclaiming their own right to do as they pleased. The cartoon image would be that of Kim Jong-il manipulating diplomats from Washington to Tokyo, to Seoul and Beijing like marionettes, tugging here, relaxing there, jerking the Americans, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese around like puppets in a traveling circus.
The show in all probability will conclude with a huge bang Ñ the noise of a Taepodong-2 roaring off the launch pad Ñ while the puppets fall in a heap on the stage, motionless until the puppeteer tugs the strings again and they scurry about, in little jerky motions, bowing, gesticulating and shouting among each other, with voices all spoken by the clever puppeteer doubling as a ventriloquist.
The puppet image is one that North Korea loves, never more so than when referring to South Korean "puppets", actually a mild term compared to "traitor" and "lackey", two of the words most used to characterize the South's conservative President Lee Myung-bak.
As the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, a powerful Communist Party organization handling inter-Korean relations put it in a typical statement, for North Korea to launch of a missile, or a satellite borne by a missile, "is the North's sovereign right" and "does not allow mere [South Korean] puppets to take issue with it". In a swipe at all possible American actions, a spokesman said the North was ready for "everything, from their loudmouthed sanctions, intercepting and retaliatory strike".
As for the uncertainty about whether the purpose of the missile is really to put a satellite into orbit, said a North Korean "spokesman", as quoted by Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency, "If they are not sure about whether it will be a satellite or something else, they will come to know when watching what will soar in the air in the days ahead."
All the rhetoric was scary enough for Bosworth to have to cancel a talk at Georgia Tech in Atlanta at which a senior official from North Korea's United Nations mission and a top State Department official both spoke. Their remarks were off-the-record Ñ the State Department would not permit the North Korean to make the trip if he wanted to talk publicly Ñ but the North Korea said while on his way there that of course North Korea would launch the missile.
Amid such posturing, U.S. trade problems with South Korea do indeed loom large. U.S. imports from the South may well descend precipitously in coming months while pressure grows on Lee to keep his economy from totally deteriorating in the midst of the worsening global economic crisis.
So then, in the wake of Obama's speech, the question is whether South Korean batteries, as a symbol for so much more that South Korea exports, pose a worse threat than North Korean missiles? Which is more serious, the continuing trade battle between the U.S. and South Korea, or the perpetual struggle to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program?
No, North Korea is not going to fire the Taepodong-2 on a path to Alaska or Hawaii. Unless something goes very wrong, however, the latest version of the Taepodong should do better than the Taepodong-2 that flew for about 40 seconds and landed in the sea after its launch on July 5, 2006. The missile, if it gets into the atmosphere successfully, may indeed launch a satellite that will orbit the Earth Ñ a reminder of the terrible warhead it might carry if North Korea were sufficiently annoyed, or frightened, or the Americans were about to bomb the daylights out of the place, the bogeyman image of North Korean propaganda.
Under the circumstances, the decision of Obama, his aides, advisers and writers to skip over the North Korean threat seemed all the more remarkable, considering that Clinton had just returned from a mission that took her to Japan, South Korea and China, with a diversion to Indonesia. Everywhere she went she discussed the North Korean threat.
We won't really know the U.S. response to an actual missile/satellite launch until North Korea turns warnings into reality. Obama's omission of Korea in an address in which he pointedly cited that other would-be nuclear menace, Iran, hardly instills confidence in the U.S. as a strong defender of South.
The real fear is that South Korea will be forgotten again, just as the Korean War remains America's Òforgotten war".
The spectacle of the U.S. sending high-level diplomats junketing on ever-more missions to convince the North Koreans to honor all commitments while condemning North Korea's nuclear/missile programs is a familiar one. By ignoring Korea in his most major speech since his inaugural address six weeks ago, however, Obama leaves the impression the U.S. may choose to "forget" about Korea in a life-or-death crisis.