Opinion

New Threat to Korean detente

February 26, 2018

MANY observers went lyrical about sports’ magical powers to heal political and cultural rifts among nations after North Korea took part in the just concluded Winter Games held in the other part of the divided Korea. Didn’t Ping-Pong diplomacy help rebuild ties between Washington and Beijing in the 1970s, resulting in the first-ever visit by an American president to the Communist China?

What the Korean Peninsula witnessed last fortnight was no less dramatic. Not only did the North take part in the Olympic Games, but the two Koreas marched under one flag, and fielded a joint women’s ice hockey team.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un also sent his powerful and reclusive younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, to the Games. She posed with South Korean President Moon Jae-in for photographs, and invited him to a summit “at his earliest convenience” in Pyongyang.

What was forgotten amid all this euphoria was the fact that South Korea, unlike the North, has to think of its superpower patron before it rook any step toward rapprochement with the North or responded to overtures from the North.

This means there is a limit beyond which the South can’t go in its dealings with the North without arousing the suspicion or jealousy of Washington. The US can always shatter the morning calm of South Korea for any reason or simply to remind the South it has a veto power over its actions when it comes to the North.

And this is what it has done as President Moon gears up for the third inter-Korean summit after years of chilled relations due to the North’s nuclear tests.

Such tests continued last year too including the North’s sixth and largest. But it has not conducted any missile test for the last two months. And as a result of the Olympic diplomacy, the South and North were moving closer to each other. Still, President Donald Trump said on Friday the US was imposing its largest package of sanctions on North Korea.

The new sanctions will be harshest too. Stopping vessels suspected of carrying commercial goods, the US is edging closer to the imposition of an economic blockade on the North.

The US knows that North Korea is not going to renounce its nuclear ambitions because of such punitive measures. So we should assume the real target of new sanctions are South Korea or President Moon Jae-in’s attempts to revive the “sunshine policy” of engaging North Korea rather than isolating it.

Moon’s policy is in sharp contrast to the hardline approach taken by South Korea’s past two governments in response to the North’s nuclear tests and missile launches. While Moon has not made any secret of his approach to the North, what must have disturbed the Trump administration is the whole-hearted support he is receiving from the North Korean leader.

The North may be trying to create a wedge between Seoul and Washington. But a statement issued by South Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday must have allayed all such US fears. The ministry said it sees inter-Korean and US-North Korea talks as “major pillars” of any dialogue aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. Washington must have waited to see how things shape up. In spite of all bellicose talk, Trump may not go to “phase two” if the sanctions just announced don’t have the desired effect because he knows “it may be very, very unfortunate for the world,” including the US. But the measures announced on Friday are likely to plunge the region once again into heightened tension. China has demanded the US reverse its decision, saying the “unilateral actions” could undermine cooperation between Beijing and Washington. Everybody knows that no deal with North Korea can be worked out without the active cooperation of China, North Korea’s neighbor and most important trading partner and main source of food and energy.


February 26, 2018
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