A Road Through Seoul
By Henry Kissinger
The Washington Post
Tuesday, March 6, 2001; Page A23The visit of South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung to Washington this week occurs at an opportune moment. For his country, the focal point of Asian crises for a century, may now prove pivotal in the emergence of a new and more stable Asian order.
Korea's history has been violent. In 1904-5, the Russo-Japanese War was fought over its future. Occupied by Japan in 1908, liberated in 1945, partitioned in the same year along the 38th parallel, invaded by North Korea in 1950 and by Chinese armies in 1951, saved by its own exertions and American forces, South Korea has faced since then what is arguably the most repressive Communist regime anywhere across one of the most absolute dividing lines in the world.
In the last months of the Clinton presidency, a sudden thaw occurred. South Korea's president was invited to visit the capital of North Korea. The second-highest-ranking military officer of North Korea, Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, was received in Washington by President Clinton and hosted at an official dinner by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who followed up with a return visit to Pyongyang. And in his last weeks in office, Bill Clinton was eagerly trying to arrange a presidential trip to Pyongyang, thwarted only because North Korea would not accept his condition to stop the export of missiles.
Did all this herald a fundamental change, or was it primarily a new set of tactics to achieve familiar goals, which include undermining the case for a U.S. missile defense? It is important that we get the answer straight, for on it may depend the future not only of South Korea but of our entire position in the western Pacific.
Over 50 years, North Korea has turned into a caricature of Stalinist tyranny, while South Korea has evolved into a genuine democracy and has reached the threshold of being an advanced industrial country. Even in the age of the Internet, the North has sealed off its population from the rest of the world. Its economy is a shambles. Agriculture has collapsed to the point of producing widespread starvation and malnutrition.
Nevertheless, by devoting an unprecedented proportion of its gross national product to military purposes, North Korea has created large forces of tanks and artillery, many of them deployed within range of South Korea's capital of Seoul. North Korea obtains foreign exchange through the sale of missiles to countries hostile to the United States and by blackmailing the United States, Japan and South Korea into giving it modern technology by threatening to build nuclear weapons.
The long-term objective has not been war, which North Korea could not sustain, but to demoralize South Korea and undermine its relations with the United States by discussing the future of the Korean peninsula directly with the United States. If North Korea succeeds in establishing itself as the legitimate representative of the Korean national interest, Seoul will be marginalized as an American auxiliary. For a while, this policy was not without success. In 1994 the United States conducted separate negotiations with North Korea on the basis of which Japan and South Korea agreed to build two heavy-water reactors for North Korea and the United States agreed to supply heavy oil for North Korea's power plants in return for a suspension (but not abandonment) of its nuclear program. Though the deal was put forward as a contribution to nonproliferation, it probably had the opposite effect. For it may have encouraged other rogue states to initiate nuclear weapons programs to generate a comparable buyout.
It may also have accelerated other aspects of the North Korean proliferation problem. For shortly afterward, North Korea tested a long-range missile that flew over Japan under the pretext of space exploration. This set off another negotiation that brought Albright to Pyongyang to explore the price of stopping that program. The aborted visit of President Clinton in his last month in office would have been part of that political price.
Negotiations with North Korea did achieve a suspension of North Korean plutonium production, but at the price of implying that the future of Korea might be settled directly between Washington and Pyongyang, excluding Seoul. Two events arrested the trend. The first was the death in 1994 of North Korea's dictator, Kim Il Sung, which limited Pyongyang's maneuvering room. The second was the election of Kim Dae Jung to the South Korean presidency, which increased Seoul's diplomatic scope. Kim Dae Jung's so-called "sunshine policy" of encouraging economic cooperation, family reunification and other exchanges reestablished the balance with the United States in contacts with the North.
The key issue, however, is the content of that diplomacy. If it is confined to a changed tone and economic support for the North Korean economy, it will perpetuate the very regime whose threat has been one of the justifications for the U.S. national missile defense program. In fact, the various reciprocal visits seemed to open the floodgates for a policy of reciprocal psychological gestures more than specific agreements. Though Kim Dae Jung received little more than promises of a return visit by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to Seoul and a very limited opportunity for family reunification, the outside world reacted euphorically.
Exchanges of visits culminated in the attendance of Albright at a mass rally celebrating the 55th anniversary of the North Korean Communist Party. Other nations eager not to be left behind were straining to beat a path to Pyongyang.
The collective rush to Pyongyang may have the ironic consequence of tempting Kim Jong Il to return to the previous policy of isolating Seoul, because he could draw the conclusion that he no longer needs direct talks with South Korea to solve his internal problems.
Kim Dae Jung's visit to Washington provides the opportunity to coordinate American and South Korean strategies. Neither America nor South Korea can want to preserve Pyongyang's control system or to perpetuate its military capacities simply on the basis of a gentler tone. Progress in relations with Pyongyang must be based on clear standards by which progress can be measured. At the same time, Seoul and Washington must be receptive if North Korea's actions provide evidence that it is seeking to graduate from the status of a rogue state.
Two principles should govern any common strategy: that the American alliance with South Korea and not the rapprochement with North Korea is the key to stability on the peninsula; and that South Korea should play the leading role in inter-Korean negotiations. Pyongyang must be convinced that the road to Washington leads through Seoul and not the other way around. If these priorities are reversed -- if America upstages Seoul with dramatic gestures -- North Korea may restore at least some of its economy, not from or via South Korea but through outside countries jockeying for a preferred position in Pyongyang.
But Korea is also where the interests of several major powers intersect. Neither China nor Japan is eager for a rapid, if any, unification of Korea. Both consider a unified Korea a potential danger to their security -- especially were it to inherit North Korea's nuclear and missile technology.
China entered the Korean War to prevent unification, and Japan has permitted American bases on its soil in large part to defend the status quo in Korea. China is concerned about the impact of a united Korea on the Korean minorities in Manchuria, while Japan fears that the foreign policy of a unified Korea will rally its public by appealing to long-standing Korean antipathies.
For all these reasons, the evolution of the Korean peninsula must be thoroughly discussed with Kim Dae Jung, and it must provide as well for consultation with all the interested parties, especially Japan, but also with China and Russia. They are aware of the volatility and recklessness of Pyongyang's rulers and of their possession of nuclear weapons. No neighbor of Korea can benefit from military turmoil on the peninsula, even if there are differences about the nature and pace of a desirable evolution.
An important beginning would be coordination to end Pyongyang's blackmailing tactics with respect to weapons of mass destruction. For, whatever their differences, none of the interested powers can wish to be drawn into a conflict by proliferation measures that could have been avoided by joint action.
Consultation is necessary also because other outcomes are possible than the continuation of the repressive Pyongyang regime or its collapse. Countries uneasy about Korean unification may well be prepared to encourage a more benign government in Pyongyang while favoring its remaining separate from Seoul. But in the real world, such options are limited. Any democratic government in North Korea will seek unification. Any authoritarian government will repeat the existing dilemmas. In the end, it will be no more possible to keep Korea divided by the actions of outside powers than proved to be the case in Germany.
Of course, the North Korean regime may collapse, as East Germany did, because Kim Jong Il loses control over events. In many respects, this is probably Seoul's nightmare. A rapid unification process for Korea would dwarf the monumental problems Germany faced for a decade. The ratio of the populations of West to East Germany was about three to one; in Korea it is closer to two to one. The ratio of the per capita GDP in Germany was approximately two to one; the ratio in Korea is closer to 10 to one -- meaning that the economic challenge of unifying Korea is even more daunting than in Germany.
At that point, the four outside powers -- the United States, Russia, Japan and China -- would have to discuss the international status of Korea, while the two Koreas settle the internal arrangements, a procedure similar to the one preceding German unification.
As for the United States, it has no reason to oppose Korean unification and every motive to support it. But far more is at stake for America than the future of Korea, for the future of Asia will importantly depend on what happens to American forces now stationed along the 38th parallel.
While Kim Jong Il has been quoted by Kim Dae Jung as favoring the continued presence of American troops, regardless of what happens in the intra-Korean talks, this is not an assurance on which long-range policy can be built. Nor will the future of American troops in Korea depend entirely on the leaders of the two Koreas. Were tensions to ease dramatically, the presence of American troops could become highly controversial within South Korea. In turn, if these forces were removed, the future of American bases in Japan would become problematic. And if American troops left the rim of Asia, an entirely new security and, above all, political situation would arise all over the continent. Were this to happen, even a positive evolution on the Korean peninsula could lead to a quest for autonomous defense policies in Seoul and Tokyo and to a growth of nationalism in Japan, China and Korea.
The United States may not be able to arrest such trends, but it should not slide into them through preoccupation with the tactics and headlines of the moment.
© 2001, Los Angeles Times Syndicate International
The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm that has clients with business interests in many countries abroad.