Brinksmanship on the DMZ: How about letting the Koreans settle it?
Monday, October 26, 2009 E-Mail this story Free Headline Alerts
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL Ñ Given the bellicose rhetoric from the North since a conservative government was elected here last year, how crazy is the idea of an inter-Korean summit between South Korea's President Lee Myung-Bak and North Korea's Kim Jong-Il?
Unlikely though such a scenario might seem, the South Korean media, led by the state-owned Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), suggest the question is not absurd. KBS reports that Kim Yang-Gon, an influential North Korean figure on dealings with the South, has been in Singapore seeing an unnamed but "ranking" South Korean.
While South Korean sources have been saying the idea of a rendezvous between the conservative Lee and the North's Dear Leader is preposterous, the Blue House, the center of presidential power in the South, refrained from the usual denial of the reported North-South contacts. Instead, while Lee was in Vietnam and Cambodia, a spokesman cryptically refused to "confirm" such a meeting had happened.
No doubt about it, a Lee-Kim summit would be an ultimate expression of North Korea's desire to ease up on tensions and the South's promise to reciprocate if only Kim agrees to give up his beloved nukes. If nothing else, the conservative but pragmatic Lee would demonstrate that he's really just as interested in reconciliation as were his two left-leaning predecessors, Roh Moo-Hyun, who met Kim in Pyongyang in October 2007, and Kim Dae-Jung, who initiated the "Sunshine" policy of reconciliation and flew to Pyongyang for the first North-South summit in June 2000.
For the record, South Korea's Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan, talking to correspondents in Seoul, proclaimed South Korea "ready to meet with North Korea regardless of the time, venue and opportunity to discuss possible improvement of inter-Korean relations and the nuclear issue".
The problem, as South Korean leaders often note, is that North Korea has repeatedly refused to include its nuclear program on any agenda for discussion with the South. It seemed particularly appropriate that the topic of a North-South summit should have arisen even as Lee Myung-Bak was wheeling and dealing in Cambodia and Vietnam, a once-divided nation where South Koreans battled communist forces before "North" Vietnam's victory in 1975.
Call it fight-talk or a two-track strategy, speculation about a North-South Korean summit may be one expression of the concept of pursuing reconciliation but preparing for the opposite. While Lee was traveling, top American and South Korean defense officials agreed on the wording of sweeping commitments for the U.S. to give the South whatever is needed militarily to stave off what is seen as a rising North Korean threat.
United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates and South Korea's Defense Minister Kim Tae-Young signed a joint statement on Thursday guaranteeing the U.S. nuclear umbrella Ñ along with conventional strike and missile capabilities. Gates followed up by warning that North Korea's "emerging nuclear weapons programs have a destabilizing effect both regionally and internationally".
The U.S. pledge of support for South Korea in any eventuality appears as one of the strongest made in recent years by American defense secretaries on their annual visits here. It comes as the U.S. and North Korea consider bilateral dialogue that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others keep saying is only to get the North to enter six-party talks on its nukes Ñ and nothing else.
In a one-two punch, the American and South Korean defense chiefs issued their statement hours after Clinton in Washington again said North Korea should "have no illusions" about the U.S.'s determination to enforce sanctions until North Korea gives up its nukes. Clinton came close to repeating the mantra of the George W Bush administration, which came up with the acronym "CVID" for "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement" of its entire program, saying "current sanctions will not be relaxed unto Pyongyang takes verifiable irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization".
Picking up the baton in Seoul, Gates and Defense Minister Kim reaffirmed "the U.S. commitment to provide extended deterrence" for South Korea, "using the full range of military capabilities, to include the U.S. nuclear umbrella, conventional strike, and missile capabilities".
Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, noted that U.S. and South Korean defense chiefs had not previously used the term "extended deterrence" in their declarations. South Korean analysts strongly doubt if North Korea would ever willingly give up its nukes, but defense officials see "extended deterrence" as significantly buttressing previous affirmations of U.S. support at a time when the U.S. has aroused concerns with plans to turn over wartime control to overall South Korean command.
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, also in consultations in Seoul, told a gathering of U.S. troops that "tremendous change" is afoot and "the Korean military is taking operational control" by April 2012. The U.S., meanwhile, will be moving its headquarters from its historic base in central Seoul to a new base 60 kilometers south of the capital and also withdrawing from bases on the invasion route from North Korea.
At the same time, Mullen talked up plans to build new schools and housing for the families of soldiers who he said will soon be able to stay here in large numbers at U.S. government expense. "Extending tours, bringing families, hardens the commitment," he said in response to a question from a soldier about reports that U.S. troops would be going from here to serve in Iraq.
Mullen's remarks to troops give an image of increasingly easy living in an environment that many U.S. troops over the years have found rather forbidding. Hassles with landlords, cultural differences and perceived anti-foreign attitudes have had far more to do with placing South Korea low on a list of desired GI postings than concerns about North Korean attack. The idea now is to make duty in South Korea as desirable as posts in Europe, where three-year tours are typical.
United States Army officers almost laughingly dismiss the suggestion that perhaps North Korea may have its own plans for making life unpleasant if not dangerous for American troops in the South. "I don't think KJI would be so stupid as to do anything like that," said one officer, referring to the Dear Leader by his initials. "He has enough problems where he is."
All of which would seem to increase the possibility of a North-South summit Ñ a step that would have to ease pressure for enforcement of sanctions imposed after the North's nuclear test of May 25 even if Kim Jong-Il did not oblige by promising to abandon his nukes.
There is, however, one other obstacle to another inter-Korean summit. That is, South Korea may insist that Kim Jong-Il come to Seoul rather than the other way around. He did, after all, promise a return visit to Seoul after hosting Kim Dae-jung in June 2000. Kim Dae-jung, up to the time of his final illness last summer, never stopped hoping that Kim Jong-Il would drop by.
"First he has to come here," said a local editor, "but that's not going to happen for a long time." The fact that Kim is believed to be recovering from a stroke suffered more than a year ago and also has diabetes and other problems is yet another reason for ruling out an inter-Korean summit, at least in Seoul.
On the other hand, South Korea does boast of some of the finest medical facilities in Asia, and "medical tourism" ranks as a major incentive for attracting foreign visitors. The Korean National Tourist Organization has a whole display on the topic at its headquarters in central Seoul. How about Kim Jong-Il as medical tourist Ñ secretly attended by the South's top doctors in between photo-ops with President Lee at the Blue House?