The opening day of the ASAN Plenum 2012 in central Seoul yesterday saw academic representatives from five of the Six-Party Talks participant nations brought together to discuss the ‘Crisis on the Korean Peninsula’, a herculean effort to try and make sense of events from the ‘Leap Day Agreement’ of February 29th to the failed North Korean rocket launch of mid April.
Asked by David Sanger, the New York Times journalist who moderated the debate, what he thought North Korea was up to, former Six-Party Talks negotiator Christopher Hill of the University of Denver replied, “North Korea carefully calculated this February agreement right up until their announcement of the test; they have always confused us in the past. And that is why the Obama administration went out to engage with North Korea; to see if they are serious about returning to some kind of process with the deal on denuclearization.”
“And the answer to that is ‘not ready’,” Hill concluded.
Aiming to clarify the Chinese stance on the Korean Peninsula today, Pan Zhenqiang of China Reform Forum commented simply, “China has other things going on. They have not made North Korea a priority.”
Only, he continued, “China tried to put multilateral cooperative relations on track. China’s persistent, fundamental view on the Peninsula is not only nonproliferation issues per se, but it is military confrontation between South Korea and North Korea, particularly between the U.S. and North Korea.”
“Nuclear proliferation is an extension of this confrontation and this is the real solution to the nuclear issue,” Pan added, “If you really want to denuclearize North Korea then you have to reduce military tension and build up a more cooperative environment; are the nuclear issues the top priority of the Obama administration or do they perhaps have their own interests?”
The fact is, Vasily Mikheev Institute of World Economy and International Relations asserted, “(The Six-Party Talks) cannot solve problems with North Korea. All countries involved in the Six-Party Talks have different purposes and North Korea wants to use the Six-Party Talks to trade it’s nuclear and missile program in exchange for economic aid.”
Therefore, he went on, “We need to have Five-Party Talks without North Korea to figure out a way to solve North Korea’s problems.”
Pushing Kim Tae Woo of the Korea Institute for National Unification on the problems that exist in terms of South Korea, Sanger commented, “South Korea redefines where its national interests lie on this issue all the time! Two consecutive presidents have different views on these issues. There was the Sunshine Policy then the hard-line view, and no one knows how the upcoming election will turn out.”
“We have been suffering from divisional opinions regarding North Korea for a long time,” Kim conceded in response. “I call it the Orthodox vs. Revisionist argument. South Korea’s policy has long been shuffling between two extreme points”
However, “The real challenge comes with our relationship with China,” he went on. “I have been feeling a little bit of change these days in Chinese scholars. Before, they just repeatedly said that they want a peaceful solution to North Korea problem, but now they are strongly opposing North Korea’s nuclear test.”
“Chinese guiding principle is that we certainly criticize their actions but we respect their sovereignty,” Pan Zhenqiang explained. “This is something we particularly should understand. I don’t see any alternative for the nuclear issue.”
