李정부 & '북한'

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The incoming S.K. president Lee Myung-bak said last week he will be glad to meet Kim Jong-il, but with preconditions that might make another summit with Kim all but impossible. Because he said also that the next summit has to take place in Seoul... Considering that Kim Jong-il ignored repeated pleas by Kim Dae-jung for a return summit in Seoul, Lee's insistence on a Seoul summit in effect rules out another inter-Korean summit, at least as long as he's president. Well, indeed good prospects for the "new chapter" in the South-North relations, promised by Lee and his gang!! And to make the whole shit worse, the incoming S.K. administration is talking almost daily - for example - about the necessity for a strengthened armament of the S.K. army to fight against the enemy in the north..

For more about the "new era of peace and development" on the Korean Peninsula please read following article, published in Asia Times (HK, 16.1):

Sundown for Seoul's Korean policy?

The imminent takeover of the South Korean government by conservative leadership has resurrected heated debate between neo-conservative and moderates here over whether the decade-long Sunshine policy of reconciliation with North Korea can survive.

A corollary question is whether President George W Bush is as anxious now as he was last year in a show of North Korean compliance with its agreement to give up its nuclear weapons - or has he lost interest in North Korea as a chance to burnish a legacy already tarnished in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Much of the debate focuses on the extent to which South Korea's conservative president-elect, Lee Myung-bak, will want to build on the agreements reached in October between outgoing President Roh Moo-Hyun and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il. Conservatives see Lee's pledge of aid for North Korea only after the North has given up its nukes and his promise to raise the previously banned topic of human rights in North Korea as a clear reversal of the Sunshine policy initiated by Roh's predecessor, Kim Dae-jung.

Lee's outlook may become more clear in March, when he considers how to respond to North Korea's annual request for several hundred thousand tons of food and fertilizer. He may waffle on a decision until meeting President George W Bush to coordinate on what to do as long as North Korea balks at revealing details of its nuclear program.

US analysts predict Lee in the end will want to soften his position while pursuing economic projects with North Korea, but tensions may escalate in a time of transition and uncertainty in Korea as well as in the US. Although Korea is hardly mentioned by any candidates for the Republican or Democratic US presidential nominations, North Korea may prefer to wait until the next US president takes office a year from now before going ahead with serious talks.

Lee himself has somewhat confused matters by talking a far tougher game than either former president Kim Dae-jung or Roh, while extending what looks like his own personal olive branch of friendship.

Thus he has promised to strengthen South Korea's defenses, possibly canceling a plan to reduce the size of South Korea's armed forces, while telling South Korean defense officials that such moves "do not mean we will neglect reconciliation between South and North Korea" but "can secure peace and deter a war on the Korean Peninsula when we reinforce our defense".

And he said on Monday he, like his two reconciliation-minded predecessors, will be glad to meet Kim Jong-il, but with preconditions that might make another summit with Kim all but impossible.

For one thing, he said the next summit has to take place in Seoul, rather than Pyongyang, where Kim Jong-il hosted his summits with Kim Dae-jung in June 2000 and again with Roh in October. Considering that Kim Jong-il ignored repeated pleas by Kim Dae-jung for a return summit in Seoul, Lee's insistence on a Seoul summit in effect rules out another inter-Korean summit, at least as long as he's president.

Lee has also added another qualification that's not likely to please Pyongyang, namely that his government will have to review the agreements made between Roh and Kim at the October summit for economic and other forms of cooperation. That whole deal, he said on Monday, was "sealed in principle" but "lacking in details".

Lee's ambivalence is just about as confusing to the US nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, as is that of the Bush administration in Washington. Hill, on a fence-mending mission to the region, said he and Lee had had "a very good discussion", but Hill wants North Korea to come through with an inventory of all its nuclear facilities, as promised in six-party talks, before Lee's inauguration on February 25.

Hill's explanation is that negotiators can then move on to the much more complicated phase of getting North Korea to dismantle all its nuclear programs, including highly enriched uranium, which the North steadfastly denies developing while disabling the Yongbyon facilities for fabricating plutonium for warheads.

Hill himself leaves plenty of room for analysts to interpret his remarks as hardline, even though he has exerted substantial influence over the past two years in getting Bush to soften his policy toward North Korea. As he put it before leaving Washington for Beijing, host of the six-party talks, "We can't have a situation where we pretend programs didn't exist," or "a process that goes forward on the basis of not being honest with each other".

Critics of the Bush administration believe Hill, though given considerable latitude in negotiations, still has to deal with opposing views in his own government. Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, told me at a recent book-signing for her newly published Memo to the President Elect, a compendium of advice for whoever succeeds Bush, that she approved of Hill's efforts to get the North Koreans to live up to their word but believed he was held back by the policies of his government.

That remark reflects the view of Bush's many critics, including Albright, that his "hardline" policy was responsible for the failure of the 1994 Geneva framework agreement and North Korea's revival of its nuclear program at Yongbyon. Critics note, however, that Albright's book overlooks the highly enriched uranium program that led to the breakdown of the Geneva agreement and remains the critical sticking point.

Albright's newly published tome, moreover, betrays doubts about the whole issue of human rights in North Korea that Lee promises to confront. "Your administration should push for progress on human rights," she advises the next US president, but "if we refuse on moral grounds to negotiate with the North Koreans on security matters, we may end up with no improvement on either security or human rights - hardly the outcome you will desire."

Stripped to bare bones, that remark provides the rationale used by Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun for ignoring the unpleasant topic of human rights in hopes of bringing North Korea to terms on weapons of mass destruction. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has adopted Albright's philosophy, persuading Bush and others to wait patiently for the North to come around.

Conservatives in both Seoul and Washington worry, however, that moderates will be taken in by the negotiating skills of Kim Jong-il and his underlings. As an example, they cite Albright's own mission to Pyongyang in October 2000 in the waning months of the Clinton administration.

Albright's biggest blunder, they say, was to consent to let Kim Jong-il escort her into May First Stadium for a mass propaganda show. On this occasion, she had to watch as a section of poster holders in the packed stands flipped the cards to portray the test-launch of a long-range Taepodong missile two years earlier.

"In our meetings, Kim and I mixed tough talk about human rights and military intentions with more reflective discussions about the reasons for our lack of mutual trust," she wrote in her memoir. "It became evident to me," she concluded, "that Kim was prepared to trade military concessions for a combination of economic help and security guarantees."

Imagine, then, Albright's disappointment when North Korea, after agreeing in early October, a year after conducting an underground nuclear test, to a timetable for disabling its nuclear complex and itemizing its entire nuclear inventory, failed to come up with the list.

"Frankly, I was surprised," she told me as she signed copies of her books. When I asked her whether she had really believed Kim Jong-il would reveal his nuclear program, she said, "Yes, I did."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/JA16Dg01.html

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