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 September 21, 2006
South Korea's former minister of Unification and one of the top North Korea experts in the world, Jeong Se Hyun, started his prescription for the future of U.S. policy towards North Korea with an unflinching look at the present. He said the current U.S. policy of alternately ignoring and antagonizing the DPRK has been unproductive, both in stopping the North's nuclear programs and in affecting regime transformation. What's worse, the current administration's approach, which departs sharply from South Korea's longstanding "Sunshine Policy," has aggravated tensions in the U.S.-ROK alliance.
Jeong is not pessimistic. Many critics have pointed to the recent meeting in Washington between Presidents Bush and Roh as merely papering over the fractures in the relationship, but Jeong thinks more may have been accomplished than meets the eye. He also believes the U.S.' North Korea policy can get back on track with a few simple steps.
Currently, the administration views North Korea primarily as a rogue state. It hopes to isolate the DPRK-shown most recently by the sanctions it imposed on banks doing business with North Korea-and wait for its collapse. South Korea, on the other hand, sees North Korea less as a security threat and more as a weak, distrustful neighbor in need of aid and integration into the regional economy. U.S. officials resent South Korea's aid and support for the North, believing it props up a regime best left to collapse.
Jeong exhorted the Bush administration to recognize and accept that South Korea's view of the DPRK won't fall into line with its own. He added that all parties' interests would best be served by a resumption of the Six-Party Talks in Beijing, which the North has been boycotting in response to the financial sanctions.
Those sanctions have effectively communicated the U.S. position to the DPRK, Jeong said, and should now be dropped to facilitate talks. He then laid out several additional steps the U.S. should take to begin a successful policy of broad engagement with the North:
- Acknowledge that North Korea is more than just a rogue state, and requires a different approach.
- Accept that the DPRK requires outside aid, and that the U.S. will have to take steps to provide it.
- Use all the levers of power to change the relationship between the U.S. and DPRK from one of confrontation to one of cooperation.
- Send assistant secretary of state for East Asian and pacific affairs Christopher Hill to Pyongyang to meet with North Korea's leadership.
If it can accomplish all of the above, U.S. policymakers will be able to spend much less time worrying about he future of Northeast Asia.
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