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2013-04-23, Viewpoint, the North Korean Nuclear Saga, CM Lee.docx(24.64KB) Viewpoint:
The Consequences of the North Korean Nuclear Saga
By Chung Min Lee[1]
Program Chair, Seoul Forum for International Affairs and
Professor of International Relations, Graduate School of International Studies,
Yonsei University
Coincident with the December 2012 South Korean presidential election and the subsequent inauguration of the Park Geun-hye Administration in February 2013, North Korea embarked on an unprecedented series of nuclear and ballistic missile threats against South Korea and the United States. On December 12, 2012 North Korea successfully test fired its long-range missile and two months later on February 12, 2013, Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test following earlier tests in 2006 and 2009. While it’s always more art than science in divining North Korea’s strategic motivations, most analysts in Seoul believe that North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un has been working overtime to burnish his military credentials a little over a year after he assumed power following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in December 2011. Regardless of his key intentions, however, North Korea’s unprecedented threats and antics for the past two to three months have triggered a range of consequences for all of the region’s key actors but with special reference to three key ramifications.
First, Pyongyang’s virtually unrelenting pushing of the threat envelope poses key challenges and dilemmas for the Park Geun-hye Administration. Throughout the presidential campaign in 2012, then candidate Park designed and articulated her principal policy towards the North widely referred to as Trustpolitik. Indeed, despite North Korea’s continuing threats including its decision to freeze the landmark Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIS), the unilateral abrogation of the 1953 Armistice Agreement and cessation of the South-North military hotline, President Park has emphasized the importance of institutionalizing a trust-building process on the Korean Peninsula. As a long term policy, Trustpolitik is based on three key principles: (1) maintaining robust deterrence and defense in order to offset and to respond to North Korean provocations, (2) providing significant economic aid and matching political support commensurate with progress in North Korea’s denuclearization, and (3) maximizing opportunities through inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation with the international community in convincing the North to make the right choice.
Since she entered the Blue House in late February, President Park has reaffirmed the two central tenets of Trustpolitik or the commitment to immediate and effective responses to any North Korean provocation along the lines of the 2010 sinking of the Cheonan and bombing of Yeonpyong Island and holding out the promise of significantly improved ties with the North. Thus far, Pyongyang has rejected returning to the negotiating table and has rebuffed Seoul’s and Washington’s overtures by insisting that North Korea will never dismantle its nuclear arsenal so long as the U.S. remains as a nuclear power and provides a nuclear umbrella to the South. Notwithstanding Park’s determination to implement a new North Korean policy, however, if Pyongyang proceeds with a fourth nuclear test in the near-term as many analysts have suggested or conducts a series of mid-range and long-range missile tests, the Park Administration will be hard pressed not to revise its more flexible posture towards the North.
Second, South Korea is becoming increasingly impatient and concerned after two decades of living under the specter of the North Korean nuclear crisis. While Seoul remains firmly committed to its long-standing non-nuclear posture as evinced by its membership in the NPT not to mention other non-proliferation regimes such as the MTCR and PSI, North Korea’s third nuclear test has triggered a new debate in South Korea; namely, whether the South should also consider its own nuclear deterrent, convince the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear missiles in South Korea, or to significantly enhance its conventional deterrence assets vis-à-vis North Korea’s accelerating nuclear capabilities. To be sure, the South Korean government remains absolutely committed to a non-nuclear posture given that any move to acquiring its own nuclear capabilities will result in key opportunity costs such as a fundamental setback in the ROK-U.S. alliance, the triggering of a nuclear domino in East Asia such as Japan’s decision to discard its own non-nuclear posture, and the fact that both China and Russia will reconfigure their nuclear strategy to take into consideration a nuclearized or a potentially nuclearized South Korea. Last but not least, Seoul would lose the moral high ground in sustaining key international cooperation including the maintenance of sanctions against the North.
Nevertheless, if North Korea is able to miniaturize nuclear warheads for ballistic missile delivery it would not only threaten South Korea, but also Japan and the United States. Moreover, despite China’s disapproval of North Korea’s nuclear programs and continuing support for resolving the North Korean nuclear problem through multilateral negotiations such as the dormant Six Party Talks, many are wondering just effective future talks will be when North Korea is determined not to relinquish or dismantle its nuclear capabilities. Thus, even though the vast majority of South Korea’s national security community remains committed to a non-nuclear posture, public patience is running thin with increasing demands for more robust responses to North Korea’s mounting nuclear threats. Maintaining South Korea’s non-nuclear policies while addressing growing public unease with Seoul’s limited deterrent capabilities is a key political task that has to be successfully tackled by the Park Administration.
Third, for the United States and China, a nuclearized North Korea remains as the most important security challenge in on the Korean Peninsula but it is by no means solely limited to North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile threats. If North Korea is unwilling to give up its nuclear arsenal despite pressures from China and the international community, it is time for Beijing to fundamentally reassess its alliance with Pyongyang. While it is difficult to imagine any abrupt shift in China’s ties with North Korea in the short-term, a key foreign policy priority for President Xi Jinping and the new Chinese leadership has to be focused on rethinking North Korea no longer as a strategic asset but as a strategic liability for China’s own core interests in and out of Asia. Should China continue to render virtually unending support for the North, it’s going to result in unintended consequences such as accelerating Japan’s on-going rightward shift and greater emphasis on fielding more credible power projection capabilities. To be sure, Japan’s core security perceptions are also influenced by what it perceives as a key long term threat, namely, China’s increasingly robust military presence and capabilities. Nevertheless, China has to begin the process of rethinking its strategic interests on the Korean Peninsula including the longer term benefits that could arise from a unified Korea that is democratic, with a vigorous market economy, and one that is fully linked with the global community. Most critically, such a Korea would entail a different security makeup including a significantly reduced U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula so that while key security and economic ties will continue to be maintained with the United States, it would not pose a threat to China’s strategic interests.
From Washington’s perspective, a nuclearized North Korea together with a potentially nuclearized Iran and the possibility of protracted instability in a nuclearized Pakistan stand out as one of the most pressing challenges to U.S. and international security. Thus, while the United States should continue to emphasize the negotiation track vis-à-vis North Korea even as it bolsters South Korea’s own defenses, Washington should work closely with Seoul and Beijing in beginning the process of re-engineering the “Korean Question.” No one really believes that the North Korean nuclear conundrum can be resolved any time in the near future and while efforts should be continued in restarting the Six Party Talks, the Obama Administration has to place much greater weight on redesigning a new approach towards the Korean Peninsula together with China and the active participation of South Korea.
As President Park prepares to embark on her first summit meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in early May with a subsequent trip to China in early fall, the lion’s share of her visit is likely to be focused on emphasizing a joint North Korea strategy. But there are other critical issues that Park has to reconcile with Obama including the all-important task of renegotiating the ROK-U.S. Civil Nuclear Energy Cooperation Agreement that is set to expire in early 2013. On-going negotiations between Seoul and Washington have been unable to bridge the gap since South Korea continues to insist that it should have the right to reprocess spent plutonium and uranium enrichment capabilities to meet growing energy demands while the United States maintains that providing such capabilities to the South runs against non-proliferation principles. For now, press reports have indicated that the two sides may ultimately opt to extend the current agreement for two more years until a new accord can be reached. South Korea has demonstrated its abiding commitment to all non-proliferation treaties and regimes and as one of the United States’ most important allies in Asia; it’s time for Washington to treat Seoul as an equal strategic partner.
Last but not least, the North Korean nuclear crisis has also brought to the fore the issue of proceeding with or postponing indefinitely the planned transfer of full operational control to South Korea by December 2015. Proponents of the transfer argue that the ROK forces must begin to assume the leading role in South Korea’s defense with matching defense upgrades whereas opponents maintain that in the face of a growing North Korean nuclear threat, the current Combined Forces Command (CFC) is the optimal model for maintaining an effective deterrent posture. The Park Administration should proceed with the current timeline but only after it completes key interim assessments and with the full support of the defense establishment in Seoul and Washington.
While previous South Korean presidents have all faced varying challenges from North Korea and adjusting to shifting power dynamics in Northeast Asia, President Park arguably faces the most pressing foreign policy and national security challenges since the end of the Cold War. Concomitant with uncertain trends such as an anemic global economic recovery, a rapidly maturing South Korean economy that faces significantly lower growth rates, declining U.S. defense budgets and forward deployed forces, and an increasingly assertive China and Japan—on top of North Korea’s increasing nuclear and ballistic missile threats—President Park’s tenure is likely to be dominated by unprecedented foreign policy tasks. The headwinds facing Seoul are not only omni-directional, their likely to become even more pronounced in the months and years ahead.
[1] The views and insights expressed in this essay are the author’s own and should not be construed in anyway as representing the views and perceptions of the Seoul Forum for International Affairs, its members, or international partners.
