Once again, tension is rising across Asia over North Korea’s missile program. Unlike its previous “surprise” missile launches, Pyongyang this time notified international agencies in advance that it would launch a “satellite” sometime between tomorrow and next Wednesday. The question for the world now is not whether the North Korean regime will launch its missile, but what happens afterward.
The US, Japan and South Korea have already publicly condemned the launch as a “provocative act” and a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1718, adopted in October 2006, five days after North Korea conducted a nuclear weapons test.
But, instead of hot rhetoric, what is needed now is a cool-headed assessment of the military implications of the missile launch. If Japan, the US and others attempt to intercept or counter the missile, military tension — even possible combat — is likely to ensue. How to prevent unnecessary military measures and countermeasures is the most immediate concern for the region’s governments. Above all, the ongoing six-party talks — China, the US, Japan, Russia, South Korea and North Korea — that have sought to bring Pyongyang’s nuclear program to an end must not become a casualty of the missile launch.
In dealing with North Korea, two fundamental issues must be addressed. First, although governments are justified in criticizing North Korea for its foolhardy, counterproductive and self-destructive behavior over many years, including numerous inhuman acts perpetrated against its own people and others, North Korea is not solely to blame for its “missile tantrum.”
Indeed, the unilateral behavior of the administration of former US president George W. Bush, including the dismantling of the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework with North Korea, the hyping of an enriched uranium deal and the infamous “axis of evil” speech, have all increased the paranoia of an already paranoid regime. So Bush’s foreign policy toward North Korea, especially during his first term in office, must take a fair share of responsibility for the present mess.
More fundamentally, no one should think that North Korea’s totalitarian communist system can be changed overnight. No one inside or outside can remove its anachronistic dynastic-communist regime, and no outsider can hope to modify quickly the policy behavior of its fossilized military, party and administrative bureaucrats. These are the cold realties of North Korea today.
But cold realities do not necessarily have to turn into hot combat. Indeed, the idea of warfare on the Korean peninsula should be unthinkable, given the grotesque levels of deaths that it would likely cause. Even to contemplate such a possibility is proof of diplomatic failure, not a triumph of real leadership.
A leadership mismatch has, moreover, been a central obstacle in resolving the problem of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and the ultimate question of achieving a unified Korea. Since the emergence of two separate regimes and systems on the Korean Peninsula in 1948, South Korea and the US (its only defense ally) have dealt with only two “supreme leaders,” Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. During the same period, there have been 10 South Korean presidents and 11 US presidents.
For the past 10 years, three South Korean presidents and three US presidents have been attempting to deal with the same “perpetual” leader — Kim Jong-il. From Kim’s perspective, encountering such leadership changes and subsequent policy clashes are both bewildering and difficult to assimilate. Just on the South Korean side, he has had to cope with former presidents Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine policy” of engagement, Roh Moo-hyun’s on again, off again diplomacy and President Lee Myung-bak’s confrontational stance. From the US, he has confronted engagement on the part of former US president Bill Clinton, unilateral confrontation from former president George W. Bush and the nascent “principled engagement” of President Barack Obama.
This form of leadership mismatch has also disturbed relations between South Korea and the US. The discrepancy between the two-term, four-year US presidency and one-term, five-year South Korean presidency has sometimes been problematic, and the respective policies toward North Korea of US and South Korean administrations have often collided. When they do, both sides must spend an enormous amount of time and effort in reaching a consensus on North Korea, which leaves the isolated North breeding all sorts of conspiracy theories.
The long-term result of all this is oscillation between dialogue and deadlock, which has led to periods of uncertain engagement or heated confrontation. To break this sterile cycle, what is needed now is not more hot rhetoric about North Korea’s missiles, but a commitment to steady, patient diplomacy that transcends changes in the political cycle. There is no quick fix in disentangling the Korean knot. Only persistence and commitment will do.
Yang Sung-chul is chairman of the advisory committee of the Kim Dae-jung Peace Foundation and a former South Korean ambassador to the US.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS