South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s statements continue to confuse observers. She has said that she is most interested in building trust with the North, but she has brought back ideas and government policies from the authoritarian past. She suggests she is interested in peaceful reunification, but she does not talk or act on North-South rapprochement but rather on assumptions that the North will peacefully collapse soon. Experienced observers do not make that prediction. She talks about the North-South issue in Germany, Beijing, Washington, and asks for their help, but she will not make obvious preparations for inter-Korean dialogue.
Certainly she has recognized – as far back as the campaign period for President in 2002, when she authored an article, A New Kind of Korea, in Foreign Affairs journal – that a Korean president today must address the North-South dilemma if they are to be viewed as serious. She has also made several high-profile speeches and gestures internationally that addressed in one way or another the continuing insecurity on the Korean Peninsula and the drag that frozen diplomacy exerts on multiple foreign and domestic interests, be they Korean, Peninsular, regional, alliance, or global.
The most comprehensive description of what South Korea is aiming for, and what ought to be the larger and integrated context for any North-South negotiation, is the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI) that Ms. Park proposed two years ago. Echoing many experienced voices, this recognizes that North Korea sits geographically in the center of three of the most dynamic economies on the globe, those of Japan, China, and South Korea, and either it continuing to fester or it being successfully addressed will have enormous impacts on all regional economies, as well as on power dynamics.
A simple question is, what has worked, what has not, and why? Although this question quickly goes to the heart of current ideologies, political mindsets, historical personality battles, and so on, it remains the best logical question if one is trying to see what comes next. The period 1994 to 2001 is the period of greatest accomplishment, if by that we mean the South Korean and U.S. administrations addressing the North Korean nuclear programs, achieving some success at both walking back the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) nuclear options and dragging it tentatively into development interaction with international institutions, and managing Seoul’s and Washington’s domestic political and ideological battles. Many possibilities opened for a time in that post-Cold War, pre-9/11 world. The period of least accomplishment has been 2001 to the present. And while much has changed since 2001, the basic interests of the parties have not.
Most important is what Ms. Park’s initiatives do not include. Missing are the only building blocks that could support a return to deal-making, which encourages the view that she either cannot practice a diplomacy she desires, or that she cannot accept politically and ideologically the actions that would lead to negotiations. Those actions would include logical sequencing of denuclearization with security; realistic assessments of past North-South agreements; a clear route to development aid and to a peace treaty ending the Korean War; honest efforts to meet DPRK leaders at a summit. And of course, with a negotiating partner, missing is the courage to treat them with sufficient respect that they want to engage.
With a clear-eyed view of this history, what should we expect? Only the administrations in Seoul and Washington have the leverage and resources, along with interests, to convert the current expensive instability into real opportunities for development and security. And between the two, now and for the foreseeable future, it is the Seoul administration that has far more at stake, as well as a reservoir of largely unacknowledged diplomatic and economic power, to make a play. Whether a political leader there can harness and direct that power is not yet clear.
This means much of the region’s development and security atmosphere depends upon the next Korean president. He/she will take office in February of 2018. In past decades, it mattered greatly how the US president saw the Korea issue, even as his preferences swung wildly from engagement to coercion, responsibility to recklessness. It still matters, but not as much. There is no sign yet that Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio, or other candidates, have approached these issues deeply. U.S. executive isolation seems to deepen. Realistically, the U.S. role in Korean peninsula affairs depends more on the next Korean president than on the next U.S. president.
There are signs that President Park may be trying to groom a successor. If true, that effort may not go well, if only because her political vision now seems narrow and rigid. If she hopes to influence the next ruling Saenuri Party candidate, there will be long fights about his or her independence. A “modern” faction will likely develop in the ruling group, recognizing how little has been accomplished under the past two conservative leaders, and trying to emerge from an ossified power group this is over 30 years old and is still uncomfortable with an increasingly democratic society. The strains within the larger ruling group, however, would sap significant power.
In such a case, the divided progressive opposition has a better chance to offer a leader who could put more of Korea’s chips on the table. To do so, they will have to move away from current battles and remember their party’s guiding principles, and articulate them for modern ears. What would a contemporary version of “engagement” with North Korea look like? How would it work? Which defense choices will work, politically and practically? How can a Korean leader put to rest doubts about divided loyalties between Beijing and Washington? How can Koreans embrace the Japanese mainstream? How do energy choices impact both the domestic economy and international economic planning?
Under President Park, there is little likelihood that there could be any significant breakthroughs, either with the North directly or through China and the U.S. indirectly. The U.S. election in 2016 will not have a great impact on Korea. The Korean elections of 2017 will decide between a continuation of today’s insecure environment or a more active role for South Korea and the prospect of deal-making that would scramble the political map in Northeast Asia.
Stephen Costello is producer of Asia East, a Web and broadcast-based policy roundtable focused on security, development, and politics in Northeast Asia. He writes from Washington, D.C.
