Seoul torn over response to test
By Choe Sang-Hun International Herald Tribune
Published: October 12, 2006
South Korea, one of the few countries that can financially squeeze North Korea, slid into a bitter internal dispute Thursday over how to punish its Communist neighbor following its report of a nuclear test.
Without active participation from China and South Korea, North Korea’s two main aid providers and trade partners, sanctions being discussed at the United Nations would have limited impact, experts say. But the division at home leaves President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea without a consensus as he meets the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, on Friday in Beijing.
Seoul’s inability to make a quick decision, which contrasts with Japan’s swift ban on imports and ships from North Korea, reflects a divide among South Koreans over how to reconcile their so-called "sunshine policy" of engaging North Korea with their American ally’s push for an economic blockade on the North.
A top governing party leader in South Korea highlighted the political divide Thursday by warning against conservatives’ demand that the country join the American-led "Proliferation Security Initiative," which aims to intercept North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons materials.
Seoul’s participation in the initiative "could work as a detonator for military clash," the leader, Kim Keun Tae, said at a meeting with cabinet ministers.
Han Sung Joo, a former foreign minister of South Korea, warned that any interdiction of North Korean vessels "could increase the possibility of military clash." Sea borders between the two Koreans remain volatile, with the two navies engaging in bloody skirmishes in recent years.
"With nuclear weapons, North Korea may feel more confident to use conventional weapons," Han said.
The region will closely watch the meeting between Hu and Roh. Both China and South Korea have shared a policy of engaging North Korea. But they also compete for long-term influence on the North. South Koreans are unwilling to punish the North Koreans, partly because it would bring the North closer to China.
"It’s necessary to express clearly to North Korea that the nuclear test is the wrong practice," Liu Jianchao, a spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a regular briefing Thursday. But Liu added, "One can say that punishment isn’t the goal."
Lee Jong Seok, a South Korean unification minister in charge of relations with North Korea, said in Parliament Thursday that negotiations, as well as sanctions, were needed because "North Korea is not a country that one can open up with pressure and sanctions alone."
Roh has found himself caught between increasing U.S. pressure to get tough with North Korea and strong resistance among members of his own liberal party.
Conservative South Koreans called the North Korean nuclear threat a "death penalty" for Seoul’s sunshine policy of promoting political reconciliation and economic cooperation with the North. They said billions of dollars funneled into the North - in cash, aid and trade - during eight years of engagement has helped North Korea divert its resources into weapons development.
They called for an immediate end of the two best-known symbols of the sunshine policy: the Diamond Mountain tourism project in the North, for which South Korea has provided the North with over $900 million since 1998, and the joint industrial complex in Kaesong, where South Korean factories produce garments and kitchen utensils with cheap North Korean labor.
But liberals in and outside the Roh Moo Hyun camp believed that although they were frustrated with the North Koreans, they see no other option but to engage the North. Ending those projects will only worsen inter-Korean relations and increase the danger of a military clash on the divided Korean peninsula, they say.
"It’s clear that the sunshine policy has succeeded between the two Koreas, and it could have been more successful were it not for the bad relations between North Korea and the United States," former President Kim Dae Jung, the architect of the sunshine policy, was quoted as saying by South Korean media.
Shortly after the report of the nuclear test, Roh strongly criticized the North and said South Korea "cannot go on with the engagement policy as it is." But he has since questioned whether the policy should be blamed for the North Korean nuclear test. Conservatives quickly accused him of backpedaling.
On Thursday, Roh’s office said that it has yet to decide on what to do with the Diamond and Kaesong projects, though a leading conservative daily, Chosun Ilbo, reported Thursday that the government has decided to keep them. Opinion polls showed that a majority of South Koreans wanted the government to revise or abandon the engagement policy.
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