[A-List] South Korea: the blowback continues

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

At least Korea is united over one thing - anger at the US

There is a new desire for freedom on both sides of the 38th parallel

Martin Woollacott
Friday December 20, 2002
The Guardian

The division of Korea, predicted the South Korean radical and dissenter Paek
Ki-wan, would make his country "a nail stuck in the flow of history". That
obstructive quality, the way in which Korea constantly pulls us back to the
struggles of half a century ago, has certainly been evident in recent
months. It seems that the two Koreas cannot, will not or have not been
allowed by the powers to settle issues which in other countries and regions
are now only memories.

The North Koreans in October worried the world by revealing that their work
on nuclear weapons, supposedly suspended, in fact has never stopped, while,
in the south, presidential elections have been dominated by the connected
questions of relations with the north and with the US. The most serious
demonstrations against the American military presence in South Korea for
many years marked the final days of campaigning. The common thread that ties
together these different manifestations is the Korean desire for freedom
from outside pressures, so often expressed and so rarely fulfilled.

Nuclear defiance in one half of the peninsula and electoral change in the
other together represent a challenge to the established policies of America,
Japan, China and Russia. What they suggest is a certain convergence of
northern and southern objections to solutions, or rather the lack of them,
imposed from outside, above all by the US.

The context is clearly different. In the north, those objections come from a
narrow military and party elite that sees its survival threatened by
American policies, especially since the Bush administration took over. To
make matters more difficult to read, they are refracted through the
personality of Kim Jong-il, who is, according to different observers, either
a shrewd leader or a spoiled and perhaps mentally unstable man. In the
south, yesterday's victory of the liberal candidate Roh Moo-hyun is a
democratic phenomenon reflecting a shift in generations, slippage in the
power of the political right, and a desire for spending on social policies
rather than military hardware, as well as the feeling that the US is
dangerously mismanaging Pyongyang.

In spite of these differences, however, what it amounts to is that the north
thinks that it is being mistreated by the US, and that the current of
opinion in the south which agrees with that view is growing and is still
represented, with Roh succeeding Kim Dae-jung as president, at the highest
political level. Indeed Roh, with his expressed doubts about the American
military's usefulness in Korea, may well represent a more openly radical
position. Even so, he will have to operate in power, just like his
predecessor, with conservative partners and political associates.

Protests against the American presence have been ostensibly concerned with
the treaty which, under most circumstances, shields US military personnel
from the South Korean justice system. But the anger at the deaths of two
schoolgirls crushed by an American military vehicle during recent manoeuvres
also expressed a more fundamental questioning of the need for American
protection. South Koreans know that while a North Korean attack could cause
terrible damage, Pyongyang long ago lost the capacity to invade and conquer
the south. South Korea's economic and military strength has for years so
outweighed that of North Korea that it could deal with them without American
help, at least on the ground, as Roh hinted during the campaign. The only
military card the north has left was its nuclear, chemical and
bacteriological potential, as a last resort if it came under attack. Indeed,
that is the rub, for what matters strategically on the peninsula now is not
the threat to South Korea but the threat to North Korea.

Korean troubles in their most recent form go back to the reunification of
Germany, following which the North Korean elite began to suffer the
disquieting experience of hearing other people talk about them as if they
were dead. As the country lost its Chinese and Russian subsidies, the coming
collapse of North Korea and the reunification of the peninsula on the
south's terms were subjects on everybody's lips. Critics of the "agreed
framework" of 1994 between the US and North Korea were told that, long
before the US had to deliver, North Korea would have disappeared. That was
the deal under which the pursuit of nuclear weapons would be halted in
exchange for aid and trade, normalisation of relations and an American
pledge not to use nuclear weapons against North Korea.

Often forgotten in accounts of North Korean duplicity is that the Americans
have not kept most of these promises. The desire to get North Korea quickly
into a well-deserved grave is still evident, a typical instance being recent
leaks from the Bush administration about the idea that a collapse could be
precipitated by a huge outflow of refugees, similar to that which
precipitated change in eastern Europe.

K im Dae-jung understood the north's siege mentality, grasped that a North
Korean collapse in whatever form would be a calamity for both sides, and
tried to emphasise economic over political links as the two groped for
agreement, only to find Pyongyang suspicious of that approach as well.
Nevertheless he made progress, but that was undercut by Bush's dismissal of
his "sunshine policy" at their meeting in March 2001. Since that encounter,
the administration has again and again compounded the problem, notably with
the "axis of evil" speech, and more recently with the September 20
announcement on pre-emptive attack, and with the interception of the North
Korean ship taking missiles to the Yemen.

Bush has added a personal note in telling Bob Woodward: "I loathe Kim
Jong-il." It is thus not altogether surprising that the North Koreans have
been cheating on agreements which they feel the US has also not honoured.
Yet, when Washington did belatedly decide to explore the diplomatic
possibilities again, the North Korean admission in October that nuclear
weapons work had continued was, in the view of the respected analyst Selig
Harrison, an attempt "to wipe the slate clean and revive dialogue". If so,
the US has not responded, preferring instead to ask China, Russia and Japan
to put more pressure on North Korea.

Koreans have a well-grounded view that the best interests of their country
have weighed little in international decision-making. They see the US and
others colluding in the annexation of their country by Japan, because Japan
was more important to the west than they were. They see the division of the
country and the war that followed as the result of a combination of initial
American inattention and later obsession with the communist threat. Now,
once again, many feel Korean interests are at risk because of deals done and
dogmas shaped in a distant capital. That is the message from both sides of
the 38th parallel.