[Paik Nak-chung] Say Yes to Change in the Korean Peninsula Too
* The following is the text of the opening keynote at Korea Peninsula Peace Forum, hosted by Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of U. S. Senate, and held at Capitol Hill SC-28, Washington, DC. 14 September 2009.
If my title brings an echo of Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, it is fully intentional. The echo conveys the high expectations that many of us in Korea entertained, and still entertain, for a dramatic change in the Korean Peninsula under the Obama Presidency. It also indicates, frankly, our disappointment that no such change has taken place so far.
Of course, there have been plenty of changes in Korea over the years. But some problems of global significance have proved unusually enduring and intractable in the peninsula: its partition since 1945, armed truce since 1953 after a devastating war, and, for some twenty years now, the thorny issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program—to name a few.
Today I should like to share my thoughts on what changes we Koreans are looking for, why they would serve the interests of the American people as well, and how they may be brought about.
First of all, we share the aim of achieving a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, including of course the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear arms program. On the U.S. side, not only is this an immediate policy goal but represents a vital component of President Obama’s vision of ‘a world without nuclear arms’. And I can assure you that South Korea’s civil society fully supports both the immediate goal and the larger vision.
Yet we have made little progress even toward the more limited goal. In fact, things have grown worse. Despite some meaningful breakthroughs made in the past (most significantly the September 19 Joint Statement of Beijing 2005), North Korea by now has conducted two nuclear tests and reactivated its nuclear facilities. It has threatened to go farther if sanctions stay in place.
It is a complex issue that I for one lack the expertise to address with any adequacy. But sheer common sense, plus some knowledge of Korean history, would show that the problem will not be solved by narrowly focusing on North Korea’s nuclear weapons alone. I am certainly no advocate of the Pyongyang regime, but its behavior as regards this particular issue cannot be considered wholly irrational, given its decades-long confrontation (including a full-scale war fought to a draw) with the mightiest power on earth, which, moreover, has a large nuclear presence around the peninsula, though no longer on South Korean soil, and a record of actually contemplating preemptive strikes against North Korea and of invading a ‘denuclearized’ country like Iraq. The ‘security concerns’ regarding America’s ‘hostile policy’ that North Koreans keep harping on cannot be dismissed as a cover for other objectives—although other objectives may indeed come into play, as I shall discuss later.
We can certainly argue about the merits of sanctions as leverage for negotiations. What I find wholly unrealistic—and counterproductive—is the expectation that sanctions by themselves will either achieve denuclearization or, short of that, bring about the collapse of the offending regime. Such judgment gives no flattering picture of North Korea: precisely because it has no mechanism for its citizenry to hold the political leadership to account, further misery of its people will not seriously endanger the regime.
Here I come to the second of the changes we would like to see. We want improvement in the quality of people’s lives throughout the peninsula, including naturally the human rights of North Koreans. While this goal may not command high priority among most Americans, we should find no essential divergence between our two nations regarding it.
North Korean human rights in particular have emerged in recent years as one of the more visible agendas in both the U.S. and the international community. But here again a narrow focus on that single issue, particularly when embodied in a policy of mainly berating the offending regime, will not attain its intended aim. For all the gravity of North Korea’s human rights situation and the sincerity of one’s concern, exclusive attention to that issue will fail to ring true in a world where nobody has a monopoly on human rights violations and at a time when even in South Korea hard-won achievements of democratic rights are being threatened and partially eroded.
In any event, political and other rights cannot flourish in a situation where people’s human security itself is severely endangered. This is undoubtedly the case in North Korea, and while in principle its political leadership must bear the primary responsibility, the U.S. and its Japanese and South Korean allies cannot wash their hands of the matter. The resolution of this problem, too, will need eventually to involve an overall improvement in the relations with North Korea, including normal diplomatic ties with the United States and Japan.
A move in that direction will not be an act of unilateral beneficence on the part of the U.S. government, but one of self-interest in helping to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue and paving the way, among other things, for a more fruitful Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May 2010.
The third of the changes I have in mind, the reunification of the Korean Peninsula, probably would be still farther removed from American people’s concerns. For we cannot expect them to entertain a burning desire to see Korea reunified.
But reunification as such, that is, a speedy integration of the two Koreas into a unitary nation-state, does not evoke a burning desire among most South Koreans, either. For in cold reality it represents an impossible dream for any foreseeable future, and even a prescription for nightmare if anyone tried to force it.
The problem, however, is that division itself increasingly becomes a nightmare. North Korea’s nuclear weapons are just one indication. They represent a desperate attempt on the part of its leadership to change a status quo that has become unbearable to them, yet on condition that the Pyongyang regime itself remains intact. I mentioned earlier ‘other objectives’ than military security and diplomatic recognition that Pyongyang might have in mind. Its predicament is that even with such guarantees from the United States and other nations, it will always feel threatened by the presence of an immensely wealthier and more developed counterpart in the South. Because of this other ‘security threat’, North Korea can hardly afford to pursue the path of economic reform after the Chinese and Vietnamese models, hence will try to cling to nuclear weapons for whatever security they might offer and will not be able to significantly ameliorate the lives of its people.
What to do, then? The only viable option seems precisely what was agreed to by the top leaders of two Koreas in the summit meeting of June 2000, namely, a slow, step-by-step unification going through an intermediate stage of confederation or loose union of two separate states. This will guarantee the survival of the Pyongyang regime at least for a certain period, but on condition that it collaborate with its Southern partner in evolving a more peaceful, humane and integrated peninsular life.
Such a process naturally will need to be supported by a peace agreement of the four directly related parties parties of the Korean War and further embedded in a regional peace structure whose contour, it so happens, was already adumbrated in the September 19 Joint Statement. South Korea’s civil society will do its share in this process, and we certainly are not trying to lay everything at America’s door. But a strong and wise leadership by President Obama, his administration, and the Congress and people of the United States will be essential, and I hope we all can say yes to that.