Korean Security in a Changing East Asia (Psi Reports)

Korean Security in a Changing East Asia

Praeger Security International Advisory Board Board Cochairs Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia (U.S.A.) Paul Wilkinson, Professor of International Relations and Chairman of the Advisory Board, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St. Andrews (U.K.) Members Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies (U.S.A.) Th´er`ese Delpech, Director of Strategic Affairs, Atomic Energy Commission, and Senior Research Fellow, CERI (Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques), Paris (France) Sir Michael Howard, former Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regis Professor of Modern History, Oxford University, and Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University (U.K.) Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, U.S.A. (Ret.), former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army (U.S.A.) Paul M. Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Director, International Security Studies, Yale University (U.S.A.) Robert J. O’Neill, former Chichele Professor of the History of War, All Souls College, Oxford University (Australia) Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (U.S.A.) Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International (U.S.A.)

Korean Security in a Changing East Asia

Edited by Terence Roehrig, Jungmin Seo, and Uk Heo

PRAEGER SECURITY INTERNATIONAL Westport, Connecticut r London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Korean security in a changing east Asia / edited by Terence Roehrig, Jungmin Seo, and Uk Heo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–275–99834–9 (alk. paper) 1. National security—East Asia. I. Heo, Uk, 1962– II. Roehrig, Terence, 1955– III. Seo, Jungmin. UA832.5.K66 2007 2007016123 355
.0330519–dc22 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. C 2007 by Terence Roehrig, Jungmin Seo, and Uk Heo Copyright 

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007016123 ISBN-13: 978–0–275–99834–9 ISBN-10: 0–275–99834–7 First published in 2007 Praeger Security International, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments 1

Introduction Terence Roehrig, Jungmin Seo, and Uk Heo

vii 1

Part I: North Korea 2

3

The Role of the United States in the North Korean Nuclear Crisis Patrick M. Morgan

13

China’s Grand Strategy, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, and the Six-Party Talks Shale Horowitz and Min Ye

33

4

Causes and Consequences of North-South Cooperation David C. Kang

53

5

Regime Change in North Korea? Kyung-Ae Park

70

Part II: Changing Security Environment in East Asia 6

Korean Security and Big Power Rivalry Terence Roehrig

95

vi

7

Contents

Internal Dynamics of Chinese Nationalism and Northeast Asian Regional Order Jungmin Seo

8

Russian Foreign Policy and South Korean Security Esook Yoon

9

A Modest Proposal: Forming a Regularized Security Structure for Northeast Asia—Drawing on the OSCE Experience Thomas A. Wuchte

114 136

155

Part III: Shifting U.S.-South Korea Relationship 10 Allies under Strain: U.S.-Korean Relations under G. W. Bush Seung-Ho Joo

171

11 Changing National Identity and Security Perception in South Korea Uk Heo and Jung-Yeop Woo

192

Index

207

About the Editors and Contributors

211

Acknowledgments This book is a collection of select papers presented at panels organized by the Association of Korean Political Studies (AKPS) as part of the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the International Studies Association (ISA). The East Asia Foundation (EAF) provided financial support that was crucial to our efforts to generate this book. We would like to thank the EAF for their generosity.

Chapter 1

Introduction Terence Roehrig, Jungmin Seo, and Uk Heo Security on the Korean Peninsula has long been dependent on the broader security context that exists in East Asia. Throughout its history, Korea has often been caught between the regional powers (China, Japan, and Russia) through wars, where Korea was either a path for one adversary to reach the other or the prize of the conflict. For years, Korea existed under Chinese domination and protection, until it was annexed by Japan in 1910. For thirty-five years Korea was part of the Japanese empire, enduring a brutal occupation. At the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea for the purpose of taking the Japanese surrender, with the Soviets taking that surrender in the North and the United States doing so in the South. Despite early intentions to reunite the two regions, growing Cold War hostilities followed by the Korean War (1950–1953) cemented the division of North and South Korea. The end of the Cold War and the break up of the Soviet Union brought significant change to the international community and to security relations on the Korean Peninsula. Many expected an unprecedented era of peace and improved relations would follow these momentous events in global politics. In Europe, one by one, the states of Eastern Europe peeled away from Soviet domination followed by the independence of states that had formerly made up the Soviet Union. With Cold War tension in decline, Europe and the world in general would be a safer place grounded in a “New World Order” based on peace and cooperation. Many expected a similar, rapid change in East Asia, which, in turn, would affect Korean security; indeed, there

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Korean Security in a Changing East Asia

were many indications this might happen, yet it has not been as smooth a transition as many predicted. In the 1980s, South Korean President Roh Tae-woo began Nordpolitik, an effort to improve ties with the Soviet Union and China, the South’s former communist adversaries. In 1992, Seoul normalized relations with both China and Russia, a move that opened new economic possibilities for all parties but angered North Korea who viewed these new relationships as a betrayal by its former sponsors. The Chinese were anxious to open this new relationship since Seoul had much more to offer its growing economy than the ideological and economic rigidity of North Korea. Since that time, the Chinese economy has grown rapidly, elevating it to a regional and international powerhouse. In 2003, China became South Korea’s largest trading partner, replacing the United States that had held this position since 1965. Yet China’s growth also raises questions regarding its long-term ambitions in the region. North Korea, on the other hand, has been an economic disaster since the 1990s. Already plagued by the inefficiencies of a command economy and its juche ideology that champions “self-reliance” in an interdependent global economy, starting in 1994, North Korea was hit with an alternating series of floods and droughts that led to tremendous food shortages. As a result, some estimates indicate that two to three million North Koreans died due to starvation. Since the 1990s, North Korea has suffered from a chronic energy shortage and an industrial base that may be running at only 30 to 40 percent capacity. During the 1990s, many were heralding the imminent demise of the North Korean regime and speculating on the future course of a unified Korea. However, North Korea has shown an uncanny ability to survive and has managed, along the way, to devote the necessary resources to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Throughout this period, Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions have been the primary security concern in the region. When George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he was skeptical of the Clinton Administration’s relationship with North Korea. In response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. government responded with policies that led to the War on Terrorism and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush identified North Korea, Iraq, and Iran as part of the “axis of evil” that posed a grave threat to U.S. security. The 1994 Agreed Framework unraveled in 2002 when Washington alleged a clandestine North Korean nuclear weapons program and the United States adopted a tough negotiating position that was counter to the one taken by Seoul. For this and other reasons, U.S.-South Korean relations have been strained. While U.S.-South Korean relations have drifted apart, Washington’s ties with Tokyo have been very close. In addition, there has been an increasingly

Introduction

3

conservative tilt in the Japanese government that has made others in the region nervous. Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni war shrine as well as controversies over textbooks and interpretations of World War II aggravated Japanese relations with South Korea and China. Japan’s new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was, in the past, a supporter of the Yasukuni visits but has not indicated whether he will continue the practice. Some in Japan continue to call for a more assertive Japanese role in the region and internationally, including membership on the United Nations Security Council and revisions to Article IX in its Constitution that renounce war and the maintenance of armed forces. Most recently, the Japanese government has moved to elevate the Defense Agency to a fullfledged Ministry of Defense, a measure that some in the region believe is an initial step that may eventually lead to a more aggressive Japanese foreign policy. However, Prime Minister Abe has worked hard to repair relations with others in the region. Despite the end of the Cold War, the memories of World War II have an important impact on regional relations. In response, Chinese leaders began to utilize a dualistic approach by adopting an aggressive posture toward Japan but using the rhetoric of “Peaceful Rising,” heping jueqi, to diffuse concerns for “the China threat” in Washington. Despite earlier fears, Prime Minister Abe has attempted to mend relations with China and South Korea in the early months of his administration, and Chinese President Hu Jintao has accepted an invitation to visit Japan sometime in 2007. China’s Prime Minister Wen Jibao completed a trip to Japan in April 2007, an important effort to improve relations. However, a potential Sino-Japanese rivalry will have serious implications for regional security if not properly managed. In addition to changes in the international and regional security environments, states in East Asia have also undergone recent modifications in their national identities. Democratization in South Korea has led to a power transition that has brought in new political elites and, in turn, led to changes in the national identity.1 These political elites first came to power with President Kim Dae-jung who introduced a new perspective on relations with the United States and North Korea. In an effort to improve relations with the North, President Kim adopted an engagement strategy that became known as the “Sunshine Policy” that stressed dialogue and economic cooperation. The crowning achievement of that policy was the June 2000 summit meeting he had with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. This policy continued under President Roh Moo-hyun through ongoing engagement with North Korea and an emphasis on a common Korean identity, even against U.S. wishes and those of conservative political elites in South Korea. There have also been changes in the attitudes of Chinese and Japanese political elites. The emergence of nationalist voices among Chinese leaders and intellectuals raise questions about the future of economic and political

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Korean Security in a Changing East Asia

reform along with Chinese foreign policy ambitions in the region. Japan’s leaders are also becoming increasingly more willing for Japan to embark on a more assertive foreign policy that makes others in the region nervous. A potential clash for regional dominance between these two powers remains a serious obstacle to peace and stability in the region. All these changes occurred with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the regional security system imposed on East Asia after World War II. Similar change occurred in Europe but the disintegration of Cold War security structures there happened more abruptly with the end of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Soviet Union. Also, Europe had a stable political and security structure in place—NATO and the European Union—to fill the void. As a result, change in Europe happened more quickly and within the confines of a stable security structure. In East Asia, the end of the Cold War did not bring such immediate change so that the resulting security structure has been evolving more slowly. Moreover, East Asia has not had an overarching political and security structure to guide the transition to a new framework for regional security. Consequently, the regional security environment in East Asia has been less certain with many possibilities for tension and conflict. As security relations in the region continue to evolve, East Asia will need to address important issues that have evolved more slowly and remain important questions for long-term peace and stability. As a result, North and South Korea are part of a security environment that remains tied to the old Cold War order, while also slowly evolving into a new security arrangement. It is difficult to assess Korean security issues without placing them in the broader context of East Asia. Thus, in this book, we attempt to study how peace can be maintained on the Korean Peninsula in a changing East Asian context, and the roles the various actors play in dealing with these security concerns.

Contributing Chapters To aid the reader in sorting through the substance of the book, we now provide a brief summary of each chapter. Chapter 2, “The Role of the United States in the North Korean Nuclear Crisis,” by Patrick M. Morgan, briefly describes the origins of the crisis and explores the ways the Bush Administration strategy went wrong. First, the Bush administration set the problem almost entirely within its global strategy without focusing sufficiently on the perspectives and concerns of the regional actors. Second, it sought to use confrontation based on its almost visceral reaction to North Korea, without a clear sense of how to use coercion, in this case, effectively. The Bush Administration was overconfident about gaining leverage from invading Iraq, and found its leverage reduced instead. Thus the recent financial pressure on North Korean counterfeiting activities,

Introduction

5

which has had a serious impact, was developed almost as a fluke. It had no clear sense of how seeking multilateral pressure on the North would go—the pressure was piled on the United States instead. It also lacked a strong consensus within the administration on almost all aspects of its policy, which often produced a serious lack of flexibility. Finally, it has ended up treating the impasse as not important enough to try hard to break, which is primarily a lowest common denominator solution within the administration and accommodates the worst inclinations among the other parties to the Six-Party Talks. However, China has contributed to the impasse by not grasping its role properly, in both intellectual and political terms. It has had a far too narrow conception of the implications of the conflict and seems to have made no real preparation to play honest broker. It has significantly damaged its image with respect to contributing properly to the management of East Asian security matters. Similarly, a true multilateral approach has been at odds with the Koreans’ desire, in Seoul at least, to Koreanize the problem and the solution—which is also a rather narrow conception of the problem. This has allowed the North to have a far greater impact on how the conflict has proceeded than the Republic of Korea (ROK). In any case, the U.S. approach has failed in terms of the administration’s own global perspective: it has allowed proliferation to worsen; it has strained U.S. relations with China and the ROK; and it has built no serious consensus on the North Korean issue at home or abroad. This also means the other North Korean problems, a feeble economic system and nearly failed state, is getting no better either. Hence the single most important issue with regard to Korean and Northeast Asian security remains unchanged, while everything else in East Asia is shifting. This is inhibiting South Korea’s adaptation to the changes that are occurring and endangering the future of the U.S.-ROK alliance. Chapter 3, “China’s Grand Strategy, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, and the Six-Party Talks,” by Shale Horowitz and Min Ye, examines China’s role in efforts to curtail North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions. North Korea has pursued a nuclear weapons capability for about two decades. Many diplomatic efforts have been made to convince or cajole the Northern regime to give up this quest—and all have so far failed. Since 2003, a new multilateral approach—the Six-Party Talks involving the Koreas, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States—has raised hopes anew. These hopes are based largely on China playing an active role. China has the potential both to guarantee North Korea’s security and to impose and enforce a denuclearization agreement. Horowitz and Ye analyze China’s changing grand strategy and its implications for China’s Korea goals and policies. To Deng Xiaoping’s emphasis on China’s national interests, China’s third- and fourth-generation leaders have added a greater reliance on foreign and military policies to maintain domestic political support and legitimacy. This discussion indicates that China is currently more concerned to preserve the North Korean

6

Korean Security in a Changing East Asia

regime and prevent a second Korean War than to eliminate the North’s nuclear capability. Therefore, the Six-Party Talks are unlikely to succeed. Chapter 4, “Causes and Consequences of North-South Cooperation,” by David C. Kang notes that the ROK’s basic engagement strategy toward the North is highly controversial and is often referred to as “appeasement” in both the United States and South Korea. This chapter asks two basic questions: “Why has the South maintained its engagement policy for over a decade?” and, “What are the likely consequences of this engagement?” Kang argues that engagement is a deeply rooted foreign policy in South Korea, reflecting an enduring shift in South Korean national identity. It is unlikely to change even if a more conservative president wins the 2007 election. Furthermore, the consequences are at the time fairly minimal: total South Korean aid to the North totals much less than $1 billion per year, easily sustainable into the foreseeable future. The unanswerable question, of course, is what effect the South’s policy has on the North. There is some suggestive evidence, but a full analysis will have to wait for more developments. Chapter 5, “Regime Change in North Korea?” by Kyung-Ae Park, analyzes the prospects for regime change through civil society mobilization in North Korea. The structuralist perspective of regime change looks at economic constraints as the principal explanatory variable of regime collapse, suggesting that both economic crisis and economic reform give rise to political pluralism, activate civil society, and thus lead to regime change. The Kim Jong-il regime in North Korea escaped its collapse in spite of the prolonged economic crisis. Then, could North Korea’s recent economic reforms trigger an activation of its autonomous civil society, which could gain the capacity to change the regime? The chapter offers an analysis of North Korean exceptionalism in regard to the economic crisis and economic development theories of regime change. It argues that several components of political opportunity structures salient to North Korea work as constraints of regime change, and offers an assessment of prospects for activation of North Korea’s civil society. Chapter 6, “Korean Security and Big Power Rivalry,” by Terence Roehrig maintains that Korean security in the next fifty years will be closely intertwined with the future of two very important bilateral relationships: U.S.Sino relations and Sino-Japanese relations. In some respects, North and South Korea will be bystanders working to position themselves favorably as these relationships unfold. However, for other aspects, the two Koreas may be important players in the future of these bilateral relationships. This chapter addresses the following questions: “What are the possible directions of big power relations in East Asia in the next fifty years and what impact will these have on Korean security?” and “How can North and South Korea influence these big power relationships to help ensure peace and stability in the region while protecting their interests?” The chapter concludes that

Introduction

7

while North Korea will have little ability to affect the relationships of these powers other than in a negative way until the nuclear weapons issues are settled, South Korea may be able to play an important role in encouraging positive relations between China, Japan, and the United States. Chapter 7, “Internal Dynamics of Chinese Nationalism and Northeast Asian Regional Order,” by Jungmin Seo argues that nationalism has become one of the most important concepts to explain East Asian interregional relations. Without comprehending the nature of nationalism in this region, it is almost impossible to analyze territorial disputes over the Tokto/Takeshima and Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, the heated controversies over new Japanese textbooks, the vehement opposition of Chinese and Koreans against Japan’s desire for a seat on the United Nation Security Council, or Korean and Chinese anger over Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni shrine. The goal of this chapter is to examine one dimension of this problem, namely, the internal dynamics of Chinese nationalism that has become highly conspicuous since the mid-1990s. By analyzing the complex features of Chinese neonationalism, instead of seeing it as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda or as spontaneous mass responses, this chapter argues that Chinese neonationalism might be a potential threat to the Northeast Asian security order, not because it is aggressive toward foreign countries but because it may disturb the domestic stability of China. Chapter 8, “Russian Foreign Policy and South Korean Security” by Esook Yoon, highlights the significant implications of Russian foreign policy in Northeast Asia for South Korean political and economic security. This chapter observes that the two countries share similar policy interests in light of regional security and economic growth. Russia’s foreign policy interest in the region is to ensure the stable balance of power and the peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis that are necessary preconditions for Russia’s critical foreign policy goal in the region which is the economic development of its depressed Far East region. Specifically, Russia’s ambitious plans to develop its Far East through the construction of energy pipelines and the Iron Silk Road linking the region to Northeast Asian economies are not feasible without a peaceful resolution of the current nuclear standoff. Although Russia’s involvement in the North Korean nuclear crisis has been one of steady commitment, it has recently taken a far more active stance as evidenced by a package of economic and energy incentives it has offered to North Korea above and beyond its usual diplomatic support. Likewise, the peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis and economic development of the Far East region will generate tremendous political and economic benefits for South Korea as well. Thus, as this chapter observes, South Korea has welcomed Russia’s persistent attempts to be a stabilizing force in the regional security dilemma. Chapter 9, “A Modest Proposal: Forming a Regularized Security Structure for Northeast Asia—Drawing on the OSCE Experience,” by Thomas A.

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Korean Security in a Changing East Asia

Wuchte notes that it is an unfortunate reality that Northeast Asia faces today a unique challenge that combines both nontraditional and traditional threats. Although nontraditional security concerns have proliferated in recent years, traditional security concerns are the unresolved legacies of the Cold War that still persist in the region. In 2005, North Korea announced to the shocked world that it possessed nuclear weapons in defiance of international and bilateral commitments it has made for a denuclearized Korean peninsula. Later, in 2006, North Korea conducted another round of missile tests and tested its first nuclear weapon. With the existence of these palpable traditional threats, it would be premature to declare the existence of a “New Security Paradigm” for Northeast Asia. Given the multifaceted security challenges facing Northeast Asia, Wuchte believes that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), with its breadth of conflict prevention and confidence-building tools, is potentially a valuable resource, partner, and model for the region. With regard to transnational threats, the OSCE has been at the forefront of international efforts to tackle threats that require concerted multilateral responses, and the OSCE is well positioned to share its experience and expertise with not only Northeast Asia, but also the larger East Asian region. With regard to traditional security threats, the OSCE, when the time is appropriate, could serve as a resource and model for Northeast Asian countries in devising appropriate cooperative responses. Northeast Asia could benefit from intensified exchange with the OSCE to learn about the OSCE’s efforts to employ conflict prevention and crisis management tools to counter nontraditional security threats. While Northeast Asia, as well as the larger Asia-Pacific Region, has been reluctant to embrace preventive diplomacy as it applies to intra- and interstate conflicts, there is a growing interest within the region to shape the preventive diplomacy vision to target transnational and nontraditional security challenges. A promising way to address this dual challenge is to establish a permanent multilateral dialogue in the region along the lines of the OSCE’s Forum for Security Cooperation first, and then as part of a larger Asian “Helsinki Process.” Chapter 10, “Allies under Strain: U.S.-Korean Relations under G. W. Bush,” by Seung-Ho Joo argues that during the Cold War, the United States and South Korea remained trusting and firm allies despite periodic frictions. In the post-Cold War era, U.S.-ROK relations have been undergoing qualitative changes, and mutual distrust, suspicion, and uncertainty now characterize their relationship. The ascendancy of George W. Bush and the neoconservatives in the United States and the rise of Roh Moo-hyun and the so-called “386-generation” in South Korea were immediate contributors to this state of the relationship. This chapter examines how U.S.-ROK relations deteriorated from trusted allies to uncertain partners and why? It begins with a discussion of the changing nature of U.S.-ROK relations in the 2000s. It then examines the salient issues dividing the two allies. This is followed by an analysis of the two allies’ diverging policies toward North

Introduction

9

Korea’s nuclear issue. Finally, it concludes that frictions in U.S.-ROK relations are ascribable to the rise of new leaders, emotionalism, simplistic approaches, and diverging goals and perceptions of the two allies. Finally, Chapter 11, “Changing National Identity and Security Perception in South Korea,” by Uk Heo and Jung-Yeop Woo argue that the election of President Roh Moo-hyun and South Korea’s response to the July 2006 missile test and October 2006 nuclear weapons test by North Korea clearly indicate the changes in national identity and security perceptions in South Korea. The current discussion about wartime operation control and the discord between the United States and South Korea in dealing with North Korea are good examples of changes in South Korea’s national identity. To study the cause of these national identity changes, this chapter analyzes the modifications in both the domestic and international political environments with a number of factors seeming to be responsible for the changes. First of all, President Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine” policy and his nationalist approach led the public to believe that reunification was near and North Korea was no longer a military threat. Second, differences in war experiences between older and younger generations led to opposite responses to the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun governments’ policies toward the North and the United States. Third, the end of the Cold war and the normalization of relations with China led to the end of the traditional perception of an alliance structure based on the Cold War. This, in turn, increased the importance of the Chinese role in regional security issues at the expense of the United States. Finally, South Korea wants to avoid another war on the peninsula at any cost. The United States wants to make sure that nuclear material does not leave North Korea since the material may end up in wrong hands. To this end, the U.S. government is not ruling out any option including the use of force. In other words, there is a conflict of interest between the two countries.

Note 1. See Shale Horowitz, Uk Heo, and Alexander C. Tan, eds., Identity and Change in East Asian Conflicts: The Cases of China, Taiwan, and the Koreas, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Part I

North Korea

Chapter 2

The Role of the United States in the North Korean Nuclear Crisis Patrick M. Morgan There are various ways of examining the U.S.-North Korean relationship regarding the North’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons over the past two decades.1 To begin with it is commonly said, particularly now, that the U.S.-North Korean conflict is the main barrier to national progress in Korea, to inter-Korean reconciliation and eventual unification. It is one of the last of the Cold War conflicts that divided Europe, Germany, Vietnam, China, and Korea. Next, as has often been suggested, the conflict and its management is the crux of Northeast Asian regional security, the conflict on which nearly everything else hangs. Yet another way to see the conflict is as the epitome of most of the characteristic security issues and operations of the contemporary global system. It displays in action both the hegemon of the system and a solid example of a rogue state. It is an excellent example of the global weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation issue. It is infused with the contemporary complexities of the dominant strategies for promoting security—displaying the appeals and limitations of engagement versus containment and deterrence/compellence. Thus it also displays the security concerns that drive, and the difficulties entailed in utilizing, strategies of preemptive/preventive warfare. It is a revealing illustration of the interplay between the contemporary challenges, problems, failures, and progress in regional and global security management as pursued via either a unilateral or a multilateral approach. It has a bit of everything. While not trying to cover all these elements in detail, this chapter will touch on all of them. It briefly recounts the history of the conflict over North

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Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, looks at U.S.-North Korean relationship on those programs from national, regional, and global perspectives, critiques the performance of the two parties, and tries to make some sense out of the emergence in the fall of 2006 of yet another attempt to negotiate a solution. It concludes with some reflections on lessons of the conflict, when considered in a limited case-study fashion.

Origins The North Korean nuclear weapons conflict today is the latest nasty consequence of the failure of the Korean War over fifty years ago to settle the matter of rule on the Korean peninsula. A complete victory by either side in that conflict would have left the Korean nation living under a single state lodged on one side or the other in the Cold War. That might not have ended, but would probably have sharply reduced the scale and intensity of, conflict over the peninsula and who would run Korea in the ensuing years. And after the Cold War ended it would have been largely up to Koreans to decide the future of their country, as was the case for eastern Europeans. Survival of a divided Korea in 1953 was bound to lead, almost inevitably, to uneven success of the two regimes and thus to rising insecurity in the one that lagged behind. It was also bound to continue each side’s dependence on outsiders, giving them a considerable role in shaping the future of the peninsula. All of this could probably have been anticipated in the early 1950s and, looking back, it all seems quite understandable. The current crisis is also the result of a fundamental clash between the global security concerns of the United States and the rising insecurity of the North Korean regime, a conflict brought about by each taking actions to meet its security problems that directly impinged on the other in unacceptable ways. In many respects the conflict reflected a huge security dilemma, although not just of the classic sort. In a standard security dilemma, each state’s actions to remain or become physically safe from attack in themselves make the other state feel less secure, and there have been many such interaction effects at work in the North-South and U.S.-North Korean relationships. But in the U.S.-North Korean relationship there has been an additional security dilemma formed out of North Korea taking steps for its own security that threaten broader security management arrangements of the United States, leading the United States to reinforce its efforts to sustain those broader (beyond its own) security—for a region or system— arrangements which in turn threaten the security of North Korea. We can start with the North Korean side in the development of the current crisis. The existence of the North Korean state and regime has always been precarious because of how they were created. Their legitimacy has always been contested, and the regime has repeatedly used methods to solve this problem with its existence and legitimacy that, in the end, have only

The Role of the United States in the North Korean Nuclear Crisis

15

heightened its insecurity. In coming to power without the approval of the United Nations and lacking the support of a good portion of the Korean people (not only is the North smaller than the South, millions fled to the South when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was coming into existence), the North entered into a contest with the South over who would rule on the peninsula. Its initial effort to win that contest—the Korean War— nearly terminated its existence instead and earned it the enmity of the world’s most powerful country which has not abated in over fifty years. While long open to seizing any opportunity to try to conquer the South again, it was forced to turn primarily to trying to outdevelop and undermine its rival, an effort that had some early success but has in the end completely failed, leaving that source of legitimacy squarely in the hands of South Korea. The South is a prodigious economic success and a vigorous democracy—the North is one of the world’s poorest countries, in worse shape in recent decades than earlier, with a retrograde totalitarian system. Its failure was directly related to having instituted a Stalinist political and economic system, including what was both a DPRK-chosen and Western-imposed isolation from the noncommunist world, and then to clinging to that system when similar ones around the world were disappearing or, like China, adopting many western ways. Along the way it maintained a huge military capability to sustain its security, leading the United States to maintain powerful forces in South Korea and Japan, plan to send more in another Korean War, and stockpile nuclear weapons in South Korea, all of which kept North Korea’s existence clearly at risk. With the sharp decline in its relative economic and military position and post-Cold War alienation from former allies that had come to terms with the West, the regime turned to developing nuclear weapons—probably to bolster its security, as an achievement that would revitalize its legitimacy on the peninsula, and as a way to enhance its bargaining leverage with outsiders. But that step, plus its Stalinist elements, put it squarely at odds with the international community’s dominant values and the priority placed in the security policies of the United States on nonproliferation of WMD. Once again the North adopted a policy that was not ideal for enhancing its chances of survival. A number of other policies and behavior patterns over the years displayed the same general character. For instance there was the North Korean penchant for very bellicose rhetoric and its periodic military or other provocations—a bomb in Rangoon, assassination teams sent to Seoul, provoking naval incidents, the seizure of the Pueblo, and the restrictions on aid efforts that led many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to leave. There was also the North’s rather limited repertoire of negotiation tactics, and particularly the ways in which the North frequently alienated its friends. These actions and policies increased the chances that it would be attacked, added to its isolation, or heightened its economic and social problems.

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This is a record of great insecurity dealt with by regularly selecting policies that have added to that insecurity. North Korea is a state at risk which has repeatedly taken steps that have increased that risk. In the debate about whether the leader or leaders of the North are rational, this history is often forgotten when, in fact, it should be the best place to start. The roots of the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis in the first decade of the twenty-first century lie well back in the twentieth century’s Cold War. Early economic success in rebuilding, plus significant economic and other assistance from the communist bloc, allowed the DPRK to achieve rapid economic growth and undertake a major military buildup, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, giving it perhaps a decade of superiority on the peninsula. But just as the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) export-led growth strategy, installed by President Park Chung Hee in the early 1960s,2 was beginning to really pay off, the North began suffering the arteriosclerosis characteristic of such Stalinist systems everywhere else. It began sliding backward in its military capabilities, both absolutely and relative to the ROK and the United States, as well as in its economic progress and economic resources. It began losing support from its major allies, who became steadily more attracted to doing business with the ROK.3 On top of being unable to continue modernizing militarily and economically, and its faltering allies, the Cold War ended and the relative strength and influence of the West and the United States was immensely enlarged, resources likely to be targeted sooner or later on such a regime. Thus North Korea’s security situation deteriorated markedly on the peninsula and in a broad strategic sense. It suffered a steady decline in its ability to successfully defend itself in a war with its enemies, and to impose unacceptable damage so as to deter them from an attack. It also lost ground vis-a-vis South Korea, including a sharp drop in its chances of ever unifying ` the peninsula under its aegis. Thus it is not surprising that the North began looking at nuclear weapons as a possible solution to its security, legitimacy, and containment problems. Well before the end of the Cold War it had begun a nuclear weapons program based on planned reprocessing of plutonium from nuclear power reactors. Though it signed the nonproliferation treaty and, in 1991, an agreement with the South on maintaining a nuclear weapons-free peninsula, and though the United States removed the nuclear weapons it had stored in the ROK, it persisted in its nuclear weapons efforts. With its ability to militarily unify the peninsula someday dying away, its capability to defend itself and deter attacks through its conventional forces declining, and its nuclear umbrella from the USSR and China becoming tattered, the North turned toward having its own nuclear deterrent. Eventually it also used that program, well before it had any nuclear weapons, as leverage for compellence designed to force others to help it survive. Shifting away from North Korea for the moment, the larger historical context can be summarized as follows. After World War II, just as it did in

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Europe, the United States eventually led the way to stabilizing the regional security situation in Northeast and East Asia, and an important component of this was to stabilize the situation in Korea. Just as in Europe, that was done primarily by American protection of its allies, Japan and South Korea, from aggressive neighbors and by a general containment of those neighbors, including North Korea. In both Europe and Northeast Asia this regional security stability lasted for decades but the stability gradually became illusory. Security from the perspective of the United States and its allies was defined primarily as the allies’ safety from attack from the communist world and that was maintained. However there was no sense, apart from the deterrence theory, that the relative decline of the communist world could readily be destabilizing— that such a decline could pose serious difficulties if the opponents turned to desperate measures to recover or if, whatever they did, nothing worked and they slid into collapse. The former occurred in North Korea (although there has been considerable concern about the possible implosion of North Korea), while the latter is what happened in Eastern Europe. Both are in sharp contrast with what happened in China, which was more or less a best-case outcome. If North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons was not clearly a desperate measure when it began, it certainly became so with the end of the Cold War. The initial American response (and the South Korean reaction) was relatively conciliatory. The United States had always treated the DPRK as an unacceptable and illegitimate regime, a policy derived from the initial division of the peninsula, then reinforced by the Korean War, the North’s efforts to undermine the South, the threat of invasion its massive forces near the DMZ posed, and the totalitarian nature of the regime. But with the end of the Cold War the United States was open to a new approach involving possible engagement with the North. This was attractive because if, like the other communist regimes, the North would soon start to disappear, engagement offered a chance to speed this up and have some influence over how it occurred and developed. This was a pleasing prospect given the North’s strategic location and the uneasiness that would develop among its neighbors over how, and how fast, it was to change. The immediate catalyst was the George H. W. Bush administration’s preoccupation with getting the nuclear weapons and nuclear programs of the departing communist world under solid control (and eventual reduction or cancellation), so as to enhance the prevention of nuclear war plus nuclear and other WMD proliferation. The ROK had already begun moving toward engagement, starting with President Roh Tae Woo’s move to normal diplomatic ties and burgeoning economic relations with China and the Soviet Union and its suggestion that it would be ready to pursue similar steps with the North, followed by Kim Dae-jung’s adoption of the Sunshine Policy. The Bush Administration reinforced this movement toward d´etente on the peninsula and responded

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to North Korea’s progress in developing nuclear weapons by moving in l991 to remove all American nuclear weapons (some 200 apparently) stockpiled in the South. This reduction in the nuclear threat to North Korea was enlarged by the U.S. arrangement with the Soviet Union and Great Britain to withdraw all nuclear weapons from ships at sea except ballistic missile submarines. This removed all American nuclear weapons from the region and suggested the possibility of further steps to ease the U.S.-DPRK conflict. The underlying objective of a full-blown engagement would have been to apply in Korea the ultimate solution to the problem of devising a new and effective post-Cold War security situation that was eventually adopted in Europe—significant demilitarization of the region, plus reforms to erase authoritarian rule and communism followed by gradual absorption of such reformed states and societies into the West. That solution was not without difficulties, as the cases of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia demonstrated, but in regard to North Korea it never became a viable approach. For one thing, the North did not collapse. Not having collapsed, and not having changed its basic character, the North could not be absorbed into the ROK, or into the West, or even into the Northeast and East Asian international systems. Nor was it possible to achieve some version of the solution that emerged for China and Russia—which were not absorbed into the West but changed enough to get along with and benefit from the West, so that even though they were not asked to give up their nuclear weapons the security situation in Europe and Asia was significantly improved. Instead, the North continued to make progress on its nuclear weapons program and this put it sharply at odds with the larger developments in the international system and, in particular, with the United States as the chief security manager in Korea and Northeast Asia and the global hegemonic manager of nuclear nonproliferation efforts. None of the broad solutions noted above seemed to apply, The Clinton Administration was increasingly concerned about the DPRK nuclear weapons program and beginning to make threatening noises, suspecting that the North was reprocessing fuel from its Yongbyon reactor for plutonium that could be used to make nuclear weapons. Caught by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections doing things forbidden under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the rest of the nonproliferation regime, the North moved to withdraw from the treaty and end external access to its facilities. This led the United States to institute preparations for a possible military attack on at least the nuclear program facilities, risking another Korean War.4 This dangerous situation was defused by a breakthrough into a new effort at negotiations, leading to the Agreed Framework in 1994. While it defused the crisis, equally significant was the commitment of the parties to pursue engagement. The United States was to expand contacts with the North and

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move toward a more normal relationship with it; the North was to do the same with not only the United States but also South Korea. However, everyone was uneasy about this agreement. It required North Korea to do things it seemed likely to balk at eventually, and asked the United States to carry out steps for which there was little enthusiasm in the Congress. As it turned out the main accomplishment was that the North Korean nuclear program was temporarily frozen—the remaining provisions were not fully implemented and soon the Clinton administration and North Korea were facing off over suspicions of North Korea cheating and American opposition to the North Korean ballistic missile program. Although the administration gathered evidence of a possible North Korean uranium enrichment program having been secretly started, it nevertheless made a last effort to nail down an agreement on ballistic missiles, a step that, if successful, could have reinvigorated the engagement option.5 Instead, the Bush Administration arrived in office committed to being more confrontational and far less supportive of even the South Korean engagement effort. By 2002 it would accuse the North of pursuing nuclear weapons again, dismantle the Agreed Framework, insist on major DPRK concessions before any negotiations could take place, demand multilateral negotiations, and indicate that no option, including force, was ruled out. This set off the current crisis which has included frustrating, often delayed, negotiations, North Korean escalation to the point of announcing that it has nuclear weapons,6 and then testing a nuclear device, resulting in UNauthorized sanctions against the North.7 The crux of the problem is that the North has sought to enhance its deterrence posture for its security and for greater leverage for international bargaining in a way (nuclear weapons) that is very unacceptable to outsiders, while facing pressures from those outsiders to adopt other ways for enhancing its security that it finds nonviable or unacceptable. Engagement is feared by the North as a threat in that it would be both deferential to U.S. hegemony and likely to incite revolution because of its probable erosion of discipline in the country and the regime’s control. For the same reasons, also feared is the adoption of many significant economic and political reforms to make the country more viable. However, some steps along these lines might well have been worked out—an ameliorative deal if not a permanent one—if not for an underlying problem, which is that in the United States the regime is too reprehensible to sustain national enthusiasm for the sort of engagement North Korea would tolerate—steps that boost the well being of the country but are carefully controlled by the North to avoid nasty political side effects. The North’s typical behavior has made it easy for many Americans to conclude that it is fundamentally hostile, not simply frightened by threats from the United States, and will never trade its nuclear weapons efforts in a fully verifiable way—that its true objective has been to have nuclear weapons.8

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A Multilayered Confrontation As noted at the outset, in discussing the nuclear weapons program in North Korea and the conflict it has provoked it can be useful to think in terms of at least three levels of analysis—the national, the regional, and the global. The national level encompasses the factors and processes at work within the individual nations involved and their specific governments, and the consequences that have developed or are likely to result from the conflict for those nations and governments. The regional level encompasses the factors and interactions, the dynamics and conflictual or cooperative patterns that operate in Northeast or East Asia either in connection with or as a result of the DPRK nuclear weapons issue. Finally, the issue is in part driven by, and is having or will have effects on and implications for, aspects of the global level, the overall system, of international politics. Similarly, the participants to the conflict are concerned about and are focused on these levels at different degrees of intensity. Since this clash between North Korea and its neighbors, the United States, and much of the world, in particular the U.S.-North Korean part of it, has been so widely discussed it is difficult to critique the crisis with even a whiff of originality. However, an attempt at this must be made, and here it is organized using these three levels to shape the discussion. At the national level with regard to South Korea, it is commonly said that the essence of the situation is a growing maturity and national self-confidence in South Korea that is reshaping the national identity in ways that reject South Korea’s typical victim mentality, its past anti-North Korea posture, and any image of being a ward of the United States. In seeking a new identity there is resentment of the constraints that external parties have put on progress in inter-Korean relations. This has led to: (1) a rising sense of inter-Korean solidarity in the South along with a sharp reduction in fear of North Korea as a threat; (2) a rising desire to pursue a greatly improved relationship (engagement) with the North as the only way to make progress toward reconciliation and eventual unification; and (3) strong political support for giving significant aid to North Korea. One side effect is a strong dislike of American policies that are confrontational toward the North and increase the possibility of a war, leading to a widespread feeling that the United States is a major obstacle to the achievement of ROK goals and thus indirectly a threat to South Korea.9 This view of the South position is not irrelevant but needs revision and some supplementation. One important revision is that these shifts in South Korean perspectives are due less to enhanced maturity and self-confidence than to a strong nationalism with an excessively narrow focus that is, rather

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fruitlessly, seeking to turn the inter-Korean relationship into a national quarrel, ignoring the regional and global problems it presents. As a result the South Korean aid to the North, despite little evidence that this can resolve the nuclear weapons issue or promote the extensive reforms necessary to enable the North to develop a more normal relationship with the outside world, has certainly contributed to the North’s inflexibility and frequent absences from the negotiations as well as adding to the resources available for the North’s nuclear weapons program. In addition, the South’s engagement policy is not just designed to handle relations with the North. It is an important component facet of South Korea’s national strategy for meeting the challenge of being a highly developed country that must now compete with other advanced societies and with the rapid rise of China. It seeks to utilize the resources of the North (natural resources, cheap labor), eliminate the ways the North inhibits more rapid national progress in the South (scaring away foreign investors, necessitating very heavy military spending, for example), and prevent a North Korean collapse that would impose heavy burdens on the South and therefore cripple its ambitious plans. In short, there is more to the friction between the United States and the ROK on how to deal with North Korea than popular nationalism and an emerging identity. This suggests a further point. The effort behind the South’s engagement with North Korea has a nationalist component, but one facet of that envisions adjusting the South’s relationships with the other important states in the region while distancing itself from the United States. That reflects a perception that the United States will be less significant in East Asia in the future and the ROK must therefore be a more significant player in its own right in the regional system. This means shifting relations with China and Japan, while altering the U.S.-ROK alliance relationship to free ROK foreign and national security policy from that close and confining association. Included here is the desire to deal extensively with North Korea in political, economic, and social terms while leaving much of the burden of resolving the nuclear weapons problem with the United States. Hence the strains in the alliance from all that has been happening have not been of great concern to the architects of this overall strategy in Seoul. The alliance is not as important as it once was in their view. What is now increasingly obvious is that this entire foreign policy reorientation is in serious trouble because of the behavior of the North. The biggest loser to date of the nuclear weapons crisis is the Roh Tae-woo administration—its engagement policy is widely challenged and the popularity of the president has dropped precipitously. Lower level elections in May 2006 were so devastating for the ruling party that it amounted to public repudiation of it. This extends somewhat to the downplaying of the alliance. The North’s nuclear test makes for greater insecurity in the South, making the alliance look more attractive again.

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Much of the Roh Administration’s downplaying of the alliance was clearly understood, or at least felt, at the national level in Washington and as a result support for the U.S.-ROK alliance has been wilting there under the strains of dealing with the North Korean problem. South Korea is not very visible in U.S. public opinion but in Washington circles there is considerable resentment of the ROK government and public for the anti-American sentiments often displayed recently, the Roh government’s willingness to play to that sentiment for its own political purposes, and that government’s becoming more comfortable with Beijing than Washington on how to deal with North Korea. Still at the national level in the United States, it is commonly suggested that the administration has had an entirely inadequate strategy. The critique starts by complaining that it confronted the North Koreans, moved to dismantle the Agreed Framework, and forced creation of the Six-Party Talks without a clear understanding of how these steps were to bring about the rollback of the North Korean nuclear program. It goes on to note that the administration was preoccupied with invading Iraq while the more urgent, more serious, proliferation threat posed by North Korea was allowed to get out of control. However, this slights the administration’s actual strategy a bit. The idea was to deal with the rogue states and the WMD proliferation problem as a whole, in an interconnected way. It seems much more accurate to say that the administration expected the rapid defeat of Iraq to greatly enhance the credibility of the threats it issued against other rogue states on proliferation issues, increasing the chances that those threats would be effective, but also priming the armed forces for intervention against Iran and North Korea if they were not. If the threats were effective that would in turn cancel the need to resort to engagement, elaborate negotiations, and incentives to deal with the North Korean problem, all of which were considered distasteful, and consequently resolve the intense policy split in the administration on how to handle the North Korean issue. All of this would have reaffirmed the administration’s overall approach to foreign policy: face up openly to unacceptable governments, bring U.S. power to bear much more directly, and be prepared to act without a broad coalition or widespread international support. Thus when the Iraq War’s aftermath turned out to be so problematic, the administration did not get its internal dispute resolved and that then handicapped its ability to shift toward an engagement policy and make the North a major offer. This has had an enervating effect on U.S. influence in East and Northeast Asia.10 Like the ROK, the United States has been pursuing a policy without being able to demonstrate just how it was to bring about the nuclear disarmament of North Korea. Without that, and being unwilling to pursue direct and meaningful negotiations with the North, the United States has been the target of much criticism from the other participants in the Six-Party Talks and from a great many observers, something it expected to be more true of

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North Korea. It has had to cede leadership on the North Korean problem to China, with China then having the key role on applying sanctions and on shaping what sanctions are actually pursued. The United States is in roughly the position it occupied during the East Asian financial crisis—unable to provide real leadership because it was espousing an approach that the other parties found unhelpful, even dysfunctional. (That crisis also damaged the U.S. image and U.S. influence in the region.) Also replaying its earlier role is China. In that earlier crisis and the current one it has adopted an approach and taken steps (resisting depreciation of its currency then, opposing the use of force and promoting negotiations now) that are widely appreciated in the region and have enhanced China’s image and stature. From this it is easy to segue up into the regional level, where there has been plenty of worry about the potentially nasty consequences that could emerge from the North Korea nuclear weapons problem. As a quick summary of a sizeable topic in itself, North Korea’s successful development and retention of nuclear weapons has generally been expected to increase the possibility that the related technology will eventually be shared by the North with other rogue governments and possibly terrorists elements, will increase the likelihood that Japan will develop nuclear weapons and significantly expand its conventional forces, will be followed by a nuclear weapons program in the ROK and possibly Taiwan, which could well end the U.S.ROK alliance or convert it into a much weaker association, and will lead to the ROK associating much more with China while the United States continues strengthening its alliance cooperation with Japan. As a result of these developments, the region would enter into a more clearly competitive, power-balancing, structure. This would undermine any possibility that the Six-Party Talks ultimately become the core of a regional security management arrangement for Northeast Asia or possibly East Asia. Instead, these developments would lead to a rise in the general level of regional insecurity and a reduction in the role of the United States in sustaining regional order. If, on the other hand, extensive coercion of the North is undertaken to prevent nuclear proliferation, so the usual argument goes, this is likely to bring about the collapse of the regime. This will generate a very large refugee burden for both the ROK and China, and possibly even for Japan in the form of boat people. It will be extremely costly for all involved. There are fears, particularly in South Korea, that a collapse of the North will incite a Chinese intervention either to preserve remnants of the regime or maintain a buffer territory between itself and the expanded South Korea, an intervention that might lead to conflict with the ROK, Japan, and the United States if one or more of them respond with their own forcible interventions. Or the collapse could result in the emergence of civil war in the North which, while producing the refugee problems and inciting interventions, would multiply ways in which developments take a turn for the worst in a violent fashion.

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Set against this is the possibility that in the end the response to the North’s nuclear weapons will be, as noted above, the emergence of a regional security management arrangement that will successfully resolve the North Korean problem and may even proceed to give East Asia a regional order that befits the regional system that is soon to become the center of global international politics and economics. Given too little attention is what is, in fact, the most likely outcome. As has happened repeatedly in regard to the proliferation problem, the major players in the current crisis will each find some goal or objective that is more important than a determined effort at prevention of proliferation in this particular case. As a result the parties will find ways to live with North Korea as a nuclear power. Rather than prevent or reverse nuclear proliferation in this instance, the other players will seek ways to keep its harmful consequences within tolerable limits. This would take the form of accepting the North as a nuclear weapons state, giving it greater interaction with the world to make the North less isolated and better able to survive, while closing off its chances of utilizing nuclear weapons to make major gains in its foreign policy. More specifically, the implicit deal would allow China to get a moderately stable North Korea, avoid its collapse and the attendant refugee and other costs, avoid a U.S. ally taking over the North, and gain the dominant influence on Korea at the expense of the United States. Japan would have the pretext it needs for gaining the nuclear and conventional military capabilities that can make it a much more normal great power, one able to compete far better for predominance in the regional system and as a balancer against the rising power of China, all without having to engage in any warfare. The ROK will escape the risk of inter-Korean war on the peninsula and go on building a stronger, more elaborate relationship with the North without endangering its growing relationship with China. The United States could settle into an “offshore balancing” role in which states in the region do most of the work of sustaining regional order and security via their shifting patterns of rivalry and cooperation and the United States ensures that no one of them predominates. As the supplier of important public goods in regional security, like freedom of the seas and moderating the competition among the regional players, the United States would maintain a high level of participation and influence at much lower cost and risk than at present. The chief casualty would be the international nonproliferation regime. This would be explained as unavoidable anyway over the long run; not really anyone’s fault. The fact that this is probably no one’s preferred outcome makes it even more likely. Anticipating it helps explain why the Six-Party Talks have hardly been pursued with a deep sense of urgency and why the reaction to the North’s provocations has been rather mild. For some time observers have been suggesting that the parties were content to wait for the end of the

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Roh administration and the Bush administration, for further developments in Sino-Japan and ROK-Japan relations under the recently installed Abe government, for the collapse of the North, etc. The implication is that the parties have learned to live with the prospect of a nuclear-armed DPRK as long as certain other goals of theirs are attained—goals more appetizing than preventing proliferation if a tradeoff must be made.11 However, assessing the unfortunate side effects of this outcome brings us readily to the global level. The North Korean government has long defied international community norms focused on human rights, democracy, and nonproliferation. In defending its actions North Korea is the foremost champion of national sovereignty, insisting it is entitled to do anything it wishes within its boundaries. This is counter to the broad movement toward limiting or redefining sovereignty to prevent various unacceptable activities and occasionally authorizing international interventions to put a halt to them. The North attracts defenders precisely for this reason, particularly in China and Russia where such an erosion of sovereignty is seen as mainly benefiting the West—and particularly the United States—in terms of when and how and for what the eroding of sovereignty is being carried out. For example, China has always insisted that North Korea is entitled to develop nuclear weapons if it wants to—it is a sovereign nation and thus has that right. One of the most sensitive and dangerous battlegrounds in this connection is nuclear proliferation, with the United States having long provided the leadership of the nonproliferation camp. Hence the U.S. struggle with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program has a direct bearing on the American effort to sustain the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Over time most of the world’s governments have subscribed to the regime. The total number of nuclear weapons has declined significantly and the salience of those that remain has sharply diminished in international politics. Thus the main fear about the global consequences of the North Korean issue is that if the North is not stopped, a terrible precedent for violating the nonproliferation regime will have been set and another possible source for transfers of nuclear technology that promote proliferation, or even the terrorist use of nuclear weapons, will have emerged. Various analysts insist that the nonproliferation regime, and the additional structure of values erected by the international community, cannot survive without a potent deterrence/compellence capability backing it up.12 What is at stake in the U.S.-DPRK conflict is the credibility of the coercive capabilities that could be used to backstop international security management. The difficulty of sustaining credibility is an old problem in deterrence and compellence and the solutions to it are relatively unchanged. One of them has always been effective upholding of commitments—commitments are to some extent interdependent in that how one is treated is believed to shape an observer’s judgment as to how other commitments by the same party or parties will be treated in the future.

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A major struggle has been taking place since the end of the Cold War over how to manage global system security, and the U.S.-DPRK dispute bears on this. After coming into office the Bush Administration took a strongly unilateralist approach to global management. It indicated that the United States would do what was necessary for global security by starting with an assessment of the American national interests involved on both the particular issue and the means that could be deemed suitable. Then it would be willing to work with others but would not be constrained by the absence of assistance or any formal treaty or institutional arrangements where U.S. interests dictated otherwise. Thus the phrase “coalition of the willing.” Those willing to join the United States would make up the collective actor involved. As we know this was not well received. Governments, analysts, and others argued that coalitions of the willing would lack the legitimacy that well-established institutions and decision procedures could convey. Under the duress of others’ opposition to the Iraq war and the U.S. failure in Iraq, the administration eventually shifted its position in the direction of multilateralism. An excellent example of this is the Six-Party Talks. Almost certainly the Bush administration expected the other parties to line up behind its main goals, adding weight to the U.S. side in the dispute with the North. If so this would have involved what amounted to another coalition of the willing. Instead, the other participants staked out positions which were often unsympathetic to the United States. However, the United States found it difficult to suspend or abandon the talks because its unilateral leverage declined sharply when it became bogged down in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan, and because of its continued desire to avoid dealing with North Korea bilaterally. As the other four parties were unwilling to take charge of the problem and bear most of the burdens of resolving the crisis, the talks were not productive for quite some time. One result has been to tarnish the appeal of multilateralism for dealing with Northeast Asian issues, an appeal reflected in the frequently voiced preference that the Six-Party Talks evolve into a regional security management resource. If this occurred it would be of more than regional significance as a model for dealing with a common international situation: a local problem with global implications that the United Nations is unwilling or unable to deal with and for which no other suitable institutionalized management is available, similar to the Darfur problem in the Sudan. Instead, if the talks are eventually successful they are likely to have been a one-shot operation, like the Geneva Conference of 1954 that temporarily ended the fighting in Vietnam and arranged the departure of the French. The talks have done much to illustrate difficulties among the participants that would make their regular institutionalized cooperation implausible. As was the case in the 1954 conference, U.S. foot-dragging on what the others wanted to do and

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its resistance to deal with one of the main participants has been a major source of those difficulties. As noted earlier another result of the crisis has been to reinforce the widespread sense that the power of the United States in various regional systems is ebbing, by adding the East Asian regional system to the list. It was apparent to many observers before the Iraq War that the United States could not run hegemonic security management effectively in a largely unilateral fashion. While neocons and others asserted that operating in a more multilateral fashion would be too constraining on American freedom of action and would involve too many compromises of American interests, the best of the alternative views was not that the United States could count on international institutions or an international community to do what was necessary but that the U.S. exercise would do best to exercise its leadership vigorously within some multilateral constraints. This would allow others to offer their views and retain some influence and also enjoy the reassurance that the hegemonic status and power of the United States would not be regularly abused, while the United States would have the advantage of being the obvious leader as well as the supplier of the ultimate resources for making multilaterally designed solutions workable. With regard to the Six-Party Talks, the United States has been reluctant to use them for productive “negotiations” and, as noted above, has not been able to unilaterally resolve everyone else’s concern about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program—it has not had the necessary power and influence readily available. This sort of outcome has given rise to uneasiness in the region along the lines of that which arose in the late stages of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The dominant power displaying its limitations, pursuing policies that add to its future difficulties, will have to make adjustments that leave more responsibility for regional security in the hands of others, etc. For some governments this is welcome news. But for many governments the ideal international order is roughly what the United States worked out with its friends and allies during the Cold War: U.S. hegemony is the core of meaningful management but it is somewhat constrained and operates with considerable empathy for others’ interests and concerns. Thus far it has proven difficult to get a post-Cold War version of this kind of international order in place that works well and is sufficiently supportable domestically in the United States. The Korean nuclear crisis illustrates how unfortunate that can be. After all, the North’s neighbors are unanimous in not wanting the emergence of another nuclear power. Most of the world agrees. Yet the United States was unable to orchestrate a campaign of carrots and sticks to prevent the North from violating those preferences. Thus the global consequences stemming from the North Korean nuclear crisis may well be structural, having a major impact on how the world is to be run in the foreseeable future.

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Some Lessons—Why the Failures? At the point when this chapter was written, to that point, two broad solutions had failed to resolve the crisis. The initial one was the effort to coerce North Korea enough to contain or, as the United States wished, to reverse its behavior on nuclear weapons. It is reasonably clear why this failure occurred. First, the West as a whole is leery of any large-scale coercion for nonproliferation purposes, particularly if the costs could be extensive. There is a strong inclination in Europe and Japan to see the use of force as a very last resort because it is not very legitimate, not sufficiently reliable, and too costly when used on any large scale. The Bush Administration sought a way around this through the use of American power in a coalition of the willing, but the failure of the American grand design, recounted earlier, meant that American power could not be strongly brought to bear against the North. Another factor has been that the United States has been widely held to be mainly responsible for resolving the conflict but is not generally acceptable for leading any application of force to do so because it is regarded as too dangerous in the application of its military power and because a success would dangerously enhance its military leverage and probably its readiness to use force again somewhere else. China, Russia, France and others, in short, do not want a forceful solution if the United States is responsible for it and therefore will not support one. For China and Russia such a success by the United States and its Western allies is equally unattractive—they fear the West is much too powerful as it is. As noted in the paper this suggests that the United States needs to be highly creative in its approach to leading the management of global security affairs, something it has insufficiently displayed thus far and particularly in the Bush administration. This general defect has been magnified in the North Korean crisis by the concentration in Northeast Asia of countries with an especially pronounced aversion to the use of force to end it. As was the case in the first years after World War II when Soviet deterrence of the United States rested on the ability to do great harm to American friends and allies, North Korea’s deterrence holds Seoul, the rest of South Korea, and Japan somewhat hostage for good American behavior. China and Russia have been resolutely opposed to the use of force as well for the reasons noted above, because the consequences could spill over into their territories, and because they do not like the choices they would then be forced to make. The United States also could hardly go ahead on its own to use force without gravely straining, perhaps collapsing, its two alliances in the region by putting the allies in harms way in disregarding their preferences and by the good possibility that the allies would not allow their territories to be used for attacks on the North. The other failure to date has been in the negotiations with the North. Why did the negotiations go so badly? The ready answer is the U.S. unwillingness

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to seriously negotiate with the North. But why was this the case? Here we can make use of the two-level game framework for an analysis. In fact, the U.S. approach to the North since the end of the Cold War, not just in the recent crisis, has been a good illustration of the complications that can arise in a two-level game. Robert Putnam’s analysis of the conduct of international negotiations stresses that in negotiating with another state, the officials handling the talks must perform in a two level bargaining game.13 At one level the bargaining is with the other state. In that negotiation if the win-sets (the range of acceptable solutions) of each side do not overlap the bargaining is over possible shifts in one or the other win-set to change that (which is where coercion may come into play). If, or when, they do overlap, the bargaining is about where in that overlap agreement is to be reached. Simultaneously, they must perform at a second level in the bargaining game (or in a separate bargaining game), which is at home. Any agreement must ultimately be approved by some key group or institution, depending on the type of agreement or its importance or content. Putnam refers to this as ratification; an agreement can’t be adopted and then carried out without getting this sort of approval, and thus it must fall within the ratifiers’ collective win-set. Those seeking to get an agreement must arrange that it either falls within that win-set or that the win-set is adjusted to encompass it. Since the Cold War the United States has had a frequent mismatch between what was negotiable internationally and what could be suitably ratified domestically with respect to North Korea. This problem was evident with the Agreed Framework. While no formal treaty required Senate action the agreement required a number of steps being taken by Congress and Congress was never enthusiastic. Then in the initial months of the Bush Administration it was announced that the government was ready for negotiations with the North but only if any agreement covered a broader range of sensitive topics than the North wanted and this was accompanied by an announced readiness to drive a much harder bargain (that is, the domestic win-set was going to be much narrower). In keeping with this the nearly completed Clinton administration negotiations on a deal to halt North Korea’s missile development efforts were not continued. This led to no talks—the United States and DPRK win-sets no longer overlapped. When the United States accused the North of secretly pursuing a uranium enrichment route to nuclear weapons, it insisted on no real negotiations for engagement benefits until the North had verifiably dismantled its nuclear weapons programs. When this brought no progress, the United States joined the China-brokered Six-Party Talks but only gradually accepted the idea that benefits to the North could parallel its steps to eliminate its nuclear programs, as long as other parties supplied them. Even when, early in the Bush second term, the United States seemed more flexible, powerful elements within the administration prevented the emergence of true negotiations.

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Nearly all close observers have described the Bush administration as caught up in what amounts to a variant of a two-level game mismatch. Just the idea of negotiating with the regime in North Korea and the implied acceptance of engagement that serious negotiations would convey has been hard to fit into the administration’s internal win-set. Hardliners on North Korea associated with the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, some high-level State Department officials, and elements in the White House repeatedly blocked (that is refused to ratify) meaningful negotiations, curbing or offsetting the efforts of State Department officials to get them started. And the results? As noted, the administration’s stance isolated it in the SixParty Talks, so that all the pressure from the others fell on the United States not the DPRK. A frustrated Pyongyang repeatedly delayed the talks and steadily escalated the conflict—eliminating all the constraints on its nuclear activities of the Agreed Framework, then abandoning the NPT, moving on to renewing missile tests, and testing a nuclear device. The proliferation threat it posed was growing, not halted or thrown into reverse. Washington may, in the end, escape the worst possible consequences. North Korea overplayed its hand with the missile tests and the nuclear test. Both crossed important lines that the other parties had drawn. And the coercive effects of the tests were less than intended because they partially fizzled out. The other parties were able to draw together in stiffening their positions, bring about the adoption of at least some sanctions even by China and the ROK. It was perhaps as important that the tests undermined the position of those political elements dedicated to engaging the North. In terms of the two level game, North Korean behavior has tended to narrow the win-sets of its opponents’ domestic ratifying groups when it is often a better negotiating tactic to try to shift the parameters of or significantly widen such win-sets. Support for the Sunshine Policy has dropped significantly in the ROK, for example. The North entered the next round of the talks with a weaker bargaining position than must have been imagined when the tests were planned. Perhaps an agreement will still be crafted. However, it will likely be years in the implementation and the verification tangles will almost certainly be daunting.14

Conclusion In an important sense, North Korea is right to see the United States as the source of its difficulties and for the other parties to hand the United States much of the blame for the crisis and the difficulty in resolving it. The United States has been more intransigent than North Korea’s neighbors all along. This has been true because of the American attitude toward the North and because the North is part of a challenge to American responsibilities in the global management of security—otherwise, North Korea would be of little concern to the United States even with its strategic location.

The Role of the United States in the North Korean Nuclear Crisis

31

Yet in another sense it is the nature of the North Korean regime that is the real source of the crisis. After all it is the repugnant nature of that regime that provokes so much American enmity. It is the nature of the regime that stands in the way of North Korea being absorbed into the West or, like China, changing enough to live with the West and survive. An important contributing factor is the continued tenuous nature of the link between China and Russia on the one hand and the West on the other, because that puts them in opposition to truly effective coercive measures against North Korea, and against bringing about the collapse of North Korea, and opposed to even really strenuous pressures on North Korea. It is along that fault line in international politics that the U.S.-led nonproliferation effort runs into its most serious difficulties. North Korea is a very illuminating case in point.

Notes 1. Some general sources on the U.S.-North Korea relationship include Samuel S. Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2006; Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 2006; and Tim Beal, North Korea: The Struggle against American Power, London: Pluto Press, 2005. 2. Eun Mee Kim, Big Business Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Development, 1960–1990, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997. 3. On the drop in China’s support see Samuel Kim, Chinese-North Korean Relations at a Crossroads, International Journal of Korean Studies VII(1) (Spring/Summer, 2003): 39–55; Chae-Jin Lee, China and North Korea: An Uncertain Relationship, in North Korea After Kim, Il-Sung, Suh, Dae-suk and Chae-jin Lee, eds., Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998, 193–209; on Russia’s retreat see Joseph P. Ferguson, Russia’s Role on the Korean Peninsula and Great Power Relations in Northeast Asia, NBR Analysis 14(1) (June 2003): 33–50. 4. Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004. 5. Duk-min Yun, North Korean Long-Range Missiles: Development, Deployment, and Proliferation, East Asian Review 16(3) (Autumn 2004): 17–40. 6. North Korea Says It “Weaponized” Spent Plutonium, Financial Times, October 29, 2004. 7. It is unclear if North Korea actually tested a nuclear weapon—increasingly it seems it did not, that the device was a plutonium device but probably fizzled somewhat. See Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, North Korean Fuel Identified as Plutonium, New York Times, October 17, 2006; Jungmin Kang and Peter Hayes, Technical Analysis of the DPRK Nuclear Test, Northeast Asia Peace and Security Network Special Report, October 20, 2006; The text of the Security Council resolution on sanctions is in Full Text of United Nations Security Council Measure 1718, 2006. Northeast Asia Peace and Security Network Special Report, October 16. http://www.

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nautilus.org.fora/security/0688UNSCStatement.html>http://www.nautilus.org/ fora/s. 8. A good review of the North Korean nuclear weapons effort is Larry A. Niksch, North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program, Congressional Research Service Issue Brief for Congress, June 9, 2003. Also very good is Seongwhan Cheon, Assessing the Threat of North Korea’s Nuclear Capability, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 18(3) (Fall 2006): 35–69. An example of the skeptical view that the North will never give up its nuclear weapons is Henry S. Rowen, On Dealing with a Hard Case, in North Korea: 2005 and Beyond, Philip W. Yun and Gi-Wook Shin, eds., Stanford University: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2006, 197–210. 9. See, for example, Samuel S. Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 225–295. 10. Peter Hayes, The Stalker State: North Korean Proliferation and the End of American Nuclear Hegemony, Northeast Asia Peace and Security Network: Policy Forum Online, October 4, 2006.http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/ 0689HayesKang.html. 11. See, for example, Ralph C. Hassig and Kongdan Oh, Prospects for Ending North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program, Foreign Policy Research Institute ENotes, October 18, 2006; Alexandre Y. Mansourov, The Time of Reckoning: U.S. Vital Interests on the Korean Peninsula and Response to the Escalation of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, Northeast Asia Peace and Security Network, Policy Forum Online, October 11, 2006. http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0686Mansourov. html. 12. Michael A. Levi, and Michael E. O’Hanlon, The Future of Arms Control, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005, 137–138; Patrick M. Morgan, Deterrence Now, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 172–202; and Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence, Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 2004, 118– 119. 13. Robert Putnam, Diplomatic and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games, International Organization 42 (1998): 427–461. 14. We can only speculate about how the two-level game framework applies to the DPRK. Some analysts insist that Kim Jong-Il is in complete control; if so, any important agreement would be reached only with his specific approval and he would require assent from very few other officials. Others believe he must conciliate various elements, particularly the armed forces, on certain issues; there is, therefore, a set of officials whose views he may be reluctant to ignore, making them partly responsible for ratifying important agreements. Still others see him caught in a balancing act among various elements or factions (for example, Robert L. Carlin and Joel S. Wit, North Korean Reform: Politics, Economics, and Security, Adelphi Paper No. 382 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006). As a result some of them at times have what may amount to a veto power in selected matters.

Chapter 3

China’s Grand Strategy, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, and the Six-Party Talks Shale Horowitz and Min Ye The North Korean regime has pursued a nuclear capability since the waning years of the Cold War. Over almost two decades, all manner of diplomatic and economic strategies have been employed—so far unsuccessfully—to persuade and cajole the North to relent. Since the most recent crisis, in 2002, hopes for a peaceful resolution have resided in a multilateral negotiating framework. While the Six-Party Talks include all the major regional players, it is China’s participation and influence that is regarded as crucial. In particular, China brings two pivotal strengths to the negotiations, which have so far been absent. First, China has an interest in the survival of the Northern regime, which makes a Chinese security guarantee more credible than those provided by the United States and South Korea. This allows China to provide a better substitute for the North’s nuclear deterrent. Second, China has tremendous economic leverage over the North. This gives China the ability to press the North to trade its nuclear capability for security guarantees and economic assistance, and to enforce such an agreement by means short of military force. Will China’s involvement in the Six-Party Talks be the mechanism that finally resolves the North Korean nuclear crisis? China’s role has indeed changed significantly. From the onset of the crisis, China emphasized the nonintervention principle, and stressed that the

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directly concerned parties should resolve the issue. In more recent years, China abandoned the role of low-key, cautious onlooker and became an active mediator. As tensions escalated after North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2003, China brokered the Three-Party Talks between the United States and North Korea in April. This seemed to defuse the situation, which many saw as sliding toward a catastrophic military showdown. In August, for the first time, the six major parties gathered in Beijing to seek a resolution of the crisis. The Six-Party Talks have not led to a rapid agreement and have been frequently interrupted. On the other hand, they seem to provide the most promising hope for a peaceful solution. So far, five rounds of Six-Party talks have agreed on some fundamental principles, which may prove to be the basis for an agreement that is both acceptable and more likely to be implemented.1 Given China’s close relations and unmatched influence with the North Korean regime, a more involved China seems likely to be crucial to any such resolution. However, before assessing the promise of the Chinacentric Six-Party Talks, we first need to analyze the likely motives behind China’s more active Korea policy: Has China decided to use its leverage to force Kim Jong Il back to the negotiating table and to make a deal with the United States and its allies? Or is China just establishing a safety valve to prevent tensions from accidentally igniting an all-out war? Or, as some have argued, does China have a more far-reaching plan to use the Six-Party Talks as the basis of a multilateral security mechanism in Northeast Asia that will more reliably protect China’s national interests?2 It is also possible that China’s leaders see the Korean crisis through the prism of maintaining their own internal support and legitimacy. These varied motives have quite different implications for China’s strategy in the unfolding nuclear crisis. In this paper, we investigate China’s role in the Six-Party Talks from the perspective of China’s evolving grand strategy. We argue that China’s more active engagement in the crisis reflects a broader change in China’s post-Deng grand strategy, in which China seeks to become “a responsible great power.”3 This post-Deng grand strategy contains two main elements in tension. First, it continues to pursue Deng’s understanding of China’s national interests. Second, however, the post-Deng leadership is more concerned with regime security and intraparty rivalries. These elements differentiate China’s post-Deng grand strategy from those of the Mao and Deng periods, with important implications for China’s Korea policies. After postulating and explaining a preference ordering over the possible outcomes of the Korean crisis, we analyze the pattern of China’s Korea policies. Both logic and evidence support the conclusion that China is more interested in regime stability and peace than in denuclearization. Therefore, the Six-Party Talks are unlikely to end with the North giving up its nuclear capability.

China’s Grand Strategy, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, and the Six-Party Talks 35

Development of China’s Grand Strategy Before analyzing China’s Korea strategy and the Six-Party Talks, it is useful to review the development of grand strategy in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Here “grand strategy” refers, not only to the basic principles and fundamental goals of China’s foreign policy, but also to China’s national identity and view of the world. Under Mao’s leadership, China is said to have had “the greatest freedom to maneuver, act on grand strategy” among all the major powers.4 From dispatching troops to the Korean Peninsula to hosting President Nixon, from “leaning to one side” to ally with the communist camp to breaking with Khrushchev and fighting border conflicts with the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong repeatedly shocked the rest of the world by his highly unpredictable behavior. This “unpredictability” was made possible by China’s capacity to maneuver amid the two opposing poles of the Cold War era, but its erratic character is not explained by this capacity. China’s grand strategy was unpredictable in the sense that it seemed inexplicable in terms of realist calculations of national interest.5 The guidance of internationalist ideology—Marx-Lenin-Maoism—is the most significant feature of China’s grand strategy under Mao’s leadership. During this period, China’s grand strategy was justified in terms of ideological slogans, such as anti-American Imperialism, anti-Soviet Revisionism, and the leadership of the Third World. These ideological doctrines opened China’s grand strategy to goals that went far beyond the “narrow” national interest. On the other hand, the unpredictability or lack of continuity in China’s grand strategy derived from Mao’s great personal latitude in making (and unmaking) China’s grand strategy. This highlights another significant feature of China’s grand strategy under Mao’s leadership. Surrounded by a personality cult, Mao had a God-like status in Chinese politics and seemed to enjoy unlimited power. He could and did (re)interpret and change China’s guiding ideology and grand strategy without being constrained by peers or institutions. Even when his policies proved to be unsuccessful, his personal prestige exempted him from any serious accountability. Mao’s domestic policies—from the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution—were also characterized by abstract ideological motivation and erratic change. In terms of standard motives of foreign policy, Mao’s domination of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made him largely immune to considerations of regime security. At the same time, Mao’s ideological commitment to international communism and mercurial character led to a sequence of policies that seemed to have little connection to narrow Chinese national interests. These policies led to external conflicts and internal disasters that would have severely challenged more insecure leaders. After Deng Xiaoping ascended to power in the late 1970s, China’s grand strategy changed fundamentally. Although still nominally committed to

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communist ideology, Deng sought to avoid the high costs of Mao’s policies and to relate ideological doctrines to China’s reality in a more pragmatic manner. Most fundamentally, Deng replaced Marx-Leninism-Maoism with economic development as the primary goal of the country and the party, stating that, “except in the situation of an all-out war, China should always firmly adhere to this central task.”6 This shift transformed China’s grand strategy. First, in the service of economic development, Deng’s grand strategy focused on international peace and on developing economic relations. This meant abandoning Mao’s revolutionary agenda, with its worldview that a third world war was inevitable, and its preparations for an “early, major, and nuclear war.”7 The second change was China’s modest profile in international affairs. In contrast to Mao’s enthusiasm for Marxist internationalism, Deng preferred a low-key image and background role in international affairs. By this means, Deng sought to prevent China from being distracted from the central task of economic development by international adventures and their consequences. China’s identity changed accordingly. Under Mao’s leadership, China called itself “a communist state, a third world state.” But after Deng took power, China gradually identified itself as “a developing country.” Once Deng had consolidated his power, he enjoyed a level of prestige, security, and autonomy not too far below that of Mao. Deng used his institutional autonomy to recast communist ideology toward a narrow focus on China’s national interests. Rather than seeking to stabilize or incrementally reform the existing system—like Stalin’s successors prior to Mikhail Gorbachev—Deng cut the Communist Party loose from its core doctrine of state control over the economy. Deng also had little need for residual diversionary pursuit of international communism. After the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Deng did not seek to succeed to the leadership of world communism. China accepted the new reality and quickly recognized the post-communist regimes. Another example is China’s decision to recognize South Korea against the raging opposition of its traditional North Korean ally. Deng characterized his low-key pursuit of a stable, enabling international environment as “concealing the strength, and never being the highlight.”8 Starting from the middle 1990s, as Deng gradually retreated from China’s politics, Jiang Zemin, the “third-generation” leader of the Chinese Communist Party, began to adjust China’s grand strategy. When Jiang stepped down in favor of Hu Jintao, the fourth-generation leader, at the Communist Party’s Sixteenth Congress in 2002, China’s new grand strategy in the post-Deng era was systematically expounded in Jiang’s report to the Congress.9 Generally speaking, Jiang and Hu inherited most of Deng’s strategy, including the priority of economic development and the commitment to international cooperation and development. Yet a careful reading of Jiang’s report reveals several significant changes. We believe these changes

China’s Grand Strategy, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, and the Six-Party Talks 37

are important clues to understanding China’s new initiatives in the Korean Peninsula. The first difference is that the new grand strategy no longer conceals China’s increasing strength. Instead, the new strategy calls for a profile of responsible great power. The second change was embodied in China’s “new concept of security,”10 which clarified the Asia-Pacific region as China’s geopolitical priority and expressed China’s support for more actively pursuing its national interests through multilateral international organizations. Since such multilateral organizations formally or informally operate by seeking consensus, they may offer advantages over bilateral relations in dealing with specific international issues. Christensen and Sutter show that this interest in using multilateral organizations as tailored mechanisms to address regional problems is a departure from previous diplomatic practices, which tended to be either ideologically universalistic or strictly bilateral.11 In what context have these changes occurred? No doubt, the changes are facilitated by China’s increasing power and confidence after three decades of rapid economic growth. China’s economic growth is now much more self-sustaining and less vulnerable to international economic shocks—as shown by the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998. Increasingly, other large economies and regional groupings need China’s markets as much as China needs theirs. But the position of China’s leaders has also changed, and offers a more specific explanation of the direction of foreign policy change. In China’s official account, Deng is called the second-generation leadership, but Deng’s position has more similarities with that of Mao than with that of Deng’s successors. Deng belonged to the generation of veteran party leaders, having participated in the Long March in the 1930s and held a senior position before the establishment of the People’s Republic. This provided Deng with much greater personal prestige and more absolute authority over the military. By contrast, Deng’s successors lack such personal achievements and prestige. Sustained economic growth is an important source of legitimacy. But the Tiananmen Incident showed that significant internal vulnerabilities remain. An additional complication is added by the post-Deng shift toward collective leadership. With Deng gone as the final arbiter over policy and personnel decisions, his successors must also worry about internal party leadership rivalries. Both in surviving internal challenges to party rule and in intraparty power struggles, the loyalty of the military is crucial. How have China’s third- and fourth-generation leadership—Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao—responded to these challenges? They have gradually expanded the basis of the legitimacy of communist rule. They continue to follow Deng’s emphasis on the need to “deliver on the promise of growing prosperity for the Chinese people”; in addition, they have adopted a more prominent foreign policy profile, in which China more actively, though still cautiously, defends her interests against “hostile or meddling foreign

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Table 3.1. Three Phases of China’s Leadership and Grand Strategy Mao Zedong

Deng Xiaoping

Post-Deng

Identity

Communist State

Developing State

Developing State, Regional Great Power

Domestic Priority

Class Warfare

Economic Development

Economic Development, Regime Stability

International Goals

World Revolution

National Interest

National Interest, Regime Stability

Grand Strategy

First, Ally with USSR; Later, Assert Independent Leadership

Stability— “Concealing the Strength, and Never Being the Highlight”

Stability, Prestige—“A Responsible Great Power”

Primary Region

World

China and Immediate Periphery

Asia-Pacific Region

Personal Latitude

Very Great

Great

Moderate

Use of Multilateral Organizations

Use to Make Ideological Statements

Low Profile, Little Use

Intermediate Profile, Use to Pursue Domestic and Regional Goals

powers.”12 The first component is in accordance with China’s national interest. It also coincides with Deng’s grand strategy, requiring continued adherence to the primary goal of economic development and, hence, a peaceful international environment. However, the second component does not always serve China’s national interest. On the one hand, it may allow China to attend more successfully to flashpoints and crises that threaten China’s national interests. On the other hand, such active, high profile foreign policies are more open to misuse for internal, diversionary purposes. China’s post-Deng leaders have greater need of internal legitimacy, at both the mass and intraparty levels, and so are naturally more tempted to seek the diversionary benefits of appealing to domestic nationalism. The evolution of China’s grand strategy from the Mao to the Deng and post-Deng periods is summarized in Table 3.1. In the post-Deng period, then, there are tensions between the noworthodox Deng emphasis on inwardly focused national interests, and newer

China’s Grand Strategy, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, and the Six-Party Talks 39

international activism based on rising power and greater need for internal legitimacy. How can more active pursuit of national interests be distinguished from diversionary use of foreign policy? While there is not always a conflict between these objectives, we briefly review potential conflicts in three main areas: military spending and relations with Taiwan and Japan.13 Military spending was slashed to low levels under Deng, particularly after the 1979 war with Vietnam. Apart from a temporary spike in response to the Tiananmen Square Incident, military spending remained at such low levels after the collapse of the USSR. Following Deng’s death in 1997, it began a period of explosive growth—well in excess of the pace set by China’s fastgrowing economy. Both the Deng and the post-Deng changes were contrary to external threat conditions. Deng’s cuts occurred while the Soviet Union’s power and influence were peaking; the post-Deng increases started well after the end of the Cold War, when Russian and U.S. military spending had come way down. The changes are better explained by domestic politics. Deng’s undisputed leadership of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) gave him the capacity to make deep cuts without risking his political security. Weaker, post-Deng leaders have relied more on military support, both against internal Tiananmen-style threats, and in their own collective decision-making struggles. Given the absence of significant new external threats and the general emphasis on productive investment for internal growth, the huge defense increases appear designed to placate this crucial, more independent domestic actor. Other states look in vain for defensive motivations for the persistent military build-up, and, as time passes, feel increasingly threatened. Toward Taiwan, China has sought to use a combination of carrots and sticks to achieve unification. Here again, Deng’s pragmatism is evident. Leaving behind Mao’s militant rhetoric of conquest, Deng developed the “one country, two systems” model to reduce Taiwan’s perceived costs of unification. Deng’s successors have continued to offer autonomy (the second “system”) and have sought maximum economic and demographic integration with Taiwan. However, they have coupled these positive, gradual incentives with rising levels of threat. The most compelling incidents were the missile tests near Taiwan’s coast during 1995 and 1996, prior to the presidential election that completed Taiwan’s transition to democracy. More generally, China has maintained a constant stream of war threats against Taiwanese policies that move toward a more independent political and cultural identity, coupled with a massive military buildup along the Taiwan Strait. The military buildup emphasizes elements necessary to crush Taiwan’s air defenses and command-and-control capacities, which would be necessary to mount a successful invasion by air and sea. Most observers agree that the aggressive rhetoric and military buildup has backfired. True, Taiwanese continue to oppose declaring formal independence, because they worry that China would be compelled to use force in order to save face—even at the cost of a failed, destabilizing conflict. Yet Taiwanese identity has shifted strongly against

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the pan-Chinese identity of the traditional Kuomintang (KMT), in favor of the separate “islander” political and cultural identity. The rapid growth of a separate Taiwanese political identity makes it very unlikely that Taiwan will ever agree peacefully to unification. Thus, Deng’s voluntary unification strategy appears dead, and it seems that China will either have to live with a separate Taiwan or opt for a costly and risky war of unification. In terms of Deng’s definition of China’s national interests, this is a fundamental geopolitical setback. However, in terms of internal legitimacy, it must be viewed as a great success. Chinese mass opinion is strongly convinced that unification is a basic national interest, and public assertiveness on the issue is therefore an important new source of regime legitimacy. As discussed, the PLA also benefits from the huge revenue stream necessarily to build an invasion capacity. These internal political benefits seem to explain China’s continued rhetorical threats—as in the recent Anti-Secession Law legally authorizing the use of military force against a recalcitrant Taiwan—and cross-Strait military buildup. On the other hand, national identity increasingly transcends material pragmatism as the basis of Taiwan’s separateness, and national identity is not easily neutralized by measures short of war and long-term occupation. A similar pattern is evident in relations with Japan, which are affected by a number of longstanding issues. First, there is the “history question” of whether Japan’s apologies for World War II-era aggression and war crimes are sincere and adequate. Ongoing irritants include visits by Japanese leaders to the Yasukuni Shrine for war dead, along with questionable historical narratives in textbooks. There are also rival claims to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands and to offshore territory and energy deposits. Under Deng, these issues were not allowed to develop into major diplomatic disputes. Under Deng’s successors, China has pressed more forcefully on multiple fronts. Rhetorical condemnation of then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni was ratcheted up. China has unilaterally started energy exploration in the disputed waters, while making at least one naval incursion into undisputed Japanese waters. Most remarkably, Chinese authorities, in contrast to the ordinarily tight control exerted over political speech and organization, have done little to stop or discourage widespread anti-Japanese nationalism in China’s large on-line community. In April 2005, they appeared to sit by for weeks as sometimes-violent anti-Japanese demonstrations erupted and spread. Observing these developments, a number of “realist” commentators in China warned that frictions with Japan were unnecessary and contrary to China’s interests. Some have argued that Chinese authorities cannot easily control anti-Japanese public opinion without jeopardizing their own legitimacy. Others argue that the authorities have little trouble controlling forms of expression and organization deemed more directly threatening to the regime itself, and therefore seem to be trying to use controlled anti-Japanese nationalism as a means of channeling attention and frustrations toward

China’s Grand Strategy, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, and the Six-Party Talks 41

external targets. Regardless of which explanation is more correct, there is evidence of domestic legitimacy goals being elevated above national security goals.14 It is also worth noting that, if there is a need for diversionary politics, China’s national security interests would favor targeting of the United States rather than Japan. This is because it is the United States that is more militarily mobilized and that directly opposes China over Taiwan, and Japan that is currently more militarily passive and less committed to Taiwan.

The CCP Regime’s Priorities in The North Korean Crisis There is little debate that, since Deng’s reforms, China’s foreign policy has shifted toward pursuing more traditional Chinese national interests—in the classical realist sense of territorial integrity, military security, and internal stability and development. A more contested issue is whether, especially after Deng, CCP regime survival significantly qualifies or trumps the commitment to national interests. Although these objectives are not necessarily inconsistent, there is a pattern of post-Deng policy changes—in military spending and in relations with Taiwan and Japan—that seem more consistent with short-term regime security priorities than with Deng-like emphasis on longterm stability and development. Toward the Korean Peninsula, we argue that there is not a strong conflict in the strategies implied by the two policy objectives. Nevertheless, it seems that the regime security objective makes it more difficult for China to play a decisive role in resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis. To put it simply, this is because the CCP’s regime security objective reinforces Chinese national interests to make preventing the collapse of the North Korean regime China’s foremost priority. To force an end to the North’s nuclear program, China would have to jeopardize this priority. Consider the following CCP regime preferences over possible outcomes of the North Korean nuclear crisis, ranked from most to least preferred.15 1) North Korea accepts China’s “voluntary guardianship”: Without the pressure of extraordinary threats or sanctions, North Korea eliminates its nuclear weapons program in exchange for a security guarantee and economic assistance from the United States, China, South Korea, and Japan. (The Northern regime may seek additional security through guarded economic reform.) China secures the North Korean state, while gaining more leverage to prevent the North Korean regime from pursuing policies contrary to Chinese national interests. By successfully mediating an end to the crisis, it also strengthens ties with South Korea, reassures the United States and Japan, and increases its regional and international prestige. 2) North Korean “self-reliance” with no significant international consequences for China: North Korea maintains its nuclear capability, and

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South Korea and especially the United States and Japan accept the resulting new military balance and strategic reality. 3) North Korean self-reliance with limited international consequences for China: North Korea maintains its nuclear capability, and the United States and Japan respond with limited, narrowly targeted defensive military preparations and strategic adaptations. The latter include measures such as improved missile defenses and preparations for worst-case scenario confrontations with North Korea. These responses do not significantly affect China’s military security or other relations with the United States and Japan. 4) North Korean self-reliance with significant adverse international consequences for China: North Korea maintains its nuclear capability, and the United States and Japan respond by qualitatively upgrading their military preparations. Since the United States already spends far more on defense than Japan and will be extensively committed in the Middle East and South Asia for the foreseeable future, important new developments would mainly involve Japan. These might include a significant upgrading or expansion of Japan’s military capabilities; a constitutional amendment allowing Japan’s armed forces to operate in defense of regional allies and interests; and a significant rightward shift in Japanese public opinion, solidifying a more assertive direction in Japan’s foreign and military policy. Possible longer-term implications include the following: Japan moves toward an equal or regionally dominant footing within the U.S. alliance; along with the United States, Japan becomes more likely to come to Taiwan’s assistance in the event of a China-Taiwan war; Japan becomes more likely to acquire its own nuclear capabilities. As rising Chinese power makes Taiwan’s U.S. security umbrella less credible, the precedent of a permanent North Korea nuclear capability also makes it more likely that Taiwan will pursue a nuclear capability, and that the United States and Japan will not strongly oppose this. 5) “Imposed guardianship,” with risks for Northern regime stability: With China’s necessary cooperation, comprehensive economic sanctions are threatened and possibly used to force North Korea to give up its nuclear capability. Sooner or later, North Korea concedes. There is some probability that the resulting external security guarantee and economic assistance may not compensate for the regime’s loss of prestige, along with any interim economic costs. If the North Korean regime were to succumb to riots and internal divisions, the result would almost certainly be a Korean Peninsula united under the Southern regime. This could only be prevented by a Chinese military intervention to set up a North Korean satellite state. In the short run, this would prevent Korean unification and avoid the dangerous precedent of a Korean communist regime collapse. On the other hand, Koreans would perceive such intervention as foreign occupation, meaning that any future unified Korea would be

China’s Grand Strategy, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, and the Six-Party Talks 43

correspondingly more hostile toward China and more well-disposed toward the United States and Japan. 6) War: North Korean provocations—in the form of diplomatic and military brinkmanship or transfer of dangerous types of nuclear technology and materials to rogue states or subnational terrorist or organized crime networks—lead to a second Korean war. Without Chinese military intervention to prop up a North Korean client state, the North Korean state is crushed militarily and the Korean Peninsula is united under the Southern regime. It is doubtful that China would risk a war with the United States and South Korea, on top of the cost of alienating Korean nationalist opinion, in order to prevent Korean unification under the Southern regime.

This ranking of outcomes requires some explanation. The first, “voluntary guardianship” outcome is best because the North Korean regime is preserved at little cost, but at the same time is not able to act independently in a way that harms China’s military security and other national interests. This assumes that North Korean nuclear concessions made without threats or use of economic sanctions do not significantly increase the risk of regime collapse. Such an increased risk of collapse would depend on South Korea intervening amid North Korean internal instability in defiance of China’s security guarantee. The South is extremely unlikely to do so, because intervention against a North protected by China might easily lead to a second Korean War. It could be argued that voluntary guardianship would not be most desirable if a North Korean nuclear capability diverts scarce military resources of potential rivals such as the United States and China. But this does not seem to be the case. As discussed below, United States and especially Japanese responses to the North’s nuclear capability represent additional capabilities that are also usable against China. The second outcome, North Korean self-reliance with no significant international consequences for China, is more obviously superior to the third outcome, North Korean self-reliance with limited adverse consequences, and to the fourth outcome, self-reliance with significant adverse consequences. Similarly, imposed guardianship is preferable to war, because war would lead to one of the more adverse consequences of imposed guardianship— unification under the Southern regime or more direct Chinese control over the North—at much greater cost. So far, the ranking of possible outcomes seems consistent both with pure Chinese national interests, and with such interests constrained by more myopic regime survival priorities. Why is imposed guardianship (outcome 5) worse than self-reliance with significant adverse consequences (outcome 4)? One might argue that, at least for China’s national interests, imposed guardianship is better, or at least not obviously worse. First, it seems highly unlikely that the Northern

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regime would collapse as a result of threatened or actual economic sanctions. To avoid humiliating the North, China would have an incentive to keep the threat quiet. The North might refuse to bow to threats out of a false belief that China was bluffing, but it would almost certainly yield quickly if China began to impose determined economic pressure. Second, in the highly unlikely event of a Northern regime collapse, the costs to China’s national interests should not be exaggerated. A unified, Western-oriented Korea is hardly a significant geopolitical threat to China, not only because of China’s size and weight, but also because Korea can be counted upon to remain hostile to excessive Japanese influence. On the other hand, a more assertive Japan and the precedent of a nuclearized North Korea make it more likely that China will face an additional military superpower on her periphery,16 and less likely that China will be able to absorb Taiwan. In the long run, unification of Korea is close to inevitable and not inherently threatening to China’s national interests. In contrast, a more assertive Japan and a more secure Taiwan are not inevitable, but quite damaging to China’s interests. Suppose now that the post-Deng CCP regime is more willing to compromise Chinese national interests to secure its own survival. Then important new factors weigh against imposed guardianship and in favor of self-reliance with adverse international consequences. First, an internal unrest-induced fall of the North Korean communist regime would be a very uncomfortable precedent for the CCP regime, which remains preoccupied with a Tiananmen Square-type internal unrest scenario. Second, tensions with a more assertive Japan are a valuable diversionary source of legitimacy for the CCP regime. Japan is a much stronger object of reflexive hostility than the United States. An assertive Japan will more reliably rally China’s increasingly nationalist public behind the regime. Similarly, if the CCP regime is more concerned with internal legitimacy and economic development, Taiwan is more valuable as an outside diversionary issue and source of economic stimulus, than as a restive and economically stunted internal “autonomous” province. Thus, for a survival-focused CCP regime, a North Korean regime collapse will be far more threatening than when viewed in purely geopolitical terms; and the geopolitical costs of a more assertive Japan and secure Taiwan will be outweighed by the resulting diversionary legitimacy gains. If the diversionary gains of a more assertive Japan are so great, why isn’t voluntary guardianship (outcome 1) inferior to the self-reliance outcomes (2–4)? The reason is that the CCP regime has other, less provocative means of stoking tensions with Japan. Examples are disputes over Japan’s official attitudes toward World War II, over Japan’s international diplomatic status (particularly Security Council membership), and over sovereign rights to offshore islands and energy resources. As discussed above, China has recently cultivated these disputes independently of events in Korea. Such tensions can be ramped up short of North Korea-style military threats against Japan, and are directly controlled by the CCP regime itself. By these means, diversionary

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tensions with Japan can be ratcheted up or down at the CCP regime’s convenience—calibrated to respond to internal political needs while taking care not to provoke an excessive Japanese response. To summarize, beyond the risk of a second Korean War that might involve China, the legitimacy and security costs of a North Korean regime collapse seem most important in ranking CCP regime preferences. Possible adverse reactions by Japan and Taiwan do not seem sufficient to push China to threaten or use economic sanctions to force an end to the North’s nuclear program. This is the more true, the more the CCP regime prioritizes shortterm internal legitimacy and stability over external military security. Judging from China’s own policies—chosen independently of the Korean nuclear crisis—it seems that China is not too concerned about political reactions and higher levels of military preparation in Japan and Taiwan.

Understanding China’s Korea Policies The main policy levers that China possesses are economic assistance and diplomacy. What economic and diplomatic strategies toward North Korea are implied by China’s preferences? We would expect China’s first priority to be stabilizing the North Korean regime, by seeking to prevent an internal collapse and by dissuading North Korea from provocative international behavior that might trigger a second Korean War. A secondary priority— one that would not be allowed to jeopardize the first—would be encouraging the North to substitute a Chinese security guarantee and other measures for reliance on a nuclear deterrent. Thus, we would not expect China to threaten or use economic sanctions or apply intense diplomatic pressure to force North Korea to give up her nuclear capability. How well does this seem to explain the record of China’s Korea policies, particularly in the post-Deng period and in the Six-Party Talks? Consider first the baseline policy established by Deng, prior to the onset of the North Korean nuclear program. Before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, the USSR provided the lion’s share of subsidies to the North, including almost all of its crucial oil imports. Soviet aid levels steadily fell under Gorbachev, and ceased entirely with the collapse of the USSR. This caused an economic and humanitarian crisis in the North, and many observers believed that the Northern regime might collapse. Deng responded to this situation with characteristic pragmatism and low-profile caution. On the one hand, Deng threw the North a lifeline. From 1990, China’s economic aid increased significantly. On the other hand, Deng broke with Maoist orthodoxy by establishing diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1993. By doing so, he sought to take maximum advantage of the great economic complementarities between the Chinese and South Korean economies. At the same time, he was also hedging against the risk of a North Korean collapse by establishing good relations with the regime likely to preside over any future, unified

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Korea. But also in 1993, future leader Hu Jintao visited the North, bringing a commitment for further, massive economic assistance. From 1994, China is estimated to have provided 70–90 percent of the North’s oil imports and one-third of food imports.17 In essence, China has replaced most of the North’s lost Soviet aid, taking up the slack left by smaller and more unreliable donors such as South Korea, the United States, Japan, and the European Union. Also under Deng, China was not involved in any multilateral talks involving the Koreas and the United States. It is unreasonable to believe that China was not paying attention and even consulting informally amid the acrimonious disputes and high profile negotiations of the early and mid-1990s, which culminated in the nuclear-freeze-for-economic-aid deal of the 1994 Agreed Framework. But by observing from the outside, China was “concealing strength” and avoiding responsibility. These policies continued until Deng’s death in 1997. From the outset, China’s post-Deng leadership was more willing to play a high-profile role in Korean diplomacy. Starting in December 1997, Chinese representatives participated in the U.S.-South Korean initiative to move beyond the armistice terms ending the Korean War to sign a formal peace agreement. The second round of negotiations was held in March 1998. On August 31, 1998, North Korea precipitated a crisis by test-firing a modified Taepodong-1 missile, which flew through space over Japan before crashing into the Pacific. Two more rounds of negotiations were held before the fourparty peace talks were abandoned. North Korea announced a moratorium on further missile testing, but continued to develop longer-range missiles. After Hu’s visit to the North in 1994, the next visit of high-level leaders between China and the North did not occur until 2000. Since then, such direct contacts have been frequent. Kim Jong Il went to China in 2000, 2001, 2004, and 2006. Many top Chinese leaders visited Pyongyang, including Jiang in 2001 and Hu in 2006. The most recent round of the nuclear crisis erupted into the open in 2002, when the United States confronted the North with evidence of a secret uranium enrichment program. This program bypassed the Agreed Framework’s freeze on plutonium processing and, more generally, on building nuclear weapons capability. The North admitted enriching uranium and defiantly proclaimed its right to do so—although it later denied this. The United States retaliated by stopping its oil shipments under the Agreed Framework. The North then formally withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and reactivated its plutonium processing facility. The United States then insisted that any new agreement be negotiated multilaterally. In particular, the United States wanted to prevent the North from cheating on any new agreement. Short of military action that would likely lead to a second Korean War—not a credible option—the only means of enforcing North Korea’s compliance is by means of economic sanctions. However, economic sanctions cannot be applied effectively unless all of

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North Korea’s major donors and trading partners guarantee an agreement. This meant including not only China and South Korea, but also Japan and Russia. Precisely for this reason, the North opposed multilateral talks and instead demanded bilateral talks with the United States. China now accepted a more prominent role. First, China protected the North. In addition to providing additional economic assistance, China blocked the United States from censuring or punishing the North’s withdrawal from the NPT in the UN Security Council. However, China also appears to have pressured the North to take part in multilateral talks. In February 2003, China’s oil supplies to the North were suspended for three days, supposedly due to “technical” problems. One month later, ThreeParty Talks between North Korea, the United States, and China were held in Beijing. The first round of the Six-Party Talks followed in August 2003.18 The first round of the Six-Party Talks failed to agree on anything—not even on when to hold the second round of negotiations. In September, a Chinese foreign military official admitted that China had deployed armed forces along the 800-mile border with North Korea, which was usually guarded by police. Media estimates were that China deployed 150,000 troops.19 These troops would have made it possible to block any large-scale refugee flow into China. The danger of such a flow is often given as a reason why China would hesitate to impose harsh economic sanctions on the North. If, as seems likely, China was sending another signal to the North, it was received. The Six-Party Talks resumed, with the second round being held in February 2004, the third round in June 2004, and the more protracted fourth round in two phases (July–August 2005 and September 2005). The second and third rounds agreed on overarching principles of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and peaceful coexistence. The fourth round produced a much more detailed agreement, which many viewed as a breakthrough. The North agreed to verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons and supporting technical infrastructure, in exchange for a U.S. nonaggression guarantee, recognition of the North’s right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program, massive economic assistance, and normalization of diplomatic relations. It remained to work out the difficult and complicated details of this broad agreement. The first phase of the fifth round was held in November 2005, but the second phase has been postponed. From September 2005, the United States imposed financial sanctions to prevent North Korea from laundering foreign exchange earned through illicit activities, such as drug trafficking and particularly counterfeiting. North Korea refused to return to the Six-Party Talks until the United States withdrew the financial sanctions. In July 2006, North Korea test-fired a number of missiles, including a new longer-range missile—thus ending the moratorium in place since 1998. Supported by the United States, Britain, and France, Japan sponsored a Security Council Resolution that not only condemned the missile tests, but would also have imposed legally binding restrictions—under Chapter VII of the UN

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Charter—on trade in missiles or missile technology with the North. The latter provision was aimed not just at North Korea’s missile sales on the world arms market, but also more narrowly at what appears to be extensive North Korean cooperation with Iran (and Pakistan) on missile development. New and planned long-range Iranian missiles are based on North Korean models and technical assistance. The reported presence of an Iranian observer at the missile tests also did not go unnoticed. China, along with Russia, refused to support this resolution, but also did not block all Security Council action. Instead, China, again with Russia, sponsored and successfully passed a weaker resolution, which condemns the tests and makes a nonbinding call for other countries not to engage in missile-related trade with North Korea. At the same time, China belatedly followed the United States lead and imposed financial restrictions on questionable North Korean accounts—after similar moves by Japan and South Korea.20 In October 2006, North Korea responded by conducting its first test of a nuclear weapon. This time, China and Russia supported a much stronger Security Council response. Resolution 1718, passed under the legally binding Article VII, banned all trade with North Korea related to nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), ballistic missiles, and significant conventional weapons systems; and called on all member states to enforce such restrictions, among other things by restricting travel and freezing funds related to the nuclear and other WMD and missile programs. The resolution also banned trade in luxury goods, which the Northern regime distributes to shore up the loyalty of its ruling elite. On the other hand, it is notable that the resolution does not require China and other countries to impose restrictions on trade in other goods, particularly oil and food, which are vital to the survival of the Northern regime. Perhaps in response to this firm yet limited pressure from China, the North returned to the Six-Party Talks in December 2006. For many years, there has been hope that the North would follow China down the road of market reform. China appears to have encouraged this approach, offering its own extensive expertise and huge market opportunities. However, Kim has long shied away from even the incremental, sectoral liberalizations that characterized Chinese and later Vietnamese reforms. Instead, Kim appears to be following the model of post-Soviet Cuba, in which liberalization is limited to government-controlled enterprises or projects that funnel maximum foreign exchange to the regime without producing systemic economic change. In 2006, there was yet another upsurge of hope on the market reform front. Kim visited South China, and China and North Korea agreed that future economic assistance to the North would emphasize market-based mechanisms. For the foreseeable future, however, market reform is unlikely to lead the Northern regime to give up its nuclear capability. First, the Chinese-style incremental market reforms being considered produce gradual dividends.

China’s Grand Strategy, the Korean Nuclear Crisis, and the Six-Party Talks 49

Second, the reforms inevitably liberalize the economy and society, producing independent social networks that may generate political unrest. This is precisely why the Northern regime has been so hesitant—so far preferring to starve the society to feed the army. As a means of securing the regime, greater internal economic strength is a complement rather than a substitute for a nuclear deterrent. If the Northern regime accepts the risks of significant market reform, it will almost certainly want to keep the nuclear deterrent as an external firebreak against domestic instability. For the Northern regime, any market reforms are first and foremost about regime security, and are unlikely to be used as substitutes for other means serving the same overriding goal. What is the overall pattern of China’s involvement in Korea in the postDeng era? China continues to provide North Korea with massive economic aid, propping up the North’s moribund economy and providing China with corresponding diplomatic leverage. On the other hand, China is no longer “concealing strength.” China’s third- and fourth-generation leaders are openly engaged in ongoing consultations with Kim. Most significantly, this includes participation in the Six-Party Talks as a potential guarantor of any agreement. On the one hand, it is notable that the North agreed to participate at all in multilateral Talks that include China, its most important patron. On the other, the main result of the Talks appears to be to maintain some hope of a denuclearization agreement, while dragging on the negotiations indefinitely. China appears to have compelled the North to participate in the Talks, but to have reassured the North that a denuclearization agreement would not be imposed through the threat or use of economic sanctions. This leaves the North free to string out the negotiations. Thus, the North preferred to avoid multilateral negotiations that would make agreements enforceable through the threat or use of economic sanctions. This is particularly true for agreements including China, which holds decisive leverage over North Korea’s economy and is unlikely to violate a high profile agreement including the United States, Japan, and South Korea. As discussed, there is some evidence that China has pressured the North to accept the multilateral talks, and then to participate in a manner that leaves some hope for an agreement. Yet, if China has the power to push the North into the Six-Party Talks, China also has the power to push the North to sign and implement a denuclearization agreement. More than three years after the onset of the Talks, it is evident that China did not intend to impose such an agreement, and that China is unlikely to do so in the future. This also makes it likely that China’s leaders reassured Kim in advance that they would not force an agreement. This does not mean that there will be no denuclearization agreement. It only means that China’s influence on the North is unlikely to go beyond persuasion and inducements. Without the threat or use of economic sanctions by China, there is unlikely to be a final denuclearization agreement anytime soon. The North

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Korean regime will not voluntarily give up its nuclear capability unless it acquires an equally reliable guarantee against South Korean and U.S. military intervention, and, secondarily, similar leverage to extract and maintain foreign economic assistance. In the event of a severe internal political crisis in the North, only China can provide a credible guarantee against South Korean and U.S. military intervention. China seems willing to provide such a guarantee. Similarly, China has shown an interest in providing aid and facilitating North Korea’s economic recovery. The problem, of course, is that North Korea must trust China to follow through on these obligations. Understandably, the Northern regime would prefer not to be so dependent on China. Again, China has shown no inclination to impose such complete dependence.

Conclusion China’s recent Korea policies make sense in terms of the preferences of China’s post-Deng leadership. Deng’s successors continue to emphasize pragmatic national interest goals—internal economic development in a stable, accommodating international environment. On the other hand, the postDeng leaders are not as secure in power. Both greater need for mass-level legitimacy and intraparty rivalry draw them toward diversionary uses of foreign policy. The greater emphasis on regime security generates a stronger interest in the survival of the North Korean regime. A traditional realist balance-ofpower view is that China has an interest in preventing Korean unification and maintaining a dependent regime in the North—although it can also be argued that this policy is myopic. The realist, national interest argument is powerfully reinforced by CCP regime survival interests. The collapse of the Northern communist regime would weaken the legitimacy and perceived stability of the CCP regime. The same reasoning applies to China’s attitude toward the North’s nuclear capability. The Northern regime sees the nuclear capability as a key guarantee of its survival. China would probably prefer that the North rely on China’s external support, along with careful, but effective internal economic reform, rather than on a potentially destabilizing nuclear deterrent. However, the costs to China of the North’s nuclear deterrent are not as high as they appear on purely realist grounds. True, the North’s capabilities and saber-rattling are provoking diplomatic and public reactions and offsetting military preparations in the United States and especially Japan; and they may increase the likelihood that Taiwan will eventually seek a nuclear capability. However, China’s post-Deng leaders have shown by their own independent policies that they are not unduly concerned with such reactions, and that there are significant offsetting diversionary benefits of greater frictions with Taiwan, the United States, and more recently, Japan. Hence, it

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seems highly unlikely that China will risk destabilizing the North by threatening or using economic sanctions to force the North to give up its nuclear capability. At the same time, China achieves significant substantive and diversionary gains from inconclusive multilateral talks. China engages more closely with the North, and is thus better able to oversee and constrain any North Korean policies that might lead through miscalculation to a second Korean War. Similarly, China more easily restrains U.S. reactions to North Korean provocations, by offering the United States an indirect influence channel as a complement to warnings or threats delivered directly to the North. Last, China’s leaders can bask in the public glow of functioning as the pivotal arbiters of great-power relations in Northeast Asia. During a July 2006 visit to Washington, Guo Boxiong, the vice chairman of China’s central military commission, was asked why China did not apply more pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. He replied that, “China cannot possibly force the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] to do anything or not to do anything. . . . However, bearing in mind the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula as well as the goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, China still tries every means in its power to persuade the DRPK.”21 This is a very explicit statement. The goal of denuclearization is qualified by the goals of “peace and stability.” This means that denuclearization will not be pursued at the risk of destabilizing the North; and that China probably values the Six Party Talks more as a means of preventing accidental outbreak of a second Korean war than as a way of pursuing denuclearization. Guo also says that China “cannot” force North Korea to do anything. This means that, at least for now, China refuses to threaten or use economic sanctions to compel the North. If China is doing everything only to “persuade,” we should expect that Kim will use the Six Party Talks—along with any follow-up process to implement a framework agreement such as that announced after the fourth round of the Talks—to stall denuclearization indefinitely.

Notes 1. Liangui Zhang, What Do We Need to Break the Impasse [Zouchu Jiangju Xuyao Shenme]? World Affairs [Shijie Zhishi], 14 (2006): 14–19. 2. Jaewoo Choo, Is Institutionalization of the Six-Party Talks Possible? East Asia 22 (2005): 39–58. 3. Baojun Li and Zhengyuan Xu, China’s Self-Identity Construction as a Responsible Power in the Post-Cold War Era [Leng Zhan Hou Zhong Guo Fu Ze Ren Da Guo Shen Fen De Gou Jian], Teaching and Research [Jiaoxue Yu Yanjiu], 1 (2006): 49–56. 4. Andrew Nathan and Robert S. Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security, New York: W. W. Norton, 1997, 14.

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5. Allen Whiting, Chinese Foreign Policy: Retrospect and Prospect, in China and the World, Samuel S. Kim, ed., Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998, 287–309. 6. Deng Xiaoping, The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 2, Beijing: The People’s Press, 1993, 249. 7. Ibid., vol. 3, 127. 8. Ibid., 363. 9. Li and Xu, op. cit. 10. Ibid. 11. See Thomas Christensen, Chinese Realpolitik, Foreign Affairs 75 (1996): 37– 52, and Robert Sutter, China’s Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils, Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 12. Avery Goldstein, Across the Yalu: China’s Interests and the Korean Peninsula in a Changing World, in New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy, Alastair Johnston and Robert Ross, eds., Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006, 136. 13. For a discussion of relations with Taiwan and Japan, see Thomas Christensen, op. cit. and Shale Horowitz and Alexander Tan, The Strategic Logic of Taiwanization, World Affairs, 168 (2005): 87–95. 14. Peter Hays Gries, China’s “New Thinking” on Japan, China Quarterly, 184 (December 2005): 831–851. 15. For other discussions of China’s Korea policy goals, see Samuel Kim, The Making of Chinese Korea Policy in the Era of Reform, in The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform, David Lampton, ed., Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001, 371–408; and David Shambaugh, China and the Korean Peninsula: Playing for the Long Term, The Washington Quarterly 26 (2003): 43–56. 16. If Japan merely doubled current military spending, to about 2 percent of GDP, this would add at least as much military striking power as the United States now maintains in the Western Pacific. Even this would be a limited military effort compared to the GDP shares spent by powers such as Britain and France, not to speak of the United States. 17. David Shambaugh, op. cit. 18. An additional incident had occurred in July 2003. Yang Bin, reportedly one of the richest men in China, was convicted of fraud and bribery and sentenced to eighteen years in jail, New York Times (July 15, 2003): A2. The year before, Kim Jong Il had appointed Yang governor of a new special economic zone in the North, designed to produce goods for the Chinese market. The draconian, high profile punishment, for crimes that are typical of big business practices in China, is usually interpreted as a message to the North. It is alleged that China’s leadership was showing the North its displeasure at not being consulted about Yang’s appointment and activities. 19. New York Times (September 16, 2003): A3. 20. Chosun Ilbo (June 20, 2006; July 13, 2006; and July 24, 2006); and International Herald Tribune (July 14, 2006). 21. Channel News Asia (July 20, 2006).

Chapter 4

Causes and Consequences of North-South Cooperation David C. Kang North Korea’s nuclear test of October 2006 brought condemnation from around the globe. The UN passed resolution 1718 that allowed for limited sanctions against North Korea, and it was widely expected that more coercive measures would follow if North Korea did not back down. One country that is key to any successful attempt to pressure the North is South Korea. Especially since the South has pursued an engagement strategy toward the North for the past decade, much attention was focused on whether the South would abandon its engagement policy and conform with harsher measures toward the North. Although South Korea did back away from its engagement stance, it did not actually abandon many of aspects of that engagement, from its joint economic projects with the North to other forms of trade. This has led to confusion and consternation, particularly in the United States, where the case for engagement appears to be minimal at best. However, the causes and consequences of North-South economic cooperation are deeper than the nuclear crisis, and explaining why South Korea has pursued the foreign policy it has requires first explaining these deeper causes. From the beginning of the Cold War until perhaps a decade ago, East Asia was stable if not peaceful: Korea and Japan were staunch anticommunist allies of the United States, focused on deterring the Soviet Union and North Korea from military adventurism in the region. China, although large, was politically isolated and economically unimportant. Today, China is emerging as the most vibrant and powerful economy in the region, the Soviet Union has disappeared, Japan is exploring ways to exert its influence

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through a more assertive foreign policy, and interaction between North and South Korea has increased to the point that there are both paved roads and railroads that traverse the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). This changed regional and domestic context has caused South Korea’s long-term strategic concerns to shift from Seoul’s previous Cold War focus. Instead of the Cold War policy that emphasized deterrence of the North, South Korea’s priority has now shifted; although deterrence remains important, the South is increasingly focused on reconciliation with the North. That is, South Korea is increasingly focused on how best to integrate North Korea back into the world’s most dynamic region whether or not it has nuclear weapons, and what a unified Korea’s foreign policy should be. This shift in South Korean foreign policy focus, however, should not be overstated: South Koreans still overwhelmingly view the United States in a positive light, and despite the strain on the alliance brought about by the events of the 1990s and 2000s, South Koreans generally desire both the security alliance and close economic relations with the United States to continue. In terms of overall national security strategy, South Korea has committed itself to a strategy of interdependence and engagement with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). This seemingly deep-rooted commitment, which stems from a number of factors, constitutes a fundamental shift over the past decade in South Korea’s foreign policy strategy. South Korea’s emergence over the past half century has been predicated upon an economic development model that catapulted the ROK into the ranks of the developed nations; thus the fact that this strategy is being continued in South Korea’s broader foreign economic policy is not surprising. Furthermore, the economic weakness of North Korea, South Korea’s democratization, the end of the Cold War, and a change in South Korea’s national identity have all contributed to the current belief within South Korea that military issues are secondary to economic issues. As a result, South Korea’s engagement strategy will continue to carry consequences for regional policy toward North Korea, the United States’ role in the region, and the influence of China. The second major event that has helped reshape South Korea’s foreign policy was the June 2000 summit meeting between Kim Jong Il and president Kim Dae-jung. The summit marked the culmination of a change in South Korean attitudes toward North Korea. Four decades of rapid economic development has created a generation of young South Koreans who have nothing more than book knowledge about the Korean War, poverty, or a genuine North Korean threat. By contrast, Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine policy” has reaped an important political and psychological benefit—the first sustained exposure to the DPRK and the regime’s reclusive leader Kim Jong Il. In the midst of President Clinton’s generally benign foreign policy toward the DPRK, South Korea thus began to pursue economic and cultural engagement with North Korea and turned away from its previous policy of competition and hostility. Ever since the 2000 summit South Korean trade

Causes and Consequences of North-South Cooperation

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and investment into North Korea has expanded rapidly, averaging increases of over 50 percent per year. With the election of U.S. President George W. Bush, a second nuclear crisis of 2002, and a U.S. administration that was generally more suspicious of North Korea, United States’ and ROK foreign policy attitudes have openly diverged. Given that South Korea’s democratization of 1987 allowed previously silenced domestic interests to voice their opinions regarding national politics, domestic politics have played a major part in this transformation. Furthermore, South Korea has undergone a major shift in the past decade, from viewing North Korea as a threat to viewing it as a “poor cousin.” While external security threats to Seoul appear to have diminished over the past decade, economic motivations—a consistently important aspect of South Korea’s foreign and domestic policy since World War II—have increased. At many levels of South Korean society there is concern over decreasing international economic competitiveness and growing inequality at home. These worries are driving domestic market-oriented reforms, support for regional institution building, trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) with China, and the engagement strategy with North Korea. Though strategic motivations are important, economic motivations for engagement have become more crucial, especially since the 2000 summit.

Why South Korea Does not Fear North Korean Strength Although all countries in the region want to keep North Korea from becoming a nuclear state, South Korea is more concerned about North Korean vulnerability: the possibility of its collapse or chaos. South Korea (and China and Russia, to a lesser extent) believes that North Korea can be deterred, and instead are worried about the economic and political consequences of a collapsed regime. To put the matter in perspective, should North Korea collapse, the number of refugees could potentially exceed the entire global refugee population of 2004.1 Even assuming a best-case scenario in which collapse did not turn violent, the regional economic and political effects would be severe.2 Economic growth in all the neighboring countries would be affected, if only because refugees would increase all governments’ demand on resources. China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia would have to coordinate policies and actions in a rapidly changing political environment. In addition, the South continues to pursue an engagement strategy that has had noticeable success. For almost a decade, South Korea has consistently pursued a policy of economic engagement toward North Korea designed to encourage North Korean economic reforms. In 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung embarked on a foreign policy called the “Sunshine Policy,” whereby South Korea abandoned its long-standing policy of hostility to the North in favor of economic and cultural engagement. This change

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in strategy has proved popular in the South. In 2002, presidential candidate Roh Moo-hyun won the election based largely on his promise to continue the Sunshine Policy with North Korea. Within the larger context of a foreign policy that emphasizes interdependence and a focus on economic issues, the issue that most visibly reveals the changing nature of South Korea’s overall foreign policy approach is Seoul’s strategy for solving the North Korea problem. U.S. and South Korean policies were relatively in accord during the entire Cold War period and well into the first North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993–1994. As recently as the mid1990s, South Korea viewed North Korea primarily as an imminent military threat.3 Yet the past decade has seen a major change in how South Korea views itself, North Korea, and the ROK’s own preferred method for resolving the issue of a divided Korean Peninsula. The 2002 crisis over North Korea’s nuclear programs showed how far the two countries had drifted apart in their foreign policies and perceptions and how far South Korean fears had progressed that the United States would initiate a conflict on the peninsula that could devastate the ROK.4 The United States continues to view North Korea primarily in military terms and is worried about North Korean military strength, in particular Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The United States is concerned over the potential sale of either nuclear material or missiles to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, which would in turn use such weapons against the United States. Furthermore, although from 1999 to 2006, Pyongyang placed a voluntary moratorium on tests of its ICBMs, its unsuccessful test of a Taepodong-2 missile in July 2006 heightened fears throughout the region about its weapons programs.5 In response, the United States has generally attempted to isolate North Korea and is pursuing a complex mix of negotiation and coercion in an attempt to convince North Korea to halt its nuclear programs.6 By contrast, South Korea has come to view the North Korea problem primarily in economic and political terms and is now more concerned over the weak nature of the North Korean state, which could likely lead the government to collapse or descend into chaos. In preparation for such an outcome, South Korea has embarked on a path of economic interdependence and political reconciliation with North Korea. Having begun a decade ago, this new policy will most likely continue to be South Korea’s primary foreign policy direction. The goal is to slowly change North Korea through increased economic and cultural ties and to promote reform in the DPRK through aid and investment. South Korea appears to be solidly on course to pursue interdependence relative to North Korea, and this policy appears to fit comfortably with China’s approach to the region. South Korean popular support for an engagement policy appears to be deeply rooted and reflects the changing nature of South Korea’s national

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identity. As a result, managing the nuclear issue has been a necessary step to reintegration, and South Korea’s foreign policy over the past decade has reflected this more fundamental goal of unifying the peninsula. Over the past decade Seoul has begun to formulate a positive image and role for the ROK by rethinking South Korea’s relationship to North Korea. After decades of demonizing North Korea and defining itself as North Korea’s opposite, South Korea has begun to redefine itself as a “distant relative.” Now feeling that it is in a position of strength, South Korea is prodding North Korea to change. In a way, it is not surprising that South Korean national identity with respect to North Korea has begun to change. Not only do the two share a common history and culture, but also by any measure—economic, political, cultural, or diplomatic—South Korea won the competition with North Korea. Thus, it is relatively easy for Seoul to be magnanimous with Pyongyang. Although some argue that only the younger generation of South Koreans supports the engagement policy toward North Korea, this is not the case. Indeed, discussion about a generational rift in South Korea is somewhat overstated.7 In reality, among the South Korean populace there is widespread agreement that engagement is the proper strategy to follow. For example, a March 2005 opinion poll published in the South Korean newspaper Donga Ilbo showed 77 percent of Koreans supporting the use of diplomatic means and talks with North Korea in response to its nuclear weapons development and kidnapping of foreign civilians. Significantly, even those from the “older generations” were solidly in favor of engagement. Of those in their sixties or older, 63.6 percent supported diplomatic means.8 In 2005, a Korean Institute for National Unification poll found that 85 percent of the general public and 95 percent of opinion leaders approved of North-South economic cooperation.9 In fact, a leftist (or “progressive”) strand of South Korean politics is not new. Though masked during the Cold War, a long-running leftist element has existed in South Korean politics since the 1940s. Kim Kyung-won, a former ambassador to the United Nations and the United States under Chun Doo-hwan, made the following statement: South Korea has always had a deeply-held leftist strand of politics. Back in the 1940s it was probably stronger than the conservative forces, and only the U.S. military government allowed the right to win power. We thought [this strand] had disappeared under the military governments, but it did not. And now, it is back, reasserting itself.10 These protests were so strong that Park Chung-hee was forced to declare martial law from 1972 to 1979, during which time he temporarily closed the universities because of extensive student protests. After a coup d’etat in 1980, the entire city of Kwangju rose up in protest, and the demonstrations

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were only put down by the direct use of South Korean military units that were pulled off the DMZ.11 It should be emphasized, however, that opposition to the authoritarian regimes did not imply any support for North Korea or socialism. Although authoritarian rulers used that link as a pretext for repression, in reality this was not the case. The point for this paper is that opposition groups of all types have long existed in South Korea, and that the seeming unanimity of opinion under the authoritarian governments was due more to repression than it was agreement on policies. With the consolidation of democracy, this multiplicity of voices has surfaced. Given widespread South Korean popular support for engagement, both the opposition and ruling parties are motivated by electoral purposes to back engagement toward North Korea. In 2005, for example, the opposition Grand National Party—often considered more hard-line toward North Korea than the ruling Uri Party—submitted a proposal to establish a special economic zone along the entire border with North Korea to foster interKorean economic cooperation. The proposed zone, which would extend the current Kaesong industrial zone to Paju in South Korea’s Kyeonggi province, includes plans to expand the economic boundary from Haeju in North Korea to Incheon in South Korea as a joint inter-Korean project similar to the Kaesong zone.12

South-North Economic Interaction South Korean engagement of North Korea actually began under the Kim Young-sam government, when South Korean nongovernmental organizations, most of which were Christian-based, ignored governmental prohibitions against sending aid to North Korea during its famine.13 With the Kim Dae-jung administration (1998–2003) and continuing with the Roh Moohyun administration (2003–2008), South Korean official policy changed as well. Kim had long criticized the conservative military governments for both excessively politicizing the North Korean threat and impeding inter-Korea reconciliation efforts. As president, Kim called for a “sunshine policy” that would engage North Korea and begin the reconciliation process. Currently, official ROK policy toward North Korea is explicitly based upon the idea both that trade and interdependence can promote peace and stability on the peninsula and that encouraging North Korea to continue economic reforms and opening to the international community is the best path toward achieving stability and peace on the peninsula. Regarding the increasing economic and cultural ties between North and South Korea, for instance, the South Korean Ministry of Unification stated that “with the peaceful use of the demilitarized zone, the eased military tension, and confidence building measures, the foundation for peaceful unification will be prepared.”14 Thus, for almost a decade, South Korea has consistently pursued a policy of economic engagement toward North Korea that has been designed

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to encourage North Korean economic reforms. Following the shift to the sunshine policy, South Korea rapidly increased its relations with North Korea: North-South merchandise trade has rapidly increased over the past five years, with merchandise trade between the two sides increasing 50 percent from 2004 to 2005, exceeding $1 billion for the first time (see Figure 4.1).15 Commercial trade amounted to 65 percent of total North-South trade in 2005, while noncommercial (government) trade accounted for less than 35 percent. Thus, while the government is supporting the economic integration of the two Koreas, private firms are also heavily involved. Trade with South Korea accounted for 20 percent of North Korea’s total trade in 2004, while South Korea’s $256 million worth of economic assistance comprised 61 percent of total external assistance to the North. South Korean conglomerates quickly expanded their activities in the North with the official approval of both the South and North Korean governments. By 2005, over 1,000 South Korean firms had expressed interest in opening operations in North Korea.16 South-North negotiations have covered a wide range of issues, such as reconnecting the railroads across and repaving a road through the DMZ, creation of joint sports teams, family reunions, economic assistance, and— most significantly—military discussions.17 In 2004 the two sides agreed to the establishment of a hotline between North and South Korea, held the first high-level meeting between North and South Korean military generals since the Korean War, and halted the decades-long propaganda efforts along the DMZ.18 In 2005 North and South Korea established 300 direct telephone lines linking South Korea with the Kaesong industrial zone for the first time since the Soviet troops severed telephone lines in 1945. Perhaps the most notable success has been the Kaesong Industrial Park, a special economic zone or industrial park just north of the DMZ in the ancient capital city of Kaesong. Designed to use South Korean capital and North Korean labor, the zone will consist of a railroad and roads that connect the two sides by crossing the DMZ.19 The first products from Kaesong, North Korean-made iron kitchen pots, became available in Seoul in December 2004 and sold out in one day.20 Currently shoes, clothes, electronic products, machinery, and some semiconductors and communication equipment are being produced at Kaesong.21 In December 2006, output at Kaesong passed $10 million, and over 10,000 North Korean workers were employed by the twenty-one South Korean companies that have operations at the site.22 Kaesong in some ways represents the most visible success of the South’s engagement policy of the North. The actual economic benefit of Kaesong at this initial stage is minimal. However, the South Korean government currently has plans to license another forty firms to operate in Kaesong by July of 2007, and Kaesong was explicitly excluded when the South reduced its aid to the North following its missile tests of July 2006.23

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To be sure, there is much skepticism both about Kim Jong Il’s intentions and about the extent of North Korea’s market-socialism reform policies. Observers in the United States and South Korea remain divided over the extent and likely success of the reforms.24 Peter Hayes notes that “the regime is investing in minerals development, niche markets for exporting cheap labor or embodied labor, a boot-strapping sector, and real estate development on the DMZ that combined represent a long-term and slowly growing economic foundation for a nuclear-armed DPRK.”25 Alternatively, Marcus Noland has an “essentially pessimistic” view of the North Korean reforms, noting that “it is fair to say that the reforms have been a mixed bag, not delivering as expected and contributing to increasing social differentiation and inequality.”26 Regardless of North Korean intentions, however, South Korea (along with China) has continued to follow a comprehensive engagement strategy toward the North. Despite much skepticism about Kim Jong Il’s intentions, North Korea’s market-socialism reform policy is continuing. Most significantly, in July 2002, the central government formally enacted a set of economic reforms, the most important of which was the introduction of a market-pricing system.27 Except for crops, rationing was abolished and goods were traded using currency. Although prices continued to be administered, “by fiat, state prices are brought in line with prices observed in the markets.”28 Much information about the pace and extent of the reforms is incomplete because North Korea has not opened its economy to full international participation. However, anecdotal evidence abounds that notable change has taken place. Visitors to Pyongyang in 2004 reported that more than thirty-five distinct markets were in operation, the most famous being the Tongil Market downtown. A microbrewery opened in the city’s Yanggakdo Hotel in 2002. Eleven restaurants selling goat delicacies had also opened in the capital by 2004, and the city has a “food street” lined with restaurants that cater to the well-off and to foreigners. These businesses were not privately owned—one was operated by a work unit—but they were “profit generating,” according to Nicholas Bonner of Koryo Tours, a company that specializes in travel tours to North Korea.29 It is estimated that as many as 400 markets operate throughout the entire country. Growing contacts with North Korea reinforced the perception in South Korea that North Korea was more to be pitied than feared. For example, the Hyundai group established a tour of Mt. Kumgang on the east coast of North Korea, a destination that more than 275,000 South Koreans visited in 2005 and over 1.1 million total have visited since 2000. In 2005 alone, the two governments allowed 660 family members who had been separated by the division to hold reunions.30 Meetings between divided families have occurred on an intermittent basis, and both countries agreed to march together in the Olympics under the “unification flag.”31

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Consequences of North-South Economic Cooperation South Korea’s engagement policy has had the effect of increasing strains in the U.S.-ROK alliance, and the difference in the two countries’ approaches to North Korea became clear soon after the election of George W. Bush in 2000. When a second North Korean nuclear program spurred a crisis in October 2002, U.S. and South Korean positions openly diverged. The South Korean populace and leadership urged restraint, whereas the Bush administration took a harder line. The South Koreans were concerned that, as a result of the Bush administration’s open embrace of preemptive war as an instrument of national policy, North Korea would become a potential target of such a preemptive strike, with South Korea— particularly Seoul—being the victim and bearing the brunt of the ensuing devastation. The 2002 South Korean presidential election revealed the degree of distance between the United States and South Korea on how to deal with North Korea. In large part, the election came down to a referendum on South Korea’s stance toward North Korea and the United States. By a ratio of 49.8 percent to 48.1 percent, voters chose Roh Moo-hyun, who favored continued engagement with North Korea, over more conservative Lee Hoi-chang, whose stance toward North Korea—suspending assistance until the DPRK cooperates on issues like arms control—more closely reflected that of the United States. In electing Roh Moo-hyun by the largest share in modern Korean political history, voters voiced their displeasure with the Bush administration’s inflexible stance.32 In January 2003, newly elected Roh Moo-hyun stated that “South Korea ranks as the twelfth to thirteenth largest economy in the world and I want to preside over our strong nation as its strong president. All I am asking is an equal partnership with the United States.”33 The divergence between the United States and South Korea continued. With Bush’s reelection in 2004, the United States continued attempts to isolate North Korea, refusing to engage in negotiations until North Korea had dismantled any nuclear weapons programs.34 Conversely, South Korea continued an engagement strategy, leading to open friction between the two military allies. The South Korean 2004 Defense White Paper downgraded North Korea from “main enemy” to a “direct and substantial threat to our military.” Despite a vocal, hard-line minority opinion in South Korea, in the past few years opinion polls regularly have shown over 70 percent of the population continuing to favor engagement. Numerous skeptics question the wisdom of South Korea’s policy toward North Korea. Indeed, South Korea’s adamant refusal to take a harder line toward North Korea has both led some analysts to call South Korea’s foreign policy “appeasement” and increased friction with the United States.

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Nicholas Eberstadt has called South Korea “a runaway ally,” arguing that the United States ought to “work around” the Roh administration.35 Ted Galen Carpenter and Doug Bandow have called for an “amicable divorce” between South Korea and the United States, suggesting that the U.S.-ROK alliance should be dissolved.36 While differences between South Korea and the United States over how to deal with North Korea are nothing new, in the past such differences often were tactical and so were resolved in large part because of the common perception that North Korea represented a serious security threat. In recent years, however, Seoul has viewed the Bush administration’s apparent interest in fostering Pyongyang’s collapse or in using military force as unacceptable, since either option would threaten the progress made over the past decade. Magnified by other tensions in the relationship—such as South Korea’s increasing self-confidence and pride, anti-Americanism, and concerns about U.S. unilateralism—the Bush approach to North Korea has become the prism through which many South Koreans view the U.S.-ROK security relationship. Disagreement over how best to deal with North Korea has both led to open friction between the United States and South Korea and put a severe strain on the alliance. In a series of speeches during his tenure, Roh Moo-hyun has reiterated the rationale behind engagement of North Korea. In a speech to the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles on November 12, 2004, Roh said he hoped that the United States would not use “hard-line measures” against the North and that “North Korea will not develop nuclear arms.”37 The South Korean embassy in Washington, DC, argued in a press release that “a more confrontational U.S. policy approach is not likely to bear fruit. North Korea has never succumbed to external pressure over the past fifty years, despite the wishes of foreign ideologues.”38 The South Korean liberal newspaper Hankyoreh Sinmun editorialized that “the Koreans should resolve their own problems, including the nuclear issue.”39 Over one hundred respected figures in Korean society, including Catholic Cardinal Stephen Kim, sent the U.S. Embassy in Seoul an open letter urging the U.S. ambassador to reject military options.40 At one point in 2005, President Roh Moo-hyun’s comments regarding U.S. policies toward North Korea were unusually direct. The United States had begun to publicly pressure South Korea to take a more active stance against North Korea’s illegal financial activities, such as counterfeiting U.S. money. Roh said that I don’t (with) some opinions inside the US that appear to be wanting to take issue with North Korea’s regime, apply pressure and sometimes wishing for its collapse. If the US government tries to resolve the problem that way, there will be friction and disagreement between South Korea and the US.41

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When the United States released a press statement through the U.S. Embassy in Seoul “urging” South Korea to take action against North Korean financial transactions, the South Korean Foreign Ministry released a response calling the U.S. press release “inappropriate.” 42 South Korea’s engagement and interdependence policies toward North Korea are echoed by China’s approach. Arguing that North Korea was on the path to reform, Chinese officials have made public pronouncements urging a conciliatory line toward North Korea. In January 2005, Chinese ambassador to South Korea, Li Bin, argued that “to think that North Korea will collapse is far-fetched speculation. The fundamental problem is the North’s ailing economy. If the economic situation improves, I think we can resolve the defector problem. The support of the South Korean government will greatly help North Korea in this respect.”43 In fact, Chinese trade and investment into North Korea far outstrips that of even South Korea; over half of total North Korean trade in 2005 was with China—almost double inter-Korean trade.44 Piao Jianyi of the Institute of Asia Pacific Studies in Beijing stated that “although many of our friends see it as a failing state, potentially one with nuclear weapons, China has a different view. North Korea has a reforming economy that is very weak, but every year is getting better, and the regime is taking measures to reform its economy, so perhaps the U.S. should reconsider its approach.”45 Without Chinese cooperation, a U.S. attempt to isolate the North will be difficult, if not impossible. Indeed, Kim Jong Il’s nine-day visit to Chinese industrial zones in January 2006 was evidence that China continues to have warm relations with the North, and furthermore, that China intends to continue its engagement policy, showing no signs of taking a more coercive stance toward the North. In sum, South Korea’s foreign policy orientation appears to be firmly focused on interdependence with North Korea as the keystone of its overall foreign policy. The widespread popular support that exists for this policy shows few signs of abating. Indeed, until national reconciliation or some type of unification is achieved, North Korea will overwhelmingly be the first priority of South Korean foreign policy. Within that context, China’s rapid economic development and similar perspective on the best policy to adopt toward North Korea have combined to cause South Korea to shift its foreign policy attention away from the United States.

The Nuclear Test of 2006 Even in the wake of the North Korean nuclear tests of October 2006, South Koreans remained far more suspicious of U.S. motives, and more supportive of engagement, than many other countries. An opinion poll conducted in South Korea after the nuclear test found that 43 percent of South Koreans “blamed the U.S.” for provoking a North Korean test, 37 percent

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blamed North Korea, and only 13 percent blamed South Korean engagement policies.46 The South Korean Catholic Bishop’s conference released a statement that week denouncing the nuclear test, but also reiterating support for its programs in the North, saying that “for the recent several years, the South and the North have maintained peaceful exchanges, through which the two Koreas came to recognize the other not as an enemy but as one people, the same brethren . . . no one should block the way of reconciliation which the South and the North have paved through all efforts, nor should turn back the streams of the peace and unity running through the Korean peninsula.”47 A Korea Times poll taken in late October 2006 found that 65.2 percent of South Koreans would disapprove of a surgical strike on North Korea’s nuclear facilities, and 48 percent said that if the United States attacked those nuclear facilities, Seoul should “act on Pyongyang’s behalf and demand that Washington stop the attack.”48 Even the conservative opposition party, while calling for reductions in aid, remained willing to engage the North under more restrictive circumstances.49 Although it imposed a few symbolic sanctions on the North, the South Korean government steadfastly refused to let UN resolution 1718 significantly affect the Kaesong and Mt. Kumgang joint economic ventures between the two countries. In sum, South Korea’s foreign policy orientation appears to be firmly focused on unification through interdependence with North Korea as the keystone of its overall foreign policy. Managing the nuclear issue has been a necessary step to reintegration, but South Korea’s foreign policy over the past decade has reflected the more fundamental goal of unifying the peninsula. There is widespread popular support for an engagement policy, and this support show little signs of abating. Indeed, until national reconciliation is achieved, North Korea will be the overwhelming first priority of South Korean foreign policy.

South Korea’s Strategic Conundrum South Korea’s eternal problem is that it sits at the intersection of a number of great powers. The Cold War, which allowed South Korea to concentrate primarily on its relations with the United States, was an exception to this fundamental regional dynamic. With China’s emergence, Japan’s moves toward a “normal” foreign policy, and continued U.S. concern over North Korean nuclear weapons, South Korea faces the unenviable task of formulating a foreign policy strategy that allows it to retain some control over its own fate and pursue its primary goal of reconciliation with the North, while juggling competing interests from a number of great powers.50 There are no obvious choices for South Korea, and the actions that other states take—especially the actions of the United States—will go a long way toward determining the constraints within which South Korea operates. However it is important to understand this fundamental Korean dynamic:

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it is not emotionalism (nor is it anti-Americanism) that has caused strife in the U.S.-ROK alliance. One potential event could affect these overall trends. Following the 2007 presidential election in South Korea a new president may decide to adopt a different foreign policy toward North Korea. A president from the opposition Hannaradang could very well slow down or reverse the trend toward engagement. For example, Seoul’s mayor Lee Myung-back has promised to “stem the red tide . . . of nascent socialism” if he were elected.51 Yet worth noting is that, given the deep support for engagement of North Korea—and the willingness of the South Korean populace to loudly and quickly voice their displeasure with governmental actions—such a reversal seems unlikely. Most observers see the opposition Grand National Party as committed to engagement, the only difference being that it would pursue a more limited engagement and more carefully focus on reciprocity with the North. Fully abandoning an engagement strategy would be difficult for Seoul, given the widespread popular support in South Korea and the extensive institutional and infrastructural ties already in place over the past decade.

Notes 1. World Refugee Survey 2004, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, http://www.refugees.org/data/wrs/04/pdf/key statistics.pdf, accessed February 16, 2006. 2. See, for example, Richard Ellings and Nicholas Eberstadt, eds., Korea’s Future and the Great Powers, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2001. 3. Victor Cha notes that historically it was South Korea’s fear that the United States would not take this threat perception seriously that drove the U.S.-Korea relationship. See Victor Cha, Alignment despite Antagonism, Stanford, CA: 1999. 4. Much of this section draws on Victor Cha and David Kang, Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 5. P. Parameswaran, North Korea Flexes Missile Muscle to Grab U.S. Attention, Agence France-Presse, June 13, 2006, http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/ printer/printer 6415.php. 6. For overviews of the 2002 crisis and its aftermath, see Victor Cha and David Kang, Can North Korea Be Engaged? Survival 46(2) (Summer 2004): 89– 108. 7. Derek Mitchell, ed., Strategy and Sentiment: South Korean Views of the United States and the U.S.-ROK Alliance, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2004. 8. Donga Ilbo, Opinion Poll on South Korean Attitudes toward Japan and Other Nations (March 4–31, 2005), http://www.donga.com/fbin/output?f=aps&n= 20050460247&main=1. 9. Christine Ahn, Reunification Is on the March, International Herald Tribune (February 9, 2006) (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/09/opinion/edahn.php).

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10. Author’s interview with Kim Kyung-won, August 31, 2003. 11. John Adams Wickham, Korea on the Brink: From the “12/12 Incident” to the Kwangju Uprising, 1979–1980, Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1999; and Linda Lewis, ed., Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising, Honolulu, Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press: Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai’i, 2002. 12. Annie I. Bang, Bill on Inter-Korean Special Zone Proposed, Move Aims to Build Economic Community, Korea Herald (February 14, 2006). (http:// www.minjok.com/english/news.php3?code=1458). 13. L. Gordon Flake and Scott A. Snyder, eds., Paved with Good Intentions: The NGO Experience in North Korea, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 14. Ministry of Unification, Peace and Prosperity: White Paper on Korean Unification 2005, Seoul, South Korea: Ministry of Unification, 2005, 106–108. See also MOU, Kaesong Kongdan geonseol silmu jobchuk bodo chamgojaryo, Seoul, South Korea: Ministry of Unification, December 8, 2002. 15. Inter-Korean Trade Beats $1 Billion in 2005, JoongAng Ilbo (January 23, 2006); and Economist Intelligence Unit, North Korea: Country Report 2003, London: The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2003, 19. 16. Anthony Faiola and Joohee Cho, Perils of Investing in North Korea Become Clear to a Pioneer, Washington Post (November 24, 2005): A3. 17. David Kang, North Korea’s Economy, in North Korea: A Country Study, Robert Worden, ed., Washington, DC: Federal Research Bureau, 2005. 18. James Brooke, 2 Koreas Sidestep U.S. to Forge Pragmatic Links, New York Times (June 26, 2004), p. A1. 19. Donga Ilbo, Road Connecting the Two Koreas Opens (December 1, 2004). 20. Yonhap News, First Products from Inter-Korean Project Due on Sale in South This Week (December 13, 2004). 21. Sang-young Rhyu, North Korea’s Economy and East Asia’s Regionalism: Opportunities and Challenges. Paper presented at the conference, Northeast Asia’s Economic and Security Regionalism: Old Constraints and New Prospects, Center for International Studies, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, March 3–4, 2006. 22. Lee Jin-woo, Kaesong Site to House 40 More Manufacturers, Korea Times (January 11, 2007). 23. Personal communication from a senior U.S. official, August 1, 2006. 24. See, for example, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Aid, Markets and Reform, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006; Bradley Babson, Visualizing a North Korean “Bold Switchover”: International Financial Institutions and Economic Development in the DPRK, Asia Policy 2 (July 2006), 11–24; and Marcus Noland, Transition from the Bottom-Up: Institutional Change in North Korea. Paper presented at the Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC, March 20, 2006. 25. Peter Hayes, US Misses Mines for Nukes Opportunity, Nautilus Institute Special Report 06–34A, May 2, 2006. 26. Marcus Noland, How North Korea Funds Its Regime. Testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental

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Affairs, Washington, DC, April 26, 2006. See also Marcus Noland, Transition from the Bottom-Up: Institutional Change in North Korea. Paper presented at the Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC, March 20, 2006. 27. See Aidan Foster-Carter, North Korea Caves in to the Market, Asia Times (August 6, 2002), http://www.asiatimes.com/atimes/Korea/DH06Dgol.html 28. Marcus Noland, Life Inside North Korea. Testimony on Life Inside North Korea Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs United States Senate, Washington, DC, June 5, 2003, 3. 29. Andrew Salmon, For the Lucky, North Korea’s Food Options Grow, International Herald Tribune (October 30, 2004), http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/30/ a4 33.php. 30. Christine Ahn, Reunification Is on the March. 31. Ruediger Frank, Economic Reforms in North Korea (1998–2003): Systemic Restrictions, Quantitative Analysis, Ideological Background, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, 10(3) (2005): 278–311. 32. In 1987, Roh Tae-woo received 36.5 percent of the popular vote; in 1992, Kim Young-sam received 41.4 percent; and in 1997 Kim Dae-jung received 40.3 percent. tv , President-elect Roh speaks about 33. Chosun Ilbo, North Korea’s Nuclear Program in His First TV Forum (January 18, 2003), http:// www.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200301/200301180131.html. 34. See Victor Cha and David Kang, Can North Korea Be Engaged? Survival 46(2) (Summer 2004): 89–108. 35. Nicholas Eberstadt, Tear Down This Tyranny, The Weekly Standard (November 29, 2004), http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/ 004/951szxxd.asp. 36. Ted Galen Carpenter and Douglas Bandow, The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea, London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004. 37. Roh Moo-hyun, quoted in Yonhap, Roh Urges U.S. Not to Take Hard-Line Policy on N. Korea (November 13, 2004). 38. Soo-dong O, Defusing North Korea. Press release by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea, Washington, DC, December 1, 2004. 39. Editorial, Hankyoreh Sinmun (November 7, 2004). 40. Donga Ilbo (January 12, 2005). 41. No author, South Korean President Warns U.S. against Seeking Collapse of the North, The News (January 26, 2006), http://www.ipcs.org/Jan 06 japan. pdf. 42. Andrew Salmon, Roh Opposes U.S. on Regime Change Plans for North, Warns of “Difference of Opinion,” Washington Times (January 26, 2006). 43. Li Bin, quoted in the JoongAng Ilbo (January 14, 2005). 44. Robert Marquand, North Korea’s Border Trade Getting Busier, Christian Science Monitor (April 14, 2005), http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0414/p01s04woap.html. 45. Howard French, Doubting U.S., China is Wary of Korea Role, The New York Times (February 19, 2005): A1.

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46. Research Plus poll conducted October 11 and 12, 2006, http://www.angusreid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13537. 47. Korean Nuclear Tests Shock, Blockade, Sanctions No Answer, Bishops Say, Catholic Online (October 13, 2006), http://www.catholic.org/international/ international story.php?id=21618. 48. Park Song-wu, Koreans Oppose Air Strikes against Nuclear Facilities, Hankook Ilbo (October 31, 2006), http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200610/ kt2006103117384011990.htm. 49. Personal interviews in Seoul, October 14–18, 2006. 50. Christopher Hughes, Japan’s Re-Emergence as a “Normal” Military Power, Adelphi Papers, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2005, 368–369. 51. Seoul Mayor Vows to Stem Red Tide, Chosun Ilbo (March 14, 2006), http:// english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200603/200603140023.html.

Chapter 5

Regime Change in North Korea? Kyung-Ae Park The issue of regime change in North Korea began to draw international attention after the fall of the Communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Many analysts predicted that North Korea would have followed Poland and Czechoslovakia in their abandoning of Communism. However, North Korea has successfully kept its political system intact. Throughout the 1990s, North Korea intensified its ideological campaign to prevent “unhealthy bourgeois culture and ideology” from infiltrating the society and “contaminating” the youth and intellectuals. However, since the U.S. military action in Iraq of 2003, policy discussions on preemptive strikes and regime change in North Korea have been abounding in Washington. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration in its 2002 National Security Strategy unveiled that one of its main security schemes would include a preemptive strike strategy. Washington’s aim was to destroy any threats from terrorists and rogue states before they could ever reach U.S. borders, with or without support from the international community. Although the act of war can be clearly viewed as one of the pathways to regime change as witnessed in Iraq, in the case of North Korea, such an option seems to remain as only a remote possibility. Rather than through war, many argue that North Korea’s regime change could be brought about through an implosion. Recent North Korean efforts to liberalize its economy through experiments with bold economic reforms have led some analysts to assert that its civil society may eventually experience ascendance, or even exercise a similar kind of power against its state as witnessed in Eastern Europe.

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The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the prospects for regime change through civil society mobilization in North Korea. It offers an analysis of North Korean exceptionalism in regard to its economic crisis and economic development theories of regime change. It argues that several components of political opportunity structures salient to North Korea work as constraints on regime change, which could be triggered by either economic crisis or economic development. The chapter first examines existing theoretical frameworks for regime change, probing the theses that both economic crisis and economic reform give rise to political pluralism, activate civil society, and thus lead to regime change. This section is followed by an analysis of the changes in North Korea’s economic policies. The chapter then explores the relevance of political opportunity structures in accounting for regime change in North Korea. Finally, it offers an assessment of prospects for activation of North Korea’s civil society and regime change.

Theoretical Frameworks for Regime Change A regime denotes more permanent forms of political structures than government and refers to “a government or sequence of governments in which power remains essentially in the hands of the same social group.”1 The governments formed within a particular regime embody a common set of norms and procedures, and, on this account, a change of government does not necessarily involve a change in regime. Regime change pursues fundamental alteration of the norms and principles, while change within a regime involves “alterations of rules and decision-making procedures, but not of norms or principles.”2 North Korea experienced a change of government when Kim Jong-il came into power after the death of his father, Kim Il-sung. However, the regime remained in place, as the junior Kim adhered to the fundamental norms and values of his father’s government. Therefore, any efforts to change the North Korean regime will involve attempts to destroy the fundamental values and structures of Kim’s government, and alter the governing principles and norms, including the Juche (self-reliance) ideology. The structuralist perspective of regime change views economic constraints as the principal explanatory variable of a regime collapse. Since the pathbreaking work of Guillermo O’Donnell, many studies have analyzed the role of economic crisis in regime change, suggesting that it could trigger a democratic breakdown.3 O’Donnell argues that the collapse of democratic regimes in Brazil and Argentina in the 1960s was triggered by economic crises caused by the inability of these regimes to “deepen” their economies. The crises brought about the belief among political actors that only bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes could resolve them. Other scholars observe similar effects of economic crisis in authoritarian regimes.4 They argue that the failure of a national economy undermines the legitimacy of an authoritarian regime and triggers a transition to democracy, resulting in

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the termination of authoritarianism or socialism. Economic crisis has been widely accepted as the catalyst of regime collapse, which could lead to both democratic breakdown and democratic transition. Another compelling explanatory factor of regime change is economic reform/development. In the tradition of Western liberalism, scholars argue that economic reform in authoritarian regimes gives rise to political pluralism, activation of civil society, and pressures for democratization. It is assumed that an expansion of the market will open up new spaces for the private sector to articulate its new interests and create opportunities to challenge the state. Huntington, for instance, maintains that economic changes “extend political consciousness, multiply political demands, [and] broaden political participation.”5 Economic reform is believed to produce new interests that demand political voice and political expression, as well as demands for institutionalization and democratization that may lead to the activation of civil society. As one scholar notes, in order to convince intellectuals and experts to participate in the economic reform process, liberalization (loosely defined as increased freedom of intellectual and private activity) that allows the expression of various demands, including political ones, is necessary.6 Thus, economic reforms are expected to result in a more pluralistic society, while, at the same time, stimulate the people to increase their awareness of civil rights and their consciousness of their legitimate demands. As people become less tolerant of a repressive regime, such a regime is pressured to change and ultimately tolerate some of the civil society’s demands. If the existing regime fails to show signs of liberalization, a collective action carried out by the civil society can spark a revolt, thus forcing a change of regime. The proposition that an introduction of market forces can lead to the emergence of a civil society has its historical roots in the economic development of Western societies. However, as Starr and Lewin show in the case of the former Soviet Union, an emerging civil society in socialist countries also needs to be linked to pluralistic and differentiated social structures that find their origins in urbanization, development of communication devices, and increased educational opportunities, or, in another words, in economic development.7 Similarly, Howell and Pearce show how Chinese market reforms have played a key role in the restructuring of Chinese society, the country’s greater social differentiation, and increased mobility of its population. These developments have given rise to some new needs, grievances, and interests that need to be addressed by the state, and thus, in turn, contributed to the reshaping of the intermediary sphere of association, representation, and interest articulation.8 If the linkage between economic reform and liberalization of a society leading to a more autonomous civil society is indeed valid, the implications for an authoritarian regime could then simply be that economic reform carries its own risks. The danger for such a regime would be posed by more differentiated and specialized social structures created by economic

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development, an emergence of new organized groups, and consequently a loss of the authoritarian government’s effectiveness to rule the complex society by command.9 As Larry Diamond points out,10 They (authoritarian regimes) face a legitimacy contradiction, a kind of catch-22. If they do not perform, they lose legitimacy because performance is their only justification for holding power. However . . . if they do perform in delivering socio-economic progress, they tend to refocus popular aspirations around political goals for voice and participation that they cannot satisfy without terminating their existence. Furthermore, as observed by Peter Eisinger, who adopted Alexis de Tocqueville’s paradox in his concept of political opportunity structure, people revolt not when things are worst, but when closed opportunities have begun to open up.11 When economic reform begins to offer opportunities for political participation, a regime has to confront a movement of mass mobilization. If this thesis is valid, no type of an authoritarian regime can sustain its ruling mechanism, since the wants of its people change and their demands need to be articulated. Such a system will eventually collapse due to what Diamond calls a “generic vulnerability.”12 Under such conditions, economic reform for an authoritarian regime could turn into a “Trojan horse.”

Economic Crisis and Economic Reform in North Korea For almost two decades, the North Korean regime has been suffering from a chronic economic crisis and a steady decline in its economy. The economic growth rate dropped steadily from 3.3 percent in 1987 to 2.4 percent in 1989, and, in 1990, North Korea recorded its first negative growth rate— minus 3.7 percent. This negative growth had continued for nine consecutive years, until 1999, when the economy picked up slightly and registered a growth rate of 6.2 percent. The growth rate, however, plunged again to 1.3 percent in 2000 and 3.7 in 2001. It was no secret that food and energy shortages were pervasive in North Korea, but, the devastating floods in 1995, the worst in a hundred years, precipitated economic ruin and forced North Korea for the first time to launch an international campaign to acquire help from the international community. After the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) formally inaugurated the Kim Jong-il regime during its tenth session in September 1998, North Korean leaders launched an array of reform programs. The 1998 constitutional revision for the first time introduced such market economy concepts as value, costs, profits, and material incentives. It also granted more autonomy to the Cabinet, thus allowing it to oversee the nation’s economy, so that technocrats, rather than party cadres, could assume the management of economic affairs. Since then, under the slogan of constructing a “powerful and

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prosperous” state, Pyongyang has been calling for pragmatism, a “new way of thinking,” attention to practical gains, and development of science and technology. In support of his regime’s new economic ambitions, Kim Jong-il himself made a visit to China in 2001, where he toured Shanghai’s stock markets and foreign-owned factories, the showcase of China’s economic reform and market opening. In July 2002, North Korea launched a series of far-reaching economic reform programs, including price and wage reforms, officially described as “economic improvement measures for a strong and prosperous state.” The price reform increased prices for commodities, social services, rents, and fees. The price of rice rose more than 550 times from 0.08 won per kilogram to 44 won,13 and the subway fare from 0.1 won to 2 won, a twentyfold increase. The price reforms were an attempt to set prices at a more realistic level by alleviating the gap between official state prices and prices at the unofficial farmer’s (black) markets, and to induce people to buy and sell goods in the state-run stores. This effort was aimed at restoring the official economic sector and the state distribution systems. Price reforms led to a wage reform, which correspondingly resulted in an increase of all wages by twenty- to fifty-fold in order to maintain people’s purchasing power and also to prevent state employee absenteeism, a serious problem due to the state’s inability to pay workers regularly. At the same time, the reform measures envisaged decentralization of economic planning and more autonomy for enterprises. As a result, while broad economic guidelines have been planned by the National Planning Committee, some detailed production plans can be drafted by enterprises, which are now seen as responsible for their own accounting, both for profit and loss. With the approval from a supervisory organization, enterprises have been even given some leeway in setting their own prices that may differ from the official price. As the state no longer provides enterprises with subsidies or means of production, the companies have become more independent and begun to assume some managerial responsibilities. Last but not least, the official exchange rate of the North Korean currency has been adjusted from 2.2 to 150 won to the U.S. dollar.14 Devaluation of the won represents North Korea’s effort to close the gap between official and black market rates and to absorb U.S. dollars being circulated on the black market. After the announcement of the July 2002 reform programs, North Korea undertook further changes to revamp its dismal economy. For the first time since 1950, Pyongyang decided in 2003 to sell government bonds (with ten-year maturity) in an effort to mobilize hoarded capital circulating in unofficial markets and channel it into the official sector to finance Pyongyang’s ambitious economic programs.15 As the public distribution system continued malfunctioning, unofficial sectors such as farmers’ markets expanded into giant proportions. Some observers estimate there is twice that much

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money floating in the unofficial markets than in the government’s annual budget. Mobilizing money from private sources has become an answer to the government’s failure in drawing capital from the international community, and also an attempt to prevent inflation that could be touched off by the previous price and wage reforms. Another push for economic reform came when consumer and industrial goods, not only agricultural products, were allowed to be traded in the public market, which thus de facto gained the function of North Korea’s private sector. This policy transformed farmers’ markets into general public markets, such as the Tongil Market in Pyongyang, which officially opened in March 2003. More markets have been planned to open up in a majority of cities and counties, an increase that would eventually lead to a total of some 300 markets nationwide. Market expansion clearly represents a step toward liberalization of the North Korean economy. North Korea’s economic reform measures were accompanied by a generational shift in economic leadership positions. A major cabinet reshuffle, which followed the election of the eleventh-term SPA in August 2003, was particularly noted for its generational change and infusion of reform-minded technocrats. The SPA-appointed technocrat Pak Pong-Ju, a former minister of chemical industry, as the premier, replacing the much older Hong Song Nam. In his inaugural speech, Pak emphasized a “fundamental innovation in economic programs” as one of the Cabinet’s most important responsibilities, thus suggesting that North Korea’s reform efforts would continue. The economic team, with its five newly recruited members, underwent some significant changes. Three of its members, including the new Premier Pak, visited Seoul in November 2002 for a two-week tour of South Korea’s industrial facilities. According to a report from the SPA session, 52 percent of the SPA members were under the age of fifty-five, while those who were fifty-six or older comprised 47.7 percent, and 2.2 percent of members were thirtyfive or younger.16 College graduates accounted for 91.9 percent, up from 85 percent in the previous SPA. These changes in leadership signaled that Pyongyang’s reform drive was to be accelerated by younger, well-educated, and pragmatic technocrats. Pyongyang’s efforts to revamp its economy were also reflected in its active push for joint projects with South Korea. Inter-Korean economic cooperation has from time to time become hostage to the escalating nuclear crisis, stirring a debate at the on-again-off-again Inter-Korean Ministerial and economic talks. Nonetheless, the two Koreas cooperated for the establishment of the Gaesong Industrial Complex, South Koreans’ overland travel across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and partial reconnections of crossborder railways and roads. They have also enacted several inter-Korean agreements on investment guarantees, double-taxation avoidance, procedures for settling business disputes, and the settlement of accounts. These accords are pivotal to promoting South Korean investment, and thus the establishment

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of these systems has paved the way for a major boost in attracting capital from the South. Although there is a broad consensus in the literature that economic crisis is the primary cause for regime collapse, it has not triggered regime change in North Korea, where Kim Jong-il’s regime escaped its collapse in spite of the prolonged economic crisis. Then, we must consider whether North Korea’s economic reforms could trigger political liberalization and an activation of its autonomous civil society, which could in turn gain the capacity to change the regime. Taking this consideration into account, the following section will examine several dimensions of North Korea’s political opportunity structure.

Political Opportunity Structure and North Korea’s Civil Society Civil society can be defined as a “sphere of human activity which is concerned with the meeting of certain material wants, the satisfaction of which requires a human group more numerous than the family.”17 Since civil society is composed of various autonomous groups, the state is not expected to interfere with its operation, unless it intervenes in the task of the state. However, in reality, no civil society is completely free from the state. Particularly, in East Asian countries that have been affected by Confucian values, the state often dominates civil society, and civil society thus cannot be seen as separate from the state as in Western democracies.18 Only in recent years, civil societies in some East Asian countries have started to gain a certain degree of relative autonomy. Among these countries, North Korea is conspicuous with its most fragile civil society. A report of the Human Rights Watch group pointed out that the North Korean government remains among the “world’s most repressive governments,” and it “routinely and egregiously violates nearly all international human rights standards.”19 Without doubt, North Korean civil society is not only underdeveloped, but also lacks signs of developing even the slightest activity. Nonetheless, Pyongyang’s recent economic reform measures to remedy its disarrayed economy have heightened the expectation that North Korea might tolerate some degree of economic, if not political, liberalization, which might contribute to activation of its civil society. Since the year 2000, the expectation has also been driven by Pyongyang’s pragmatic foreign policy that resulted in opening up of the regime’s contacts with the outside world and seeking rapprochement with other countries. Pyongyang normalized its diplomatic relations with many capitalist countries, and Kim Jong-il attended rare summit meetings with China, Russia, and Japan. North Korea’s dire economic situation necessitated an aggressive approach to other countries for economic gains, including cooperation with capitalist markets. Is the economic reform, no matter how controlled, limited, and incremental in its nature, likely to induce an activation of civil society that could

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be mobilized for regime change in the long run?20 Although economic reform in the socialist systems generally produces new demands and increases political pluralism and mass political action, North Korea may represent an anomaly. The political opportunity structure in North Korea, which is believed to have constrained the adverse effects of economic crisis on the regime, is also expected to offset the liberalizing impact of economic reform on civil society. According to Sidney Tarrow, political opportunities are consistent “dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for collective action by affecting people’s expectations for success or failure.”21 A civil society is shaped by political opportunity structures, which might precipitate or inspire it. In North Korea, there are several unique dimensions of political opportunity structures that might intervene in the linkage between economic reform and activation of the civil society.

Regime Legitimacy While Pyongyang has expanded pragmatic elements in its economic policies, possibly providing a window of opportunity for civil society activation, it has simultaneously continued to wage ideological campaigns. Its attempts to instill the superiority of the regime’s style of socialism in the masses, and to prevent the dangers of bourgeois cultural contamination, effectively managed to suppress any civil society activities. These conflicting signals clearly indicate that North Korea is in a predicament. Since Pyongyang’s policies are antagonistic in their nature, it is not clear which direction North Korea’s civil society will take in the future. Under the current economic situation, continuous economic reform is inevitable to remedy the problems of “equality in poverty” and absolute shortages of daily necessities. Moreover, economic performance is of vital importance to Kim Jong-il, who lacks the level of legitimacy and charisma enjoyed by his father. As Diamond, Linz, and Lipset argue, a regime that lacks deep legitimacy “depends more precariously on current performance and is vulnerable to collapse in periods of economic and social distress.”22 Thus, improving the quality of life—or at least avoiding its deterioration—would be the most urgent task of Kim’s regime. Unless he ultimately satisfies his people with better economic performance, Kim may encounter some difficulties with the legitimacy of his regime. However, economic performance is not the only justification of Kim Jongil’s power, since the primary basis of his legitimacy also lies in the Juche ideology, which provides him with an ideological basis of legitimacy and the status of the realizer of that very own idea. In this situation, widespread restructuring along with opening the economic system and introduction of comprehensive market elements would pose a threat to Kim Jong-il, as such measures could damage his ideological legitimacy. Kim’s inherent dilemma rests in the subtle balance that he must maintain between the two mutually

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contradictory bases of his legitimacy: the ideological base that could be maintained most effectively under a tightly closed and controlled society, and the performance base that would be enhanced in a more open system. In this sense, Kim has developed a “generic vulnerability” of his own system and must strive to protect the Juche ideology to any politically feasible extent. Moreover, as North Korea is unlikely to concede its inferiority to the South by relying on its economic performance, Kim’s regime will be constantly constrained from emphasizing performance as the major source of its legitimacy. South Korea, which has sought legitimacy on the grounds of economic performance, will thus continue to outperform North Korea in this very arena. If North Korea should start to lean more heavily toward its economic performance, it would be unable to gain a comparative advantage against the South on important matters of regime legitimacy. Consequently, North Korea will make every effort to keep the political opportunity structure closed in order to protect its ideological purity. Therefore, economic liberalization will be accompanied by efforts to contain a possibility of civil society movements.

Grassroots Dissent The second factor is the virtual nonexistence of organized groups at the grassroots level that would be comparable to Solidarity of Poland, the Civic Forum of Czechoslovakia, or the Democratic Forum of Hungary. Most Eastern European countries, especially during the post-World War I period, had a chance to experience pre-Communist social pluralism, which enabled independent grassroots civic and religious organizations to slowly develop and later help trigger mass mobilization. By contrast, the North Korean people have not even experienced an embryonic democracy throughout their history, and accordingly did not have an opportunity to acquire participatory values through organized activities. Even the Chinese are seemingly better equipped for these functions than the North Koreans. Chinese students, intellectuals, and the masses were from time to time encouraged to challenge the established authority of the Chinese Communist Party. They were granted the rights of independent thinking, freedom of expression, and free speech— although short-lived—during the Hundred Flowers Movement. Moreover, during the Cultural Revolution, students were encouraged to criticize and challenge political authority, which provided them with an opportunity to acquire participatory values.23 In North Korea, no such opportunities have ever been provided to the public. Furthermore, unlike people in Eastern Europe or even in China, North Koreans are tightly insulated from a communication access to the rest of the world. The regime has successfully monopolized sources of news and information, and all television sets and radios are fixed to receive only state

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channels. Yet recently, government control over information has become rather tenuous, as evidenced by the spread of cell phones and South Korean pop culture. Since the Chinese cell phone companies began building relay stations along the North Korean border in 2003, despite a strong government ban, cell phones have been smuggled into North Korea, especially into border cities such as Dandong, and soon turned into a popular item on the black market. However, shortly after a devastating train explosion in Ryongchon near the Chinese border in April 2004, which claimed at least 161 lives with over 1,300 injured, North Korea confiscated all government-licensed cell phones. The incident occurred soon after Kim Jong-il’s return by train to North Korea from his visit to China, and it was believed that cell phones had been used to spread the news to outsiders. Even today, ordinary North Koreans rarely use cell phones as a regular communication method. Mobile phones remain limited to use by North Korean traders in border towns in their business operations with the Chinese. In an effort to curtail the illegal use, the government employs radio signal detectors to crack down on cell phones, so that even traders are limited in using their phones for a very short amount of time to prevent detection. In the last few years, South Korean pop culture has also found its way across the North border, mainly through CDs and DVDs smuggled via China. In response to such “cultural and ideological infiltration” and in its attempt to completely block such routes, Pyongyang has adopted a new criminal law banning watching or spreading of South Korean videos. Thus, cell phones and South Korean pop culture can hardly become an effective way of enhancing the flow of information, which could then assist in triggering successful grassroots organization. Without doubt, the economic difficulties and food shortages in the 1990s, and the expanded private economic activities in recent years have greatly increased people’s movement and social fluidity. In the Socialist Constitution of 1998, North Korea lifted travel regulations and guaranteed freedom of residence and travel. Although this freedom might facilitate a primitive flow of information and ideas, in reality, significant constraints are still imposed on most people. In fact, the constitutional change was largely a response to the fact that people were already moving in search of food. In a country where even foreign visitors are restricted from domestic travel, external pressure or stimulus that could trigger organization of the masses can hardly exist. Nevertheless, at the end of the 1990s, an unprecedented number of North Koreans were allowed to travel abroad for nongovernmental involvement in educational, technical, and training programs. The number of North Korean delegations engaged in foreign training programs increased dramatically in 1998, while their training was concentrated in four fields: international law and business, agriculture, medicine, and energy.24 Between 2000 and 2005,

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Pyongyang sent over 1,200 officials abroad25 for training in agriculture, fisheries, livestock breeding, medicine, architecture, trade, information technology, languages, economic management, and security. This change in policy could reflect the fact that North Korea has been prioritizing a restoration of its deteriorating economy and public health system, and especially focusing on overcoming severe shortages in its sources of hard currency, food, medical supplies, and energy. Another notable event occurred in September 2004, when Pyongyang held its first workshop on economic reform co-organized with the European Commission, in which over seventy North Koreans from fourteen different ministries and institutes joined European economic experts, who had been involved in the economic reform processes of their countries. However, it should not be overlooked that many delegations that had been sent abroad to gain knowledge in international law and business transactions were significantly restricted in their access to any sources of “spiritual pollution.” North Korean delegates trained in social sciences, including finance and business management, were limited to study in politically friendly countries. While technical and science training in areas such as energy, medicine, and agriculture, was in the 1990s conducted mainly in the United States, social science programs were hosted primarily by China, Australia, Thailand, Singapore, Pakistan, Hungary, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, and Sweden. Not surprisingly all of these countries have diplomatic relations with North Korea. Although the United States hosted the largest number of North Korean delegations, North Korea appeared to be very cautious in exposing its social scientists to any long-term American training. Even when American institutions organized and sponsored training programs, the sessions were required to take place outside of the United States. Since the year 2000, a similar pattern has been noticeable in the case of some EU countries that have normalized their diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, which led the North Korean government to allow its citizens to join social science programs in Europe. The obvious intention behind careful selection of the study destination of North Korean delegates was to contain “spiritual pollution” and to prevent any politically sensitive incidents, such as political defection. By employing carefully controlled policy measures, the government made it extremely difficult for returning North Koreans who had been externally exposed to activate civil society once back at home. Moreover, intellectuals and professionals who are allowed to visit foreign countries benefit from the regime and do not pose as much of a threat as underprivileged peasants and workers. As we could see in the case of China, where Communist cadres have been instrumental in the spread of capitalist relations,26 any Communist state structures and its personnel could be crucial in the process of hybrid market economy development. Communist intellectuals, as both indispensable assets and a possible challenge to the regime, must be incorporated into its modernization process. One study

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attributed the failure of Soviet economic reform to its direct challenge to the powerful and recalcitrant groups of bureaucrats, state managers, and state enterprise workers.27 The development of market relations therefore does not necessarily produce activation of the civil society or a withering away of the authoritarian regime. Przeworski and Limongi observed that, in countries with per capita income higher than $6,000, dictatorships become more stable as the countries become more affluent.28 According to them, dictatorships also survive invariably in very poor countries with under $1,000 per capita income, such as North Korea. In the event of resistance from any dissatisfied group in North Korea, the opposition movement would likely be sporadic, spontaneous, and chaotic, rather than well organized. In fact, there have been reports on numerous protests in North Korea, especially in Hamhung in South Hamgyong Province, and Chongjin, Hoeryong, and Musan in North Hamgyong Province. North Korean defectors to China were quoted as saying that Pyongyang had been blocking international food aid to punish these northeastern coastal provinces due to several rebellions.29 Also, in January 2005 a South Korean group released a video clip showing a defaced portrait of Kim Jong-il, as evidence of dissent in North Korea.30 The potential threat of these unorganized protests to the regime should not be discounted, as it could invite differing views among the ruling elites on the origins of resistance and could fragment their solidarity. However, such unorganized and sporadic resistance can hardly trigger regime change. The past protests were mostly triggered by food shortages, rather than by people’s political consciousness or their demands for participatory values. North Koreans appear to attribute their economic difficulties to outside forces such as the collapse of the socialist market, economic sanctions by the United States, and natural disasters, rather than to Kim Jong-il’s leadership. Even a number of defectors to the South tend to blame such factors rather than the leadership itself, although they hold the mid-level governmental officials responsible for some of the regime failures. Among the 4,072 defectors who came to South Korea since 2000, only 9 percent quoted political discontent as the main reason for defection, while 55 percent and 20 percent respectively attributed their defection to poverty and a desire to reunite with their families.31 Moreover, as the resource mobilization theory suggests, poor people who have grievances but no resources to fight are unable to initiate protest. According to this theory, only those who have “economic basis, social standing, organizational network and political connections” that can afford them the “capability to press their claims in the political arena” can initiate collective action.32 When people fight for daily survival, participation in an organized mass rebellion is not a priority for them, and they thus do not constitute a resourceful critical mass. As one Chinese scholar observed, “One million soldiers are still eating, and the people cannot fight back.”33

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Religious groups are another important grassroots organization that could turn into a critical mass in the resistance formation. North Korea opened its first two Protestant churches in 1988, and now has one Catholic and one Russian Orthodox Church. Pyongyang claims that there are 12,000 Christians organized through some 500 home churches, along with sixty temples operated by 10,000 Buddhists.34 However, it is evident that religious organizations are not independent from the state, and thus cannot be expected to play any role in a dissident grassroots movement. In addition, as of today, North Korea is alleged to be holding some 150,000–200,000 political prisoners in various political detention camps across the country.35 However, political prisoners cannot mobilize themselves into a viable dissident group since they lack resources and opportunity for any organizing whatsoever. According to a South Korean source, North Korea maintains an elaborate class system that categorizes people into three groups based on their loyalty to the government: the “core class” (28 percent), the “wavering class” (45 percent), and the “hostile class” (27 percent).36 By means of this classification method and various household watch systems, the regime can maintain effective control over its people. Although there is no doubt that signs of distortion in the centralized control mechanism are more and more common with people beginning to roam in search of food, this failure has not triggered any organized bottom-up rebellion. The fact that any meaningful grass roots mobilization is practically impossible undermines the possibility of any efforts to liberalize the society from below, even after the significant economic opening of North Korea. Thus, the emergence of “exemplary individuals”37 who could challenge the authorities seems virtually impossible.

Leadership Division Another intervening factor to the linkage between economic reform and autonomous civil society is that not only is grass roots mobilization weak in North Korea, but any organized challenge from elites in the existing power structure has virtually no room for success. In general, a political opportunity structure expands when power conflicts exist within the political elite.38 This is especially true in authoritarian regimes where regular and institutionalized leadership change and a succession process are absent. Even in China, different power factions that could pose a threat to the regime have always been present, and such factionalism has caused an ongoing power struggle. Scholars for instance observed that the struggle for power between Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng in the late 1970s made Deng initially support the democracy movement of 1978–1979, because of its effectiveness in undermining Hua’s leadership.39 Deng tolerated the liberalizing tendency of the movement to undermine Hua’s major basis of legitimacy—the fact that he was Mao’s handpicked choice.

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In North Korea, however, major factional disputes disappeared as early as 1958 after some rounds of severe power struggles. Thanks to the conflict, Kim Il-sung was able to eliminate most key alternative leaders whose ascension to power might have led to the weakening of Kim’s power position. The elimination of factionalism following the Korean War also made any organized challenge from the power elites extremely difficult. Clearly, the North Korean system does not tolerate political division and those who rise up against Kim Jong-il cannot sustain themselves. To be sure, there have been reports of political splits between hard-liners and soft-liners within the North Korean government. Some of the reports point to signs of purging of key reform-minded officials, and suggest that Washington may be worried about hard-liners in the North Korean military who are asserting their strength due to the reversal in relations with the United States under the Bush Administration.40 North Korean officials themselves occasionally indicate such division to their foreign counterparts. They imply that hard-liners’ opposition could undermine moderates if certain North Korean demands are not met by their foreign partners. However, it could be likely that the supposed factions are merely employing the classic negotiating tactic of the “two-level game,” in order to derive a maximum concession from their counterparts, in which case the allegations of political split could be exaggerated. Moreover, differences of opinion on policies within the North Korean leadership should not be confused with major political strife or power struggle. The thesis that economic reform produces a pressure for liberalization of civil society and regime change is undermined in North Korea due to a lack of power conflict within the political elite.

External Allies One of the core dimensions of political opportunities for mass movement is the presence of influential allies who can provide organizational expertise, financial assistance, and leadership in order to reduce the power discrepancies between the civil society and the ruling regime.41 The more balanced the power between the two, the more likely mass mobilization is to occur. Unlike in democratic regimes where grass roots organizations such as political parties, professional associations, and labor unions can play influential roles as internal allies, allies of any mass movement in authoritarian regimes need to be external, such as transnational social movements, foreign governments,42 or overseas dissident groups. In the case of North Korea, any overseas dissident group that could provide the organizational basis for a democratic challenge to the authoritarian leadership is virtually nonexistent. Reportedly, an anti-Kim Jong-il group has been established in China by some 300 defectors from North Korea. It is claimed that its leaders are mostly former high-level officials of the Kim

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Il-sung government and have been protected by the Chinese government for several decades in spite of Pyongyang’s demand for their repatriation.43 This group is allegedly working with antigovernment groups in Pyongyang involving current military generals. However, given that it is a pro-China organization, this group is unlikely to provide any impetus for a democratic challenge to the North Korean government or to create a political space for organization from below. Another external ally that could be conducive to increasing the power resources of North Korean civil society in the long run is the external movement for improving the human rights situation in North Korea. In his inaugural speech of January 2005, President Bush stressed the importance of freedom and democracy in the international community. He clearly indicated that the United States would pay close attention to any violations of freedom in any part of the world, undoubtedly including North Korea. Freedom and civil rights in North Korea came to the fore when the United States and European Union (EU) expressed their serious concern over Pyongyang’s human rights situation at the sixtieth meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in April 2004. The commission approved a resolution introduced by the EU, calling on Pyongyang to cooperate with the international community in investigating allegations of human rights violations, and appointed, for the first time, a special rapporteur to carry out such an investigation. Later, Japan requested that the issue of Japanese abductees be treated as another grave violation of human rights by North Korea. In addition, the United States, which had publicly accused North Korea of being the world’s most inhumane regime, enacted the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. It authorizes up to $24 million annually through the year of 2008 to promote North Korean human rights through humanitarian aid, and to protect North Korean refugees from the regime’s retribution by offering them humanitarian and legal assistance, and helping them obtain political asylum in the United States. Earlier in 2006, Washington even invited a few North Korean defectors to enter the United States. The Human Rights Act is designed to support NGOs that promote human rights in North Korea and to facilitate information flow to the country through the expansion of radio broadcasts, such as Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America, and through distribution of radios to North Korea. Increased information flow will surely expand civil society’s political opportunities, but the effectiveness of Washington’s human rights initiatives remains to be seen. Following the European Union’s introduction of the 2005 UN resolution, which voiced a “serious concern” about Pyongyang’s human rights record in November 2005, North Korea ordered all resident NGOs that had been involved in humanitarian assistance programs to leave the country by the year’s end. Although Pyongyang’s justification of its decision was the increased availability of the local harvest and sufficient Chinese

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and South Korean aid, its proclamation came more as a reaction to the international request to ensure unimpeded access to all parts of the country for humanitarian organizations, NGOs, and UN agencies. In reaction to the acceptance of the resolution by the UN General Assembly committee, Pyongyang harshly criticized the document as an attempt to “attain the ridiculous purpose of regime change,”44 and accused the EU and the United States of misusing the issue for political purposes. North Korea is well aware of the potential danger that NGOs represent as agents facilitating a smoother information flow and possible influential external allies of its civil society. While the United States along with the international community are trying to expand inflow of information into North Korea, Pyongyang continues to curtail such efforts by reducing the presence of international NGOs and their activities.

Threat Perception Another factor that could challenge the thesis that economic reform produces pluralism and pressures for liberalization of civil society is the perceived threat from South Korea and the United States. Despite South Korea’s current engagement policy, Pyongyang still perceives Seoul as a country equipped with the desire and capability to destroy the North Korean regime, particularly with the assistance of some 30,000 American troops and sophisticated weapons. Over the years, Pyongyang has also developed a fear of the United States, particularly since Washington’s implementation of its Missile Defense program, which led North Korea to “continue to develop missiles to guard against US military threats” 45 and to eventually launch its missiles in July 2006. Furthermore, Washington’s references to Pyongyang as part of the “axis of evil,” an “outpost of tyranny,” and the leading military threat to the United States,46 along with its actions regarding the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), the invasion of Iraq, and recent financial sanctions, reinforced North Korea’s long and deeply held preoccupation with American threats. Pyongyang stated that it was preposterous for the United States to talk about the “threat” that North Korea posed, as Washington was using such talk in order to “launch another local war to meet the interests of U.S. munitions monopolies.”47 It also argued that the final goal of the Bush administration was to “terminate the tyranny,” and since North Korea had been defined as an “outpost of tyranny,” the United States would not rule out the use of force against Pyongyang. As a result, in February 2005, North Korea defied the United States when it declared that it was in possession of nuclear weapons and finally shocked Washington in October 2006 by conducting a nuclear test. According to Pyongyang, these moves were necessary defensive actions to cope with the antagonistic U.S. policy to “isolate and stifle” Pyongyang and to deter a U.S. invasion.

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The political opportunity literature in general suggests that mass mobilization gains momentum when repression is declining while being deterred by increasing repression.48 Perceived threats from the South and the United States could be used to justify repressive measures on North Korean dissidents, thereby blocking any efforts to organize political opposition. This aspect is unique to North Korea as neither Moscow nor Beijing faced the prospect of a rival national claimant waiting to extend its influence over the entire country. As one North Korean official said to a Russian visitor, “any criticism of the socialist system is dangerous due to the presence of enemies in South Korea.”49 Pyongyang’s tight control over dissidents seems to be even more prominent, as Korea is a divided country. As Albert Hirschman suggests, people may respond to their government’s performance either by voice—complaint or protest—or exit—a shift to an alternative government.50 Unlike China, Russia, or Vietnam, North Korea may thus need to worry about a massive exit of people to the South, unless it maintains an effective social control.

Indigenous Ideology Finally, the fact that North Korean communism is indigenous can undermine the suggested effects of the thesis. Unlike East European Communism that was transplanted from the former Soviet Union, the self-sustained North Korean Communism could strongly resist the domino effect of the bankruptcy of Communism and the liberalizing effects of economic reform. While Gorbachev’s Perestroika largely expanded political opportunities in Eastern Europe, which subsequently triggered the mass upheavals and regime changes, it had a little impact on Communism in North Korea. North Korean Communism based on Juche cannot be expected to crumble that easily because of the economic system’s liberalization. In short, the power of North Korean civil society is considerably weak. Moreover, there is insufficient evidence in recent political and economic developments to provide a foundation for an immediate emergence of stronger civil society and “exemplary individuals” who could challenge the authority. All of the political opportunity factors examined above pose serious constraints on the activation of North Korean civil society and regime change, even after a significant degree of opening of the economic system.

Prospects for Civil Society and Regime Change As examined above, the assumed liberalizing effects of economic reform on civil society, which could lead to regime change, are not expected to occur in North Korea due to several intervening political opportunity factors. In the absence of naturally occurring pluralism, any successful initiative to create public space for social organizations is more likely to come from above.

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The majority of the recent studies on regime change focus on elite behavior, based on the elite’s calculations, pacts, and dispositions, as the catalyst for the process of regime change.51 It is argued that strategic behavior of the elite could call for compromise, moderation, tolerance, and gradualism, rather than repression, if its members felt confident that they were “taking the initiative” during the transition and had some “significant control of the emerging game.”52 Alfred Stepan, in his essay on various paths to democracy, analyzed ten alternative ways to proceed from authoritarian regimes to democratic rule.53 The first three paths54 are results of international wars and conquests, which are very unlikely to happen to North Korea. The next three are initiated from within the authoritarian regime by civilian leadership, the military as government, or the military as an institution (that is, a quasigovernment such as a junta). The last four paths are based on opposition forces of various kinds, including society as a whole (society-led), party pact, violent revolt, and Marxist revolutionary war. Considering the fact that the power of civil society in North Korea is extremely weak, the last four ways are also highly unlikely to occur. Out of the second group of paths, the military as government is not relevant to North Korea, and a transition by the military as an institution does not seem to be probable either. There is little evidence that the North Korean military is in need of taking over the regime. Potentially the most relevant case to North Korea seems to be the one occurring through an initiative of the ruling leadership. In this case, as Stepan observes, without demands from civil society, an institutionalized democracy is unlikely, as the regime’s hard-liners will not be persuaded that democratization could be an indispensable institutional requirement. Diamond is in accord with Stepan when stating,55 Typically, the ruling structure in an authoritarian or semi-democratic regime includes many elements and interests firmly opposed to a transfer of effective power—“hard-liners.” . . . Their resistance will not be overcome, and often a transition may not even be launched, without the convergence of enormous pressure from below, in civil society and perhaps from outside, in other countries. The best that could be achieved under these circumstances is regime evolution through liberalization, as opposed to regime change for a democratic rule. As the power of civil society is weak in North Korea, democratic transition through regime change is unlikely in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, with continuous economic reform and increased openness in foreign policy, it seems that the North Korean leadership might be compelled to adopt a certain amount of liberalization, at least until these factors begin to threaten regime stability. Also, economic reform could give rise to new social and economic interests and demands that the regime would be forced

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to address. In such a case, the leadership might find it advantageous to open up some room for individual liberty and public space for civic organizations, which could relieve pressures from various groups and retain mass support of the population without surrendering power. If the costs of repression are greater than the price of toleration, the regime’s tolerance level will increase. For example, the Chinese government, while prohibiting social organizations deemed politically threatening, has allowed some professional, occupational, and welfare groups formed around narrow and specific interests to emerge in the spaces opened up by the market.56 It has not only tolerated, but also actively encouraged and sponsored some social and economic associations, which could facilitate economic reform and help relieve the burden of the government by performing a number of functions that are useful to the state. As noted by O’Donnell and Schmitter, civil liberties can exist alongside authoritarian structures. Unlike democratic regime change, liberalization does not pose an imminent threat to the regime’s survival, as it does not involve a transfer of power or altering the ruling structure. Many LatinAmerican historical cases illustrate how their authoritarian governments found it advantageous to initiate liberalization, even in the face of weak and disorganized opposition by civil society.57 Similar liberalization efforts carefully orchestrated from above could also be quite possible in North Korea. Through liberalization of areas that are in the biggest need of economic reform, but have no direct linkage to the political sphere, proliferation of semiautonomous social associations could arise. Not only is a radical regime change unlikely in North Korea, but it is even undesirable, as there is no guarantee that a society-led radical regime change would lead to a democratic regime and a democratic civil society. As Linz maintains, “The strategy of a clean break is only viable in a revolution or a potentially revolutionary situation.”58 A clean break from an authoritarian regime through a revolutionary system transformation could make the establishment of democratic processes and autonomous civil society more difficult. It may well lead to another non-democratic authoritarian regime similar to the one collapsed, to a revolutionary regime, or to a military junta. Many historical examples show that society-led radical upheavals in no way assure the path to a democratic regime.59 Although the power of civil society is an indispensable element in the transitional process to democracy, the consequences of “society-led regime termination” can be highly unpredictable and even dangerous. This scenario may be particularly likely in a country such as North Korea, which lacks any democratic experience. In North Korea, a form of gradual top-down liberalization is not only more likely, but perhaps more desirable to insure a viable path toward autonomous civil society, and eventually toward democratic rule. Rather than a rapid regime change, a lengthy period of regime evolution and transition might be more conducive to long-term stable democratic rule in North

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Korea. As Linz contends, “to be stable, post-totalitarianism can reject the totalitarian heritage only selectively and gradually, if it is not to lead to a revolutionary outbreak that could lead to a radical change of the system.”60 This condition may give space for fragile North Korean social forces to be established, organized, and eventually draw a “boundary between the state and civil society.”61 Moreover, it may provide the social forces with the necessary time to learn various democratic practices, such as compromise and negotiation with the authoritarian regime, and the operation of market systems in general. Once a solid civil society is established, it will be a driving force for the promotion of further liberalization and democracy. Until then, the best that could be hoped for in North Korea seems to be regime evolution and regime-led selected liberalization, in which the extent, timing, and pace would be decided by the regime. Such liberalization would not endanger the power of the ruling elite, and would not ensure regime change, but could still provide space for civil society activation.

Notes 1. Peter Calvert, ed., The Process of Political Succession, London: Macmillan, 1987, 18, quoted in Stephanie Lawson, “Conceptual Issues in the Comparative Study of Regime Change and Democratization,” Comparative Politics 25(2) (January 1993): 185. 2. Stephen Krasner, ed., International Regimes, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983, 5, quoted in Stephanie Lawson, “Conceptual Issues,” 186. 3. Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics, Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1973; Juan Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978; Robert Kaufman, “Industrial Change and Authoritarian Rule in Latin America: A Concrete Review of the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Model,” in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, David Collier, ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979. 4. See, for example, Luciano Martins, “The “Liberalization” of Authoritarian Rule in Brazil,” in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America, Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, and Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and Destruction of Socialism and the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 5. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968, 5. 6. Nina Halpern, “Economic Reform and Democratization in Communist Systems: The Case of China,” Studies in Comparative Communism, 22(2/3) (Summer/Autumn 1989): 140. 7. S. Frederick Starr, “Soviet Union: A Civil Society,” Foreign Policy 70 (Spring 1988): 26–41. Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Perspective, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988.

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8. Jude Howell and Jenny Pearce, Civil Society and Development: A Critical Exploration, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001, chapter 6. 9. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World Politics, 49(2) (1997): 157. 10. Larry Diamond, “Beyond Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism: Strategies for Democratization,” The Washington Quarterly, 12(1) (Winter 1989): 150. 11. Peter Eisinger, “The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities,” American Political Science Review, 67 (March 1973): 11–28. 12. Diamond, “Beyond Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism,” 150. 13. It has continued to increase to 190 won by October 2003 and to 700 won by January 2005, Joongang Ilbo (February 21, 2005). 14. It further depreciated to 1,000 won in November 2003. 15. Bonds carry no interest, and will be redeemed in installments, unless a holder draws a lucky number in one of the lotteries, which are to be held regularly. 16. “North Korea This Week,” Yonhap News (September 4, 2003): 3. 17. James Cotton, “Civil Society in the Political Transition of North Korea,” Korea and World Affairs (Summer, 1992): 321. 18. Ibid. 19. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2005, http://hrw.org/wr2k5/wr2005. pdf. 20. Part of the analysis is drawn from Kyung-Ae Park, “Social Reform in North Korea: Prospects for Liberalization and Democratization,” Korea Observer, XXII(4) (Winter 1991): 499–517. 21. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contenious Politics, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 77. 22. Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Lipset, “Introduction: Comparing Experiences with Democracy,” in Politics in Developing Countries, Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990, 10. 23. For a discussion of “democratizing” effects of the Cultural Revolution, see Halpern, Economic Reform and Democratization in Communist Systems, 139–152. 24. For more on North Korea’s foreign contacts, see Kyung-Ae Park, The Pattern of North Korea’s Track-Two Foreign Contacts, North Pacific Policy Papers, #5, Vancouver, BC: Program on Canada-Asia Policy Studies, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, 2000. 25. The countries included China, the United States, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Peru, India, Thailand, Taiwan, Canada, Israel, and Europe. 26. Richard Baum, ed., Reform and Reaction in Post-Mao China: The Road to Tiananmen, New York: Routledge, 1991. 27. Marye Gallagher, “Reform and Openness: Why China’s Economic Reforms Have Delayed Democracy,” World Politics, 54 (April 2002): 363. 28. Przeworski and Limongi, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” 159–160. 29. South China Morning Post, quoted in North Korea Blocks International Food Aid to Dissenters, Japan Economic Newswire (June 22, 2001). 30. Korea Times (January 19, 2005). 31. Aidan Foster-Carter, “Boycott or Business?” Comparative Connections, 6(4) (Fourth Quarter 2004): 100.

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32. Rod Aya, “Popular Intervention in Revolutionary Situations,” in Statemaking and Social Movements, Charles Bright and Susan Harding, eds., Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1984, 330–331. 33. Special Report, U.S. Institute of Peace. 34. North Korea provided these figures in its report on Covenant-B (civil and political rights) to the U.N. Human Rights Committee in March 2000. White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea, Seoul, Korea: Korea Institute for National Unification, 2004, 187. 35. Ibid., 225. 36. Ibid., 142–145. 37. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, “Opening (and Undermining) Authoritarian Regimes,” in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy, Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. 38. Sidney Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy, 1965– 1975, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, chapter 2. 39. See Halpern, “Economic Reform and Democratization in Communist Systems,” 139–152. 40. Joongang Ilbo (July 31, 2001). 41. Kurt Schock, “People Power and Political Opportunities: Social Movement Mobilization and Outcomes in the Philippines and Burma,” Social Problems, 46(3) (August 1999): 361. 42. Ibid., 361. 43. Jungkuk-ui Bukhan Jupsutim-i Wumjik Inda (North Korea Take-Over Team in China Is in Action), Wolgan Joongang (Joongang Monthly), 351 (February 2005): 92–98. 44. North Korean Foreign Ministry statement, DPRK Permanent Mission to the U.N. Press Release, No. 47, November 22, 2005. 45. N. Korea Rips U.S. Missile Program, The Associated Press (August 2, 2001). 46. A statement of the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, The Washington Times (July 29, 2001). 47. “North Korea Says U.S. Threat Fear Preposterous,” Reuters (August 1, 2001). 48. Kurt Schock, “People Power and Political Opportunities,” 361. 49. DPRK Report #10, Northeast Asia Peace and Security Network (February 18, 1998). 50. Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. 51. See, for example, Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy and Guiseppe Di Palma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. 52. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, “Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, in O’Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead,” Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy, 67. 53. Alfred Stepan, “Paths toward Redemocratization: Theoretical and Comparative Considerations,” in O’Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy.

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54. They are “internal restoration after external reconquest,” “internal reformulation,” and “externally monitored installation.” 55. Diamond, “Beyond Authoritarianism,” 147–148. 56. Howell and Pearce, Civil Society and Development, Chapter 6. 57. O’Donnell and Schmitter, “Opening (and Undermining) Authoritarian Regimes,” 19. 58. Juan Linz, “The Transition from Authoritarian Regimes to Democratic Political Systems and the Problems of Consolidation of Political Democracy.” Paper presented to the International Political Science Association, Tokyo, March 29–April 1, 1982, 34, cited in Diamond, Beyond Authoritarianism, 144–145. 59. For more discussions on this point, see Stepan, “Paths toward Redemocratization” and Juan Linz, “Transtion to Democracy,” The Washington Quarterly, 13(3) (Summer 1990): 143. 60. Juan Linz, “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes,” in Handbook of Political Science, vol. 3: Macro Political Theory, Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby, eds., Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975, 342, cited in Diamond, Beyond Authoritarianism, 159. 61. Diamond, “Beyond Authoritarianism,” 149.

Part II

Changing Security Environment in East Asia

Chapter 6

Korean Security and Big Power Rivalry Terence Roehrig Throughout its history, the Korean Peninsula has had the unfortunate geographic destiny to be located between the regional powers of East Asia. As a result, Korea has often been fought over or fought through by countries in the region.1 In the next fifty years, Korea may again be caught between the struggles of others in Northeast Asia but now, with some important differences. In the past, Korea was united and relatively weak in comparison to China, Japan, Russia, and later, the United States. Today, the peninsula is divided with North Korea struggling to remain in existence while South Korea possesses significantly more power than the North and more than a united Korea had in the past to determine its own fate. Korean security in the next fifty years will be closely intertwined with the future of two very important bilateral relationships: Sino-Japanese and U.S.-Sino relations. In some ways, North and South Korea will be bystanders working to position themselves favorably as these relationships unfold. However, in other respects, the two Koreas may be important players in the future of these bilateral relations with some degree of leverage to shape the outcome of the region. This chapter examines the present and future course of big power relations in East Asia along with the possible influence North and South Korea might have on these relationships in order to help ensure peace and stability in the region while protecting their interests.

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Sino-Japanese Relations In the years ahead, there is concern that as rising powers in East Asia, China and Japan will compete for influence in an effort to dominate the region. Both have a growing sense of national pride and competing interests that could be an ever-increasing source of conflict. Yet, one line of argument maintains that, while there will be clashing interests that from time to time cause friction, the presence of important and growing economic ties between these two powerhouses of East Asia will remind leaders of what is at stake, encouraging them to tamp down inclinations to escalate their conflicts. There is ample evidence to demonstrate the growing economic connections between Beijing and Tokyo. For China, Japan is its largest trading partner providing 16.8 percent of Chinese imports while receiving 12.4 percent of its exports, third largest behind the United States and Hong Kong. Similar numbers apply to Japan as China is its largest market for imports at 20.7 percent and second largest export market at 13 percent behind the United States.2 Japan is also the largest source of economic aid for Beijing supplying over $26 billion since it began providing assistance in 1979. Most of the funding has been in the form of low interest loans to support a variety of projects including airports, railway lines, roads, environmental protection, poverty eradication, and education.3 This aid plays an important role for Japan in its relations with China. According to Denny Roy, at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, aid acts as “de facto reparations that help compensate China for the harm done by the Japanese during the Pacific War, and it is an investment in China’s stability, forestalling the problems a Chinese breakdown would pose for Japan.”4 In addition, Japan also sent China a large aid package to combat severe acute respiratory syndrome—SARS, more than any of the other G-8 countries.5 Japan has often been unhappy with China’s reluctance to recognize this level of aid. However, in April 2007, Prime Minister Wen Jibao thanked Tokyo for its “support and assistance” in an effort to acknowledge Japanese help in China’s economic development.6 Finally, in 2004, Japan provided 9 percent of China’s foreign direct investment with 14,000 Japanese firms having operations on the mainland. In the future, many Japanese construction and service companies will be seeking contracts to help China prepare for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.7 China and Japan also share other interests such as maintaining peace and stability in the region, a peaceful resolution to the North Korea imbroglio, and further expansion of their economic ties. However, while the economic links and interests are significant, it is not at all clear whether these will be sufficient to forestall growing Sino-Japanese tension. Numerous points of friction exist and it is not possible here to explore them all in depth. Here are a few of the most significant.

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As competitors for power in the region, China and Japan could be on a collision course through competing security postures. In its early history, China was long the dominant power in the region. The Middle Kingdom controlled regional affairs and expected others in Asia to bow to Chinese authority. As Chinese economic and political power grows, some fear that it may intend to reclaim that position. The economic progress made in China in the past ten to fifteen years has fueled a resurgent nationalism that taps into the Chinese historical memory and evolving Chinese identity as a great regional power.8 If Chinese leaders choose to pursue this vision, there will likely be a clash with Japan. More worrisome have been the consistent and significant increases in Chinese defense spending, with a budget that has grown by double-digits for the past seventeen consecutive years.9 It is important to note that the numbers Chinese officials provide are questioned by many as the true total of what China spends on defense so that the actual amount may be considerably larger. In March 2007, China announced a 17.8 percent increase in defense spending, making the total approximately $45 billion, putting it on par with Japan’s budget and raising further concerns. These spending increases have fueled a massive expansion and modernization program that has allowed Beijing to deploy more advanced ships and aircraft along with an improved ballistic missile force accompanied by an increasing number of nuclear weapons tests. China has also deployed several hundred ballistic missiles on its eastern coast; while these are aimed at Taiwan, the missiles also have sufficient range to reach Japan. Though China’s defense modernization program has been troublesome in Tokyo, Japan has also sparked concern in China and among others in Asia that it may have designs to become a more potent force in the region. Since World War II, Japanese military power has been constrained by Article IX of its “pacifist” constitution, a document given to them by the U.S. occupation authority. In Article IX, the Japanese people “forever renounce war as a sovereign right” along with foregoing the threat or use of force to resolve international disputes. The country also forswears the maintenance of military forces, the interpretation of which has allowed the existence of the Japanese Self-Defense Force (SDF). The use of these forces, even for peacekeeping operations has in the past evoked a firestorm in Japan and in the region. Most recently, Tokyo deployed close to 600 SDF personnel to Iraq for reconstruction and medical work. Many in Japan and elsewhere opposed this action maintaining it violated the constitution. In the midst of a meeting in 2006, a Chinese academic shouted at U.S. Pacific Commander, Admiral William Fallon that the United States was pushing Japan toward a more aggressive foreign policy. In reference to Japan’s deployments to Iraq, the academic shouted, “Japan should not send troops outside of Japan.” Fallon responded that the Chinese should look more to the future and that “it’s not helpful to keep pointing to history.” 10 To critics, Japan’s moves are

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part of a slippery slope toward a more aggressive foreign policy. However, in July 2006, Japan withdrew its forces from Iraq but has left 200 Air Force personnel in Kuwait to assist in airlift operations for U.S. forces in Iraq. The United States and others have often criticized Japan for its lack of involvement in global security affairs and a reliance on “checkbook diplomacy” to promote international peace and stability. Conservatives in Japan, a growing force in the foreign policy debate, have also become increasingly unhappy with the restrictions of Article IX and are seeking for Japan to regain the status of a “normal” country. This would allow Japan to more fully participate in collective self-defense operations and end the contradictions present between the constitution and the existence of the SDF. In 2005, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) announced a revised proposal for Article IX that retains the “no-war” provisions but authorizes the SDF and allows the right to participate in collective defense including the U.S. alliance and UN peacekeeping operations. In response to the growing threat from North Korea, especially the October 2006 nuclear weapons test, some Japanese analysts have also raised the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons, something that would have been political suicide ten years ago simply to raise the issue. In the wake of the North’s test, Shoichi Nakagawa, chairman of the policy research council for the LDP noted that “we need to find a way to prevent Japan from coming under attack. There is an argument that nuclear weapons are one such option. I want to make clear that I am not the one saying this, and Japan will stick to its nonnuclear principles, but we need to have active discussions.”11 Two days later, Japan’s Foreign Minister Taro Aso told a parliamentary committee that while Japan would not develop a nuclear weapon, “it’s important to have discussions on the matter.”12 Later that day, Foreign Minister Aso met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as part of her Asia tour to reassure allies of the U.S. nuclear umbrella in an effort to discourage any nuclear weapons ambitions. After the meeting, Foreign Minister Aso commented that Japan “is absolutely not considering” developing nuclear weapons. Following that meeting, regarding the suggestion of a debate and a possible nuclear option for Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe firmly rejected the idea stating “that debate is finished.”13 Japan is also seeking a seat on the UN Security Council, a position it believes it has earned due to its stature in the international community and that it is the second largest contributor to the organization’s budget providing 20 percent of UN revenue. From time to time, China has threatened to block Japan’s efforts to obtain a Security Council seat, another point of contention between these two countries. For China and others in the region, Japanese efforts to become “normal” evoke considerable anxiety grounded in memories of World War II. Many fear that the increasing prominence of more conservative Japanese leaders is a dangerous signal for the future. While many Japanese argue the country

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has changed and learned from the past, most Chinese remain unconvinced and fear that changes to the constitution will be the start of a path leading to a more aggressive Japanese foreign policy. According to Roy, “the common Chinese perspective emphasizes that Japan has both a history of militarism and imperialism and an enduring core of right-wing sentiment” that makes Tokyo prone to a more assertive foreign policy.14 While these attitudes are real, they are also exacerbated by the Chinese government. The Chinese Communist Party can use Japan as an easy scapegoat to bolster its legitimacy and distract the population from a growing income gap and other socioeconomic problems. In turn, Chinese military modernization and the growing China threat provide a rationale for Prime Minister Abe and other conservative politicians in Japan to counter their critics, while gaining support for efforts to revise Japanese military doctrine, a position that remains controversial in many segments of Japanese society.15 The result is the potential for a classic security dilemma where the military preparations of one side, taken ostensibly for defensive purposes, is perceived by neighbors as aggressive posturing. In response, these neighbors take their own “defensive” actions, which in turn provoke a counterresponse. If China and Japan move in this direction, they will become an increasingly menacing security threat for each other. Another area of conflict exists over the growing energy needs of the two countries. Japan is almost entirely dependent on imported oil while China’s economic growth, particularly on the east coast generates ever-greater demands for energy. China and Japan rank second and third respectively as consumers of petroleum. One of the solutions to this dilemma is the oil and gas reserves of the East China Sea, an area where both Tokyo and Beijing have overlapping claims. China maintains it has rights to most of the oil since the East China Sea continental shelf is an extension of the Chinese mainland. However, Japan claims the boundary line is considerably farther west and would give it control of what are believed to be the richest oil fields.16 The dispute escalated in May 2005 when Tokyo gave permission to Japanese companies to explore for oil offshore of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. The ownership of these islands is an important dimension of the disagreement since whoever is able to establish control over these uninhabited islands would be able to claim the mineral and fishing rights that surround the chain. Japan currently possesses what it calls the Senkaku islands based on claims made in 1895. China maintains these islands, the Diaoyutai, were seized by force and have always been under Taiwanese administration, and thus, remain Chinese territory. Both countries claim a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone that overlaps in the East China Sea, further complicating their competing claims. In September 2005, Chinese warships patrolled near the disputed oil fields, raising the tension level once again. Different interpretations of history add further to a strained relationship between Japan and China. Most Chinese believe Japanese authorities have

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been insufficiently repentant for the country’s actions during World War II, including the Japanese invasion of China, the Nanjing massacre, the comfort women, and the chemical and biological weapons experiments and warfare conducted by Japanese units, such as U-731 and U-100. These issues are periodically resurrected when Japanese history textbooks are published that do not fully account for these atrocities or indicate that the Japanese occupation throughout Asia was beneficial to the region. In April 2005, a new junior high school textbook sparked massive demonstrations in China that included attacks on the Japanese embassy in Beijing. Given the size and intensity of the demonstrations, it is likely the actions had at least some level of government approval. In one press report, Chinese police “herded [student] protesters into tight groups, let them take turns throwing rocks, then told them they had ‘vented their anger’ long enough and bused them back to campus.”17 According to one student participant, “It was partly a real protest and partly a political show. I felt a little like a puppet.”18 Prime Minister Abe, at the time, acting secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, remarked that the anger in these demonstrations was an outgrowth of rising social problems in China, and “Japan is an outlet to vent that anger. Because of the anti-Japanese education there, it’s easy to light the fire of these demonstrations and, because of the Internet, it’s easy to assemble a lot of people.”19 When Japan demanded an apology for the demonstrations and compensation for damages to Japanese diplomatic facilities, China’s foreign minister Li Zhaoxing rejected the demands. According to Prime Minister Li, “The Chinese government has never done anything for which it has to apologize to the Japanese people. The problem now is that the Japanese government has done a series of things that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people on the Taiwan issue, some international issues and especially the treatment of history.”20 In 2005, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao asserted that China would continue to block Japanese efforts to join the Security Council until Japan is more apologetic. According to Mr. Wen, “only a country that respects history, takes responsibility for history and wins over the trust of peoples in Asia and the world at large can take greater responsibilities in the international community.”21 The Chinese government also allowed an Internet petition to circulate that rejected Japan’s bid for the seat. Authorities claimed that over thirty million people signed the petition.22 The textbook issues have generated outrage in other parts of Asia including South Korea, who endured a brutal occupation by Japan from 1910 to 1945. Japanese authorities maintain the textbooks are written by private organizations that have the right to publish what they choose and that schools are not required to adopt the text. A recent book was one of eight approved by the Japanese Ministry of Education. In fact, the textbook published in spring 2005 was condemned by the Japanese Teacher’s Union and used by only eighteen of more than 11,000 junior high schools in the country. Soon after the textbook controversy, in an effort to smooth over the uproar, then

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Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi noted, “In the past, Japan through its colonial rule and aggression caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. Japan squarely faces these facts of history in a spirit of humility and with feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology always engraved in mind.”23 Previously, Japan was much more willing to absorb China’s criticisms but increasingly has begun to show the signs of what one scholar labeled “guilt fatigue” and may be less willing to apologize for the past.24 Further exacerbating the history controversy were Prime Minister Koizumi’s periodic visits to the Yasukuni shrine that honors 2.5 million of Japan’s war dead. The shrine is not run by the Japanese government and no bodies are entombed at the site. Koizumi maintained his visits were conducted as a private citizen and intended to honor those who have served the country. However, the memorial also includes the names of fourteen Class A war criminals, including Hideki Tojo, convicted in the trials that followed World War II. Koizumi’s predecessors, Yasuhiro Nakasone and Ryutaro Hashimoto, visited the shrine only once during their entire time as prime minister while he visited six times during his four years in office. At a government ceremony following his last trip in August 2006, Koizumi tried to temper the effect of his visit by remarking “we should not forget that friendly ties with other countries and territories have been fundamental to Japan’s stability in the postwar era.”25 There has been some discussion to remove the names of the fourteen war criminals from those honored at the shrine but so far, this has not occurred. Moreover, it is not clear that most Chinese, or others in the region offended by the visits, would feel differently if the fourteen names were removed. Japan’s new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has not yet indicated whether he will continue the visits, actions he supported when undertaken by other prime ministers. Abe has made a concerted effort to improve relations with China and South Korea in the early months of his administration. In April 2007, Prime Minister Wen visited Japan in an effort to “melt the ice” and noted that “the Japanese government and Japanese leaders have stated many times their stance on history-related problems, publicly acknowledged their invasion, and expressed their deep remorse and regret to victimized nations. That is something that the Chinese government and people regard positively.” However, he followed this remark by adding “we sincerely hope that Japan will show in concrete ways their expressed attitudes and promises,” a likely warning to Prime Minister Abe to refrain from visiting the Yasukuni Shrine.26 Most certainly, Abe’s efforts to improve relations will be tarnished should he choose to visit the shrine sometime in the future. Another point of contention has been Tokyo’s increasing support of Taiwan. China has long insisted on a “One-China” policy whereby there is no other alternative but eventual reunification of Taiwan with the mainland. Any consideration of Taiwan moving toward independence is met by

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tremendous hostility from Beijing. In February 2005, Japan declared for the first time that “the peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait through dialogue” was a “common strategic objective” with the United States.27 Japan’s action incensed Chinese officials and the next month, Beijing promulgated a new antisecession law that declared Taiwan will never be allowed to secede. In addition, China reserved the right to employ “non-peaceful means and other necessary measures” to prevent this from happening.28 Taiwan remains a potential flashpoint in the region that could draw Japan and the United States into the conflict should China use force against Taiwan.

Sino-U.S. Relations The second big power rivalry affecting Korean security relations, U.S.-China relations, has important implications not only for East Asia but global politics as well. At the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the lone super power with few challengers on the horizon. As China continued its phenomenal economic rise, scholars, analysts, and policymakers began to see the possibility of a rising China competing with the United States sometime in the future. Since the 1990s, U.S.-Sino relations have experienced a series of highs and lows. During the latter years of the Clinton administration, U.S. policymakers viewed China as a strategic partner working to construct a positive working relationship based on common strategic and economic interests. The incoming Bush administration viewed this approach with deep skepticism seeing China as a strategic competitor, a possible challenger to U.S. power and its position in the region and perhaps globally. Buttressed by the views of neoconservatives who advocate the use of U.S. power to maintain its position of hegemony, administration officials argued for the need to contain China from reaching a level on par with the United States. While the United States and China see their common interests in maintaining peace and expanding economic ties, relations have often been strained. In 1999, NATO planes accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, an act many Chinese viewed as deliberate punishment for China’s opposition to NATO actions in Serbia. In 2001, the confrontation resulting from the collision of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter pushed the relationship to its lowest point since China conducted missile tests near Taiwan in 1996. In the wake of September 11, U.S.-China relations improved as Beijing has been a helpful partner in Washington’s war on terror, due in part to its own problems with separatist movements in Western China. There has also been increasing U.S.-Chinese cooperation in settling the North Korean nuclear confrontation. At several points, China has exerted significant pressure on North Korean leaders in an effort to bring them back to the Six-Party Talks. In 2003, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan maintained,

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“China has been helpful. China has made it clear that they don’t want to see a nuclearized peninsula. I don’t think anyone in the region wants to see a nuclearized peninsula, so this is something that we’re in close discussions with our friends and allies on.”29 On July 5, 2006, North Korea conducted seven missile tests consisting of six short-range SCUD and Nodong missiles and one long-range Taepodong 2 missile. China has long provided economic support and diplomatic cover for the DPRK regime including opposition to U.S.-sponsored UN resolutions that threaten economic sanctions. China also joined South Korea in condemning a Japanese trial balloon for a preemptive military strike on the North’s missile-launching facilities. For China, the potential collapse of North Korea and the likely flood of refugees is a far more dangerous threat than the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program. However this time, China issued public warnings to North Korea not to test the missiles, and President Hu Jintao called on Pyongyang to return to the Six-Party Talks, a rare public expression of concern. In an indication of shifting Chinese policy following the missile tests, Beijing froze North Korean accounts in the Bank of China in Macao and supported a measure for North Korean refugees to more easily obtain asylum in the United States. Beijing also voted for UN Security Council Resolution 1695 condemning North Korean actions and imposing sanctions on parts and technology for ballistic missiles and nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.30 In response to these actions, particularly the vote at the United Nations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted, We have a good relationship with China. We don’t agree about everything. That’s not surprising, given how complex and big the relationship is. We want China to be strong and confident in international politics and to be able to act responsibly on behalf of international security in the way, for instance, that China did in helping us to get a resolution on North Korea.31 North Korea stirred the pot again on October 9, 2006, announcing its first test of a nuclear weapon, something most assumed the DPRK already had. Later evidence confirmed the North had indeed exploded a nuclear device but one that produced a smaller blast than expected. Both Washington and Beijing expressed indignation at Pyongyang’s actions calling for an immediate halt to testing and a return to the Six-Party Talks. Chinese leaders had been particularly outspoken in their warnings to the North so that the test was an embarrassing rebuke of Beijing. Soon after, the United States pushed for the UN Security Council to impose tough, punitive sanctions. Despite Beijing’s outrage, Chinese leaders did not support the initial U.S. proposal of harsh economic sanctions. For China, sanctions needed to signal the international community’s indignation but also be consistent with the chief goal of bringing the DPRK back to the bargaining table. Chinese leaders

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maintained sanctions should not be an end in themselves and should lead to a diplomatic solution.32 After several days of negotiations, China joined other UN Security Council members in unanimous passage of UN Resolution 1718 that banned the sales to and from North Korea of any weapons-related materials and technology, including items related to conventional, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The resolution also called for freezing funds related to the DPRK’s weapons programs, restricting travel of DPRK personnel involved in its weapons programs, prohibiting the importation of luxury goods, and authorizing member states to inspect cargo entering and leaving the DPRK.33 Resolution 1718 was an important compromise and indication of China’s willingness to impose tougher sanctions than it had in the past. During her trip to Asia to encourage enforcement of the resolution, Secretary Rice praised China’s support and noted, “it is an extraordinary thing for China to be now where it is.”34 However, a senior administration official was skeptical of China’s willingness to cooperate indicating “they had no choice but to support the resolution that the U.S. and others put forward.”35 Questions also remain concerning China’s willingness to aggressively enforce the measures. Beijing expressed particular reluctance to stop and search cargo entering and leaving North Korea, despite U.S. efforts to push for vigorous enforcement of the inspection provisions. China’s role here is crucial as it is the North’s largest trading partner accounting for 40 percent of its foreign trade, an amount that more than doubled from $490 million in 1995 to $1.1 billion in 2005.36 In addition, China provides 80 to 90 percent of North Korea’s imported oil at prices that are well below the market price.37 On a few occasions, China has turned the pipeline off to demonstrate its leverage to leaders in Pyongyang. China reaffirmed its support for the sanctions with a spokesman from the Chinese foreign ministry maintaining “each country has a duty to strictly and responsibly implement [the UN resolution] and China is no exception.”38 Yet, the evidence to date is mixed regarding its willingness to inspect cargo entering and leaving the DPRK. However, there are clearly limits to how far China is willing to go to impose sanctions, an important point of disagreement between Beijing and Washington. China is capable of applying more economic pressure on North Korea but chooses not to exercise that leverage. Should North Korea conduct further nuclear tests, it is possible China may be more willing to punish Pyongyang but that remains to be seen. With the conclusion of the February 2007 agreement with North Korea, U.S. and Chinese efforts now turn to implementing this agreement that appears again to have the DPRK on the road to dismantling its nuclear weapons program. However, difficult issues remain and many details will need to be worked out. U.S.-China relations may again be tested over this issue. Despite these common interests, there is considerable debate in the United States concerning China’s future as a “strategic partner” or “strategic

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competitor.”39 In the Nuclear Posture Review, submitted to the U.S. Congress on December 31, 2001, and subsequently leaked to the press, it noted, “Due to the combination of China’s still developing strategic objectives and its ongoing modernization of its nuclear and non nuclear forces, China is a country that could be involved in an immediate or potential contingency.”40 Later, in the Bush administration’s 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) document, it stated, “We welcome the emergence of a strong, peaceful, and prosperous China.” However, “in pursuing advanced military capabilities that can threaten its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region, China is following an outdated path that, in the end, will hamper its own pursuit of national greatness.”41 Four years later, the 2006 NSS noted, “China’s leaders proclaim that they have made a decision to walk the transformative path of peaceful development. If China keeps this commitment, the United States will welcome the emergence of a China that is peaceful and prosperous and that cooperates with us to address common challenges and mutual interests.”42 The document continues by cautioning China on the “old ways” such as military modernization without greater transparency, mercantilist trade practices, and support for nefarious regimes to obtain access to important resources.43 U.S.-China relations have also been strained over trade issues, including greater access to Chinese markets and Beijing’s insistence on maintaining a fixed exchange rate for its currency. One of the specific concerns regarding future Chinese power is the effort to modernize its military forces with percentage increases in double digits for the past ten to fifteen years. In the Pentagon’s Annual Report to Congress in 2006, the authors noted, “key aspects of China’s military modernization goals and plans are not transparent.” The report goes on to state that in addition to expanding its capabilities to deal with Taiwan, “evidence also suggests that China is developing capabilities that will enable it to project power beyond Taiwan. As China’s capabilities grow, its leaders could consider using force or threats to achieve their strategic objectives.”44 While many point to these consistent spending increases as signs of a growing Chinese military threat, others maintain the numbers are deceiving. According to Ivan Eland, the Chinese must spend much of their increases in official defense funding to prop up their sagging, oversized force and slowly convert it to a force that can project power, to meet escalating payroll requirements to compete with the thriving Chinese private sector, and to compensate the military for “off-the-books” revenues lost when the Chinese political leadership ordered the armed forces to stop running commercial businesses.45 As a result, Chinese defense spending is equivalent to far less due to the cost of bringing its defense forces to modern levels. Moreover, others maintain

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China is unlikely to use its military for imperialist adventures in the region. As one scholar noted, “China’s military force will also be modernized as its economy grows, but China’s focus is domestic economic growth, not military expansion.”46 Chinese leaders assert they do not seek military conquest and instead are pursing a “peaceful rising” (heping jueqi) for development and industrialization. Some Chinese leaders have now adopted the phrase “peaceful development” to avoid the negative connotation of “rising.” According to one Chinese official, China will not follow the path of Germany leading up to World War I or those of Germany and Japan leading up to World War II, when these countries violently plundered resources and pursued hegemony. Neither will China follow the path of the great powers vying for global domination during the Cold War. Instead, China will transcend ideological differences to strive for peace, development, and cooperation with all countries of the world.47 Whether China will follow this “new path” is uncertain. While Chinese leaders may have indeed learned from the past and will be constrained by global economic realities, one can never be certain future leaders will see it that way.

Korean Security and Big Power Rivalry While North and South Korea are not directly involved in all of these issues, the growing rivalry between China and Japan along with questions concerning the future of U.S.-China relations create some dangerous possibilities for Korean security. Peace, stability, and prosperity on the peninsula and in the region are core national interests that could be at risk if the tension between these big powers continues to grow. South Korea may be uniquely situated to play an important role to encourage better relations in Northeast Asia. For North Korea, its ability to have an impact will be more limited and difficult to determine. Despite this potential, there will also be many issues that neither of the two Koreas will have much ability to influence. In February 2005, President Roh Moo-hyun delivered an address on the second anniversary of his inauguration where he spoke of South Korean armed forces being a “balancing factor in Northeast Asia.”48 The following month, he expanded on this concept at an address to Korean Air Force Academy graduates where he stated, Our armed forces are now intent on maintaining peace and prosperity not only on the Korean Peninsula but also in all of Northeast Asia. We will safeguard peace in the region as an important balancing factor in

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Northeast Asia. For this purpose, we will take the lead in building a cooperative security structure in the region and working together closely with other neighboring countries based on the Korea-U.S. alliance.49 Roh’s remarks were largely dismissed by many as presumptuous and soon became lost in the on-going crisis with North Korea. Many were highly skeptical at the thought of ROK military power balancing that of China, Japan, and the United States. In addition, many in the Bush Administration, already unhappy with ROK opposition to Washington’s North Korea policy and growing anti-Americanism in Korea, saw this as an effort to move away from the centrality of the U.S.-ROK alliance toward a closer relationship with China. South Korean economic, political, and military power has grown significantly in the last twenty years giving it important tools to advance its interests. In another speech in 2005, Roh remarked that “the power equation in Northeast Asia will change depending on the choices we make.”50 This is certainly an overstatement of ROK power, and Seoul will not be able to play a traditional, geostrategic role of balancer. Indeed, this may not have been Roh’s intention. However, South Korea may, in fact, be well suited to act as a mediator. While English translations of these speeches have focused on “balancing,” the word Roh used in his statements may have been intended to convey more the notion of a mediator or diplomatic balancer to help states see common interests and resolve conflicts. In the end, Roh was not that far from the mark with the idea of a mediator. However, the policy may have been better served had it been a more quiet initiative than a public pronouncement. Working toward the goal of being a mediator in regional disputes can be an important approach to further South Korean interests but proclaiming that role publicly generated ridicule and overshadowed the potential benefit of the policy. However, in the end, this effort may still be an important tool in serving South Korea’s long-term security interests of maintaining peace and stability in the region. South Korea is, in fact, in a very advantageous position to accomplish the role of mediator. While China, Japan, and the United States may have the power to dominate the region sometime in the future, it is unlikely South Korea will become sufficiently strong to challenge for that spot. In addition, South Korea has never attacked one of its neighbors nor given an indication it intended to do so. Thus, South Korea can be seen as a legitimate mediator by the other three without being a competitor. As part of this approach, there are several specific issues for South Korea to address. First, the most dangerous force at work in the region is nationalism. The entire region, with the exception of North Korea, is one of rising economic and political clout, accompanied by increased pride in what has been accomplished in the past twenty to thirty years. Disputes between states take on greater importance and have an increased likelihood of escalating to

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armed conflict when stoked by nationalism. One of the first and most difficult tasks is to diffuse the negative side of nationalism and promote greater regional cooperation, security transparency, and a regional security forum. The difficulty here is that South Korea has several of its own serious disputes with these regional players, particularly Japan. In addition, the U.S. alliance is currently strained over policy differences relating to North Korea. Despite its increased trade ties with China, South Korea has some of the same long-term concerns about China’s future as do others in the region. In 2004, South Korea and China had their own controversy over history when China’s foreign ministry removed mention of Koguryo from its Web site section on Korean history. Koguryo is the northernmost of three ancient kingdoms that Koreans recognize to have unified in 668 ce to form their homeland. Though the dispute has died down, some South Koreans fear China is attempting to build a case to claim this territory sometime in the future. The Chinese government has also made other references to this region having been under its administrative control in the past. An important dimension of this task, but one that will be difficult, is restraining the level of anti-Japanese sentiment in the region. As noted earlier, South Korea has some important concerns in its relationship with Japan including the legacy of Japanese occupation, the Yasukuni shrine visits, and the dispute over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands. In a response to Japanese efforts to acquire a Security Council seat, South Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kim Sam-hoon argued that “a country that does not have the trust of its neighboring countries because of its lack of reflection on the past” should not play the “role of a world leader.”51 While these are important issues that need continued dialogue, fanning the flames of antiJapanese sentiment in the region can only make matters worse. As a result, according to one analyst, there is a danger that, down the road, Japan could find itself increasingly isolated diplomatically from other countries in the region. Coupled with the security challenges that Tokyo faces, such a situation could drive Japan toward counterproductive unilateralism or an overly militarized variant of the U.S.-Japanese alliance. Either outcome would greatly intensify regional tensions.52 Creating forums to address these issues, similar to ROK-Japan efforts to discuss some of the textbook issues, would be a better model to follow. Second, the U.S.-ROK alliance is going through some difficult times, particularly as they disagree over the best approach to resolving the North Korea nuclear weapons and ballistic missile problems. The two have reached an important juncture in their relationship, as they have at several times in the past.53 There are important changes on the horizon for the U.S.ROK alliance including U.S. troop reductions and relocations along with

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the transfer of wartime operational control of ROK troops that reflect more of a partnership than a patron-client relationship.54 This presents a challenging dimension to South Korea’s potential role as a mediator and will require a great deal of finesse. While maintaining its alliance with the United States, South Korea will need to nudge future U.S. administrations away from choosing sides too decidedly between China and Japan. Certainly, the United States will continue its alliance with Japan as a cornerstone of its security policy in the region. Yet, the more Seoul can encourage the United States to engage China in a way that promotes a cooperative relationship among all, the less likely regional animosities will escalate. Crucial to this goal is quietly playing the role of mediator between China, Japan, and the United States without undermining U.S. alliances with South Korea and Japan. Relations between these countries must not become an “either or” proposition between allies and adversaries. The United States has important interests at stake here; conflict in the region can severely damage these interests as well. Having South Korea do some important groundwork will help maintain peace and stability without weakening its alliance with the United States. In fact, these diplomatic efforts may be important initial attempts in crafting a broader multilateral security framework in the region. For North Korea, its ability to influence the future of Sino-U.S. and SinoJapanese relations is more constrained. Pyongyang’s economic ties with these three is relatively small and actually flows in a direction that makes its economy more vulnerable, particularly given the help it receives from international food aid, Chinese food and energy assistance, and remittances from Japan. In the past, North Korea has been a master at manipulating the nuclear crisis for leverage and possible concessions. However, increasingly, this appears to be a path that will provide few tangible benefits unless North Korea actually demonstrates a willingness to give up its efforts to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Until this occurs, relations with Japan and the United States will remain poor, particularly if North Korea continues provocative actions such as the October 2006 nuclear test explosion and the July 2006 missile tests. Moreover, these tests are serious blows to Sino-DPRK relations. Despite China’s warnings and its support for the Kim Jong-il regime, the North’s nuclear weapons and missile tests demonstrated its defiance in the face of significant international pressure. While China has been an important supporter of North Korea, these actions will force China farther toward the more hard-line position of the United States and Japan. The February 2007 agreement from the Six-Party Talks hold out some hope that eventually, the nuclear issue will subside however, much remains to be done. Concerning Japan, there is the added obstacle of settling the kidnapping issue. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, North Korean operatives kidnapped thirteen Japanese citizens and took them to North Korea, presumably to provide language training for DPRK agents. In 2002, North Korea finally

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admitted to these actions and later, attempted to account for most of the missing Japanese and their children. However, questions still remain on the fate of possibly twenty to thirty others and Japan has indicated it will not be satisfied until a full accounting is made of these individuals. Prime Minister Abe, who was Japan’s lead negotiator in the abduction talks with North Korea, has indicted he will take an even tougher approach on this issue, as he has in imposing tough economic sanctions on the DPRK in the wake of the nuclear tests. The February 2007 agreement contains a provision for a working group to address this issue. Though China has the closest relationship with North Korea, it remains frustrated and perplexed by Pyongyang’s behavior. Despite numerous efforts to coax North Korea to an agreement on its nuclear weapons program, Beijing has been unsuccessful. Following the weapons tests, China voted for UN Security Council resolutions condemning North Korea, and imposing limited sanctions, much to the anger of Pyongyang. China’s leaders are hopeful that the new agreement will be the starting point for resolving the nuclear dispute. Yet, so long as the Kim Jong-il regime remains in power and the nuclear dilemma remains unresolved, North Korea will have few economic, political, or military levers to have any significant and positive impact on big-power relations in East Asia.

Conclusion In fifty to a hundred years, the world will be able to judge the many predictions made about the future of East Asian security. Will China’s rise to power be one that does not include an aggressive foreign policy? Will Japan continue its efforts to become a “normal” country while not posing a threat to others in the region? Will the United States remain the dominant global power and engaged in East Asia? These are crucial questions, the answers to which will shape the region in dramatic ways. Moreover, the answers to these questions will not come in isolation from each other as the consequences of one answer, China’s future as a regional and global power for example, will have an impact on the decisions and behaviors of the others. North and South Korea will have a limited ability to influence the outcomes of these questions and will not be able to control the conflict between the big power rivals in East Asia. However, North and South Korea are not powerless and have some ability to shape the future of these rivalries. Moreover, to do nothing or even worse, join the fray and exacerbate the conflict could be far worse. Should reunification occur in the next fifty years, the situation will change dramatically as a united Korea will have greater leverage in the long-term but will likely be preoccupied with domestic adjustment issues in the short-term. At the moment, while North Korea is more limited in its options, consistent and timely ROK efforts as a mediator to promote

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dialogue, transparency, and cooperation can have an important impact on the long-term peace and stability of the region.

Notes 1. The views expressed here are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. 2. CIA, The World Factbook, 2006, http://www.cia.gov, accessed July 18, 2006. 3. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Overview of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to China, June 2005, http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/region/ e asia/china/index.html, accessed July 19, 2006. 4. Denny Roy, “Stirring Samurai, Disapproving Dragon: Japan’s Growing Security Activity and Sino-Japan Relations,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 31(2) (Summer 2004): 93. 5. Ibid., 94. 6. Norimitsu Onishi, “China Leader Pledges Amity, but Warns Japan,” New York Times, April 13, 2007, A7. 7. Michael Collins, “Riots and Remembrance: Rising Tensions between China and Japan,” Contemporary Review 286, no. 1673 (June 2005): 336–337. 8. For a detailed discussion of security and identity in the region, see Shale Horowitz and Uk Heo, eds., Identity and Change in East Asian Conflict: ChinaTaiwan and the Koreas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 9. Kent E. Calder, “China and Japan’s Simmering Rivalry,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 2 (March/April 2006): 139. 10. Richard Halloran, “China War of U.S. Friendship With Japan,” Honolulu Advertiser, September 10, 2006, http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com, accessed June 17, 2007. 11. “Japan Should Reexamine Its Nuclear Weapons Ban, Ruling Party Official Says,” Washington Post, October 16, 2006, A15. 12. Glenn Kessler, “Japan, Acting to Calm U.S. Worries, Rules out Building Nuclear Arms,” Washington Post, October 19, 2006, A24. 13. Ibid. 14. Roy, “Stirring Samurai,” 100. 15. Collins, “Riots and Remembrance,” 334. 16. Calder, “China and Japan’s Simmering Rivalry,” 130. 17. Joseph Kahn, “China is Pushing and Scripting Anti-Japanese Protests,” New York Times, April 15, 2005, A1. 18. Ibid. 19. Norimitsu Onishi, “Tokyo Protests Anti-Japan Rallies in China,” New York Times, April 11, 2005, A8. 20. Joseph Kahn, “No Apology From China for Japan Protests,” New York Times, April 18, 2005, A6. 21. Joseph Kahn, “China is Pushing and Scripting Anti-Japanese Protests,” New York Times, April 15, 2005, A1. 22. Ibid.

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23. “Japan PM Apologizes for the War,” CNN, April 22, 2005, http:// www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/04/22/china.japan.koizumi/index.html, accessed July 20, 2006. 24. Roy, “Stirring Samurai,” 96. 25. Kyodo News Agency, “Koizumi Stresses Int’l Friendship on 61st Anniversary of WWII End,” as quoted in Northeast Asia Peace and Security Network Daily Report, August 15, 2006, http://www.nautilus.org. 26. Norimitsu Onishi, “China Leader Pledges Amity, but Warns Japan,” New York Times, April 13, 2007, A7. 27. U.S. Department of State, “Joint Statement of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee,” February 19, 2005, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/ 42490.htm, accessed July 14, 2006. 28. BBC News, “Text of China’s Anti-Secession Law,” March 14, 2005, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/4347555.stm, accessed July 14, 2006. 29. Scott McClellan, “Press Briefing on North Korean Report of Fuel Rod Reprocessing Concerns,” July 15, 2003, http://www.usinfo.state.gov, accessed August 23, 2005. 30. Mrinal Menon, “China Walks Tightrope on N. Korea,” Taipei Times, August 9, 2006, 8. 31. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “Roundtable with Asia Print Journalists,” July 21, 2006, http://seoul.usembassy.gov/dprk20060724.html, accessed August 7, 2006. 32. UN Security Council, “Security Council Condemns Nuclear Test by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” October 14, 2006, http://www.un.org/News/ Press/docs/2006/sc8853.doc.htm, accessed October 17, 2006. 33. Ibid. 34. Gordon Fairclough and Neil King Jr., “Behind China’s Stance on North Korea,” Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2006, 6. 35. Ibid. 36. Jim Yardley, “Sanctions Don’t Dent North Korea-China Trade,” New York Times, October 27, 2006, A1. 37. Joseph Kahn, “China May Press North Koreans,” New York Times, October 20, 2006, A1. 38. Fairclough and King Jr., “Behind China’s Stance on North Korea,” 6. 39. For some of this debate, see David M. Lampton, Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989–2000, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001; Robert L. Suettinger, Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S.-China Relations, 1989–2000, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003; Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America, Washington, DC: Regenery Publishing, 2001; Warren I. Cohen, America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000; Zihqun Zhu, U.S.-China Relations in the 21st Century: Power Transition and Peace, New York: Routledge, 2006; and Ezra Vogel, ed., Living with China: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century, New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. 40. Nuclear Posture Review, December 31, 2002, 16–17, http://www. globalsecurity.org, accessed July 17, 2006.

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41. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 27, 2002, 27, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ncs.nss.html, accessed July 7, 2006. 42. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, March 16, 2006, 41, http://www.white.gov/ncs/nss/2006/ accessed May 15, 2006. 43. Ibid., 41–42. 44. U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: The Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, 2006, 7 http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ library/report/2006/2006-prc-military-power.htm, accessed June 30, 2006. 45. Ivan Eland, “Is Chinese Military Modernization a Threat to the United States?” Policy Analysis, no. 465 (January 23, 2003): 6. 46. Enbao Wang, “Engagement or Containment? Americans’ Views on China and Sino-US relations,” Journal of Contemporary China 11, no. 31 (May 2002): 385. 47. Zheng Bijian, “China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ to Great-Power Status,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5 (September/October 2005): 22. 48. Roh Moo-hyun, “Address on State Affairs Marking the Second Anniversary of His Inauguration,” February 25, 2005, http://english.president.go.kr accessed July 25, 2006. 49. Roh Moo-hyun, “Address at the 53rd Commencement and Commissioning Ceremony of the Korea Air Force Academy,” March 8, 2005, http://english. president.go.kr, accessed July 25, 2006. 50. Roh Moo-hyun, “Address at the 40th Commencement and Commissioning Ceremony of the Korea Third Military Academy,” March 22, 2005, http://english. president.go.kr, accessed July 25, 2006. 51. Norimitsu Onishi, “Tokyo Protests Anti-Japan Rallies in China,” New York Times, April 11, 2005, A8. 52. Calder, “China and Japan’s Simmering Rivalry,” 135. 53. For more detailed discussions of the U.S.-ROK alliance, see Terence Roehrig, From Deterrence to Engagement: The U.S. Defense Commitment to South Korea, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006; William T. Pendley, “The Korea-U.S. Alliance: A Problem Future,” in Korea: The East Asian Pivot, Jonathan D. Pollack, ed., Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2004; Ralph A. Cossa and Alan Oxley, “The U.S.-Korea Alliance,” in America’s Asian Alliances, Robert D. Blackwill and Paul Dibb eds., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000; Victor D. Cha, “Shaping Change and Cultivating Ideas in the U.S.-ROK Alliance,” and Donald P. Gregg, “The United States and South Korea: An Alliance Adrift,” both in The Future of America’s Alliance in Northeast Asia, Michael H. Armacost and Daniel I. Okimoto, eds., Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004. 54. For a more detailed discussion of these changes, see Terence Roehrig, “Restructuring the U.S. Military Presence in Korea: Implications for Korean Security and the U.S.-ROK Alliance,” Korea Economic Institute Academic Paper Series 2, no. 1 (January 2007), http://www.keia.org/2-Publications/Roehrig.pdf.

Chapter 7

Internal Dynamics of Chinese Nationalism and Northeast Asian Regional Order Jungmin Seo When the Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Northeastern Project (Dongbei Gongcheng) that reinterprets history of Koguryo and Parhae, two ancient Korean states located in Manchuria, as parts of Chinese history was reported in Korea in 2004, the public reaction in Korea was much more than public symposiums, op-ed columns in newspapers, and on-line debates that denounce Chinese “imperialistic” intention over history. “Chumong,” a historical drama aired by Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation throughout 2006, was the most popular TV drama in Korea with average rating over 35 percent. The protagonist of the drama was Chumong, the founder of “Koguryo,” an ancient state that ruled the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast China. Not surprisingly, the main theme of the drama is Chumong’s “anticolonial” struggle against Chinese (Han) imperialism in Northeastern Asian in the first century bc. Though slightly less popular than Chumong, another historical drama, “Yon’gaesomun” by Seoul Broadcasting System also shows Koguryo’s struggle against encroaching Chinese imperial power (Tang) in the seventh century. The fever of historical drama is currently being inherited to another drama, titled “Taejoyong” by Korean Broadcasting System. Started in September 2006, the drama attracted its viewers with in-detail descriptions on how Parhae, an ancient state inherited Koguryo’s territory, was able to repel Chinese (Tang) imperialism in the eighth century, and to regain the lost territory of Manchuria and the

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northern half of the Korean peninsula. Considering the fact that the bestwatched historical TV drama in Korea in 2004 and 2005 was “Immortal Admiral Lee Sun-Sin,” which depicts the heroic life of General Lee, who defeated Japanese invasion in the sixteenth century, the sudden rise of interest and rememorization of ancient northern territory and past Chinese invasions in Korean popular culture indicates that deep-rooted anger and fear against Japanese colonialism is partially replaced by the Korean public’s suspicion on the rising nationalistic and somewhat expansionistic popular/political discourses in China. Is the Korean public’s concern or fear about the rising Chinese nationalism well-grounded? Or, is it a hysteric expression of defensive nationalism in Korean society? My answer is cautiously leaned toward “Yes” to the first question, while not ruling out the deeply embedded nationalistic/anti-China sentiments in Korea as a facilitating factor. With over three million visitors to China every year and more than half-million long-term residents in Chinese cities, the South Korean public may have a much better understanding of everyday discourse of Chinese nationalism than their Western counterparts do. Indeed, there is no shortage of ordinary Koreans’ reports on uncomfortable dialogues with Chinese citizens, “distorted” ancient histories in Chinese museums, and “problematic” Chinese history textbooks in Korean cyberspace and popular publications. At the same time, the new young generation’s political consciousness that was anointed by anticolonial discourses during the 1980s democratization period may have facilitated the discomfort and suspicion against the Chinese attempts to reconstruct her past with more nationalistic tones. Nationalism has become one of the most important concepts to explain East Asian interregional relations. Without comprehending the nature of nationalism in this region, it is almost impossible to analyze territorial disputes over Tokto/Takeshima and Diaoyu/Senkaku, the heated controversies over new Japanese textbooks, vehement opposition of the Chinese and Koreans against Japan’s desire for a seat in the United Nation Security Council, or Korean and Chinese anger over the repeated visits of Japanese leaders to the Yasukuni shrine. Though nationalism is a region-wide phenomenon, this chapter addresses the internal dynamics of Chinese nationalism that became highly conspicuous since the mid-1990s and its implications to the security environment of the Korean Peninsula. The complex features of Chinese neonationalism observed in this chapter clearly show that the rise and popularization of nationalistic discourses in Chinese society cannot be explained by Chinese Communist Party propaganda or direct mass responses as usually argued by the Western media. Instead, I argue that the expanding Chinese social/cultural spaces under comprehensive market and intellectual reforms are the nourishing ground of Chinese neonationalism. In other words, not the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department but street Internet cafes, quasi-independent academic, commercial magazines, and popular

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music channels are the production sites of Chinese neonationalism. This study describes the emerging societal/commercial nationalism focusing on three distinct features: spontaneity, interactivity, and commercialization. Finally, I conjecture that, in the long term, Chinese neo-nationalism might be a potential threat to the Northeast Asian regional order and perhaps the stability of the Korean peninsula, not because it is aggressive toward foreign countries but because it may disturb the domestic stability of China.

Scenes of Chinese Nationalism Since the Mid-1990s When thousands of Chinese students gathered in front of the American Embassy in Beijing to protest against the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, the depth and intensity of anti-Americanism in urban China was vividly presented to the Western audience. A majority of Chinese intellectuals and students refused to accept the American explanation that blamed outdated maps for the bombing “mistake” and vehemently accused the American government of brutality and arrogance. Even then, the issue of the accuracy and honesty of the American explanation was basically irrelevant to them. Xiong Lei, one of the authors of Behind the Scenes of Demonizing China, a bestseller published in 1996, said that “it is not important whether it is a mistake or not. If it was intentional, they should be criticized for the brutality. If it was a mistake, they should be accused of arrogance. Why were they not aware of the location of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade? Are they treating British and French Embassies in the same manner?”1 Xiong Lei’s poignant criticism on the problem of the American attitude toward China discredits the American media’s depiction of the massive protest in front the American Embassy in Beijing as the result of extensive propaganda by the Chinese government.2 Rather than seeing the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy as the cause of the anti-Americanism, it is important to contextualize the anti-American protest in 1999 within the broader social trend of nationalization throughout the 1990s. For China watchers, the most conspicuous signals of the popularity of nationalistic discourses in China prior to the 1999 protest are the spectacular sales of nationalistic books and magazines. In the summer of 1996, an anti-American book entitled Zhongguo keyi shuo bu (China Can Say No) written by a group of young intellectuals sold more than two million copies. In the same year, Zai yaomohua Zhongguo de beihou (Behind the Scene of Demonizing China) also became a quick bestseller. The former deals with several issues such as Tibet, the Taiwan Straits, human rights, and the failure of China’s bid for the 2000 Olympics, but concludes with a single thesis: America as a single evil power orchestrates all the pressures and threats against China. The latter, written by eight Chinese scholars and journalists who mostly studied in America, argues that the American media is deliberately distorting, or demonizing, the image of China. Inspired by the huge success of these books, several other books and special issues

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of magazines that try to contend with the more radical version of antiAmericanism that quickly appeared on the market.3 Though the government tried to curb the excessive mood of chauvinism by banning a few of them, the publications of “Say No” items soon became steady sellers in the Chinese book market. As some China watchers argue, those nationalistic discourses can be understood as a direct result of the deteriorating relationship between the United States and China. Nevertheless, nationalistic discourses in China are much broader than the monolithic anti-Americanism found in countries in Europe or the Middle East. Anti-Japanese sentiment, perhaps in a much more fundamental way, is also a popular theme in the cultural market. In 1997, right after the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands incident, books like Xuezha (Blood Debt) and Weishenme Riben burenzhang (Why Japan Won’t Settle Accounts) immediately appeared on the book market in 1997. Also, inspired by the sixtieth anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, the translation of Iris Chang’s Rape of Nanking quickly became a bestseller. The boom of antiJapanese discourses in the 1990s indicates that neo-nationalism in China is deeply based on a new historical sensitivity emerged during the reform period.

“Government Manipulation” or “Direct Response”? The most well known approach in the United States is the “government manipulation” perspective. A few scholars and China specialists in the U.S. government or media suggest that Chinese nationalism is the CCP’s attempt to fill the ideological vacuum in the era of reform.4 According to this account, with the crisis of communist ideology as an effect of economic reforms, the CCP picked up nationalism as an alternative ideological tool to legitimize its rule. As formulated by Thomas Christensen, a leading U.S.-China relations’ specialist, “Since the Chinese Communist Party is no longer communist, it must be even more Chinese.”5 This interpretation is in some regards persuasive. As many East European watchers agree, the fundamental reason why the 1989 revolutions happened in Eastern Europe was the decaying moral base of communism, which unleashed the social power that eventually resulted in the collapse of the regime.6 Actually, some important studies have shown that ideological control of society has been the critical task of the Chinese state or even an issue of life and death of the Party.7 Taking a lesson from the experiences in Eastern Europe, Chinese rulers in the reform era have sought to prevent a similar catastrophic failure by manipulating the ideological atmosphere of unstable Chinese society. Nevertheless, this account of recent Chinese nationalism has a serious flaw. Scholars fail to explain the gap between the motivations of the state (government) and genuine popular sentiment. It may be correct to say that the Chinese state wanted to implant popular nationalistic sentiment in the populace. Nevertheless, to explain the relationship between the

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government’s intention/motivation and the populace’s nationalistic sentiments, we have to examine how the government successfully imposed the desired ideology upon the general population. Since some of a state’s ideological projects succeed and some fail and many result in “unexpected consequences,” when we observe a coincidence between the Chinese state’s intention and popular sentiments we must concentrate more on why and how the coincidence happened than on the coincidence itself. Hence, what those China-watchers offer to us is not explanation but observation based on a persistent stereotypic image of Chinese polity—a fundamental dichotomy between the democratic/pro-Western populace and the despotic Chinese Party/state, or more succinctly “Big Bad China and the Good Chinese.”8 Recognizing the “genuineness” of nationalistic sentiments among the Chinese populace, some scholars have suggested an alternative view of this issue. They see nationalistic discourses in contemporary China as a spontaneous public reaction to a series of international events, not government propaganda.9 Emphasizing the historical sense of “humiliation” at the hands of the West, they argue that “the loss of face” in a series of international issues, such as the failure of the bid for the 2000 Olympic Games, the international accusations of Chinese human rights violations, or the issues of Tibet and Taiwan’s national sovereignty, directly threaten the popular perception of China’s dignity in the international community. Nevertheless, this approach is no less problematic than the government manipulation perspective. Whereas the latter ignores the complex relationships between the state’s motivation and popular sentiment, the former overlooks the complex relationship between international politics and popular sentiment. Simply put, the direct response approach obliterates the issue of how the populace perceives and constructs the reality of international relations. Unsatisfied by the two approaches above, I propose to shift the focus from the agents of Chinese nationalism to the social contexts in which nationalistic discourse has emerged. By doing so, instead of a prolonged discussion on “who really produced nationalistic sentiments in China,” we can better understand the dynamics of Chinese nationalism by interpreting the social space in which nationalistic discourses are produced and disseminated. Eventually, we will be able to acquire a more accurate picture on how public/societal nationalism in China is gaining its power over the once omnipotent Chinese party/state that used to control the political consciousness of the Chinese populace.

Emerging Social Spaces and Internal Dynamics of Chinese Neo-Nationalism Recently, a well-known Chinese political scientist, Jia Qingguo, complained about the monolithic approach of American scholars to Chinese nationalism but noted an interesting comparison between American patriotism and

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Chinese nationalism: “Chinese nationalist feelings went through a drastic change before and after the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in May 1999. The contrast between American nationalism before and after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 is even more striking.”10 Just as we cannot simplify the American patriotism/nationalism through a reaction against a terrorist attack, Jia implies, we cannot understand the nature of Chinese nationalism without seeing its internal dynamics. In this section, I will analyze the rise of nationalistic discourses in three distinctive social spaces—the Internet, academia, and popular culture—and extract three dimensions of contemporary Chinese neo-nationalism. Of course, this is not the complete list of characteristics of Chinese nationalism but a few selected examples to illuminate the fluidity and complexity of nationalistic discourses in Chinese society.

Spontaneity: Sino-American Hacker War Chinese Internet users numbered over twenty million in 2000 and increased to over 110 million by mid-2005. Since most Internet users in China, like any other country, are the young and educated population, many Western observers have had a rosy expectation of a rising cyber-democratic movement and creation of a cyber territory for Chinese dissidents. As Daniel Lynch, a noted specialist on the Chinese Internet world observes, control of the Chinese cyber world has been almost impossible in spite of continuous efforts by the Chinese government to develop sophisticated techniques.11 Hence, if numerous netizens truly wish to establish a hub of anti-CCP activities in Chinese cyberspace similar to what already exists in many overseas Web sites, the Chinese government would not be able to shut down all those movements. In particular, the prevention of the influx of information from foreign countries into China via the Internet has been the most frustrating task for the CCP. The technique of using proxy servers to evade the government cyber-wall against foreign Web sites has been widely used and effective for most Chinese Internet users. Chinese netizens have even developed a freeware “Proxy Hunter” to search for proxy servers, which is very easy even for novices of the Internet.12 Considering the freedom that exists on the Internet, it is quite safe to assume that organized activities in Chinese cyberspace are inherently spontaneous. In that sense, the unprecedented hackers association that emerged right after the U.S. spy plane incident in April 2001 gives us a good chance to measure the degree of nationalism among Chinese Internet users. A virtual war between American and Chinese hackers occurred in late April and early May 2001.13 As soon as the news of the EP-3 spy plane incident spread to both sides of Pacific, skilled computer users in both countries began to attack government Web sites of the other country. On the Chinese side, a very unusual movement suddenly emerged in late April. Several

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top Internet security specialists initiated “the Chinese Red Hackers Association” (or Honker’s Union of China: HUC) and began to recruit rank and file Internet users. In less than three days, more than a thousand amateur hackers voluntarily joined the association. The top leaders quickly organized those volunteers in a military manner. Based on the Association Charter, all members were divided into several units based on differentiated functions, that is, departments of techniques, resources, organization, and sectors for geographic areas, while maintaining the Core Group that coordinated all subordinate units. Each unit was further stratified into three levels: novices were assigned specific tasks ordered by senior hackers; mid-level hackers transferred and taught the basic skills of hacking to novices; and the leaders made strategic decisions on attacks and used highly sophisticated skills that opened roads to rank and file soldiers.14 The HUC Web site posted daily battle reports regarding the casualties— Chinese Web sites that were destroyed by American hackers—and wins— American Web sites they successfully attacked. The Web sites of the White House, Pentagon, FBI, CIA, NASA, and the U.S. Congress were the main targets of the Chinese offensive and most of them indeed experienced serious damage for several days. Once Chinese hackers successfully broke the security wall of an American Web site, they left a screen stating “Long Live Great Chinese Nation!”; “The U.S. should take responsibility for the Spy Plane accident”; and “Protest against American exportation of weapons to Taiwan and destruction of the world peace.”15 The biggest offensive against American Web sites was performed on May Fourth, a historical day for many Chinese nationalists, when roughly 80,000 Chinese hackers participated in the single full-day campaign. The May Fourth offensive resulted in a three-hour shutdown of http://www.whitehouse.gov. On May 9, the Core Group announced a cease-fire, claiming the victory of the first hacker war between the United States and China. The New York Times named this spectacle in cyberspace as the first WWWWI (World Wide Web War I) (May 13, 2001) and The LA Times, “Hacktivism” (May 2, 2001). Articles referred to “the declaration of war (May 1),” “the main offensive day (May Fourth),” and the announcement of “a cease fire (May 9).” Almost all activities on the Chinese side were well coordinated, directed, and controlled, not by the government, but by senior hackers. In many ways, the Chinese hackers were triumphant against the American hackers.16 Whereas the much less-organized American hackers heavily used racist remarks and obscenity to contaminate the Chinese Web sites, such as “u suck Chinaman,” or other unprintable words, the Chinese attacks on American Web sites were well-disciplined military efforts with politically crafted slogans such as “beat down American imperialists.” For example, one of the key principles of HUC was “no destruction or deletion of data from private Web sites in America,” corresponding to the Red Army’s principle that “soldiers should not destroy civilians’ properties.”17 Such a

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principle ensured that “hacktivism” was a political movement, not unruly behavior of Internet users, while also promoting the self-esteem of the young Chinese generation. The spectacle of a hacker war in the cyber world shows an important aspect of Chinese nationalism—undeniable spontaneity. James Sasser, the United States Ambassador to China, readily acknowledged the spontaneous reactions of Chinese Internet users against the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in his interview with PBS: “What happened with the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the news started leaking in over the Internet before the official Chinese media could deal with it. The university students in Beijing were taking it off the Internet. Others were seeing it on Hong Kong Television. And the anger started boiling up and the Chinese government, simply rather than trying to encourage it, they just simply got out in front of the crowd before it ran over them.”18 The Ambassador’s observation shows the delicate relation between popular sentiments and the Chinese government’s reaction. The Chinese government was surprisingly defensive in the face of the rise of popular sentiments triggered by information not from the official media outlets, but from overseas information sources. The WWWWI was a very dismaying incident for Chinese authorities, since it was apparently illegal according to Chinese domestic law. In other words, the formation of the HUC itself might be regarded as an organized crime. Nevertheless, the authorities could issue an announcement only after the high tide of the U.S.-China hacking war had passed. On May 8, even after the HUC Web site indicated its interest in a cease-fire, the People’s Daily virtually pleaded for “Chinese hackers to channel their ‘patriotic fever’ into building a stronger China.”19 No subsequent punishments to the Chinese hackers were reported and the initiator and the top leaders of the HUC became the most sought-after figures of Chinese popular media as well as Internet security companies. If the Chinese authorities’ inability to control cyberspace suggests the possibility of a democratization of China, as the hackers’ war demonstrates, then democracy in cyberspace has been achieved in an ironic way. Independent organization emerged in cyberspace and information was spread freely, even against the authorities’ will. Surely, this type of democracy may not be the one Westerners expected. A close observation indicates that it is groundless to blame the nationalistic fever in Chinese cyberspace on the CCP’s “cyber-strategy” or “dot.communism.”20 The “hacktivism” or nationalism in Chinese Web sites indicates that the spontaneity of the nationalistic consciousness among Chinese youth is undeniable and firmly grounded in contemporary China. Further, spontaneity in the cyber world, as the Chinese government’s reactions show, is not necessarily benign in relation to the ideological work of the CCP. When Wang Xiaodong, a well-known nationalist writer in China, learned from the Internet (not from official Chinese newspapers) that the Chinese government had

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agreed to pay U.S. $2.87 million to the American government for damages inflicted on American diplomatic properties in China by the anti-NATO demonstrators, he became furious and said to a foreign interviewer that “I hope China can have more democracy so that the Xinhua news agency will not cut out these reports. It must tell us the truth. That is the first point. The second point is that if the Chinese government again makes this kind of concession to the United States, it should seek our agreement. We didn’t agree to this.”21 The discourses of nationalism and democracy perfectly submerged in Wang’s anger by dichotomizing Chinese people versus the CCP and the American imperialism.

Interaction: Academic Nationalism and Cultural Awareness In the academic world, the heated debates on nativist theory mark a deep conundrum regarding the autonomy of the Chinese intellectuals, not from the Chinese state, but from the West. The concept of nativist theory in China is about an attitude and a shared creed that created a certain mind-set, rather than a theory such as postcolonial studies.22 The debates were initiated by the introduction of Edward Said’s theory in 1993 by Chinese graduate students in American academic institutions.23 The efforts to find a particular Chinese form of knowledge initially started with skepticism of the universality of Western epistemology. Nevertheless, it quickly developed into a subtle amalgam of antimodern and anti-Western discourses and opened a road to fully rehabilitate the legitimacy of neo-Confucianism, not as philosophical antiquity, but as an applicable lens in which to see the world. In that sense, the acceptance of Said’s Orientalism in China did not result in the elimination of the dichotomy of East/West. Rather, Said was understood as a call for creating a native epistemology that can resist Western hegemonic discourses.24 The rehabilitation of traditionalism naturally led to a new type of selfreflection. For example, Lu Xun, the most revered writer in twentiethcentury China, became the target of young literary critics from the late 1990s.25 Lu Xun’s harsh and sometimes pessimistic attitude toward the “characteristics of Chinese people”(Zhongguoren de guominxing), presented in The True Story of Ah Q or Madman’s Diary, was denounced by the new critics for having adopted a Westerner’s viewpoint of the East. For nationalistic cultural critics, the prevailing self-reflection and self-criticism on the Chinese national characteristics in the early twentieth century was the result of Chinese intellectuals’ contamination by the messianic worldview imposed by Western imperialism. For young Chinese critics, Lu Xun was guilty of not resisting such cultural and epistemological encroachment26 and his literature was simply a product of the contemporary Chinese intellectuals’ fashion to bring everything from the West (nalai zhuyi).27

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In a similar context, young Chinese film critics harshly attacked Zhang Yimou, whose films, on the one hand, symbolize the power of Chinese culture by winning renowned international film awards, yet on the other hand, demonstrate the inferiority complex of the Chinese, who want to be recognized by Westerners by pleasing them.28 In other words, Zhang’s films primarily targeted a Western audience who wanted to see the backwardness and exoticism of China, while alienating a Chinese audience. A young critic titled his criticism of Zhang’s films Biele, 80 niandai (Bye, 1980s), and argued that denunciation of Zhang means Chinese youth’s escape from the fantasy of the Western world in the 1980s. Zhang’s international status, however, later produced an intriguing irony. His 1999 film, Not One Less, was welcomed by the Chinese government and audiences for warmly depicting Chinese humanism. Nevertheless, Western critics were deeply disappointed and attacked Zhang for surrendering to the CCP’s pressure to make a film that beautifies Chinese reality. Zhang boldly withdrew two of his latest movies from the Cannes Film Festival, complaining that “the West has for a long-time politicized Chinese film. If they are not anti-government, they are considered just pro-government propaganda.”29 Since Chinese popular perception is structured as a “love-hate” or “envyhate” dilemma,30 the construction of the American image in Chinese society cannot be described as a simple process of demonizing the other. For example, in a recent on-line survey on the most influential books in twentiethcentury China, China Can Say No took twenty-ninth place, while GRE Vocabulary Lists was in the twenty-eighth place.31 Historically, the most influential factor that has shaped Sino-U.S. mutual perception since 1949 has been the ideological considerations in both societies. Either through elite manipulation or popular aversion, the level of suspicion toward the other country was not necessarily determined by the Realpolitik of the two countries, but by the ideological necessity to create a potential threat toward each one’s security. Conversely, this domestic factor has long been a powerful constraint to smooth more calculated relations between the two countries.32 Nevertheless, as the U.S.-China hacker war in 2001 indicates, the domestic image of the other country is now not entirely determined by the necessity of high politics. Through satellite TV and the Internet, Chinese intellectuals and youth have a much better understanding of American society compared to their elders. In 1995, the Chinese media reported extensively the first Chinese “Supermodel” competition in Shanghai. Before and after the competition, the public and even some intellectuals participated in heated discussions on the criteria for choosing a Chinese supermodel, who was supposed to be the symbol of Chinese beauty in the international scene. The popular pressure put upon the judges well represents the conundrum of Chinese nationalism: a search for Chinese authenticity and American recognition at the same time. In other words, the chosen model should express “traditional oriental beauty” and,

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at the same time, should be well recognized by the American modeling market with a high-figure contract with a Hollywood or New York modeling agency.33 Ironically, these two demands for the best Chinese supermodel are not independent of each other. For many Chinese audiences, authenticity without recognition by others means the Chinese narcissism criticized in Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah Q; at the same time, international recognition without authenticity means “cultural sell-out,” the term coined by the nativists’ criticisms of Zhang Yimou’s films.34

Commercial Nationalism and Chinese Popular Culture Though most China watchers are emphasizing conspicuous nationalistic discourses such as China Can Say No, politically colored nationalism is only a segment of the much bigger nationalistic consciousness of everyday life in Chinese society. Particularly, the emergence of the cultural market in China provided a space for diverse expressions of underlying nationalistic consciousness among Chinese intellectuals and youth. The nationalistic discourses embedded in everyday Chinese life have been discussed by a few Western scholars.35 The flood of soap opera drama and paperback novels with nationalistic themes in the Chinese cultural market is a wellknown phenomenon. The popularity of “A Beijing Man in New York,” a TV series screened in 1993, startled many Westerners because of its sensational narrative—a Chinese low-life man makes a fortune and finally hires an expensive white prostitute in New York. Nostalgia in “alluring commercial packaging” became a fashionable consumer culture, based on the widespread misperception that nostalgia is the evidence of modernization.36 An example of a superhit pop song in 1996 shows very well how the intensive interaction between the commercial motivation of the cultural market and the state interest produces a kind of nationalistic discourse. Unlike other sectors of popular culture, the emergence of nonofficial popular music is deeply related to the nationalistic consciousness of mainland singers. When Cui Jian, a Chinese version of the Beatles and Bob Dylan combined, was marketed as the pop icon of Chinese popular music in the late 1980s, Westerners identified him and his colleagues of the Chinese rock world as rebels against the CCP’s domination of everyday lives. Nevertheless, a few specialists on Chinese pop culture analyzed the rise of Chinese rock music in the 1980s as a reaction to the flood of Hong Kong and Taiwan pop music from the beginning of the reform.37 Combining the rough and wild sounds of the northwest peasantry, Shaanxi in the case of Cui Jian, with the newly available rhythms of Western rock music, rebellious musicians tried to “reestablish a connection with China’s lost past and regain a sense of collective identity” vis-a-vis the feminine and soft sounds of southern China.38 ` If the nationalistic consciousness played an underlying and invisible role in creating Chinese rock’n’ roll in the 1980s, the emergence of nationalism

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in the Chinese CCTV and MTV in the middle of the 1990s shows the complex relationship between the marketization of the music industry and the state’s continuous control of popular culture. As the return of Hong Kong approached, dozens of popular singers released songs that contained the joy and mixed sentiments of the return of a long lost “son.” A super-hit song, “1997” reads, “I was forced to see you off one hundred years ago, and now I am expecting you to return. Ocean has been turned into cultivated land, but I am still missing you. Again and again I cry out for you, 1997.”39 The most interesting song that was successful in the market was “Great China” (da zhongguo) written and performed by Gao Feng, a former rock star. If its nationalistic theme and repeated broadcasts on CCTV prove the Chinese state’s endorsement of nationalism in pop music, the motivation of the singer shows a very different aspect of the rise of popular nationalism in China. Seeing no financial gain in the tiny rock music market in Beijing, the singer made a calculated effort to please the government and won both fame and economic success. As an ethnography of Chinese music suggests, “many official politicized songs today on the mainland are produced like Gao’s songs not because of the political/ideological conviction of their creators or any directive political pressure from the state but rather because the state needs new official songs and it rewards those who provide the need by promoting them and their music and making them rich and famous. . . . The musicians thus ‘exploit’ the state at least as much as the latter exploits them.”40 One of the most spectacular examples of commercialized nationalism in China, however, can be observed in the book market. The marketization of the Chinese book market not only produced thousands of tabloids and yellow publications but also politically controversial books. The taboo of political issues in the book market was first, though only partially, broken by the publication in 1994 of a book named, Looking at China through a Third Eye (henceforth Third Eye), one year after the deregulation of book pricing and the radical reduction of government subsidies to publishers.41 Instantly, the book became a bestseller, selling 1,500,000 copies in a few months, plus an unknown number of pirated copies. This book straightforwardly challenged and criticized the on-going economic reforms in China since 1978. Centered on the theme of the decline of state and Party authority in Chinese society, the book boldly supported Mao Zedong’s rural policy of collectivization and criticized the expanded role of Chinese intellectuals in political and economic decision-making. By harshly criticizing current political and economic policies for the first time in the book market, the book became an attractive commodity for readers who had never seen a politically controversial book before. The commercial success of this book radically changed the terrain of the Chinese book market. Chinese publishers and bookdealers learned that political arguments could be a bestseller as long as they carefully manage the potential

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political risks. In other words, the agencies in the publishing industry found a new lucrative market: a field called “Zhenglun” (political issues/arguments) that discusses the fate of state and nation.42 The publication of China Can Say No (Zhongguo keyi shuo bu) and its commercial success can be interpreted as another version of the success of Third Eye. Nevertheless, unlike Third Eye, which problematized the failing political and economic policies of China, China Can Say No was firmly grounded on newly gained self-confidence through the fast growing economy and China’s superpower status in international society. The production process of the book was very similar to Third Eye and relatively well known to the public, due to intensive domestic and international attention. A wellknown poet/writer and book dealer in Shanghai, Zhang Zangzang, who later produced several other bestsellers with similar themes, was the planner and promoter of the book. Like other bestsellers in China, the book was published through the “second channel,” meaning the involvement of book number trading and the alternative distribution channel. As the authors admitted, the book was written in a great hurry, only twenty days, to quickly respond to the intensifying Taiwan Strait Crisis in April 1996.43 Witnessing the increasing international tension on the Taiwan issue, he first contacted his former classmates, Song Qiang and Qiao Bian, and later recruited two other writers. Many Western observers see the nationalistic discourses of China Can Say No as the result of the growing confidence of China’s younger generation in the era of rapid economic development.44 Nevertheless, few reviews clarified the direction of political loyalty addressed in this book. Zhang Zangzang makes a demand of the Chinese government that it “accuse them (American media that distorted the situation in Chinese orphanages), following Lee Kwanyu’s method, since they so much damaged the Chinese spirit and gave psychological pain to the Chinese nation.”45 In this sentence, the Chinese nation is radically separated from the state, which should be an appropriate agent of the nation. Tang Zhengyu discusses the plight of Chinese Americans who suffer from racial stereotyping and wrongful accusation of being spies for the Chinese government. While introducing how the united response of Chinese Americans eventually prompted a full apology from CBS,46 he reasoned that “the unity of Chinese Americans was possible because of the growing power of China.”47 Hence, China’s development not only benefits the Chinese people but also ethnic Chinese, regardless of their citizenship, whose interests are represented as the nation not as a state. Qiao Bian’s discussion of China’s failure to host the Olympic Games also addresses this issue more clearly. The political decision on the rejection of the Chinese application means, for Qiao Bian, “the rejection of a Chinese nation with five thousand years of civilization.”48 The rejection of the Chinese application to host the Olympic Games, allegedly orchestrated by the United States, is seen as a deprivation of the Chinese nation’s right to welcome the festival

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of nations. Qiao’s discussion of the Olympics does not try to skirt the issues involved in the controversy of the Olympic Games in China, such as the Tiananmen Democratic Movement and human rights issues. In a subtle sense, problematizing these issues itself is “politicizing [the] Olympic Games”49 because that is the problem of the Chinese state not of the Chinese nation. The occupations of the authors indicate little connection to the government: a reporter in Chongqing Broadcasting State, freelancer/book dealer, poet/gardener, freelancer, and a reporter at Beijing Chinese Commercial Times (Zhonghua Shanggong Shibao). Many Western scholars assumed that the Chinese government was behind the publication of this book because of the favorable comments made by several Chinese high officials and official media outlets including People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency. Nevertheless, the official media and established intellectuals have been overwhelmingly critical of the success of China Can Say No and the book was even temporarily banned by the authorities for fear of causing troubles internationally.50 In particular, criticisms from established intellectuals imply the government’s mixed stance toward the nationalistic fever created by China Can Say No. Since 1997, Liu Ji, a vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Science, the most prominent research institute in China, and a well-known adviser to Jiang Zemin, has sponsored the publication of a series of books that gave Jiang a reformist image and harshly criticized the market phenomenon of nationalism.51 The anti-Americanism of China Can Say No was labeled as “the sentiment of Yiheduan,” or irresponsible xenophobia.52 A senior reporter at People’s Daily and professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS), Shen Jiru, also published a book warning that the anti-Japanese and anti-American sentiments in the marketplace could lead to the isolation of China by the international community.53 Hence, the official response to China Can Say No is highly ambiguous and complex. A few major newspapers endorsed the book as a genuine expression of the patriotism of Chinese youth and others criticized it as narrow-minded nationalism. In sum, the Chinese government did not have a coherent perspective on the sudden rise of the nationalistic discourse in the publishing market, triggered by the success of China Can Say No. The most vivid example of the potentially disturbing aspect of nationalistic discourses in the cultural market can be seen in the short review of China Can Say No written by a bestseller writer, Wang Xiaobo. While he is critical of the fever surrounding the book, he introduces a popular opinion about it: “People say this book (China Can Say No) raised the status of Chinese people (laobaixing) because they can directly speak to foreigners. . . . [People believe] if we look at our government’s diplomatic negotiations with foreign countries, our government seems to fear Westerners; if we look at the overseas reactions toward China Can Say No, it seems Westerners fear the Chinese people; because the government fears Westerners and Westerners fear

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the Chinese people, eventually the Chinese government fears the Chinese people.”54 The popular syllogism introduced here, though Wang Xiaobo does not approve it, implies the cause of the popularity of this book in the market. Whether myth or not, the attack on foreigners, allegedly a privileged class in the metropolitan cities in China, gives a sense of empowerment to Chinese readers as Wang suggests. The commercial success of Third Eye or China Can Say No publications clearly shows how the growing cultural market has impacted the mode of existence of new Chinese intellectuals. As Zhang Xudong observed, “a new generation of Chinese nationalists is emerging in and alongside a nascent Chinese public sphere; that sphere is the vast discursive space created by a thriving, omnipresent market and a retreating, decentralized state power.”55 Those nationalists or writers who frequently write on serious social issues or sensitive political themes have now gained the title of “minjian sixiangjia” (private/popular thinker),56 which is similar to the “popular sociologists” who produced the popular discourses of “nihonjinron” in Japan.57

Chinese Neonationalism, Social Stability, and the Regional Order: A Conjecture The three dimensions addressed above clearly indicate that the rise of neonationalism in China is not an overnight product to serve the Chinese Communist Party’s short-term political agenda. As shown in the series of antiJapanese protests and the CCP’s responses to them, Chinese nationalism is a force that may disturb CCP regime stability. For example, the authors of China Can Say No strongly, though indirectly, charged that the “Chinese government had been na¨ıve and soft in its dealings with the US, that it should be more forth-right in just saying no, and that the government is neither confident nor competent; it was too wrapped up in the past and not bold enough in engineering China’s modernization.”58 Neither do I agree that Chinese nationalism is a particularly historical product of a century-long imperialistic invasions China has suffered.59 As I argued in a previous work,60 Chinese nationalism is a force that creates a political subject based on the collective perception of historical reality that can be either aggressive or defensive. In other words, as theorists of culture and hegemony suggest, the concepts of nation and nationalism function as facts, not as ideology or arguments61 and posit themselves above state or party. Because the Chinese nation as a collective political subject posits itself higher than the Chinese party/state, the public loyalty oriented toward the Chinese nation cannot be easily manipulated or controlled even by an extremely authoritarian regime. The realities that Chinese neonationalism is rooted in social spaces rather than the Chinese party/state’s ideological project and that the loyalty of the Chinese populace is shifting from the Chinese

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party/state to the Chinese nation are profound implications regarding the future of East Asian regional order, as I discuss below. Pessimistic scenarios for East Asian security have prevailed during the post-Cold War era. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and the rapid rise of China as a regional hegemon created a deep sense of uncertainty among many East Asia watchers. Both realistic and liberalistic accounts see the inherent instability of this region due to the lack of multilateral security arrangements and a low level of economic interdependence that would compensate the rapidly shifting power structures.62 Naturally, scholars have expected that the field of struggles among great powers will move to East Asia as the European showcase closed down with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the successful formation of the EU; in other words, “Europe’s past could be Asia’s future.”63 From the Chinese perspective, the disappearance of the Soviet Union raised a serious concern because Chinese leaders and policy advisors clearly knew that China was not ready to balance American power in East Asia. The repetitive emphases on “heping jueqi” (peaceful rising) by the top Chinese leaders show their unwillingness to raise the level of tension.64 If both liberal and realist theorists are concerned with uncertainty in the region, constructivism, which this chapter is closely related to, is more or less concerned about the certainty of tensions around the issues of history, sovereignty, and national pride. Thomas Berger, a leading constructivist, challenges both realist and liberal understanding of the East Asian security dilemma as follows: “The primary source of the tensions that trouble the Asian region today are rooted not in their geo-strategic environment, their level of political economic development, or the character of the international institutions in which they are embedded. Rather they are the products of deep-rooted historically based suspicions and animosities, frustrated nationalism, and distinct conceptions of national identity and their differing understanding of national mission in international affairs.”65 In other words, the establishment of peaceful regional order seems to be an even harder task than liberal or realist theorists assume, since historical and epistemological solutions should precede diplomatic and economic arrangements for an improved East Asian regional community. Then, if the problems of history and nationalism are not fully controlled and managed by the Chinese party/state as I described in this paper, the solution for the problems should involve extremely complex procedures precisely because of the somewhat democratic nature of the non-state social spaces in which Chinese neonationalism is gaining its power. In other words, a very successful summit among Hu Jintao, Roh Moohyun, and Abe Shinzo cannot solve or eliminate the problems rooted in nationalistic fever in this region unless the summit is well accepted and approved by the Chinese social spaces. Further, a minor incident such as Xian Skit66 would easily cancel the conciliatory mood in high-level interstate diplomacy

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by stirring up anti-Japanese nationalistic sentiments in cyberspace and the cultural market. Whereas anti-Japanese popular nationalism frequently produces interstate tensions between China and Japan, as I discussed in the beginning, the slow but steady reconstruction of a new history of Northeastern (dongbei) China can be a source of tension between China and Korean peninsula. The Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Northeastern Project (Dongbei Gongcheng) that attempts to incorporate histories of Koguryo (first century bc–seventh century ad), Parhae (eighth century ad–tenth century ad) and other ancient states into the lineage of Chinese empires has already caused a deep suspicion of Chinese expansionist ambition among Korean elites and populace.67 Since ancient Koguryo territory includes the northern part of the Korean peninsula, many in South Korea are concerned particularly in conjunction with possible scenarios after the collapse of the North Korean regime. The worst scenario for South Korea, from a nationalist perspective, is the establishment of a China-controlled satellite state based on newly constructed Chinese historical claims over the Korean peninsula. Unlike the anti-Japanese or anti-American sentiments, however, there is no clear sign that rewriting Chinese boundary histories cause strong antiKorean or overt Chinese popular ambitions over the Korean peninsula. Hence, it is not clear how the reconstruction of Chinese border histories might affect Chinese foreign policy toward the Korean peninsula. At least, Chinese authority is effectively suppressing free debates over Korea policy in the Chinese social spaces. For example, a prominent elite magazine, Strategy and Management (zhanlue yu guanli), was forced to shut down in 2004 due to an article that was critical of China’s continuing embrace of the North Korean regime.68 That incident implies that Chinese policy toward the Korean peninsula would not be allowed to be an agenda for popular discussions and public opinion would have little impact. Nevertheless, the long-term consequence of the Chinese project of rewriting border history might be profound. Once the Chinese populace begins to see the northern part of the Korean peninsula as an inalienable historical realm of China, it is not unimaginable that Chinese popular and commercial discourses would press the Chinese government to aggressively intervene in the fate of the Korean peninsula even at the expense of Chinese national security interests. My observation of Chinese nationalism hence suggests a pessimistic prospect for the construction of a stable East Asian regional order. However, I do not believe that historical animosities and nationalism(s) in this region automatically produce instability. Rather, the populist nature of Chinese neonationalism—in conjunction with populist natures of Korean and Japanese nationalism—can be the real source of the problem. The history of nationalism testifies that popular nationalism is subversive whether it is based on pride or humiliation and is far from a “status quo” ideology.

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Nationalism is relatively safe only when it is under tight control of a state or a group of elites since nationalistic energy can be easily directed by sophisticated manipulation of symbols and discourses. However, when popular nationalism escapes from control of the state, it forces the state and elites to give up realistic and calculative foreign policies and to realize nearly impossible political agendum based on collective pride and humiliation. The sample characteristics introduced in this paper suggest that nationalistic discourses in China are produced and circulated outside the domains of the Chinese party/state. The CCP is losing control over popular nationalism in Chinese society, precisely because new Chinese youths began to subscribe to the nationalistic discourses that were initially produced by the state. It is worthy to remember that the Cultural Revolution nearly destroyed the state apparatus when true believers of Maoism marched the streets of Shanghai. The real concern for Chinese neighbors is the possibility that true believers of an aggressive version of Chinese nationalism march the streets of Shanghai and Beijing demanding radical change of East Asian status quo.

Notes 1. Interview with the author, Beijing, July 1999. 2. The Washington Post declared: The Big Lie is alive and well in Beijing. . . . It should come as no surprise, after weeks of . . . internal propaganda, that many ordinary Chinese now believe the embassy bombing was deliberate. The Washington Post (May 11, 1999): A 20; quoted from Peter Hays Gries, “Tears of Rage: Chinese Nationalist Reactions to the Belgrade Embassy Bombing,” The China Journal 46 (2001): 25–26. 3. For example, Yongjun Xi and Zaihuai Ma, Chaoyue Meiguo: Meiguo shenhua de zhongjie (Surpassing the USA: The End of the American Myth), Huhehaotu shi: Neimenggu daxue chubanshe, 1996; Qian Peng, Mingjie Yang, and Deren Xu, Zhongguo wei shenmo shuo bu? lengzhan hou Meiguo dui Hua zhengce di wuqu (Why Does China Say No? Mistakes in Post-Cold War American Foreign Policy), Beijing: Xinshijie chubanshe, 1996. 4. Thomas A. Metzger and Ramon H. Myers, Chinese Nationalism and American Policy, Orbis 42(1) (1998): 21–36; Thomas J. Christensen, Chinese Realpolitik, Foreign Affairs 75(5) (1996): 37–52; Suisheng Zhao, Chinese Intellecutals’ Quest for National Greatness and Nationalistic Writing in the 1990s, China Quarterly 152 (1997): 725–745; Suisheng Zhao, A State-Led Nationalism: The Patriotic Education Campaign in Post-Tiananmen China, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 31(3) (1998): 287–302; Edward Friedman, Chinese Nationalism, Taiwan Autonomy, and the Prospects of a Large War, Journal of Contemporary China 6(4) (1997): 5–33. 5. Christensen, Chinese Realpolitik, 37–52. 6. Daniel Chirot, ed., The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left: The Revolutions of 1989, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1991; Kazimierz Z. Poznanski, ed., Constructing Capitalism: The Reemergence of Civil Society and Liberal Economy in the Post-Communist World, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992.

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7. For example, Yan Sun, Ideology and the Demise or Maintenance of Soviet-type Regimes, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 28(3) (1995): 319–338. 8. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Big Bad China and the Good Chinese: An American Fairy Tale, in China Beyond the Headlines, Timothy B. Weston and Lionel M. Jensen, eds., Foreword by Geremie R. Barme, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, 13–35. 9. Xudong Zhang, “Minzu zhuyi yu dangdai Zhongguo” (Nationalism and Contemporary China), Dushu 1997(6): 22–30; Hongshan Li, “China Talks Back: AntiAmericanism or Nationalism?” Journal of Contemporary China 6(14) (1997): 153– 160; Peter Hays Gries, China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004. 10. Jia Qingguo, Disrespect and Distrust: The External Origins of Contemporary Chinese Nationalism, Journal of Contemporary China 14(2) (2005): 12. 11. Daniel C. Lynch, After the Propaganda State: Media, Politics, and “Thought Work” in Reformed China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. 12. At http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/english/sandt/webwar.htm. 13. A small-scale hackers’ war occurred in May 1999, right after the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, http://www.cnn.com/tech/computing/ 9905/10/hack.attack.02. 14. At http://tach.sina.com.cn/i/w/65690.shtml. 15. At http://tech.sina.com.cn.i/c/65803.shtml. 16. Due to weaker antihacking systems, the number of hacked Chinese Web sites was bigger than that of the American counterparts. Interview with a vice-president of a Chinese Internet security company, June 2001. 17. At http://www/cnhonker.com. 18. At http://www.acrosswaters.com/china.html. 19. People’s Daily, May 8, 2002. 20. Nina Hachigian, China’s Cyber-strategy, Foreign Affairs 80(2) (2001): 118133; Shanthi Kalathil, China’s Dot-Communism, Foreign Policy 122 (2001): 74–75. 21. Susan Lawrence, The Say No Club, Far Eastern Economic Review (January 13, 2000): 18 (italics mine). 22. Ben Xu, From Modernity to Chineseness: The Rise of Nativist Cultural Theory in Post-1989 China, Positions 6(1) (1998): 203–237. 23. Jianyuan Zhang, Bi yu ci: pingjie Edward Said de dongfang zhuyi (Self and Other: Review of Edward Said’s Orientalism), Wenxue Pinglun 1 (1990): 129–134; Jun Qian, Sayide tan wenhua (Said Says on Culture), Du Shu 1993(9): 10–17. 24. Joseph Fewsmith, Historical Echoes and Chinese Politics: Can China Leave the Twentieth Century Behind? in China Briefing 2000: The Continuing Transformation, Tyrene White, ed., Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000, 17. 25. Hui Wang et al., Lu Xun yanjiude lishi pipan (The Criticisms on the History of Lu Xun Studies), Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2000; Xudong Gao, ed., Shijimo de Lu Xun lunzheng (The End of the Century Debates on Lu Xun), Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 2001. 26. Jicai Ping, Lu Xun de gong wu “guo” (Merits and Faults of Lu Xun), in Gao, Shijimo de Lu Xun lunzheng, 16. 27. Hogbing Ge, Wei ershi shiji zhongguo wenxue xie yifen daoci (A Funeral Oration for Twentieth Century Chinese Literature, in Gao, Shijimo de Lu Xun lunzheng, 29.

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28. Xiong Ying, Biele, 80 niandai: Zhang Yimou dianying lungang (Bye, 1980s: A Review of the Films by Zhang Yimou), in Zhongguo dianying chubanshe zhongguo dianying yishu bianjishi (Editing Department for the Chinese Film Art) ed., Lun Zhang Yimou (Discussing Zhang Yimou), Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1994, 1–21. 29. Maggie Farley, “One Less” Movie at Cannes, Los Angeles Times (May 7, 1999): F1; cited from Cheng Li, “Promises and Pitfalls of Reform: New Thinking in Post-Deng China,” in China Briefing 2000, Tyrene White, 130. 30. David L. Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972– 1990, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. 31. At http://www.blogchina.com/new/display/13634. Like many other online surveys, the accuracy or reliability of this survey is questionable. Nevertheless, the appearance of “GRE Vocabulary Lists” in the rankings addresses a great irony in Chinese students’ attitudes toward America. 32. Harry Harding, Fragile Relationship: The United States and China since 1972, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1992. 33. Susan Brownell, Gender and Nationalism in China at the Turn of the Millennium, in China Briefing 2000, Tyrene White, ed., 195–232. 34. Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, National Cinema, Cultural Critique, Transnational Capital: The Films of Zhang Yimou, in Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender, Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, ed., Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1998, 126. 35. Ann Anagnost, National Past-times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997; Gary Sigley, Governing Chinese Bodies: The Significance of Studies in the Concept of Governmentality for the Analysis of Government in China, Economy and Society 25(4) (1996): 457–482. 36. Jinhua Dai, Imagined Nostalgia, trans. Judy T. H. Chen, Boundary 2 24(3) (1997): 144–161. 37. Nimrod Bernoviz, China’s New Voices: Politics, Ethnicity, and Gender in Popular Music Culture on the Mainland, 1978–1997, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1997; Andrew F. Jones, Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music, Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1992. 38. Ibid., 50 39. Translated by Bin Zhao, Popular Family Television and Party Ideology: The Spring Festival Eve Happy Gathering, Media, Culture & Society 20 (1998): 43–58. 40. Bernoviz, China’s New Voices, 184–185. 41. Luo yi ning gee r [pseudo.], Di sanzhi yanjing kan Zhongguo (Looking at China through a Third Eye), trans. Wang Shan, Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1994. 42. Interview with a book dealer in Beijing, July 2001. 43. Song et al., Zhongguo keyi shuobu (China Can Say No), Beijing, China: Zhongguo wenlian chuban gongsi, 1996, 377, 420. 44. Peter Hays Gries, China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004. 45. Song et al. Zhongguo keyi shuobu, 96. 46. Tang introduces the controversial CBS reports on the Chinese spy network in the United States in 1994.

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47. Song et al., Zhongguo keyi shuo bu, 171. 48. Ibid., 342. 49. Ibid., 343. 50. Tong Lam, Identity and Diversity: The Complexities and Contradictions of Chinese Nationalism, in China Beyond the Headlines, Timothy B. Wester and Lionel M. Jensen, eds., Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 51. Meng Xu, ed., Guanjian Shike: dangdai Zhongguo jindai jiejie de 27 wenti (A Critical Time: 27 Problems to Be Solved in Contemporary China), Beijing, China: Jinri zhongguo chubanshe, 1997; Zhijun Ling and Licheng Ma, Hu Han: Dangjin Zhongguo de 5-zhong shengying (Shouting: Five Voices in Present China), Guangzhou shi: Guangzhou chubanshe, 1999. 52. Ibid., 264–326. 53. Jiru Shen, Zhongguo bu dang “bu xiansheng” (China Should Not Be Mr. No), Beijing, China: Jinri zhongguo chubanshe, 1998. 54. Xiaobo Wang, Baixing, Yangren, Guan (People, Westerners and Officials), Nanfang Zhoumo (September 13, 1996). 55. Xudong Zhang, Nationalism, Mass Culture, and Intellectual Strategies in Post-Tiananmen China, Social Text 16(2) (1998): 109. 56. Lydia H. Liu, What’s Happened to Ideology? Transnationalism, Postsocialism, and the Study of Global Media Culture, Working Papers in Asian/Pacific Studies 98– 01, Duke University, 1998, 13. 57. Kosaku Yoshino, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Inquiry, London: Routledge, 1992. See Chapter 2 for more information on “popular sociologists” in Japan. 58. Joseph Fewsmith and Stanley Rosen, The Domestic Context of Chinese Foreign Policy: Does “Public Opinion Matter?” in The Making of Chinese Foreign Policy in the Era of Reform, David M. Lampton, ed., Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001, 163. During the tension between the United States and China in 1995, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs got a name tag of “maiguobu”(Ministry of National Traitors). Ibid., 176. 59. Suisheng Zhao, Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004, 7. 60. Jungmin Seo, Nationalism and the Problem of Political Legitimacy in China, in Legitimacy: Ambiguity of Success and Failure in East and Southeast Asia, Lynn T. White, ed., Singapore: World Scientific Press, 2005. 61. Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, New York: Routledge, 1996. 62. Thomas J. Christensen, China, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia, International Security 23(3) (1999): 49–80 63. Aaron A. Friedberg, Rife for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia, International Security 18(3) (1993/94): 7. 64. Chi-yu Shih, Breeding a Reluctant Dragon: Can China Rise into Partnership and Away from Antagonism? Review of International Studies 31 (2005): 755–744. 65. Thomas Berger, Power and Purpose in Pacific East Asia: A Constructivist Interpretation, in International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific, G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, eds., New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 388.

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66. A group of Japanese students’ humorous skit at Xian’s Northwest University in 2003 resulted in weeklong violent protests and thousands of angered posts in cyberspace by Chinese students. For in-detail description of the incident, see Susan Jakes, Pride and Prejudice: A College Skit Enrages Chinese Students, Causing AntiJapanese Rioting, Time (Asia Edition) (November 17, 2003). 67. Andrei Lankov, The Legacy of Long-Gone States, http://www.atimes.com/ atimes/Korea/HI16Dg01.html. 68. Periodical Shut Down after Article on N. Korea, South China Morning Post (September 22, 2004).

Chapter 8

Russian Foreign Policy and South Korean Security Esook Yoon After transitioning to an open political and economic system over the past decade, Russia is now gradually building up its great power status through a pragmatic foreign policy grounded in economic development and domestic political stability. By forging new relationships with the West, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Islamic world, and the former communist bloc countries including North Korea, Russia has expanded its diplomatic influence throughout the world. Russia’s rising profile in the international community is reflected in Northeast Asian politics and particularly in inter-Korean relations. Russia is a strategic participant in multilateral negotiations in the region to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis and a useful broker to facilitate inter-Korean dialogues. Specifically, the Putin administration has established a balanced equal involvement policy toward the Korean peninsular. Russia recognizes that its strategic interests vis-a-vis the two Koreas are perched between the maintenance of a regional ` security through a traditional balance of power calculus and fostering economic development. On the one hand, Moscow sees its close relationship with North Korea as critical to enhancing its diplomatic influence in Northeast Asia. On the other hand, Moscow views South Korea as a viable partner for its own economic resurgence through the development of its depressed Far East region. Such Russian foreign policy interests in Northeast Asia have several implications for South Korean political and economic security. First, emerging Russia may ensure the stable balance of power in Northeast Asia by

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counterbalancing the United States and to a less degree China in regional politics. Russia’s existence as an alternative power in the region may facilitate South Korea to attempt to take a more independent stance in regional politics by moving away from its previous lockstep approach with Washington in its foreign relations. Second, given its close relationship with North Korea, South Korea expects Russia to be a viable intermediary in facilitating inter-Korean dialogues. Russia in fact has attempted to do so. Russia is also a supportive voice for eventual Korean reunification as the Putin government clearly states its support for an orderly, peaceful reunification achieved by Koreans themselves.1 Another significant Russian foreign policy goal that matters to Korea is Russia’s development projects in its Far East region through the construction of energy pipelines and a transport corridor between Russia and both Koreas. These projects, if undertaken, will significantly enhance South Korean energy security by diversifying its energy supply sources and will also generate great economic benefits for both Koreas. Russia’s Far East development projects will also effectively integrate North Korea into the regional economy. Russia’s commitment to develop its Far East depends upon the political stability in Northeast Asia, and this in turn encourages more extensive Russian involvement in regional politics. Against the above backdrop, this chapter examines the recent changes in Russian foreign policy and its implications for South Korean political and economic security. Despite a short period of bilateral relationships that initiated with the end of the Cold War, Russia and South Korea have made significant strides in cultivating good relations in the absence of territorial disputes or complicated historical relations between them. The two countries have recognized this deepening bilateral relationship to be a sure route to achieving their respective foreign policy goals in Northeast Asia. South Korean political and economic support is significant for Russia to identity itself as a great power in Northeast Asia and to achieve its policy goals. Likewise, South Korea’s ambition to be an independent force capable of proactively exerting influence over the Korean issues could be enhanced by a healthy cooperation with Russia. Besides, Russia’s Far East region will be the primary source of energy and other natural resources to Korea. Thus, the two countries now recognize the political, strategic, and economic advantages of mutual cooperation.

Korea in Russia’s Changing Foreign Policy Interests By way of introduction, Russia started to exert direct influence over the security of the Korean peninsula since the Peking Treaty in 1860 when Russia came to share a short border with Korea by acquiring the Maritime Province from China. From that point on, until Korea fell into a Japanese colony, Russia had been a major player in modern Korean politics. Russia once forced Japan to honor Korea’s independence by staging the Triple Intervention

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with Germany and France when Japan eliminated China’s suzerainty over Korea with its victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. Russia also played an influential role in Korean politics between 1896 and 1898 when the Korean emperor escaped into Russian legation upon Japan’s intrusion into the royal palace in 1896. This led to a conflict between Russia and Japan, and subsequently, Russia was forced to withdraw from Korea as the result of its defeat in the Russo-Japanese war in 1904. Russia returned to Korea forty years later in 1945 as the Soviet Union upon Japan’s surrender at the conclusion of World War II. The Soviet Union accepted the U.S. brokered division of the Korean peninsula by occupying the northern part of Korea, and subsequently established a Stalinist regime in North Korea for the period from 1945 through 1948. Upon the determination that its geopolitical interests would best be served by a unified communist Korea that would be inimical to U.S. interests in East Asia, the Soviet Union sponsored the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950. Following the stalemate that resulted in the current division between the two Koreas, the Soviet Union remained as the firm and primary Cold War ally of North Korea standing in opposition to the bilateral security alliance between the United States and South Korea. The Soviet Union, as the great power protector, provided North Korea with substantial economic aid, energy, and weapons until the late 1980s when the country suffered a major decline in nearly all dimensions of power. The Soviet policy toward the Korean peninsula was reformulated by Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–1991). After initially boosting military aid to North Korea, Gorbachev eliminated defense, industrial, food, and energy support to North Korea by the end of his term. Moscow then carried out a surprising rapprochement with the economically prosperous South Korea that reciprocated by promising the Soviet Union to provide a $3 billion package of economic aid in January 1991 to help boost its declining economy. The bilateral relation between Russia and North Korea was further frayed by Boris Yeltsin’s pro-Western foreign policy. Believing that Russia’s fate was inextricably linked to the West by its commitment to democracy and a market economy, and that Russia’s long-term economic development and security depended on close cooperation with the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, the Yeltsin government pursued the integration of Russia into the Western political and financial system.2 In accordance with this pro-Western foreign policy stance, Russia virtually abandoned the longpursued foreign policy goal of the country—namely, strategic parity with the West. The strategic value of North Korea evaporated and the relationship with it was perceived as essentially an economic and political burden to Russia. Russia ended transfers of military equipment and technology to North Korea and allowed its security agreement with Pyongyang to lapse. Economic and scientific cooperation, cultural exchanges, and even direct flights were cancelled. Consequently, trade between the former allies plummeted from $3.5 billion in 1988 to less than $100 million by mid-1990s.

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Russia also suspended its 1991 agreement to provide North Korea with three 600-megawatt light-water reactors (LWR) that resulted in considerable financial losses to Russia.3 On the other hand, the bilateral relationship with South Korea further expanded. South Korea provided $1.47 billion in loans to Russia and trade between the two countries surged to $3.2 billion in 1995. On his visit to Seoul, Yeltsin stated that the 1961 Soviet-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance existed only on paper. Unsurprisingly, when the first North Korean nuclear crisis broke out in 1993, Moscow cooperated with the United States and South Korea urging North Korea to abide by its international obligations under the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to permit International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s inspections of its nuclear facilities.4 Yeltsin’s pro-West foreign policy resulted in a significant reduction of Russia’s influence over North Korea consequently undermining the power in Northeast Asian security relations that the former Soviet Union had enjoyed. Thus, Russia’s call for a multilateral approach to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis through an international conference which would have brought together North and South Korea, all the permanent members of UN Security Council, the UN secretary general, and the IAEA director was ignored. North Korea appeared indifferent to Russia’s role in its security issues while pursuing bilateral negotiations with the United States. As such, the first North Korean nuclear crisis was diffused through the bilateral talks between the United States and North Korea that concluded the Agreed Framework in 1994. The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), which was created by the Framework to provide North Korea with energy decided to send two South Korean light-water reactors to Pyongyang at Seoul’s request. Despite the fact that it used to be the primary source of energy and technology to North Korea, Russia was effectively excluded from the regional negotiations for energy supply to North Korea. Russia’s political significance also waned in the eyes of South Korean leaders in light of Russia’s dwindling influence over North Korea.5 Russia’s continuous economic turmoil and inability to repay its debts to South Korea further plagued the relationship between them. Ironically, Russia’s efforts to improve its relations with the West and South Korea at the expense of its longstanding ties with North Korea made Russia less valuable to Seoul and Washington and a less reliable partner in security talks in Northeast Asia. Yeltsin’s “Westernizing” foreign policy, along with deepening domestic, political, and economic troubles, generated an immense sense of frustration among Russians. Specifically, Russia was perceived as stepping down from its superpower status into a Third World country in international relations. As such, Russian leaders began to recognize that the initial benefits of the pro-West policy were oversold as unbalanced foreign relationships led to weakness in its strategic position in global and regional politics. Hence, Russia began to reformulate a more “balanced” policy between the West

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and the rest of the world by the second half of the 1990s. This yielded an equal distance approach toward both North and South Korea. While the relationship with North Korea was still strained due to North Korea’s $3 billion debt to Russia and Moscow’s stiff pressure on North Korea over its international obligations under the NPT, Yeltsin sent Deputy Prime Minister Vitalii Ignatenko to North Korea in April 1996 to patch up the bilateral relationship. At the same time, Russia bolstered its relations with South Korea by proposing weapon sales as a portion of debt repayment deals. Russia’s new foreign policy direction was further clarified in the Putin administration. Putin dropped Yeltsin’s pro-Western foreign policy, which had alienated its former friends and did little to improve its relations with those states traditionally suspicious of Russian intentions, without yielding the expected political and economic benefits. Instead, Putin pursued pragmatic and realistic foreign relations, making a conscious attempt to match Russia’s ambitions to its resources.6 Recognizing that the limits of Russian power were ground above all in its economic weakness, Putin emphasized economic development as the primary foreign policy goal of the government. Russia’s economy has in many ways been a remarkable success for the past several years. With an annual average growth rate of 6.5 percent, Russia’s foreign reserves reached $250 billion as of May 2006, the fourth largest in the world. The country announced that it paid off all of its $23.7 billion debts to eighteen Western countries. While seeking to develop friendly relations with the West, Putin has defended what he sees as Russia’s crucial interests as evidenced by his adamant opposition to Washington’s proposal that the ABM Treaty of 1972 be amended so that the United States could construct its own national missile defense (NMD) system.7 Basing his foreign policy on the idea that the current world is dominated by a group of highly developed countries backed by the economic and military might of the United States, Putin has insisted on remaining part of an alternative pole of world politics.8 Russia’s recent foreign policy choices such as the promotion of “multipolarism,” strategic partnerships with China and India balancing U.S. hegemonic power, and writing-off or a partially forgiving debts of several countries in Asia and the Middle East that had close ties with the Soviet Union to counter U.S. and Chinese clout in those regions reveal Russia’s firm intent to be the anchor of an alternative pole to both existing and emerging dominant powers. The Putin government invigorated its relationships with both North and South Korea by adopting an “equal involvement policy.” Moscow acknowledges that it must use the Korean connection to fully participate in Northeast Asian politics. In the absence of a breakthrough in relations with Japan, Russia may otherwise need to confine its Northeast Asian strategy to a ChinaAsia route.9 Thus, Putin made it clear that, from a historical and geopolitical standpoint, the Korean peninsula has always come within the sphere of

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Russian national interests.10 Indeed, Putin actively sought to restore Russia’s relationship with North Korea. Speaking to a regional forum of the ASEAN in July 1999, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov proposed that North Korea be invited to participate in the activities of the ASEAN regional forum. In February 2000, only his second month in office, Putin dispatched Ivanov to Pyongyang to sign the Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighborly Relations and Cooperation, which replaced the old treaty between the Soviet Union and North Korea that expired in 1996. In contrast to the 1961 treaty, this new treaty does not establish a military alliance. It states that Moscow and Pyongyang will contact each other in the event of a crisis, but does not include Russia’s security guarantee or military assistance to North Korea in the event of war.11 Nonetheless, the new treaty was quite a significant development, given conflicting relations between the two during the 1990s. Furthermore, Putin visited Pyongyang in July 2000, marking the first visit by a Soviet or Russian head of state to North Korea. Russia regained North Korea’s trust in a manner reminiscent of the former Soviet Union. When North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il insisted that his country needed to build missiles for sales to Iran and Syria to bring in necessary income, Ivanov stated that North Korea could still be trusted to cooperate.12 To signify Moscow’s policy realignment, Russia signed a framework agreement with North Korea in April of 2001 on defense and military technology and cooperation in which Russia pledging to upgrade its equipment in North Korea to the tune of $777 million. The relationship between Russia and North Korea was further developed through subsequent summit meetings between Putin and Kim Jong Il. At the second meeting in Moscow in August 2001, the two leaders signed the Moscow Declaration that included North Korean statements regarding the peaceful nature of North Korea’s missile programs and Russia’s understanding with regard to North Korea’s demand for the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea.13 In turn, Putin’s stature was greatly enhanced in the eyes of the international community by Kim Jong Il’s promise during the summit to suspend North Korean ballistic missile tests and launches until 2003.14 The third summit meeting between them took place in Vladivostok in August 2002. Through these summit meetings, Russia’s constructive role on the Korean peninsula was agreed upon by the two leaders. Although North Korea’s inability to repay its debts to Russia remained an obstacle, the Putin government pursued further economic cooperation with North Korea focusing on upgrading the ice-free port facilities in Rajin in North Korea and connecting of the trans-Siberian railroad to the North Korean rail network. Building natural gas pipelines from East Siberia through North Korea was also discussed. Bilateral trade with North Korea increased from $119 million in 2003 to $210 million in 2004, making Russia the fourth largest trading partner to North Korea. In order to ease North Korea’s financial and economic difficulties, Russia suggested in December 2006 that it would

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write off or substantially reduce North Korea’s $8 billion debt to the former Soviet Union.15 Russia has also strengthened political and economic relations with South Korea based on the equal involvement policy. Russia understands that while the bilateral relationship with North Korea is the key to reviving Russia’s diplomatic influence in Northeast Asian politics, South Korea is a vital partner for Russia’s economic development and successful integration of its Far East region into the dynamic Northeast Asian economy. In fact, trade with South Korea in 2004 stood at $6 billion with a healthy $1.3 billion surplus in favor of Russia. This trade accounts for slightly more than 2 percent of Russia’s foreign trade and slightly less than 1 percent of South Korea’s foreign trade; however, the bilateral economic cooperation is expected to increase with Russia’s fast economic recovery and ambitious development projects for its Far East region. The payment of Russia’s debts to South Korea, totaling $2.24 billion as of 2003, has also been negotiated. After the South Korean government wrote off $660 million in debt and received some payment in kind, it expects to receive the remaining $1.33 billion due from Russia in currency payment for the next several years. In addition to growing economic cooperation, Russia’s close relationship with North Korea likewise enhanced Moscow’s importance in South Korean foreign relations as a viable intermediary between the two Koreas. In pursuing the Sunshine Policy to engage North Korea, South Korean president Kim Dae Jung (1998–2002) eagerly repaired the relationship with Moscow that was damaged during Yeltsin’s regime due to Russia’s political and economic turmoil. South Korean Prime Minister Lee Han Dong emphasized Moscow’s constructive role in the inter-Korean reconciliation during his visit to Moscow in October 2000.16 In response, Putin offered to help facilitate inter-Korean dialogues during his visit to Seoul in March 2001. The United States also reevaluated Russia’s influence over North Korea. In August 2001, when Putin hosted Kim Jung Il in Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell appealed to Putin to persuade Kim to honor his promise to pay a return visit to Seoul and to resume talks with Washington.17 Unsurprisingly, when the second nuclear crisis broke out in the end of 2002, the international community expected Russia to use its leverage with North Korea to normalize the situation. Putin dispatched the Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Losyukov to North Korea, China, and the United States in January 2003 in order to promote dialogues between the United States and North Korea. South Korea had expected Russia’s more active diplomatic role in resolving the nuclear crisis as suggested by South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun’s visit to Moscow in September 2004.18 In seeking a peaceful resolution to the crisis, Russia attempted to persuade North Korea to return to the negotiation table while urging the United States to adopt a more flexible approach toward North Korea.

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Russia, Nuclear North Korea, and South Korean Security In an effort to broker a solution to the nuclear crisis, Putin first presented “a package proposal” that envisioned synchronized steps for resolving the dilemma. The proposal suggested that North Korea renounce its nuclear weapons programs and return to the NPT in exchange for the provision of a clear U.S. guarantee that it would not infringe on North Korea’s sovereignty and security.19 Washington, however, rejected the proposal and pushed for complete, irreversible, and verifiable dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear programs as the precondition for any negotiations. Washington further demanded the end of Pyongyang’s missile programs and a reduction in its conventional forces. In early 2003, North Korea responded by turning down a U.S. proposal to hold multilateral talks with regional countries, insisting that the nuclear dispute was purely a bilateral matter between the United States and North Korea.20 There was a growing concern that the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the position of North Korea and that of the United States might lead to military action. As tension escalated, Russia cooperated with China in search of common ground between the United States and North Korea while respecting their different perspectives.21 In a joint declaration between Hu Jintao and Putin in May 2003, the two leaders voiced their opposition to resorting to pressure or military means in resolving North Korea’s nuclear crisis by stressing the political will of the concerned parties to find a diplomatic solution.22 Both leaders also agreed to ensure denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the security of North Korea, and the creation of favorable conditions for North Korea’s economic development. The nuclear crisis instigated a multilateral negotiation framework, the Six Party Talks, whose first meeting was convened in August 2003. Russia’s involvement in the Six Party Talks has been cautious, but committed. While China has taken the lead role, ensuring that the talks got off the ground and continued, Russia has played an important supporting role of “whisper diplomacy.”23 Throughout the series of the Six Party Talks, Russia’s position has been based on two principles: namely “nuclear free Korean peninsula” and “peaceful resolution of conflict.” Putin’s strong stance on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula was framed by Russia’s (and previously the former Soviet Union’s) commitment to the NPT. It was the former Soviet Union that insisted North Korea sign the NPT as a condition for further cooperation with North Korea. When North Korea signed the NPT in 1985, Moscow agreed to build a nuclear power station in North Korea. Moscow has also strictly restricted the transfer of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons materials to North Korea. Russia has been concerned not only that North Korea’s nuclear weapons would threaten the overall balance of power in Northeast Asia by possibly inducing the nuclear armament of Japan and South Korea, but also that that a nuclear North Korea will

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damage global efforts for nonproliferation of WMD. The costs associated with an arms race in the region would be high and a nuclear-proliferation ripple effect around the world would be unpredictable. Russia considers that the driving forces behind North Korea’s nuclear threats are domestic in origin including economic difficulties and energy shortages as well as its security fears stemming from the hard-line approach of the United States. Some Russian scholars and politicians have argued that North Korea withdrew from the NPT in order to resume the receipt of energy supplies from the United States.24 That evaluation has led Russian leaders to believe that economic assistance and energy supplies provided to North Korea will be the keys to resolving the crisis. This view was shared by the United Nations envoy to Moscow, Maurice Strong, who emphasized in his visit to Moscow that the nuclear crisis could not be solved without resolving the energy crisis in North Korea.25 Russia has supported South Korea’s proposal to give energy and food assistance to the North, while stressing the need for the United States to provide security guarantees to North Korea should it dismantle its nuclear programs. Russia played an important role in resuming the Six Party Talks that had been halted since June 2004 by using several gestures of good faith to North Korea. Moscow invited Kim Jong Il to visit Russia while also sending the presidential envoy, Konstantin Pulikovsky, to the 60th Anniversary of Independence Day in Pyongyang in August 2005. As South Korea offered North Korea to provide 2 million kilowatt (kW) of electrical power, Russia also suggested to Kim that it may provide North Korea with 500,000 kW of electrical power and 500,000 tons of heavy oil that the United States agreed to provide, but subsequently suspended. The Talks resumed in September 2005 and the 9.19 agreements were made. North Korea committed to rejoin the NPT and to accept IAEA safeguards. The United States made it clear that it had no intension of invading North Korea. All five members agreed to discuss the North Korean demand for a LWR for electric power generation. Despite the agreements, no actual progress was made to resolve nuclear issue. North Korea continued to insist that they would, as clarified in the agreement, return to the NPT and the Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA and comply with it immediately upon the U.S. provision of light water reactors (LWRs) as a good faith gesture to build confidence between the two countries. On the other hand, the Bush administration urged that dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear facilities must occur before any discussion of LWR may take place and that North Korea must present a dismantlement of its nuclear materials and facilities. Moreover, the United States took tough financial measures against the North Korea’s alleged counterfeiting of U.S. currency. The North Korean response to U.S. financial sanctions was militant and provocative. In July 2006, North Korea launched 7 missiles including one

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long-range missile. Efforts for a new round of Talks in the hopes of achieving a breakthrough proved unsuccessful. North Korea finally conducted an underground nuclear test on October 9, 2006. The test was small scale and not quite successful, nonetheless, the countries in the region were forced to find a way to deal with the virtual nuclear power now at their doorstep. The test was quickly followed by the UN resolution passed on October 14 that imposed economic sanctions to North Korea. On the other hand, a series of diplomatic activities were made to normalize the situation. Russia in discussion with North Korea also sought to refrain the North from further provocative actions. Finally as North Korea showed its willingness to return to negotiations, the Six Party Talks resumed in February 2007. The resumed Talks discussed Russia’s plan to write off or substantially reduce North Korea’s debt to the former Soviet Union that Russia first proposed to North Korea in December 2006. The Talks ended up in an agreement that Russia, the United States, South Korea and China will provide humanitarian aid to North Korea in return for its nuclear disarmament.26 It remains to be seen, however, whether North Korea will actually abandon its nuclear facilities and weapons. The United States may extend security assurances along with economic aid to North Korea in exchange for nuclear disarmament. Yet, given that such assurance is not synonymous with a guarantee of regime survival in North Korea, the repeated statement of the U.S. government that it will not attack North Korea unprovoked does not translate into a U.S. guarantee for the continuance of the regime. This interpretation raises concerns in regional countries that Washington might consider forceful dismantlement of the Kim Jong Il regime. The potential outcome of such dismantlement is disfavored by South Korea since such U.S. intervention will turn South Korea into a battlefield. South Korea also fears that, even without a military clash, a sudden collapse of the North Korean regime would cause the economically destitute North to be an immense economic and social burden to absorb in the short time. Likewise, Russia’s immediate concern is to avoid an outbreak of armed conflict or any sudden change on the Korean peninsula. Due to its geographic proximity to North Korea, a sudden collapse of the regime or a nuclear blast—even within North Korean territory—will be detrimental to Russia’s Far East region as nuclear radiation and refugees would pour over the border.27 Russia’s concern with security in its Far East region has led the country to oppose any suggestion of the use of U.S. force or any scheme to bring abrupt change of the North Korean regime. Russia sees the solution to the current nuclear crisis in a negotiated settlement believing that threats, sanctions, and accusations levied at North Korea are counterproductive. As such, while joining in the chorus of international condemnation, Russia did not support strict sanctions against North Korea for its missile launches in July 2006 and the underground nuclear test in October in 2006. This was

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so despite Russia’s worries about the possibility that a missile launch and nuclear testing would endanger Russian commercial interests and its citizens in the Far East region, not to mention its Navy in the East Sea. Beyond the current nuclear standoff, Russia’s foreign policy toward the Korean peninsula also has significant implications for the future of the Koreas. Unlike the United States that supports regime change in North Korea and China that wishes to maintain the status quo, the Putin government supports peaceful transformation, not regime change, of the North Korean system through a gradual process.28 As they perceive that North Korea’s nuclear crisis was mainly caused by the country’s economic distress and energy shortage, Russian policymakers believe that North Korea is interested in reform but is isolated and paranoid. Hence, they believe that renewed friendship and cooperation between Russia and North Korea will help North Korea regain self-confidence in accepting the requisite. Russia has clearly stated that Korean questions should be resolved by the Koreans themselves to the degree possible and supports Korean reunification if it occurs in an orderly fashion through inter-Korean dialogues. Alexander Lukin has observed that a unified Korea will be positive to Russia’s interests from a geopolitical standpoint since a strong unified Korea would represent a useful counterweight to Japanese and Chinese influence over regional affairs and might significantly diminish the U.S. defensive shield in the region.29 Russia also sees the economic dynamics of a unified Korea to be a constructive factor for further development of its Far East region that is critical to the country’s security and economic interests. Russia’s position has led South Korea to have a growing understanding that Russia could be a strategically important force in regional politics, in the process of future reunification of the country and in the regional balance of power afterwards. Further deepening bilateral cooperation between Russia and South Korea will be less complicated considering that they do not have other complicating foreign policy issues such as differing interpretations of historical legacies or territorial disputes that have frequently caused diplomatic conflicts between Northeast Asian countries.

Russia and South Korea’s Energy and Economic Security Deeply concerned by the weakness of Russia’s economy, which Putin considers to be the primary cause of Russia’s weakness on the international stage, Putin has placed rapid economic recovery at the top of the country’s policy agendas.30 In Northeast Asia, Russia is preoccupied with the economic development of its backward Far East region. Indeed, the economic situation of the Russian Far East has worsened in the last decade due to its underdevelopment. The population of the region and of Siberia is currently thirty-two million, but rapidly declining. One estimate finds that if the economy does not recover soon, the Russian population in the region will shrink to about

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eight to ten million as a result of migration to the more industrialized regions in the South.31 Meanwhile, Northeast China’s population is approaching 300 million, provoking Russia’s concern about massive inflows of Chinese into the sparsely populated Far East region. Securing 4,300-kilometer long border with populous China by developing the Far East region is in fact one of top policy issues for the Russian government. Russians are also concerned that the resource rich region will become vulnerable to the exploitation of neighboring countries. When he spoke at a June 2000 conference in the Far Eastern city of Blagoveshchensk about the development of Russia’s Far East and the Trans-Baykal region, Putin warned that unless Russia makes genuine efforts to develop the region, even the indigenous Russians will soon speak mostly Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.32 Russia’s vision of the economic development for the Far East region includes the establishment of an energy community that links abundant oil and gas in the Far East to expanding markets in Northeast Asian countries and the construction of the Iron Silk Road connecting the trans-Siberian railway (TSR) to trans-Korean railroads (TKR). The development of an energy community is particularly important considering the current energy supply-and-demand situation in Northeast Asia. Three Northeast Asian countries—South Korea, China, and Japan—consume about 18.4 percent of the world’s primary energy, which is about the same as their combined share of global GDP.33 It is estimated that by 2010, energy demand in these three countries will account for about two-thirds of the worldwide growth in energy demand. The Chinese energy shortage is estimated to increase up to 100 million tons by 2010.34 Japan is the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), accounting for 61 percent of global demand and is the second largest oil importer. South Korea is the fourth-largest oil importer in the world and its natural gas imports are rapidly increasing. South Korea heavily depends on the Middle East for its energy that accounts for 70 percent of the country’s oil imports. It is also estimated that in 2010 about 60 percent of natural gas in the South Korean market will be imported from the Middle East. Such already heavy and ever increasing dependence on the Middle East is a serious concern for South Korea given that any political and economic turmoil in the Middle East may endanger a stable energy supply. Diversifying energy supply sources is thus an important foreign policy goal of South Korea. Russia is in fact a major world energy exporter, boasting the largest reserves of national gas in the world, which comprise 30 percent of the world’s known gas deposits. According to current estimates, about 1.2 billion tons of oil and about 70 trillion cubic meters of natural gas are reserved in Eastern Siberia and the Far East, which have sufficient potential to meet growing Northeast Asian needs. Abundant oil and gas reserves in Russian Far East are attractive to the Northeast Asian countries considering their efforts to enhance energy security. Increasing oil and natural gas consumption by

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regional countries in turn means an immense market opportunity for Russia. As Putin stated at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in South Korea in 2005, Russia is ready to play a key role in forming a new energy framework in the region. Long-distance pipelines from oil and gas fields in the Far East region are now feasible. Irkutsk (East Siberia) and Yakutsk (Sakha Republic) projects are under negotiations and Sakhalin I– IV projects are already under way. The Irkutsk project is likely to be the most attractive one in East Siberia because of its shorter distance to major regional markets.35 A 502-kilometer long gas pipeline, the Eastern Line, connecting Khabarovsk and Sakhalin has been completed recently, and another pipeline construction project in East Siberia that started in April 2006 is expected to be completed in 2012. Building an energy community based on energy pipelines would offer a wide range of benefits to both Russia and the regional countries. Russia has sought massive foreign capital flows into its energy sector. Japan already participated in the Sakhalin I project that started to produce oil and gas in September 2005 and is currently involved in the Sakhalin II project that will be completed in 2008. Japan and Russia agreed in August 2005 to construct 850-kilometer long pipelines at both ground level and under sea to deliver oil and gas from Sakhalin to Japan.36 China has aggressively pursued participation in the East Siberia pipeline projects. South Korea has also tried to participate in the Far East energy projects. During the 2004 summit meeting, South Korean president Roh promised South Korean investments in Russia’s energy sectors that included Korea’s LG International Corporation’s $2.6 billion in petrochemical and oil refining complex in Tatarstan and Samsung’s $500 million investment in a 10-year project to modernize an oil refinery in the Far East Russian city of Khabarovsk.37 The Korea National Oil Corporation and Russia’s state-run oil company, Rosneft, signed a memorandum of understanding for joint oil exploration from which Korea is expected to acquire 1.7 billion barrels of oil.38 South Korea’s importation of natural gas through pipelines was also discussed. Many of Russia’s rich gas fields are located in Eastern Siberia, not far from Korea. Just as Putin decided to commercialize the territory in the Russian Far East and Siberia, South Korean investors drew up plans for energy development in Russia. The Putin government has shown a particular interest in connecting TSR and TKR which it calls “the Iron-Silk Road” Project. This railway network would link the two Koreas to Moscow and then to Europe. The Iron Silk Road would advance Russia’s transport infrastructure and also would be of major geostrategic and economic significance to Russia. It would rival the EU’s railway plan to connect Europe to the Pacific region through the Caucasus and Central Asia by bypassing Russia in its course. The Iron Silk Road would also rival China’s plan to build a pan-Asian railway.39 By building the transport corridor, Russia expects to reap $4 billion in annual profits from container-rail freight traffic from Europe to Korea via Russia that would

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otherwise go to China.40 The Iron Silk Road, if connected, promises to ensure rapid transportation of freight, shortening the transportation time from forty to fifteen days that will reduce shipping charges significantly. Russian officials estimate that the rail network will make a tenfold rise in shipping volume along the TSR, from current 45,000 containers per year to 500,000 to 600,000.41 Unsurprisingly the Iron Silk Road project has been a topic of discussion at the summit meetings between Russia and the two Koreas. North Korea has also shown a strong interest in the project, having numerous working level meetings with Russia and South Korea.42 The practical issue in the railway connection project is that North Korean railways are too old to guarantee punctuality, speed, safety, and effectiveness making them unsuitable for use as an international route. To facilitate speedy railway connection, Russia agreed to help upgrade North Korea’s outdated railroad system which is estimated to cost up to $2.5 billion. Undoubtedly, the energy pipelines and the railway projects would greatly develop the Russian Far East region, which is lagging far behind neighboring areas and the economies of Northeast Asian countries. As mentioned above, the vast oil and gas resources in Russia’s Far East has the potential to free the entire Northeast Asian countries from their energy shortage and dependency primarily on the Middle East and the Iron Silk Road would boost regional development by connecting Eurasian markets far efficiently. However, despite the Russian government’s commitment and the interests of countries in the region, the realization of the development projects has been hampered by the security situation in Northeast Asia. In particular, railway talks between Russia and the two Koreas have been frequently suspended and the implementation of the projects has been halted with the fluid political atmosphere. The Rajin-Khasan line is an example. The Putin government announced in July 2006 that it would complete refurbishment of the forty-kilometer stretch linking the North Korean port of Rajin to the Russian border town of Khasan by the end of 2006 as a part of the Iron Silk Road project. The Rajin-Khasan line is expected to be available to deliver natural gas from Sakhalin to North Korea and, as Russia hopes, eventually to South Korea and Japan. Yet, Russia’s plan to complete the Rajin-Khasan line by the end of 2006 was not realized due to North Korea’s nuclear test in October 2006 and subsequent UN sanctions. South and North Korea also agreed to connect two railroads, the Kyungeui line and the Donghae line that will cross the DMZ, as agreed at the first South-North Summit meeting in June 2000. Two test drives of the respective lines were scheduled in 2004 and 2005, but were later cancelled. Finally, on May 17, 2007, the test drives finally occurred but it is still uncertain whether the two railroads will actually be connected. Russia well acknowledges that the security conflict in the region revolving around North Korea’s nuclear crisis hinders the progress of negotiations and discourages regional countries from making further investments to the

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Far East development projects. In fact, Russia itself fears undertaking such development projects without peace in Korean peninsula given the high implementation costs of those projects. Truly, all of Russia’s ongoing and planned investments in the Far East region and North Korea will be fruitful only if the Korean issue is peacefully resolved. Understandingly, Russia has sought to resolve the current nuclear conflict in a peaceful manner. Perceiving that isolating or imposing sanctions on North Korea is not effective, Putin has tried not to alienate North Korea by presenting his willingness to strengthen the ties with North Korea despite the UN sanctions. In communicating with North Korea in the wake of the latter’s nuclear test, Putin made it clear that Russia would continue to promote its development projects including North Korea. It was in this context that Putin sent the Russian railroad chief, Vladimir Yakunin, to Seoul to request that South Korea guarantee the freight that would make the Iron Silk Road economically viable.43 As another initiative to break the stalemate, Putin has proposed trilateral cooperation among Russia and both Koreas. The proposal for a threesided settlement of the crisis was first mentioned by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov upon his visit to North Korea in July 2004 after the third Six Party Talks in 2004 failed to produce any constructive outcome. Since then, Putin has stressed the importance of trilateral economic cooperation as a way to normalize the situation.44 The trilateral cooperation includes ambitious projects to engage South Korean capital and technology, Russian natural resources, and North Korean cheap land and labors. One example of this suggested trilateral cooperation is for Russia and South Korea to jointly invest in establishing processing facilities in Kaesung industrial complex in North Korea that process Russian food and natural resources to export to South Korea and the Russian Far East region possibly by rails. South Korea shares policy interests with Russia in this ambitious vision of the development of the Far East since the projects are expected to bring tremendous economic benefits to South Korea. The Iron Silk Road would greatly promote South Korea’s trade to Russia and Europe, given that, in 2003 alone, about 80 percent of 120,000 containers delivered by TSR between Vladivostok and Europe were South Korean products of consumer electronics and auto parts. South Korea also expects that, if undertaken, the railway connection and the trilateral cooperation would be an effective way to boost North Korea’s economic development. The overall foreign policy environment in Northeast Asia is generally benign with the exception of tensions on the Korean peninsula. Thus, a peaceful resolution of the current nuclear crisis is the most desirable policy option for both South Korea and Russia to achieve their economic and foreign policy goals.

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Conclusion Russia’s primary policy interests in Northeast Asia are to ensure regional security and to promote economic modernization in its Far East region by both establishing a regional energy community through energy pipelines in Northeast Asia and building the Iron Silk Road to connect Korea and Europe via the Russian Far East region. To achieve these policy goals, it is essential for Moscow to bring the North Korean nuclear crisis and consequent security tension to an end by assuring the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. As it has repeatedly insisted, Russia perceives that the current North Korean nuclear crisis should be resolved by political means in the established multilateral negotiation framework. Russia thus opposes the adoption of any unilateral actions or forceful measures in dealing with North Korean issues by the United States and other countries. In its attempt to play the role of a legitimate broker in all negotiations taking place in and around the Korean peninsula, Moscow has called for North Korea to return to the negotiation table and pressured the United States to adopt a more flexible posture toward North Korea’s proposals. Based on its policy interests, Moscow hopes that the multilateral talks will continue—regardless of the difficulties encountered—and views the resumption of negotiation as progress. Russian foreign policy goals in Northeast Asia have significant implications for South Korean political and economic security. South Korea shares similar policy interests with Russia in regional security and economic development. South Korea also believes that any option but peaceful resolution to the current nuclear crisis would be detrimental to South Korean security. A peaceful resolution of the North Korean issue would generate tremendous political and economic benefits to Korea since it would facilitate the construction of an energy and economic community in Northeast Asia that would secure South Korea’s energy supply while further expanding its trade with Russia and Europe. Such regional cooperation will in turn effectively integrate the North Korean economy into the region and an economically prosperous North Korea would undoubtedly facilitate inter-Korean dialogues and might eventually result in the peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula. In sum, Russia’s foreign policy interests in Northeast Asia are in tune with South Korea’s foreign policy goals. Thus, South Korea welcomes Russia’s commitment to the Six Party Talks and its persistent attempts to be a stabilizing force in the regional security dilemma. Russia was once considered to have the least material leverage in Korean affairs among the Six Party Talk member countries.45 However, with its fast economic recovery and its strong aspiration to be restored to the status of a great power, Russia has recently adopted a more active stance to increase its influence over North Korea and overall Northeast Asian

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relations. In fact, Russia’s committed implementation of development projects in its Far East region, recent increase in its energy supplies to North Korea, and its decision to reduce North Korea’ debts as an incentive to North Korea on the eve of the Six Party Talks in February 2007 demonstrate the country’s policy interests in the region. Given such actual and potential capacity in conducting its foreign policy goals, Russia could be as a strategic partner to South Korea in Northeast Asian politics that may counterbalance the heavy influence of the United States and China over the Korean peninsula.

Notes 1. Andrei Tsygankov, Euro-Asia, Kremlin’s Style: Russia’s Interests and Objectives in Northeast Asia, Johnson’s Russia List (May 30, 2006), http://www.cdi.org/ russia/johnson/2006-126-18.cfm. 2. Chikahito Harada, Russia and Northeast Asia, Adelphi Paper monograph series 310, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, July 1997, 14. 3. Construction on the $4 billion reactor projects was nearly complete when Yeltsin cancelled them. North Korea then refused to compensate the Russian firms for their previous work. 4. North Korea acceded to the NPT in 1985, and signed a nuclear-safeguards agreement with the IAEA in January 1992, as it had pledged to do in 1985 when it acceded to the NPT. The safeguards agreement allowed IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities beginning in June 1992. 5. Vasilii V. Mikheev, Russian Policy Toward the Korean Peninsula after Yeltsin’s Reelection as President, The Journal of East Asian Affairs 11(2) (Summer/Fall 1997): 369–372. 6. Richard Sakwa, Putin: Russia’s Choice, New York: Routledge, 2004, 208– 210. 7. STAR (Strategic Arms Reductions) Forum, How Should Russia Respond to the Impending U.S. NMD Deployment? Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, http://www.armscontrol.ru/start/nmd-op.htm, (April 28, 2007). On December 13, 2001, when the Bush administration announced the unilateral suspension of the ABM Treaty after six months, Putin strongly criticized the move as a mistake. The ABM Treaty expired in June 2002, but Russia obtained a U.S. promise that the two countries would renegotiate an arms reduction agreement that includes inspection and verification measures. 8. Richard Sakwa, Putin: Russia’s Choice, 212 9. David Kerr, The Sino-Russian Partnership and U.S. Policy toward North Korea: From Hegemony to Concert in Northeast Asia, International Studies Quarterly 49(3) (2005): 428. 10. Ibid., 415. 11. Seung-Ho Joo and Tae-Hwan Kwak, Military Relations between Russia and North Korea, The Journal of East Asian Affairs 15(2) (Fall/Winter 2001): 305–306. 12. J.L. Black, Vladimir Putin and the New World Order, New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004, 80.

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13. Moscow Declaration of the DPRK and the Russian Federation (August 4, 2001),. http://www.shaps.hawaii.edu/fp/russia/russia dprk decl 20010804.html. 14. Bill Gasperini, Russia/Korea Talks, VOA News Report (August 4, 2001), http://globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/dprk/2001/dprk-0108042360b60d.htm. 15. International Herald Tribune, Russia Considering North Korea Debt WriteOff, (January 5, 2007), http://www.iht.com. 16. J.L. Black, Vladimir Putin and the New World Order, 302. 17. Gilbert Rozman, Russian Foreign Policy in Northeast Asia, in The International Relations of Northeast Asia, Samuel Kim, ed., New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004, 213. 18. Channel NewsAsia, Russia Raps South Korea on Nuclear Experiments (September 24, 2004), http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp world/view/ 108071/1/.html. 19. Izvestia, Emissar Kremlya Privios Kim Jong Il Packet (Kremlin Delivered Kim Jong il a Packet Proposal) (January 20, 2003), http://main.izvestia.ru/politic/20-0103/article29012. 20. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Background Note: North Korea (August 2004), http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2792. htm. 21. Samuel Kim, Chinese-North Korean Relations at a Crossroads, International Journal of Korean Studies 7(1) (Spring/Summer 2003): 46. 22. Zhenqiang Pan, Solution for the Nuclear Issue of North Korea, Hopeful But Still Uncertain, Journal of East Asian Affairs 18(1) (Spring/Summer 2004): 41– 43. 23. Yu Bin, China-Russia Relations: Presidential Politicking and Proactive Posturing, Comparative Connections 6, (1) (2004): 125–136, http://www.csis.org/media/ csis/pubs/0401q.pdf. 24. For instance, the head of Russia’s Ministry of Atomic Energy, Alekandr Rumyantsev blamed the deterioration of relations between Washington and Pyongyang on KEDO’s failure to build the two promised light-water reactors to relieve North Korea’s energy crisis. 25. Maurice Strong, North Korea at the Crossroads—Prospects for a Comprehensive Settlement, Notes for Remarks Delivered at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC (June 17, 2003): 4, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/ about/pdfs/carnegie nk.pdf 26. RIA Novosti, North Korea’s debt to Russia could be dramatically cut-Lavrov (April 27, 2007), http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070214/60747982.html 27. Zhenqiang Pan, Solution for the Nuclear Issue of North Korea, Hopeful But Still Uncertain,” Journal of East Asian Affairs 18(1) (Spring/Summer 2004): 42–43. 28. Samuel Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 134. 29. Alexander Lukin, Rossiya i Dve Korei-Problemy i Perspektivy [ Russia and the Two Koreas-Problems and Prospects] Mirovaya Ekonomika i Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya, 6: 64–70. Cited from David Kerr, The Sino-Russian Partnership and U.S. Policy toward North Korea, 428–429. 30. Samuel Charap, The Petersburg Experience, Problems of Post-Communism 51(1) (January/February, 2004): 57.

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31. Korean Research Institute for Strategy, The Strategic Balance in Northeast Asia, Seoul, South Korea, KRIS, 2001, 215–216. 32. Alexander Lukin, Russia’s Image of China and Russian-Chinese Relations, CNAPS Working Paper, The Brookings Institute, May 2001. 33. Penn Well Publishing, Oil and Gas in the Irkutsk Region (April 25, 2007), http://www.irkutsk.org/fed/kovykt.html 34. Xia Yishan, China-Russia Energy Cooperation: Impetuses, Prospects and Impacts, http://www.rice.edu/energy/publications/docs/ AsianEnergySecurity ChinaRussiaEnergyCooperation.pdf. 35. Anna Shkuropat, New Dynamics in Northeast Asia: the Russian Factor, CNAPS Working Paper, The Brookings Institution, August 2002, 16. 36. Jeon Dae Kwan, Keukdong Jiyuck Kyebal Ron [The Development of Far East] Shin Dong A,562 (July 1, 2006): 446–453. 37. Channelnewsasia International, Russia Calls on North Korea to Resume Nuclear Talks (September 22, 2004), http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/ afp world/view/107868/1/html. 38. Seo Hyun-jin, Seoul Plays Moscow Card with North Korea, Asia Times Online, September 24, 2004, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/F124Dg06.html. The Project will begin in Kamchatka and Veninsky on Sakhalin Island. 39. Stephen Blank, Korea through the Russian Looking Glass, Asia Times Online (March 4, 2004), http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FC04Dg07.html. 40. Selig Harris, Gas and Geopolitics in Northeast Asia, World Policy Journal 19(4) (Winter 2002/2003). 41. Elizabeth Wishnick, Russia in Inter-Korean Relations: A New Era? in InterKorean Relations: Problems and Prospects, S. Kim, ed., New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 117–138. 42. The meetings between Russia and North Korea on the railroad-connecting issue included a meeting of railway ministers in March 2001, North Korea Railway delegation visit to Moscow in July 2001, a North Korean-Russian common delegation meeting in August 2001and a Russian railway delegation visit to North Korea in September 2001. 43. Lucian Kim, Russia Uses Railway to Expand Role in North Korea (October 25, 2006), http://www.broomberg.com. 44. ITAR-TASS, Russia, US Note Importance of Korean Peninsular Nuclear Free Status (December 22, 2004), http://www.tass.ru/eng/level2.html?NewsID= 1585279&PageNum=0. 45. Esook Yoon and Dong Hyung Lee, A View from Asia: Vladimir Putin’s Korean Opportunity, Comparative Strategy 24(2) (April-June 2005): 185–201.

Chapter 9

A Modest Proposal: Forming a Regularized Security Structure for Northeast Asia—Drawing on the OSCE Experience Thomas A. Wuchte “Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, ’till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.” —Jonathan Swift, 1729 It is an unfortunate reality that Northeast Asia faces today a unique challenge that combines both nontraditional and traditional threats. Although nontraditional security concerns have proliferated in recent years, traditional security concerns that are the unresolved legacies of the Cold War still remain in the region.1 In 2005, North Korea announced to the shocked world that it possessed nuclear weapons in defiance of international and bilateral commitments it had made for a denuclearized Korean peninsula. Despite sanctions and pressure, the announcement followed with a declared nuclear test in the fall of 2006. With the existence of these palpable traditional threats, it would be premature to declare a “New Security Paradigm” elsewhere in Asia, let alone Northeast Asia. This chapter, at the outset, does not focus on why a security structure along the lines of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has not developed. There are countless permutations on why this has

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not occurred. It takes a concerted decision collectively to convene a process that would carve out a security structure. The reality is there has not been either the political will to start such a process or the resources devoted to push an idea forward. Nevertheless, the task of strengthening constructive engagement among the countries of Asia is especially timely and important. Europe has benefited from a regularized process to interact and there is already a long history behind the Helsinki Final Act principles and the OSCE experience. Given the multifaceted security challenge facing East Asia, the OSCE, with its breadth of conflict prevention and confidence-building tools, can serve as a valuable resource and partner for the region. With regard to transnational disputes, the OSCE has been at the forefront of international efforts to tackle threats that require concerted multilateral responses, and the OSCE is well positioned to share its experience and expertise with not only Northeast Asia but also the larger East Asian region. Regarding traditional security threats, the OSCE, could serve as a resource for East Asian countries in devising appropriate cooperative responses. Moving ahead and beyond Six-Party Talks is often echoed as a vague possibility resulting from some yet-to-be-reached success or breakthrough in the diplomatic conclusion. This chapter places the Six-Party Talks aside and concentrates on how Northeast Asia could benefit the most from intensified exchange with the OSCE to learn about the OSCE’s efforts to employ conflict prevention and crisis management tools to counter nontraditional security threats. While the surrounding nations, as well as the larger AsiaPacific Region, have been reluctant to embrace preventive diplomacy as it applies to intra- and interstate conflicts, there is a growing interest within the region to shape the preventive diplomacy vision to target transnational and nontraditional security challenges—primarily through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF). Beyond the ARF, Northeast Asia does not have a comparable structure for another regional security forum or even agreement to initiate a consultation mechanism—there will need to be an effective vehicle to formalize this intensified exchange with the OSCE that is lacking. The first step is to demonstrate that the OSCE experience has direct relevance in addressing the persisting traditional threats in Northeast Asia—with so many pressing threats left unresolved it makes best sense to concentrate on an existing model to move multinational diplomacy forward in Northeast Asia. This chapter will focus attention on the security dimension of the OSCE; specifically, the dialogue exchanged within the framework of the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC). In a world today where strategic thinkers casually lecture on the “globalization” of ideas and issues, the following sections will make what has otherwise been overlooked—the connection between established multilateral frameworks in Europe so they can be applied to a region with similar problems but weaker institutions for precisely this dialogue.

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Relevance of the OSCE Why should the OSCE experience in cooperative security and conflict prevention be of interest to the region? First of all, the author recognizes historical conditions that produced the OSCE are quite different from those that prevail in East Asia today. The end of the Cold War and even the events of September 11, 2001, have affected the OSCE region and particularly Northeast Asia differently. However, there are elements of the OSCE experience that are of practical value in certain parts of this diverse region. In several OSCE-East Asia conferences, the larger question of whether the OSCE experience is relevant to East Asia has been analyzed. Recently, in Seoul, South Korea, an OSCE Asian Partner, the question of OSCEstyle CSBMs’ (Confidence and Security Building Measures) applicability to Northeast Asia was a major topic of discussion.2 There are two specific and central elements of the OSCE experience applicable to a number of the security challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region, and especially Northeast Asia. First, the OSCE’s Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC) offers an example of a cooperative security body that could be tailored for application in East Asia, particularly Northeast Asia, filling the need for a regional multilateral security mechanism. Second, the OSCE has adopted an ambitious strategy for dealing with threats to security and stability in the twenty-first century that is relevant to the “preventive diplomacy” aspirations of the region as hoped for in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and perhaps at a future point in a Northeast Asia security structure. Before examining further the OSCE strategy and its applicability to the Asia-Pacific region, consider the OSCE itself, especially the ability of the Organization to respond to the needs of its members. Since September 11, 2001, and actually long before, the OSCE has recognized that security issues must be addressed in a comprehensive way. The OSCE is now moving to meet new and pressing security challenges. This process has been facilitated by the Charter for European Security, signed by heads of State at the OSCE Istanbul Summit in November 1999. The Charter notes that the principles for cooperative security of the organization “apply across all dimensions of security: politico-military, human and economic.”3 The OSCE is now tackling challenges well beyond traditional interstate conflicts and primarily military issues. The OSCE is also a very flexible and cost-effective organization. The OSCE’s Secretariat and support units are small and can be adjusted to adapt to changed circumstances. In fact, the staffs of the OSCE field presences are manned by professionals and experts who have been endorsed by OSCE participating States. In addition, the OSCE is now actively engaged in outreach. An important element of OSCE’s ongoing work is to seek to share its experiences with other regions and organizations. There has been an ongoing series between the OSCE and its Partners for Cooperation,

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providing an opportunity to exchange views and knowledge. The Asian Partners include Japan, Korea, Thailand, Afghanistan, and Mongolia, and the Mediterranean Partners comprise Israel, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt.

The Forum for Security Cooperation This and the next section will focus on the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), a part of the OSCE that should be of particular interest to Northeast Asia. The FSC is the OSCE body that not only negotiates Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs) and oversees their implementation, but it also is a key instrument for discussion of security issues. An instrument underscored at the beginning lacking in Northeast Asia. The FSC’s political-military character as well as its ability to negotiate both CSBMs and Norm and Standard Setting Measures (NSSMs) should be of keen interest to Northeast Asia. As a permanent, standing body it meets weekly and has dedicated delegation representatives who can engage in the detailed bilateral or multilateral negotiations often needed for forward movement. Key documents negotiated by the FSC through this framework include the Vienna Document 1999, the Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security, the OSCE Document on Small Arms and Light Weapons, the OSCE Document on Stockpiles (2003), and the OSCE Documents on Principles Governing Non-Proliferation, and Principles Governing Conventional Arms Transfers.4 The FSC was established by the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in 1992 to strengthen security and stability within the community of states as laid down in Chapter V of the Helsinki Summit Declaration. The CSCE later became the OSCE. A work or action program was created for the FSC. That work program has been assessed and updated, which identified (among others) the following key tasks for the forum since early in its inception: r Implementation of existing arms control and confidence- and securitybuilding measures as agreed upon; r Consideration of a web of interlocking and mutually reinforcing agreements; r Introduction of a relevant security dialog function; r Seek ways of strengthening existing arms control agreements and the CSBM regimes, in particular the Vienna Document; and r Consider efforts to develop norm- and standard-setting measures, such as the Code of Conduct (CoC) on Politico-Military Aspects of Security, the Principles Governing Conventional Arms Transfers, and the Principles Governing Non-Proliferation.

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FSC efforts since the beginning have steadily worked toward fulfillment of these tasks, with over 500 plenary sessions to date. Successful implementation of arms control and CSBM measures is not a one-time undertaking; it demands—and in the context of the FSC—requires constant dialog. In a positive example, states are encouraged to raise implementation issues during FSC meetings, which take place weekly. In addition, the FSC holds an Implementation Assessment Meeting in March each year to review the record of achievement by member states (discussed in more detail further in this section). In June 2003, the OSCE held its first Annual Security Review Conference. This has become a separate activity from the FSC’s Annual Implementation Assessment Meeting and includes both the FSC and the OSCE’s larger body the Permanent Council. This more recent conference provides an opportunity to look at the range of OSCE security activities across all three dimensions of the OSCE—economic, human, and security—not just those in the politico-military security sphere. Two useful examples that would benefit Northeast Asia are the Vienna Document, revised in 1999, and the Code of Conduct (CoC) on PoliticoMilitary Aspects of Security. Both work in concert with their intended purpose of serving as a useful mechanism to enhance transparency and build confidence among the participating States of the OSCE. The Vienna Document stemmed from the post-Cold War need for transparency of military forces. The Code describes the appropriate role of the armed forces in a democracy, emphasizing civilian control, the necessity for transparency and public contact with information related to the armed forces, and the importance of respect for international humanitarian law. During each year, the OSCE Secretariat conducts a number of seminars to reinforce the principles contained in the CoC. In a similar way, the primary purpose of the annual implementation assessment meeting is to discuss the present and future implementation of agreed CSBMs under the Vienna Document. In sum, with the existence of the Vienna Document 1999, the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) and the Open Skies Treaties (though not formally part of the OSCE), and a number of complementary regional or bilateral arrangements, the so-called “network” of measures has been fully in place for almost fifteen years in Europe. In addition to implementing the measures contained in these and other documents, the OSCE participating States regularly exchange information about implementation of the agreements, primarily through dialogue at weekly FSC meetings. This comprehensive concept of the FSC, if applied to East Asia (particularly Northeast Asia) contains the elements of the needed paradigm shift mentioned at the beginning.

Post 9/11 Experience in the FSC The FSC promotes a “Security Dialogue,” which figured prominently in the context of recent Chairmanships of the FSC. In the first months of 2003,

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as delegations prepared for their upcoming chairmanships, the OSCE was already at work drafting a new Strategy to address threats to security and stability in the twenty-first century.5 Considering the overarching security dimension of the development of this new strategy, many became convinced that the FSC needed to broaden its focus to incorporate new threats and challenges into its already established arms control and CSBM “network.” In the past, traditional military-military and CSBM measures addressed interstate relations and the lawfully created armed forces of those states. The new threats to states’ security and stability tend to be of an entirely different nature. These are threats more often posed by non-state actors, threats emerging from outside the OSCE region and carried into it, and threats that are generally not of a conventional military nature, including terrorism, proliferation of WMD, and/or organized crime. The OSCE has entered a period in which there are no current or pressing threats to its borders—while fully understanding no regional organization has the luxury of waiting for issues that will eventually cross adjacent borders. Many of the fifty-six delegations judge that the OSCE should build on its existing strategy concepts to enhance the security dialog within the FSC and broaden the Forum’s focus during each subsequent chairmanship. The advantage of this security dialog function is that it allows the FSC to thoroughly explore and discuss a topic with no predetermined anticipation of the need for follow-up action, such as concurrence on new measures. The FSC can frame the dialog, as appropriate, for any particular topic. For example, brainstorming with like-minded countries and Secretariat (primarily with the FSC Support Unit) input, recent FSC Chairs chose three areas to address emerging security concerns and to help OSCE participating States understand them as well: proliferation of WMD, the Man Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) threat, and Civil-Military Emergency Preparedness.6 In addressing current proliferation challenges, the FSC Chairs scheduled several sets of speakers to outline the risks, challenges, and on-going efforts to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Invitations were initially extended to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the OSCE Actions against Terrorism Unit. The Conflict Prevention Center of the OSCE Secretariat also made very useful presentations. This dialogue carried forward through the Troika (past, present, and current FSC Chairs) to Andorra as a recent Chair, which demonstrated that even relatively small countries could preside over a multilateral security organization that meets weekly. The issues, once framed, allowed the FSC to start to determine how the OSCE region could contribute to regional efforts to cooperate on proliferation activities already undertaken by others. The OSCE’s own nonproliferation guidelines were approved in 1994 as a Statement on Nonproliferation Principles endorsed by all fifty-six participating States.

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The second subject was MANPADS. Shortly before introducing this subject for the Chairmanship of the FSC, the Forum initiated comprehensive export controls for MANPADS.7 The FSC called upon participating states to use existing mechanisms under the OSCE’s Small Arms Light Weapons (SALW) Document to do away with surplus MANPADS.8 During the FSC Chairmanships, the lead delegation arranged for additional presentations by the OSCE’s Action against Terrorism Unit and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to enhance the degree of awareness about the gravity of the MANPADS threat to military and civil aviation. Having highlighted this issue during the 2004 Chairmanship, the OSCE Secretariat hosted a workshop to further explore the issue of airport security throughout the region comprising the OSCE. Third was the issue of Civil-Military Emergency Preparedness. The Chair arranged for the FSC to host a daylong seminar to explore this topic— which has become more and more important—as evidenced by the tragic Tsunami in 2005. A rich array of speakers from the UN, NATO, the EU and a number of countries elaborated on their programs and suggested ways in which a regional multilateral organization might play an assistive role in creating awareness. As a follow-on, the FSC reviewed related UN documents concerning military involvement in disaster response, with a view toward considering how the OSCE might reinforce the activities of others. All of these subjects require efforts that can be enhanced via the conduct of regularly scheduled meetings, promoting forward progress at a steady pace. There is no forum in East Asia, and particularly Northeast Asia, that meets on a weekly basis for a regular exchange of views to further member ideas. There is one last area where the FSC has clearly excelled in recent years that East Asia should note—the FSC continues to promote regional implementation of the OSCE’s Small Arms Light Weapons (SALW) Document. The Expert Advice on implementation of Section V (assistance) of the SALW Document, prepared by the FSC at the end of 2002, was endorsed by a Permanent Council decision in March 2003. In July, Belarus was the first participating State to request OSCE assistance in destroying and controlling excess SALW.9 Following the steps outlined in the Expert Advice, the FSC, in close coordination with the Chairman-in-Office, assembled a group of small arms experts to conduct an assessment visit to Minsk to determine the feasibility of an OSCE small arms project there, an example of multilateral cooperation at its best. Beyond small arms destruction projects, the FSC accomplished much more with regard to the SALW Document over the past several years. Thanks to voluntary contributions by a number of participating States and the coordinating work of the Secretariat through the Conflict Prevention Center, eight “best practice guides” were prepared in an effort to elaborate on discrete parts of the SALW Document. To ensure the widest distribution and

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practical use by both OSCE and non-OSCE states, the FSC assembled and published the guides as one single reference document. The OSCE Handbook of Best Practices on SALW has now been completed in all six OSCE languages. The FSC presented a copy of its Best Practice Guides to a senior UN representative during the OSCE Ministerial in Maastricht. Moreover, the UN has since recognized the OSCE’s leading efforts to help stem the flow of illicit small arms and light weapons. Wider distribution of the Handbook has begun, and during the 2006 SALW Review Conference at the UN, the book found its way into the hands of the people who can put its practices to use. Although the potential of the FSC can only serve as a model—it is one that the decision makers who are framing the debate on East Asian and Northeast Asian security structures need to carefully consider; similar work has already been done within a geographic area that comprises fifty-six countries. The Forum, like all other bodies in the OSCE, is a consensusdriven body. That naturally restricts what any single country can accomplish, especially considering the range of views held in an organization of fifty-six members. Yet, the FSC and OSCE offer a working regional venue for its fifty-six members to discuss—in open forum or in smaller groups—issues of national interest. That fact, in and of itself, is a priceless confidence- and security-building measure. Finally, as a result of a supporting Secretariat, the rotating Chairmanships and the Troika that bridges past and incoming Chairs, the FSC has managed to include and address with deliverable results some key emerging security interests. This brief synopsis provides some idea of what the FSC is and does. Given the sophistication of most countries of Northeast Asia, the subregion has the capability to establish an institutionalized set of cooperative security measures or CSBMs along the lines of those negotiated by the FSC. If the countries of the subregion have the political will and the desire, the FSC and broader OSCE would certainly be able to advise regional states on practices that may be appropriate for the East Asia region—and in clear regard for Northeast Asia, which lacks many such measures.

If too Early for Northeast Asia—First Broaden ARF Collaboration? Over the years, different countries of the subregion have suggested proposals for establishing a more robust multilateral cooperative security structure, but none of them has yet become reality. The FSC may be particularly relevant to Northeast Asia where the interests of some of the world’s great powers intersect. This subregion of East Asia is a security complex of its own but lacks a full-fledged institutionalized forum for discussing security concerns. The interest in establishing a security forum appears to be linked at least potentially to the Six-Party process now underway in the region. It is worth exploring whether the FSC could serve as a “model” for institutionalized

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cooperative security practices for the subregion, but we should also consider the only existing architecture—the ARF. Does the FSC have something to offer to the larger ARF region as well? As the ARF seeks to strengthen its Chair and as some ARF Participants want to further institutionalize the forum, the FSC may have lessons to share on how to proceed.10 Although the modus operandi and norms of the ASEAN-centered ARF differ significantly from those of the OSCE, these differences do not mitigate the OSCE lessons highlighted earlier that support the mimicking of the European structures within the ARF. Even absent an FSC-style institutionalization, the ARF may still benefit from exchanging views and ideas with the OSCE in dealing with new transnational security challenges that threaten all regions of the world. As noted earlier, at the December 2003 Ministerial meeting, OSCE Ministers adopted an ambitious strategy for dealing with threats to security and stability in the twenty-first century. The strategy represents the review and work of all fifty-six nations of the OSCE following the post-9/11 tragedy. Focused beyond traditional interstate threats, the OSCE has poised itself to address twenty-first-century security challenges. With the adoption of this new strategy, the OSCE was moving beyond its traditional concerns about intra- and interstate conflicts toward focusing its conflict prevention and crisis management efforts on dealing with transnational and nontraditional security threats—such as terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, problems that are of common concern to all OSCE participating States and ARF member states as well. The strategy document allows the OSCE to bring into play its full panoply of conflict prevention capabilities to address these new security challenges. As the ARF continues to move from the confidence-building phase of its evolution toward more robust “preventive diplomacy,” it could benefit from exchanges with the OSCE to learn about the OSCE’s efforts to employ its conflict prevention and crisis management tools on transnational and nontraditional threats. While the ARF has been slow to embrace “preventive diplomacy” in intra- and interstate arenas, it appears to have a growing interest in shaping two discrete approaches: developing and employing new conflict prevention and crisis management tools; and focusing on emerging transnational and nontraditional security challenges.11 There may be an opportunity to achieve synergy in the respective effort of the OSCE and the ARF in tackling transnational and nontraditional security challenges. Their common focus could be an excellent basis for exchanges and cross-learning between the OSCE and the ARF. The ARF has tentatively welcomed cross-fertilization with the OSCE, and there have been some exchanges over the years. The challenge today is figuring out how the OSCE and the ARF can work together more regularly to maximize and optimize their interactions—if they so desire—with the majority of the

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challenge resting on the ARF with its lack of a robust Secretariat and episodic meeting schedule. The OSCE has the requisite experience, bench-depth, and is likely willing to help in East Asia’s efforts to deepen and institutionalize regional security cooperation. There are several OSCE activities that provide useful examples for East Asia, particularly Northeast Asia—the preceding sections have outlined many of them. Moreover, the OSCE, the ARF, and Northeast Asia are now grappling with common conflict prevention and crisis management issues in dealing with transnational and nontraditional threats. Here, all three can learn from one another via regularized information exchanges and visits. Security in the twenty-first century is indivisible; it impacts all nation states. As Asian experts and policy implementers consider the European model while designing the development of an OSCE-like security structure for themselves, they should pose the following questions: r Does East Asia, particularly Northeast Asia, have interest in an FSC-like institutionalized cooperative security framework? r If so, what types of agreements negotiated by the OSCE and its Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC) (that is, Small Arms/Light Weapons Document, the Vienna Document 1999, and the Code of Conduct) have relevance? r Do the OSCE and the ARF face the same transnational and nontraditional challenges? r How can the OSCE and the Northeast Asian region optimize their interactions to maximize transfer of information and ideas? r Given the different nature and structure of the two entities, how might this transfer be accomplished?

Conclusion—Starting Multilateral Dialogue There are differences between the situations that produced the OSCE in Europe and the conditions that presently prevail in Northeast Asia (or the larger East Asia to include the ARF, which ostensibly is the only regional security structure). These differences certainly affect how the OSCE can serve as a guide for this region. The OSCE experience, based on the preceding background, has demonstrable relevance in addressing the persisting traditional threats in Northeast Asia and East Asia. The debate about what type of structure is needed is vexing at best. Starting a multilateral security dialogue needs a political commitment at the highest level, and should be a centerpiece of any new administration if it were to move forward. As Northeast Asia thinks about the future of security cooperation as a means of dealing with traditional security threats in the region, the progress

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of CSBMs in the OSCE context is worth examining. What would work in Northeast Asia? What kinds of CSBMs? How to discuss and implement these possibilities? Also, the values and goals that have propelled the OSCE process forward should be considered? Do democracy and human rights matter in the region? What is the relationship between a security deficit and a human rights and democracy deficit? The OSCE believes there is a direct link between security and values. How can the OSCE and its Asian Partners for Cooperation, in the “spirit of Helsinki,” work together in Northeast Asia as well as the wider Asia-Pacific region? There is no shortage of good substantive ideas for prospective confidencebuilding in the East Asia region. The challenge of introducing within the Asian region the OSCE’s experience in political-military confidence-building is more than simply finding the right workable content for individual measures. It is a more fundamental problem given the doggedly complex political impasse within which any such regional initiative would have to be discharged. It rests with the ability to overcome a pervading win-lose perception that the very thought of negotiating even minimalist but mutually supportive security measures would somehow create a disproportionate “benefit” for some parties and a perceived and corresponding “deficit” for one’s own strategic and political role in the region. One cannot start with CSBMs without placing them, however ambitious and admirable, into first a workable institutional structure for a dialogue that can address current and underlying political challenges to peace and security within the region. At the outset, it was made clear that these conditions seem unlikely to improve dramatically for the better. Therefore the focus in the future for this chapter was on a process that can be borrowed/copied/emulated for a modest but perhaps even more practical and immediate interim steps, which countries collectively could usefully pursue over the coming period while such thorny issues as Six-Party talks continue. These are practical steps, which might have the ability to create the foundation for more substantial progress. There are other useful short-term steps that the Asian community might be able to take in the interim—specifically those commonly referred to as Track II (nongovernmental) to encourage and buttress the formal process involving officials and politicians, and military officers who are often burdened with day-to-day policy challenges. Academic experts within, throughout, and beyond, this region will be needed to support any eventual progress. If we are too busy to think strategically at the Track I (governmental level), then this must take the form of ensuring more consistent financial support for the current working groups for unofficial but inclusive Track II dialogue on regional security issues. Supporting and encouraging this dialogue, in a Public-Private Partnership, with an agreed process for feedback, would

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allow the results to be briefed to critical parts of the national security establishments among different countries of the region. The driving force must be a broad political endorsement to actively engage in this process. In historical terms, agreement among the countries in Northeast Asia, plus traditional partners such as the EU and United States to make a “Helsinki” commitment for Northeast Asia. This is an area where the OSCE—because of its already established framework—could materially help if politically endorsed. Today, Northeast Asia is poised to deepen regional security cooperation. The collective world does not and should not want to wait for another nuclear test to propel such thinking further. The OSCE experience will be helpful to the region as it deals with both nontraditional as well as traditional threats. Perhaps the most promising way to deal with this dual challenge is to deal first with threats that are most susceptible to cooperative solutions—through establishing multilateral dialogue in the region along the lines of the FSC first and then as the larger OSCE. The OSCE has less need now to focus on traditional security concerns, instead it has been engaging with transnational and nontraditional threats to security applicable to the Northeast Asian region as well. In dealing with the new security concerns of the twenty-first century, it would be beneficial, via information exchange and visits, for the OSCE and East Asia to cooperate more closely on addressing the persisting traditional threats of the region. A modest proposal—but one that requires political commitment beyond mere words.

Notes 1. The views in this chapter are of the authors and are not intended to reflect any official or unofficial position of the U.S. Government. 2. Consolidated Summary of the OSCE-IFANS/MOFAT workshop on revisiting the applicability of OSCE CSBMs in Northeast Asia, http://www.osce.org. 3. See the Charter for European Security, http://www.osce.org November 1999. 4. All can be accessed on the OSCE Web site. 5. The entire document can be found through the OSCE document library. 6. Examples drawn from testimony are available at http://www.csce.gov/ helsinki.cfm. 7. See FSC Decision 3/04, OSCE Principles for Export Controls of Man-portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS) at http://www.osce.org. 8. Both documents have found a receptive audience in other international fora as useful examples for consideration. Copies are easily obtained through OSCE Secretariat. The OSCE Web site, http://www.osce.org, contains a wealth of information on that organization’s past history and current activities. 9. See for example the United Kingdom’s efforts as highlighted in the UN Program of Acton on Small Arms Light Weapons, http://www. ukun.org/UNPoA.

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10. See for example the Cochairs’ Summary Report of the Meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum Inter-Sessional Support Group on Confidence Building Measures (ISG on CBMs), Berlin, Germany, February 21–23, 2005, at http:// www.aseanegionalforum.org. 11. A recent discussion on this occurred at the EU-ASEAN Ministerial Meeting, see http://ec.europa.eu/comm/external relations/asean/intro/arf.htm.

Part III

Shifting U.S.-South Korea Relationship

Chapter 10

Allies under Strain: U.S.-Korean Relations under G. W. Bush Seung-Ho Joo Since the end of World War II, the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) has considered its ties with the United States central in its foreign relations and pivotal to its survival. The ROK in 1945 hailed the United States as its liberator from Japanese colonial rule and in 1950 saluted the United States as its savior from Communist aggression and enslavement. The U.S.-ROK mutual defense treaty was signed in October 1953. Since then, the U.S.-ROK alliance and the U.S. military presence in Korea served as a deterrent against North Korea’s aggression and guarantor of peace and security in Northeast Asia.1 The United States provided generous economic aid to the ROK and served as the largest market for Korean exports, which undoubtedly contributed to the ROK’s rapid economic growth from the 1960s to the 1980s. The United States needed the ROK as an ally for its global and regional strategic designs. The two countries’ national interests, however, were not always identical. Since 1945, the United States and the ROK periodically experienced political frictions, but their differences were downplayed and hidden from public view. There was a “ritualized, official public relations gavotte that each side seems to regard as necessary and that each is reluctant to end.”2 In the post-Cold War era, U.S.-ROK political relations have been undergoing substantive, dramatic changes. The changes accelerated after George W. Bush came to power in 2001. In the past, frictions between the two allies were manageable, infrequent, and invisible to the public; now they are unmistakable, frequent, and open. U.S.-ROK political relations are now in

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flux. One of the peculiar changes is that nowadays neither side even pretends to hide or downplay their differences. This chapter discusses the metamorphosis of U.S.-ROK political relations from trustful allies to suspicious partners. It will first examine deteriorating U.S.-ROK political relations in the 2000s. This will be followed by a discussion of divergent interests and misperception as the sources of the transformed relationship. The chapter will then discuss the irreconcilable approaches of the United States and the ROK regarding North Korea’s nuclear issue. By way of conclusion, it will make some observations on the current state of U.S.-ROK relations.

G.W. Bush’s Hardline Policy versus ROK’s Sunshine Policy President Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine policy” of flexible engagement with North Korea and the historic inter-Korean summit meeting in June 2000 substantially reduced tensions between the two Korean states, but North Korea’s nuclear threat did not dissipate. Improved inter-Korean relations and the unresolved North Korean nuclear issue provided a backdrop against which U.S.-ROK political relations evolved in the 2000s. With the inauguration of President G.W. Bush in January 2001, U.S.-ROK and U.S.-DPRK relations entered into a new phase. Bush did not hide his intense hatred and contempt for Kim Jong Il and was bent on undoing Clinton’s engagement policy toward North Korea. Upon inauguration, Bush refused to resume Clinton’s efforts at missile negotiations and normalizing relations with the North. He also disagreed with the sunshine policy of the Kim Dae-jung government. Kim Dae-jung’s sunshine policy and Bush’s hardline policy toward North Korea collided, creating tension and friction in U.S.-ROK relations. The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States further hardened Bush’s stance toward North Korea. Shortly after the attacks, President Bush declared a global war on terrorism and in his January 2002 State of the Union address, Bush elaborated on the struggle against terrorism. He stated that the war had two great objectives, that is, to defeat terrorism and to prevent the “terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.” Bush then lumped three states—North Korea, Iran, and Iraq—together as the “axis of evil.”3 By including North Korea in that category, he indicated that the United States intended to destroy North Korea or force its behavioral change. The Bush administration adopted a new doctrine of preemptive war in the National Security Strategy, issued on September 20, 2002.4 The new U.S. doctrine included preemptive war (the use of force in the face of an imminent attack) as well as preventive war (the use of force before a serious threat to the United States gathers or grows over time). The preventive nature of the doctrine is well manifested in President Bush’s cover letter

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to the September 2002 National Security Strategy, which stated, “. . . as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against [such] emerging threats before they are fully formed.”5 The war on terrorism, the inclusion of North Korea in the axis of evil, and the doctrine of preemptive war raised serious concerns on the part of the ROK government since U.S. sanctions or military strikes on North Korea could easily lead to an all-out war in Korea, which would certainly spell unspeakable disasters for the Korean people. Bush’s hardline policy toward North Korea and DPRK’s inflexibility resulted in the freezing of U.S.-North Korean relations and the suspension of the inter-Korean peace process that had been set in motion following the June 2000 inter-Korean summit. Roh Moo-hyun’s election as South Korea’s President in December 2002 did not augur well for U.S.-ROK relations. Roh came to power riding the tide of anti-American sentiment that was spreading across South Korea at the time and vowing for an independent, nationalistic foreign policy as well as far-reaching domestic reforms. Before assuming the presidency, he had very limited experience in government and no experience in foreign affairs.6 As a presidential candidate, Roh vowed that if elected he would not “kow-tow” to Washington and that he would mediate between the United States and North Korea to prevent a war in Korea. He promised to continue President Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine policy” vis-a-vis North Korea.7 ` Roh came to power at a critical time. The second crisis over North Korea’s nuclear issue erupted in October 2002 when Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly visited Pyongyang and allegedly got a confession from a senior North Korea official to a secret nuclear weapons program based on highly enriched uranium. By early 2003, the North Korean nuclear issue topped the agenda in U.S.-ROK relations. By the time of Roh’s inauguration in February 2003, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was imminent and there was widespread concern among South Koreans that North Korea would be the next target for U.S. attack. In March 2003, Japan announced that it would launch a preemptive attack on North Korea if there was evidence that a North Korean missile attack was imminent. In defiance of the United States, North Korea resumed its nuclear weapons program and withdrew from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT). Roh has consistently and unequivocally opposed Bush’s hardline policy toward North Korea and advocated an engagement policy with the North. At the outset, the Roh government decided to attempt resolving North Korea’s nuclear issue while continuing inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation.8 This policy line was in direct conflict with Bush’s hardline policy, which called for isolating and pressuring North Korea into abandoning its nuclear program before providing any rewards. Like his predecessor, President Roh urged direct talks between the United States and the DPRK. In late 2002, anti-American sentiment was spreading rapidly in South Korea. The immediate cause was the crushing death of two Korean

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middle-school girls in June by an armored personnel carrier driven by American soldiers in a military exercise. The trial and acquittal of the two soldiers responsible for the accident by a U.S. military court sparked massive antiAmerican protests in which tens of thousands of South Koreans took to the street and held candlelight vigils night after night. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the United States and the ROK, which stipulates the legal rights of U.S. soldiers in Korea, is woefully lopsided when compared to similar U.S. agreements with other countries, such as Japan and Germany. South Koreans’ perception of the unfair SOFA, Bush’s hardline policy toward North Korea, and U.S. insensitivity to South Korean feelings and interests all added fuel to persistent anti-American protests. The Bush administration has been divided between the hardliners who advocate North Korea’s regime change along with forceful means to change its behavior, and the moderates who are skeptical of the Kim Jong Il regime’s immediate collapse and favor a negotiated solution to the nuclear issue. The hardliners consisted of “the offices of the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President, and non-proliferation specialists in the State Department and the National Security Council,” and the moderates found “mainly in the State Department and NSC, was composed of officials with experience on East Asian and Korean issues.”9 This division resulted in a lack of consistency and comprehensive strategy in the Bush administration’s North Korea policy. Roh’s independent foreign policy vis-a-vis the United States and concil` iatory posture toward North Korea met with strong resistance from many segments of South Korean society. The Roh government lacked widespread support from South Koreans and the ruling party was in a minority in the National Assembly. Roh’s imprudent words and deeds plus his violation of election laws led to an impeachment motion in the National Assembly in early 2004. His presidency was saved by a Constitutional Court’s ruling to dismiss the National Assembly’s impeachment move. In accordance with the Court ruling, his presidential powers were fully restored in May 2004. The impeachment effort backfired; in a general election held the following month, conservative parties lost and the ruling Uri Party won gaining a slim majority in the National Assembly.10 The general election also brought about generational changes in the legislature. The outcome of all this was that both the legislative and executive branches were comprised of the youngest, most progressive and ideologically, least experienced, and least pro-American government in South Korea’s history. In polls, a majority of Uri Party legislators classified themselves as “progressives,” and considered South Korea’s relations with China more important than those with the United States.11 Nearly half of all legislators are under fifty and only 13 per cent are over sixty years of age. In August 2004, Joongang Ilbo classified 45 per cent of the current National Assembly as progressives and only 20 per cent as conservatives, with the rest being moderates.12

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Following the May 2003 summit meeting in Washington, DC, the ROK and the United States smoothed over some of the pending issues and recovered the appearance of cooperation. Roh in the past had advocated the withdrawal of American troops, but as president he realized that the U.S.ROK alliance and U.S. troops in Korea were essential for Korea’s security and economy. He stated that such moves by the Pentagon might send a wrong signal to the North. In an effort to bolster the U.S.-ROK alliance and win U.S. support for his engagement policy vis-a-vis North Korea, Roh gave ` strong support for the U.S. war in Iraq in March 2003 and agreed to send noncombat troops to Iraq.13 With his reelection in November 2004, George W. Bush will be in the White House until January 2009. Saved by the Constitutional Court’s ruling, Roh Moo-hyun will be in the Blue House until February 2008. Like it or not, Roh and Bush will have to deal with each other in the years ahead. Bush continued his hardline policy toward North Korea. Bush himself made no secret of his intense hatred and contempt for Kim Jong Il, and believed that his bellicose unilateralism was vindicated with his reelection.14 After his reelection, President Bush was surrounded by hardliners more than ever. Colin Powell was a voice of reason in Bush’s foreign policy. With his replacement as Secretary State by Condoleezza Rice, the United States would pursue “a squeeze on North Korea” and “a collision with Iran.”15 Vice President Cheney continued to press for anything short of military invasion and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld kept pushing for hardline measures. North Korea is not a priority in Bush’s foreign policy. He is now preoccupied with conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Iranian nuclear crisis. The very fact that there are no East Asia specialists in the top leadership of the State Department does not help either. Secretary of State Rice is a Russia specialist and has limited experience with East Asia. Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick has expertise in trade issues while Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, served as Ambassador to NATO and Ambassador to Greece. Christopher Hill, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, served most of his diplomatic career in Europe before he was appointed Ambassador to Korea.16 As discussed below, Bush’s neglect of and indecisiveness toward North Korea proved to be a grave mistake as North Korea sped up its nuclear weapons programs and detonated its first nuclear device in October 2006.

From Reliable Allies to Uncertain Partners Undoubtedly, the United States and the ROK as allies are going through difficult times and their relationship is at a critical juncture. Tensions and mutual distrust between these allies are unmistakable. What then is responsible for the current state of uncomfortable, cool relations? Was the worsening relationship inevitable or accidental? In other words, did it result

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from diverging national interests or misperceptions on both sides? The fact is that it was a combination of conflicting interests, goals, misperceptions, and misunderstandings as well as a chain of events that contributed to the deterioration of the relationship.

Diverging Interests In the Cold War years, the United States pursued the goal of containing the global communist threat and relied on superior military capability to achieve that goal. In the post-Cold War era (especially after 9/11), the United States has pursued the twin goals of the destruction of terrorist networks and the prevention of nuclear proliferation by using superior military capability. Unilateralism, the preemptive doctrine, and the militarization of foreign policy characterize G.W. Bush’s foreign policy. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were a turning point. After 9/11, President Bush’s ideas about national security were radicalized. The influence of neoconservatives (neocons)17 over Bush and his foreign policy increased dramatically after the terrorist attacks. Neocons aim to perpetuate U.S. hegemony in a unipolar system. They see the world in terms of good and evil, and advocate the use of superior military power to defeat the forces of evil. They support spreading democracy to autocratic regimes. Neocons prefer “moral clarity to diplomatic finesse, and confrontation to the pursuit of incremental advantage.” They are “skeptical of multilateral institutions that limit American power and effectiveness; they prefer to focus on new threats and opportunities, rather than old alliances.”18 The preemption doctrine contained in the 2002 “National Security Strategy of the United States” derived from neocons. The ideas of the neo-cons combined with Bush’s sense of self-righteousness and certainty. In historian Robert Dallek’s words, “What you have . . . is sort of secular evangelism: ‘I know I’m right. I know what to do.’”19 Bush’s certainty and heavy-handedness alienated much of the world, including former friends and allies. The United States is preoccupied with global issues, most notably the global war on terrorism and nuclear nonproliferation. U.S. relations with the DPRK and the ROK are circumscribed by its global concerns. As a result, “much of the U.S. response was less shaped solely by North Korea’s role on the peninsula or the region than by U.S. perceptions of North Korea as part of a far larger global problem identified with proliferation, rogue states, and supporters of terrorism.”20 Nowadays functional experts in counterproliferation and counterterrorism rather than area specialists on Korea formulate U.S. Korea policy. This tendency of focusing on nuclear nonproliferation and overlooking the unique circumstances and interests of the ROK is a source of U.S.-ROK friction.21 In the same context, the Pentagon’s reconfiguring of the U.S. global military basing structure known as the Global Posture Review (GPR) caused

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friction with South Korea. In accordance with the GPR, the United States announced its plan to reduce U.S. troops in Korea by one-third by the end of 2005 and raised the possibility of transforming the security role of the U.S.-ROK alliance to include regional security matters. The GPR clearly shows how functional issues overrode alliance considerations.22 These moves alarmed the South Korean government, whose interests were defined primarily in terms of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. The United States perceives Kim Jong Il’s regime as a major threat to its security because of North Korea’s WMD capabilities. The Bush administration is prone to apply forceful means (economic sanctions and military force) to remove the threat. The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) announced by Bush on May 31, 2003, was an attempt to “prevent the flow of WMD, their delivery systems, and related materials on the ground, in the air and at sea to and from countries of proliferation concern,” and reflected the U.S. tendency to apply coercion rather than negotiations to cope with proliferation.23 In contrast, South Korea’s paramount goal is to prevent war on the Korean peninsula. Another Korean war would bring about unspeakable suffering to the Korean people and devastate Korea’s economy. As far as South Koreans are concerned nuclear nonproliferation is secondary to war prevention, and nothing can justify an internecine conflict on the Korean peninsula. The ROK’s engagement policy with the DPRK was thus based on a realistic assessment of external environment. Both Kim Dae-jung’s sunshine policy and Roh Moo-hyun’s “peace and prosperity” policy were products of aroused Korean nationalism, the need for survival, and realistic assessments of a shifting external environment. The basic objective of Kim Dae-jung’s sunshine policy was to improve interKorean relations by promoting reconciliation, cooperation, and peace. It was designed to engage the North through exchanges and cooperation and encourage it toward further opening and change. This policy was predicated upon three principles—no tolerance of any North Korean armed provocation, no intention to absorb North Korea, and inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation to resolve inter-Korean hostility.24 As long as North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were under check after the 1994 Agreed Framework and the Clinton administration was willing to try a negotiated solution to North Korea’s nuclear issue, the sunshine policy did not cause frictions to U.S.-ROK relations. G.W. Bush’s hardline policy vis-a-vis North Korea, ` however, was not compatible with the sunshine policy. Roh Moo-hyun’s “policy for peace and prosperity,”25 which was the continuation of his predecessor’s sunshine policy with only cosmetic modifications, caused further frictions and irritation in U.S.-ROK relations. The Roh government stated that its North Korea policy would build upon the sunshine policy. Roh’s peace and prosperity policy “aims at balanced emphasis on between security and the economy, or between peace and prosperity” and

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postulates that peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula will resolve a major security concern in Northeast Asia that will eventually contribute to the promotion of peace and prosperity in the region. Its goals include the promotion of peace on the Korean peninsula, the pursuit of mutual prosperity for South and North Korea, and a contribution to prosperity in Northeast Asia.26 The Roh government opposes North Korea’s nuclear armament and vows to play the leading role in resolving the nuclear issue. Roh has been reluctant to applying sanctions or military force against North Korea. Roh’s peace and prosperity policy, however, is neither original nor imaginative; it did not introduce new initiatives vis-a-vis the North. The ROK’s con` ciliatory stance vis-a-vis North Korea caused uneasiness and confusion in ` Washington. Once G.W. Bush and Kim Dae-jung (and Roh Moo-hyun) defined their national interests and foreign policy goals the way they did, the deterioration of U.S.-ROK relations was inevitable.

Misperception South Korean perceptions and attitudes toward North Korea and the United States have changed substantially and irrevocably since 2000. To most South Koreans, North Korea is no longer viewed as a military threat, and North Koreans are now viewed mostly as poor compatriots who need help. At the same time, an increasing number of South Koreans perceive the United States as a bully, a threat to peace, and an obstacle to inter-Korean reconciliation and unification. The Bush administration and the American public, on the other hand, construed as signs of ingratitude, disloyalty, and betrayal the assertiveness of the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun governments and their refusal to follow the U.S. lead, especially on North Korea’s nuclear issue and their passive role in dissipating anti-American sentiments in South Korean society. The changing perceptions and attitudes on both sides contribute to U.S.-ROK tension and distrust. Kim Dae-jung’s sunshine policy led to South Koreans’ psychological metamorphosis by “demystifying North Korea and undermining its image as the sworn enemy of the South.”27 The inter-Korean summit in June of 2000 left a lasting, indelible impact on South Koreans. For the first time, a South Korean leader, President Kim Dae-jung, went to Pyongyang and met with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, and at the end of their talks the two leaders issued the June 15 declaration. Following the summit meeting, inter-Korean dialogue and personal exchanges increased and joint economic projects were pushed through. Nearly 10,000 visited North Korea in the first half of 2004 and around 800,000 South Koreans have now visited Mount Geumgang in North Korea. In September 2002, North Korea sent 159 athletes to the Busan Asian Games along with 347 as cheerleaders and members of dance troupes. In 2004, the athletes of the two Koreas entered together the opening ceremony of the Athens Summer Olympics under one

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“Unification” flag. In May–June 2004, inter-Korean talks on security issues led to a mutual agreement to remove propaganda signs, institute a hotline, and jointly develop a communications system to help avoid accidental conflicts in the Yellow Sea (West Sea). Finally, the Gaesung industrial park in North Korea opened in 2005, with a pilot project of nineteen South Korean companies. Unlike his predecessors, President Kim Dae-jung allowed nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to develop direct contacts with North Koreans. People-to-people contacts provided the impetus for the South Korean public’s perception change. Through separated-family reunions, tourist visits, and NGO activities, South Koreans realized that North Koreans belonged to the same nation with a common language, culture, and history. Sports exchanges and cooperation along with South Korean media coverage of sporting events and interviews with North Korean athletes brought South Koreans much closer to North Koreans. Despite periodic armed clashes and crises on the Yellow Sea and threats from Pyongyang, most South Koreans now consider North Korea not as a threatening regime but as a group of compatriots to be embraced. Progressive South Koreans and the Roh government do not see the nasty, brutal aspects of Kim Jong Il’s regime and instead highlight the commonalities with the North Korean people. Many South Koreans tend to focus on the changed aspects and reforms of North Korea while overlooking the unchanged, brutal nature of the regime. It is a combination of “projection of its own images” and “wishful thinking” that led the South Korean government and progressive South Koreans to project an overly optimistic view of North Korea. In this context, Scott Snyder of Pacific Forum CSIS aptly described the following: “Many South Korean leaders came to project their hopes onto Kim Jong-il in the initial months following the summit, presuming without hard evidence that Kim had decided or would decide to emulate Park Chung-hee’s economic policies as a vehicle for achieving North Korea’s economic recovery.”28 The decision to drop the term “main enemy” in reference to North Korea in a defense white paper in 2004, published by the Ministry of Defense, was in reaction to North Korea’s persistent complaint. Instead, the white paper will call North Korea a “direct military threat.”29 This controversial move was intended to please North Korea and it reflects the Roh government’s perception that North Korea is no longer an imminent threat.30 South Koreans’ favorable perception and attitudes toward North Korea were closely linked to the rising tide of anti-Americanism in South Korea. Anti-Americanism grew steadily since the 1980s when the United States supported dictatorial governments in Seoul. But anti-American sentiment grew rapidly and intensely after G.W. Bush came to power. Anti-American sentiment spread in South Korea with an atmosphere of inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation. Bush’s hardline policy toward North Korea

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is perceived by many South Koreans as an effort to perpetuate Korean division and obstruct inter-Korean reconciliation and unification. The Bush administration’s hardline policy vis-a-vis North Korea had a chilling effect ` on inter-Korean relations and along with North Korea’s intransigency contributed to the second North Korean nuclear crisis. Bush’s hardline policy toward North Korea, the “axis of evil” speech, and his loathing of Kim Jong Il heightened fears among South Koreans that the United States might be bent on invading the North. Anti-Americanism in South Korea is also linked to South Koreans’ demand for equal and fair treatment from the United States. With rapid economic growth and political democratization, South Koreans have become self-confident and assertive, more willing to readily point out injustices and unfair practices vis-a-vis the United States. While North Korea’s military ` threats were overwhelming and U.S. forces in Korea served as an effective deterrent against North Korea’s aggression, South Koreans cultivated U.S. friendship and welcomed the U.S. military presence. But after North Korea’s military threats dwindled and South Korea’s socioeconomic conditions improved, South Koreans became increasingly impatient with the heavy-handed, self-centered attitudes and behavior of the United States. Under Roh’s presidency, South Korea’s political scene and societal mood moved to the left on the ideological spectrum. The Roh government is mostly leftist and the least experienced in the ROK’s political history. President Roh is liberal, stubborn, self-righteous, and incapable of accepting constructive criticisms, and he is surrounded by like-minded staff. Roh’s staunch supporters belong to the so-called “386 generation”—people in their thirties who were born in the 1960s and attended college in the 1980s who now occupy key power positions. This group of people, often likened to the Taliban or President Roh’s “red-guards” by their critics, are headstrong outsiders with no experience or expert knowledge, no respect for the traditional bureaucracy and the establishment, and full of half-baked radical ideas. They are bent on the destruction of the existing order in the name of reform, but do not have the slightest idea where their “reforms” are headed. Two of South Korea’s national TV networks are either government-controlled (KBS) or dominated by its trade union, and their coverage often is critical of the United States reflecting their leftist bias. Chungyojo, South Korea’s national teachers’ union, has become well entrenched in the South Korean school system and are often exposing students to views critical of the United States.

The Future of the U.S.-ROK Alliance The restructuring of U.S. troops in Korea and the future of the U.S.-ROK alliance also emerged as a divisive issue. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald

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Rumsfeld stated in early 2003 that U.S. troops would not stay where they were not welcome. In mid-March, a senior Pentagon official said the trip wire function of U.S. troops near the DMZ was outdated and the Second Infantry Division located near the DMZ would be moved to south of the Han River. He continued that if South Korea did not want American forces, they would leave “at any time, even tomorrow.”31 Rumsfeld had been restructuring U.S. troops worldwide in view of new technology and new threats with the Pentagon reassessing the location and size of U.S. bases along with the number of troops stationed abroad. In June 2004, the Pentagon presented a detailed plan to South Korea for withdrawing one-third (12,500) of its 37,000 troops by the end of 2005. This would be the first troop reduction since 1992.32 The United States announced that by 2006 all American troops would be moved from positions near the DMZ to new locations south of the Han River, out of artillery range of the North. The repositioning would mean the abandonment of the tripwire strategy designed to ensure the automatic involvement of the United States in a future Korean war. U.S. officials stated that, despite the planned U.S. troop reduction and redeployment, the U.S. commitment to the U.S.ROK alliance remained firm, pointing out the U.S. plan to spend $11 billion during the next five years to upgrade its military firepower in Korea.33 The ROK government wanted the planned U.S. troop repositioning to south of the Han River postponed until after North Korea’s nuclear issue was resolved. Many South Koreans fear that such a move was the first step for the U.S. to launch a preemptive attack on North Korea. The Roh government also wanted the proposed troop reduction to be carried out gradually over ten years. At the sixth round of the Future of the Alliance Policy Initiative talks, held in Hawaii in January 2005, Seoul and Washington agreed that the Yongsan Garrison would be moved completely from downtown Seoul to the Osan-Pyongtaek area. According to the agreement, the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command (CFC) and the United Nations Command (UNC) would be moved to the new site south of the Han River by the end of 2007. The two sides agreed to link resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue to the implementation of the second stage of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division’s redeployment to positions south of the Han River.34 It was also reported that the costs of the relocation ($9.5 billion by U.S. estimates) would be directly regulated by the Korean government and might be reduced to $3 billion.35 Despite persistent anti-American demonstrations, a majority of South Koreans want the U.S. troops to remain. According to a Joongang Ilbo survey in January 2003, 13.8 percent of those who responded demanded a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and 41.5 percent answered that U.S. troops in Korea should stay at the current level.36

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Widening Gap over North Korea The United States and South Korea manifested irreconcilable differences over how to deal with North Korea’s nuclear issue. In fact, divergent approaches to North Korea’s nuclear programs are at the heart of the U.S.ROK discord. The second crisis over North Korea’s nuclear issue flared up in the winter of 2002–2003 in the wake of a visit to Pyongyang in early October 2002 by U.S. special envoy James Kelly. Kelly stated that the DPRK admitted to a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program. The United States asserted that its accusation of an HEU program was based on solid intelligence as well as the confessions of a Pakistani scientist who admitted providing uranium enrichment-related technology to North Korea. According to former U.S. envoy to North Korea Jack Pritchard, at the time, James Kelly did not confront North Korean officials with evidence of their secret HEU program. Kang Sok-Ju who Kelly quoted as having admitted to the secret nuclear program, flatly rejected the allegation. According to Kang, he told Kelly, “We are entitled to have a nuclear program.”37 Beginning in December, the United States halted fuel oil shipments to North Korea. In response, North Korea declared the 1994 Agreed Framework null and void and removed monitoring devices while expelling IAEA inspectors. North Korea then resumed its nuclear program in Yeongbyun, which had been mothballed since October 1994, by reopening a sealed plutonium-reprocessing plant at Yeongbyun. On January 10, North Korea announced its decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The United States considered imposing sanctions and a blockade against North Korea, and the latter in turn declared that it would consider these measures an act of war. Available evidence suggests that Kelly’s confrontation with North Korea in October 2002 was motivated to derail inter-Korean reconciliation and Pyongyang-Tokyo normalization talks that were gaining momentum at the time. In April 2002, the two Koreas agreed to implement plans for interKorean railroad links and for the joint development of an industrial complex at Gaesung in North Korea. Approximately 1,000 South Korean firms were expected to move into the Gaesung complex. These conciliatory projects met with strong resistance from the United States and Washington “refused to approve the de-mining, and threatened to block the Gaesung project by restricting the use of U.S.-licensed and other sensitive technology by companies investing in the zone.”38 In September 2002, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang to discuss the normalization of relations. The United States learned of the planned visit three weeks before it occurred. When Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage presented suspicions of North Korea’s secret HEU program to Koizumi in an effort to dissuade him from making the trip, Koizumi refused to cancel. The Bush

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administration feared that it might lose control over the North Korean issue if the DPRK’s relationship with the ROK and Japan rapidly warmed up and decided to regain control by making an issue of North Korea’s suspected HEU program. In an effort to diffuse mounting tensions, the United States proposed multinational talks to discuss North Korea’s nuclear ambition. After the trilateral talks in Beijing ended in April without results, the United States wanted to hold five-party talks—the United States, China, the DPRK, the ROK, and Japan—without Russia’s participation. China dispatched Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo to Pyeongyang to resume mediation efforts. At his meeting with Kim Jong Il, Dai urged Kim to accept five-way talks. Kim Jong Il rejected a five-party format and insisted on a six-party format to include Russia. According to a Sankei Shimbun report, in late July 2003 Kim Jong Il called Russian President Putin to ask for Russia’s participation in the Six-Party Talks and for Russia to host the talks. Putin agreed but declined to host the talks on the grounds that Beijing should continue to host them because of its enormous contributions as a mediator between the United States and the DPRK.39 Kim probably wanted Russia’s inclusion in the talks to counterbalance the United States’ tough stance and to express his displeasure with China’s perceived cooperation with the United States against the DPRK. In August 2003, the first round of the Six-Party Talks convened but failed to make any progress as the United States and the DPRK manifested diametrically opposed positions. At the time, the DPRK put forward a package solution based on the principle of simultaneous actions to solve the nuclear issue. The United States opposed the package solution and the principle of simultaneous actions. The United States wanted to discuss the “sequencing” of steps (or coordinated steps) to resolve the crisis, but insisted that North Korea agree to scrap its nuclear weapons program first. The United States took the position that the DPRK should dismantle its nuclear program before the United States and the DPRK could discuss issues of security assurances and economic aid. North Korea rejected this demand as a U.S. ploy to disarm the country before invasion.40 After a six-month hiatus, the second round of the Six-Party Talks was held in February 2004 in Beijing. No breakthroughs were reached during these talks. The United States stuck to its previous position that it would not give the DPRK a written security guarantee before the DPRK first renounced its nuclear programs in a “complete, irreversible, and verifiable” manner. In contrast, the DPRK insisted on a package solution—DPRK’s renunciation of the nuclear program and a U.S. security guarantee to the DPRK should proceed simultaneously. During the third round of the Six-Party Talks in June 2004, the United States for the first time made a concrete proposal concerning North Korea’s

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nuclear program. This proposal, based on the Libya model, called for North Korea’s complete and quick dismantling of its nuclear programs before the provision of a security guarantee and economic aid.41 The parties to the SixParty Talks were divided.42 The Bush administration’s fundamental position did not change, insisting that North Korea should take steps to dismantle its nuclear programs first before it provided security and economic rewards. The DPRK rejected the June 2004 U.S. proposal, arguing that North Korea’s nuclear freeze and U.S. rewards should proceed simultaneously. In July-September 2005, the fourth round of Six-Party Talks was held. On September 19, the six nations at the talks issued a joint statement, the first agreement since the talks began in August 2003. It was a result of compromise between the United States and the DPRK, and contained provisions for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs and for other parties to provide economic aid, diplomatic relations, and other incentives to North Korea.43 Some parts of the agreement were vague and ambiguous. Still the September 19 joint statement was an important breakthrough and may pave the road to a peaceful resolution of North Korea’s nuclear crisis.44 It was designed to serve as the basis for further talks on the timing of the North Korea’s dismantlement of its nuclear weapons programs and the corresponding provision of economic aid and diplomatic relations and other incentives for the DPRK. Two days after the September 19 Statement was issued, the U.S. Department of the Treasury raised the financial issue with the DPRK and Macau’s Banco Delta Asia froze the DPRK’s accounts with the bank. The United States maintained that the financial sanctions were imposed because the DPRK was engaged in money laundering and other illegal activities through the bank. Although the amount frozen as a result of the sanctions was only $24 million, the move had a serious impact on DPRK’s financial capability because it did not have many windows to the international financial market and it received international aid and conducted international financial transactions through the bank. During the fifth round of the Six-Party Talks held from November 9 to 11, 2005, the parties sought to find ways to fulfill the provisions of the joint statement based on the principle of “commitment for commitment, action for action,” but no progress was made. The DPRK refused to return to the Six-Party Talks unless the United States lifted the financial sanctions. The Six-Party Talks were suspended while the United States continued the financial sanctions and the DPRK refused to return to the negotiating table until the sanctions are lifted. In the meantime, the Iranian nuclear crisis erupted in early 2006 and once again the North Korean issue was sidelined. North Korea escalated the crisis by test-firing seven ballistic missiles on July 5, 2006, including a Taepo-dong-2, which has the potential of reaching the U.S. West Coast. This move invited immediate and angry reaction from the international community. The UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted

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Resolution 1695 on July 15, which condemned the tests, paving the road for the international community to impose economic sanctions against North Korea. Following the missile tests, South Korea and Japan unilaterally took punitive actions against North Korea. It appears that North Korea’s missile tests were motivated to gain leverage at the Six-Party Talks and to attract U.S. attention. In an even more daring move, the DPRK carried out an underground nuclear explosion on October 9, 2006, which sent out shock waves throughout the world. The North’s nuclear test promptly led to the adoption of UNSC Resolution 1718 under Chapter 7, Article 41 of the UN Charter, which was aimed at penalizing North Korea for its nuclear test with diplomatic and economic sanctions.45 UNSC Resolution 1718 prohibited the transfer to and from North Korea of the weapons of mass destruction (nuclear chemical or biological weapons), their means of delivery (ballistic missiles) and related materials. It also prohibited exports of luxury items to North Korea. The United States and Japan were particularly harsh and swift in condemning North Korea’s reckless behavior and sponsoring the UNSC Resolution 1718. All Security Council members, including China and Russia, agreed that “there needs to be some appropriate punishment” for North Korea’s nuclear detonation. But South Korea, China, and Russia were opposed to any use of force and issued warnings against escalating the situation out of control.46 The DPRK rejected the resolution and threatened “physical countermeasures” against any state that would try to enforce the U.N. sanctions. The North Korean nuclear test failed to pressure the United States into bilateral talks but brought about negative reactions from the UNSC members as well as Japan and South Korea. The heightened tensions caused by the nuclear test lessened after North Korea announced on November 1, 2006 that it would return to the Six-Party Talks if the United States would discuss and resolve its financial sanctions against North Korea within the framework of the Six-Party Talks.47 In the wake of the nuclear test, inter-Korean relations plunged to the lowest point since the inter-Korean summit in June 2000. Seoul suspended its regular food and fertilizer aid to Pyongyang following the missile tests in July 2006. The nuclear test also jeopardized inter-Korean economic ventures such as the Gaesong Industrial Complex and the Mount Geumgang tourism project. Furthermore, the nuclear test compelled the ROK to reevaluate its engagement policy of national reconciliation and cooperation with the DPRK. The debate over the engagement policy led to internal division and fragmentation of South Korean society. The diverging approaches of the United States and South Korea to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program persisted even after North Korea’s first nuclear explosion. The United States and Japan sought to apply the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to North Korea. PSI is a U.S. policy that is part of its global war on terror. If implemented, it will allow states to

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search and interdict North Korean ships and aircraft for contraband items (WMDs, missiles, and illegal weapons) on and over the high seas. South Korea, China, and Russia, however, have refused to go along with PSI.48 After a meeting with President Bush held on the sidelines of the 2006 APEC summit in Hanoi, President Roh stated that his country would faithfully implement the UNSC Resolution 1718 but would not fully participate in the U.S.-led PSI: “South Korea is not fully participating in the PSI, but supports its purpose and principle. We’ll cooperate in the U.S. bid to deter nuclear proliferation on a case-by-case basis.”49 South Korea, furthermore, refused to yield to U.S. pressure to abandon its major economic projects (Mount Geumgang tourism and the Gaesong Industrial Complex) with North Korea as a punishment for the nuclear test. U.S. hardline policies toward the DPRK, and the ROK’s refusal to go along with these policies continued to cause frictions and distrust between the two allies. After a thirteen-month hiatus, the Six-Party Talks resumed from December 18 to 22, 2006. This time, the United States proposed a four-stage denuclearization plan to the DPRK: freeze, declaration, verification, and dismantling. North Korea, however, refused to discuss nuclear issues and focused instead on the financial sanctions issue. Washington and Pyongyang failed to narrow their differences over the financial sanctions on North Korea, and consequently the second phase of the fifth round of Six-Party Talks failed to produce any substantive results. Still the two sides agreed to continue their talks on the financial sanctions in New York in January 2007. The six nations reiterated the goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, the principle of resolving North Korea’s nuclear issue peacefully through dialogue, and agreed to take steps in accordance with the “actionfor-action” principle to implement the September 19 Joint Statement in a phased manner.50 The Bush administration’s heavy-handed approach to North Korea proved counterproductive. Full-scale economic or military sanctions against North Korea will most likely be ineffective as long as South Korea and China do not want to push North Korea into a corner. China has argued that the problem of financial sanctions must be solved for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and that the United States should engage in bilateral talks with North Korea to resume the Six-Party Talks. Russia also shares the international community’s concern and anger over North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests but, like China, is unwilling to pursue the goal of North Korea’s regime change or collapse. North Korea’s nuclear test has multiple implications.51 In the short-term, the test appears to weaken the China-DPRK alliance but strengthens U.S.China cooperative relations and the U.S.-ROK alliance. The long-term impact on Northeast Asian security will be multifaceted. The North Korean nuclear test will pose a major challenge to the non-proliferation regime and may spark a chain-reaction of nuclear proliferation not only in Northeast

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Asia but also in other parts of the world. A host of nations in the Middle East and Northeast Asia will consider going nuclear, although U.S. assurance of extended deterrence to its allies remains firm. The long-standing U.S. commitment to the security of Japan and the ROK will reduce their need to go nuclear. For now Japan and the ROK may be content with the extended nuclear deterrence offered by the United States, but in the long-run, they will have to consider securing an independent means of nuclear deterrence. Taiwan will also be tempted to go nuclear. The North Korean nuclear test will prompt Iran to acquire the capability to produce its own nuclear weapons. If Iran goes nuclear, others such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia are likely to follow suit. The North Korean nuclear test certainly prompted Japan to accelerate a missile-defense system in cooperation with the United States, which in turn would push Beijing to spend more money developing advanced nuclear weapons.

Concluding Remarks The transformation of U.S.-ROK relations from trustworthy allies to uncertain partners in the post-Cold War era is ascribable to both deliberate policies and accidental developments. As long as North Korea’s nuclear knot remains entangled, the global interests of the United States (nuclear nonproliferation and the global war on terror) and the local interests of the ROK (the prevention of a second Korean war and inter-Korean reconciliation) were bound to collide. Misperception, miscommunication, and ignorance on both sides further deteriorated an already volatile and uncomfortable relationship. President Roh continues to vow to reestablish U.S.-ROK relations on an equal footing and achieve North Korea’s denuclearization through peaceful means. ROK’s policy vis-a-vis the United States and North Korea must be ` anchored in reality and pragmatism, however. Is it realistic or practical for the ROK to demand equality in its relationship with the United States? The fact of the matter is the United States is the sole remaining global superpower and the ROK is not. The ROK needs to assert itself defending its own national interest vis-a-vis the United States, but should not confuse ` aspirations (equality) with political reality. Both Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine policy” and Roh Moo-hyun’s “peace and prosperity policy” failed miserably. They did not substantially and irrevocably improve inter-Korean relations. Nor did they pave the road to lasting peace and stability in and around the Korean peninsula. The critical weakness of the sunshine policy lies in its unconditional, unilateral nature. The policy’s fundamental assumption that the ROK’s persistent and benevolent gestures and policies toward the DPRK would gradually and fundamentally change the Stalinist regime proved wrong. It is important to remember that North Korean leaders’ worldview and modus operandi are unique and

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incompatible with those of open societies. The Roh government’s wishful thinking and wishful hearing about North Korea’s reform and its nuclear program may be misguided and jeopardize the ROK’s independence and security. Bush’s global war on terrorism and unilateralism suffered multiple setbacks, incurring diplomatic isolation and alienating many former allies and friends. The Bush government should realize that “soft power” is often more persuasive and effective than hard power and that even the global superpower cannot manage international affairs alone without cooperation and support from interested states. Bush’s hardline policy vis-a-vis North ` Korea failed to make the United States safer from North Korea’s nuclear threats. On Bush’s watch, North Korea has been openly developing nuclear weapons and detonated a nuclear device, joining the ranks of the nuclear power club. Kim Dae-jung’s sunshine policy and Roh Moo-hyun’s policy for peace and prosperity have not constrained Kim Jong Il’s nuclear ambitions, either. Seoul’s unconditional and unprincipled engagement policy toward Pyongyang neither tamed North Korea’s bellicosity nor increased Seoul’s leverage over Pyongyang on the nuclear issue. North Korea’s nuclear issue will eventually test the U.S.-ROK alliance. North Korea already is a nuclear power, and it will be all but impossible for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons. To cope with this new reality and achieve denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, a lot of imagination, ingenuity, and patience from the United States and the ROK will be necessary. It is time for Washington and Seoul to critically reevaluate their policies toward each other and toward North Korea with a view to basing their relationship on firm ground and resolve to pursue more coordinated policies toward North Korea and the nuclear issue.

Notes 1. For a detailed analysis of the evolution of U.S.-ROK security relations, see Terence Roehrig, From Deterrence to Engagement: The U.S. Defense Commitment to South Korea, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006; Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, A Contemporary History, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997. 2. David I. Steinberg, Building on the ROK: Reflections on the Korean-American Relationship, in The Korean Peninsula and the Major Powers, Bae Ho Han and Chae-Jin Lee, eds., Seoul, Korea: The Sejong Institute, 1998, 1. 3. David E. Sanger, The State of the Union Address: The Overview, The New York Times (January 30, 2002): A1. 4. President Bush first mentioned the concept of preemptive war in his June 1, 2002, speech at West Point. For the full text of the speech, see President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/ 06/20020601-3.html. 5. For the full text of the National Security Strategy (NSS), see http://www. whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html. See also Michael E. O’Hanlon, Susan E. Rice, and

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James B. Steinberg, The New National Security Strategy and Preemption, The Brookings Institution Policy Brief (December 2002). The revised version of NSS was published in March 2006, which is available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ nss/2006/. 6. Roh served as a National Assembly (ROK’s national legislature) member for six years and as a ROK’s Maritime and Fisheries Minister for six months. Born into a poor peasant family, he became a human-rights lawyer and political activists in the 1980s. He is a leftist in ideological orientation. His father-in-law died after eighteen years in prison for his communist activities during the Korean War. See Moon Ihlwan and Mark L. Clifford, The Politics of Peril: South Korea’s Untested Roh Moo Hyun Faces a Bizarre and Dangerous Foreign Policy Crisis. Is He Up to It? Business Week (February 24, 2003): 24. 7. Oh Young-jin, Roh Takes Nation’s Highest Office, President Declares “Age of Peace and Prosperity,” Korea Times (February 25, 2003): 3; and Shin Jong-rok “Roh Promises Peace and Prosperity,” Chosun Ilbo (February 25, 2003): 1. 8. Se-Hyun Jeong, Inter-Korean Relations under Policy for Peace and Prosperity, Korea and World Affairs, 28(1) (Spring 2004): 6. 9. Mark E. Manyin, Emma Chanlett-Avery, and Helene Marchart, North Korea: A Chronology of Events, October 2002-December 2004, CRS Report for Congress, Order Code RL32743 (January 24, 2005): 4. 10. The ruling Uri Party won 152 seats, a majority in the 300-seat Assembly and the leftist Democratic Labor Party gained ten seats. The conservative Grand National Party (GNP) dropped from 138 seats to 121. 11. James Brooke, Constitutional Court Reinstates South Korea’s Impeached President, The New York Times (May 14, 2004): A3. 12. Progressives 44.5 per cent, Conservatives 20 per cent, Joongang Ilbo (August 31, 2004): 4. 13. Friends in Need, Economist (May 17, 2003): 54. 14. End of Discussion, New Republic, 231 (November 29, 2004): 9. 15. Nicholas D. Kristof, The Bush Revolution, The New York Times (November 17, 2004): A18. 16. James B. Steinberg, Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Foreign Policy during the Second Term, Chosun Ilbo (January 18, 2005): 4. 17. Neocons include former professors like Paul Wolfowitz (former Under Secretary of Defense) and Steve Cambone (at the Pentagon), lawyers like Doug Feith, Scooter Libby (Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff), John Bolton (former U.S. Representative to the UN), and Richard Perle. Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld (both former CEOs) became the neocons’ most powerful supporters. 18. The Shadow Men, The Economist (April 26, 2003): 21. 19. Kenneth T. Walsh, Command Presence, U.S. News & World Report (March 31, 2003): 30. 20. Edward A. Olsen, Trilateral (United States, ROK, Japan) Cooperation in the Resolution of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, Pacific Focus, 19(2) (Fall 2004): 68. 21. Scott Snyder, Alliance and Alienation: Managing Diminished Expectations for U.S.-ROK Relations, Comparative Connections (Pacific Forum, CSIS, August 2004): 3, http://www.csis.org/pacfor/ccejournal.html. 22. Ibid., 4.

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23. Through the PSI, the US sought in cooperation with other states “to develop a broad range of legal, diplomatic, economic, military and other tools to interdict shipments of such items.” For further details on the PSI, go to http://www.state.gov/ t/np/rls/fs/32725.htm. 24. For an official policy, see Policy toward North Korea for Peace, Reconciliation and Cooperation, Seoul, Korea: Ministry of Unification, ROK, 1999. 25. For further details on the Roh’s policy, see The Policy of Peace and Prosperity, Ministry of Unification, 2003, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/ rok/2003/eng0403 91A.pdf. 26. Roh’s North Korea policy professes to bring about peace and prosperity (or economic benefits) in Korea and Northeast Asia, but does not provide any strategy plan or blueprint to achieve the goals. For an analysis of Roh’s policy for peace and prosperity, see Byung Chul Koh, Inter-Korean Relations under Roh Moo-Hyun, Korea and World Affairs (Spring 2003): 5–17. 27. Korea Backgrounder: How the South Views Its Brother from Another Planet, Crisis Group Asia Report, 89 (Seoul & Brussels: December 14, 2004): 3. 28. Snyder, Alliance and Alienation, 6. 29. “N. Korea No Longer Main Enemy in Defense White Paper,” Chosun Ilbo (January 28, 2005): 5; “South Korea to Stop Tagging North Its Main Enemy,” Reuters (January 31, 2005). 30. South Koreans are deeply divided over North Korea along the generational and ideological lines. Older people (fifty or older) and those who classify themselves as conservative are more likely to view North Korea with suspicion and be critical of Seoul’s engagement policy. The younger generation (twenties to thirties) and those who classify themselves as progressive are more likely to view North Koreans as brothers and support the engagement policy with the North. 31. Cited from Jinwung Kim, Ambivalent Allies: Recent South Korean Perceptions of the United States Forces Korea (USFK), Asian Affairs, 30(4) (Winter 2004): 11–12. 32. In 1992, 7,000 U.S. troops in Korea were withdrawn in accordance with the 1989 Nunn-Warner amendment. The amendment called for a three-stage U.S. troop reduction, but the plan was suspended due to the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993. 33. James Brooke and Thom Shanker, U.S. May Cut Third of Troops In South Korea, The New York Times (June 8, 2004): A4; Fewer but Deadlier, Economist (June 12, 2004): 39. 34. The two sides agreed that the Dragon Hill Lodge, a liaison office of about fifty men, and communications offices for the Commander in Chief of Combined Forces Command (a four-star U.S. general), and the Deputy Commander in Chief (a four-star Korean general), would remain in Yongsan. Yu Yong-weon, All US Military Facilities to Go South of the Han River, Chosun Ilbo (January 18, 2005): 2. 35. The Korean side initially offered 200,000 pyong of land in Yongsan in an attempt to persuade the Americans to leave the Combined Forces Command and the United Nations Command in Seoul. The Americans insisted on moving the Yongsan Garrison completely out of the city. Robert Koehler, Korea-U.S. Agree to Completely Move Yongsan Garrison, Chosun Ilbo (January 18, 2005): 3. 36. Cited from Jinwung Kim, Ambivalent Allies, 156.

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37. Former U.S. Envoy: U.S. Did Not Confront DPRK with Uranium Enrichment Proof, Yonhap (November 20, 2003). 38. Selig Harrison, Did North Korea Cheat? Foreign Affairs, 84(1) (January/February 2005): 128. 39. Tadashi Ito, PRC Source Cited on Putin Rejecting Kim Chong-il Request to Host Talks in Russia, Sankei Shimbun (September 9, 2003): 6. 40. More on DPRK Puts Forward Package Solutions To Nuclear Issue, Xinhua (August 29, 2003). 41. For a detailed analysis of the U.S. proposal, see Robert J. Einhorn, The North Korea Nuclear Issue: The Road Ahead, Northeast Asia Peace and Security Network Forum Online (September 14, 2004), http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/ 0433A Einhron.html. 42. At the six-party talks, a “1-3-2” formulation emerged: North Korea on its own; South Korea, Russia, and China favoring a more conciliatory approach of offering incentives to North Korea and more emphasis on a nuclear freeze instead of dismantlement; and Japan and the United States preferring a mix of dialogue and pressure on Pyongyang. See Mark E. Manyin, Emma Chanlett-Avery, and Helene Marchart, North Korea: A Chronology of Events, October 2002–December 2004, CRS Report for Congress Order Code RL32743 (January 24, 2005): 5. 43. Text of Joint Statement from Nuclear Talks, The New York Times (September 19, 2005): 3. 44. For a detailed analysis of the Six-Party Talks, see Tae-Hwan Kwak, The SixParty Resolving the North Korean Nuclear Issue through the Six-Party Process: A Creative Formula. Paper presented at the Forty-seventh International Studies Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, March 22–25, 2006. 45. For the full test of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718, go to http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0688UNSCStatement.html. 46. John O’Neil and Choe Sang-Hun, China Shows Willingness to Punish North Korea for Test, The New York Times (October 10, 2006): A1. 47. Joseph Kahn, North Korea Agrees to Rejoin Nuclear Negotiations, The New York Times (October 31, 2006): A11. 48. For an in-depth analysis of interdicting North Korean vessels and aircraft for WMD, see Mark J. Valencia, Maritime Interdiction of North Korean WMD Trade: Who Will Do What? Policy Forum Online 06-98A: November 3rd, 2006, available online at http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0698Valencia.html. 49. Olivier Know, Roh Tells Bush ROK Will Not Fully Support Proliferation Security Initiative, AFP (November 18, 2006). 50. ITAR-TASS, Fifth Round of Six-Nation Negotiations over in Beijing (December 22, 2006). 51. For a detailed analysis of the implications of the North Korean nuclear test, see Tae-Hwan Kwak, North Korea’s Nuclear Test and Its Implications for Peace and Security in Northeast Asia, Vantage Point, 29(11) (November 2006): 22–26.

Chapter 11

Changing National Identity and Security Perception in South Korea Uk Heo and Jung-Yeop Woo On July 4, 2006, North Korea launched seven missiles including a longrange missile, the Taepodong-2. This test-fire came as a surprise to the world because the United States and other concerned nations, including China, warned North Korea that the test-fire would be considered a provocation. Immediately after the launch, the Japanese government convened a ministerial meeting and expressed their concerns. In addition, the Japanese government suspended Mankyungbong-ho, the only North Korean civilian transportation between North Korea and Japan, for six months. The United States also expressed its concerns for regional security. Sharing the security concerns, the United States and Japan took the case to the UN Security Council. On July 15, the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning North Korea’s missile test. The resolution imposed limited sanctions on North Korea and demanded that it suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile programs. The United States also asked the world to comply with the UN Security Council’s resolution. Although the UN Security Council (UNSC) unanimously passed a resolution, the initial proposal crafted by Washington and Tokyo was much stronger than the version adopted by the UNSC. Since the United States and Japan wanted to put more pressure on North Korea, the initial version included a reference to chapter seven of the UN charter, which allows the possible use of force in case North Korea defies the UN resolution. Moreover, some Japanese political leaders even mentioned the possibility of a preemptive strike as self-defense.

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In contrast to the reaction of the United States and Japan, South Korea has responded quite differently to the North Korean missile launch. Overall, South Korea’s reaction has been unusually calm. Although Seoul supported the final UN resolution, the Roh Moo-hyun government criticized Tokyo in regard to mentioning the possibility of a preemptive strike and was opposed to measures enhancing pressure on North Korea. President Roh even said that North Korean missiles did not target any nation. According to President Roh, North Korean missiles are not military threats, because they do not target South Korea and were tested for political purposes. Therefore, there is no need to make a big fuss about the situation and few South Korean citizens expressed serious concerns about the North Korean missile test. Three months after the missile test, North Korea shocked the world again by conducting a nuclear test on October 9, 2006. Prior to the test, China publicly warned North Korea not to do it, and the U.S. government indicated that the nuclear test would be considered as crossing a red line. However, North Korea disregarded the warnings and tested a nuclear weapon. On October 14, the UN Security Council condemned North Korea and voted unanimously to impose economic sanctions to punish the North. The resolution included a prohibition on the sale or transfer of nuclear and ballistic missile materials to and from North Korea. The resolution also banned international travel for people involved in these programs.1 Soon after the nuclear test, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun announced that his engagement policy had been unsuccessful, and it was imperative to change the approach to North Korea. However, the Roh administration has not made any significant change in its policy. Instead, President Roh and the former President Kim Dae-Jung, who initiated the engagement policy, blamed the Bush administration for pushing North Korea to its nuclear test. Moreover, the Roh administration officially refused to participate in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) despite Washington’s request because of a possible military confrontation during the inspection.2 Recently, the Unification minister Lee Chae-Jung signaled that the South Korean government might resume food and fertilizer aids since they are part of the humanitarian assistance. The public in South Korea initially expressed their anger and blamed the engagement policy for failing to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. For instance, according to a survey conducted after the test, 78.6 percent responded that North Korea’s nuclear test worsened security environment. However, ten days later on October 19, 2006, 50.1 percent responded that North Korea’s nuclear test would not have any impact on South Korean security.3 Moreover, the South Korean stock market was not affected by the nuclear test. Regarding the insensitivity of South Koreans to the test, Kim Ho-Ki, a sociology professor at Yonsei University in Seoul said, “South Koreans may feel similarly threatened as others in neighboring countries do, but the ‘emotional ties’ with their Northern brethren

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stemming from the same ethnic identity, make them numb with fear of a war.”4 However, the “emotional ties” of South Koreans with the North have existed since the division of the country. Despite these feelings, security was the primary concern of the government and people of South Korea. What, then, has led to the changes in security perceptions of South Koreans? What caused the different reaction to the missile test by South Korea and the United States? This chapter argues that a change in national identity of South Korea is responsible for the difference. The transition to democracy in South Korea resulted in a power transition that led to changes in political elites. New political elites have appealed to nationalism based on a compatriot perspective, which contributed to changes in national identity. This changed national identity led to the different perceptions of national interests, the North Korean military threat, and the role of the United States in the region. In this chapter, we attempt to explain the cause of national identity change in South Korea, which will help us understand the recent discord between the United States and South Korea in regard to dealing with North Korea. Given that a coordinated effort between the United States and South Korea is the key to success in handling the current North Korean nuclear and missile crisis, understanding South Korea’s domestic political change is critical. Thus, this study has important policy implications.

National Identity and Security Perception According to sociologists, individuals and groups express their need for organizational affiliation through social identities, which include ethnicity, regionalism, nationality, and political party affiliations.5 By doing so, individuals and groups enhance their self-esteem and self-interest in comparison with others.6 These social identities have three functions: they “tell you who you are, tell others who you are, and tell you who others are.”7 Under the traditional military regime, South Korea identified itself as a U.S. ally with an anti-communist government and market-oriented economic system. That is how South Korea described itself and behaved in the international arena. Due to the nature of the relationship with North Korea, the primary focus of the South Korean government’s policies was on national security. Thanks to the U.S.-South Korea mutual defense pact, the U.S. military has stayed in South Korea since the end of the Korean War and played a significant role in deterring a North Korean attack. Throughout the Cold War period, both countries have maintained a close alliance relationship, and the South Korean government has supported U.S. international policies. For instance, according to a newly declassified document, South Korea eagerly supported the United States during the Vietnam War.8 South Korea not only sent combat troops to Vietnam, but also proposed a naval base for U.S. nuclear submarines in South Korea.9

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On the other hand, the inter-Korean relationship during the same period can be characterized as hostile and confrontational. Leaders of both Koreas viewed the relationship as a zero-sum game. Although there were some efforts to cooperate, such as the Three Principles of Unification announced in the joint communiqu´e of July 4, 1972, and the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression and Exchanges and Cooperation in December 1991, neither side was willing to change their hardline approach toward each other.10 As a result, there was no room for anti-Americanism or socialism in South Korea. At that time, North Korea was clearly considered the prime enemy of the South Korean armed forces.

Changes in the International and Domestic Political Environments As a consequence of the end of the Cold War, the international and domestic political environments started to change. South Korea normalized its relationships with China and Russia. As a result, the traditional alliance structure based on the East-West confrontation was no longer in place. Due to geographical proximity, South Korea’s trade with China increased over time and surpassed its trade with the United States. Given the political and economic influence of China on North East Asian countries including North Korea and the geographic proximity, South Korea’s relationship with China gained in importance. Domestically, South Korea experienced the transition to democracy at about the time when the Cold War ended. As a result, political elites in South Korea changed from former military generals to civilians, and later to progressive leftist politicians. Change among political elites also meant change in public policies. For instance, the first civilian government, the Kim Young-Sam administration, attempted to induce North Korea into a dialogue using economic aid. Seoul provided 150,000 tons of rice in 1995 when Pyongyang asked for help. In return, South Korea demanded an official dialogue between the two Koreas. Using economic aid as an inducement for dialogue was a drastic change considering that no direct assistance was provided to the North prior to that time. However, North Korea did not respond positively, and the Kim Young-Sam administration was harshly criticized. The election of Kim Dae-Jung led to further changes in South Korea’s policy toward the North. Kim Dae-Jung developed a unification policy scheme called the “Three Principles and Three Stages Unification Formula,” which included “peaceful coexistence, peaceful exchange, and peaceful unification” for principles and “the union of the republic (or the state), union by federalism, and complete unification for stages.” This policy design assumed coexistence and acknowledgement of both Koreas, confidence building for economic exchanges and cooperation to reach unification.11 To implement the unification design, President Kim Dae-Jung adopted an engagement approach called the “sunshine” policy.12 The “sunshine” policy

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promoted nonpolitical exchanges and cooperation between the two Koreas. To this end, the Kim Dae-Jung government encouraged investment in North Korea by removing the cap on investment by South Korean companies that want to operate in the North. This policy change led to creation of the industrial site in Kaesong and opened up an opportunity for many private companies in South Korea to start businesses in North Korea. In addition, one of the largest business conglomerates, Hyundai, started a large-scale tourism business with the support of the Kim Dae-Jung government. The tourism business has been a cash cow for North Korea. According to political scientist Young-Whan Kihl at Iowa State University, there are two reasons the government encouraged nonpolitical activities in the implementation of the “sunshine” policy with the North. First, the Kim Dae-jung administration wanted to demonstrate that an improved interKorean relationship would enhance regional security and encourage North Korean engagement with the world. Second, to have a meaningful outcome, a significant amount of economic aid would be necessary; however, the South Korean government could not provide “enough” aid to North Korea due to political constraints and limited resources.13 Moreover, Kim Daejung wanted to avoid the potential political backlash in case the approach turned out to be ineffective as had occurred during the Kim Young-sam administration. Thus, involving the private sector was an effort to increase the amount of aid to North Korea while minimizing the political risks in case these measures failed. On June 13, 2000, President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il met in Pyongyang for the first summit meeting since the division of the country. The meeting was highly publicized and had a symbolic meaning that showed the two Koreas were beginning to move their relationship to the next level by agreeing to avoid any threatening acts. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il also agreed to visit South Korea sometime in the future. Following the historic summit meeting, the first defense ministers’ meeting was held in September 2000. In the meeting, the two countries agreed to eliminate all threats of war. The “sunshine” policy and the summit meeting had a number of important political implications. First, extensive media coverage of the summit led to the perception in South Korea that North Korea is no longer a significant military threat. Moreover, the Kim Dae-jung administration’s emphasis on the compatriot aspect of the inter-Korean relationship significantly eased the security concerns of the South Korean people. Furthermore, North Korea’s economic difficulties and food shortages resulting from long-lasting famines and droughts led to the belief that North Korea no longer posed a threat. Second, the Kim Dae-jung government highly publicized the summit meeting and the “sunshine” policy, which led to a public perception that reunification is coming soon. Forecasts of the collapse of the North Korean

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regime by former U.S. Central Intelligence Director John Deutch and U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen further enhanced this perception.14 Research institutes in the South Korean government started studying the cost of reunification to be better prepared. According to an economic study by Choi Joon-ook at the Korean Taxation Institute (KTI), the reunification cost was estimated at U.S. $350 billion over ten years for the improvement of the North Korean infrastructure.15 Based on the logic that aid to the North will move the inter-Korean relationship toward peaceful coexistence and reduce reunification costs, the Kim Dae-Jung government provided economic aid to the North under the “sunshine” policy. However, Pyongyang did not meet Seoul’s expectation of moving the relationship to peaceful coexistence and cooperation. Despite the lack of Pyongyang’s cooperation, the Kim Dae-jung administration changed the reciprocity principle of the “sunshine” policy to the approach of “provide first and expect later.” This policy change led to serious criticism of the Kim Dae-jung administration, and support for the “sunshine” policy waned. For instance, only 18.6 percent of South Korean people supported the “sunshine” policy in 2001.16 Thus, political scientists Norman Levin and YongSup Han wrote that, “the consistency and single-mindedness with which Kim Dae-jung pursued engagement with the North as president reinforces the contrast with most of his predecessors.”17 Despite the lack of support for the engagement policy, the Roh Moo-hyun administration has continued the approach because President Roh Moohyun shares President Kim Dae-jung’s perception of North Korea. Since he was elected based on rising anti-American sentiment, his administration has emphasized self-reliance and continued a nationalistic approach in dealing with North Korea. With the recent nuclear test, however, the approach faces a lot of domestic and international opposition. Recently, Washington warned that South Korea might be isolated in dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis if Seoul continues to provide aid while refusing to participate in the Proliferation Security Initiative.

The Rise of Anti-American Sentiment in South Korea The Clinton administration supported South Korea’s engagement policy, but the George W. Bush administration perceived the approach as a failure because of North Korea’s attempt to develop highly enriched uranium-based (HEU) nuclear weapons.18 Thus, the Bush administration dropped its support for the policy and adopted a hardline approach. North Korea was named as part of the “axis of evil” along with Iran and Iraq by President Bush, and the Bush administration demanded North Korea give up all its nuclear programs prior to discussing any possible compensation and economic aid. In addition, Washington publicly announced that no option, including the use of force, was ruled out. North Korea criticized the United States for

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a possible attack, and argued that Washington must drop its intention to remove the Kim Jong Il government before a dialogue could begin. The Kim Dae-jung and the Roh Moo-hyun governments sympathized with the North’s perception on the grounds that the use of force by the United States may lead to a war on the Korean peninsula. Pyongyang wanted to have direct bilateral talks to discuss the nuclear issue, but Washington refused. Instead, the Bush administration has wanted to discuss the nuclear issue only through the six-party talks (United States, China, Japan, and Russia in addition to both Koreas). Thus, North Korea blamed the United States for the nuclear crisis, and the South Korean government asked Washington to have direct talks with Pyongyang. On September 11, 2001, al Qaeda hijacked four commercial planes, and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center, which collapsed shortly after. Another hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon. This terrorist attack greatly changed American public opinion on national security because this was the first time that the U.S. mainland was “attacked.” Due to the 9/11 terrorist attack, the American public became more conservative concerning national security issues, which led to the initial support for President Bush’s hardline policy with North Korea as well as Iraq. On the other hand, a series of incidents led to the rise of anti-American sentiment in South Korea. On September 29, 1999, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the U.S. military fired at refugees in No Gun Li during the Korean War based on the intelligence that North Korean spies were included among the refugees. Survivors expressed their anger toward the United States. In July 2000, Green Korea announced that U.S. Forces in South Korea dumped toxic waste in the Han River, the source of drinking water for residents in Seoul. The U.S. Forces in South Korea initially argued that the material dumped in the river was not harmful, but South Korean scientists disagreed. On June 13, 2002, two middle-school girls were accidentally killed during U.S. military training exercises. Two weeks after the accident, the press secretary of the U.S. military in South Korea issued a regretful statement, but did not accept responsibility for the deaths since they were accidents, which led many people to the street in protest. Realizing the seriousness of the public outrage, on July 4, the commanding general of U.S. Forces acknowledged responsibility for the accident. However, the damage was already done and a New York Times editorial criticized the poor handling of the case by the U.S. forces in Korea. To avoid further damage, on November 27, President Bush expressed his deep regret through a letter to the commanding general of U.S. Forces in South Korea. The poor handling of this case by the U.S. military may be compared with a similar case that occurred earlier in Japan. On September 4, 1995, American Marines raped a teenage girl in Okinawa. In two weeks, the U.S. ambassador and the commanding general of U.S. Forces in Japan officially apologized to the Japanese people followed by President Clinton’s apology

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on September 21. It took less than three weeks for President Clinton to apologize to the Japanese people, but it took more than five months for President Bush to express his regret to the Korean people. The difference in handling the two cases deeply hurt the feelings of the Korean public. The anti-American sentiment escalated further when the U.S. Court Martial acquitted the soldiers involved in the accident. The verdict led tens of thousands of people to the streets in protest. In March 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. South Korea immediately sent 600 noncombat troops to Iraq to support the U.S. military, which was followed by an additional 3,000 noncombat troops in the following year, upon a U.S. request. The size of the South Korean contingent in Iraq was the third largest after only the United States and the United Kingdom. On June 21, 2004, a terrorist group in Iraq took a Korean man named Kim Sunil hostage and demanded that South Korean troops leave the country. When the South Korean government refused to meet the demand, the terrorist group executed him on June 23rd. Despite the South Korean government’s commitment to assisting U.S. troops in Iraq, another incident furthered antiAmerican sentiment in South Korea. On September 3, 2004, President Bush gave a presidential nomination acceptance speech at the general conference of the Republican Party. In the speech, he listed the countries that sent troops to Iraq to support the United States, but South Korea was somehow dropped from the list. The reason for the exclusion of South Korea was never officially explained. These series of incidents seriously escalated anti-American sentiment in South Korea, particularly among younger generations. For instance, in a poll that asked which country is preferred between the United States and North Korea, 46.8, 52.8, and 40.8 percent of respondents in their twenties, thirties, and forties respectively preferred North Korea to the United States. Considering that the U.S. military has stayed in South Korea since the Korean War for South Korea’s security, these poll data are shocking.

The Impact of Anti-American Sentiment on Korean Politics In 2002, Roh Moo-hyun became the presidential candidate of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party (MDP). His expression of anti-Americanism appealed to the younger generation, due to the incidents discussed earlier. Roh Moo-hyun was elected president later that year with high levels of support from the younger generation. What concerned the conservatives and the United States most about the election of President Roh was his antiAmerican attitude. For instance, just days before the close of the extremely tight race, candidate Roh said he “might favor neutrality if a war ever broke out between North Korea and the U.S.”19 Given the mutual defense pact between the United States and South Korea and considering that U.S.-led UN troops saved South Korea from being communized by North Korea, his

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remark was radical and alarming to conservatives. However, his anti-U.S. attitude appealed to the younger generation and eventually won him the presidential election. The election of Roh Moo-hyun as president brought about a significant change in political elites. President Roh was surrounded by so-called “386 generation” politicians. The term, “386 generation” represents the generation born in the 1960s that went to college in the 1980s, and are now in their thirties (some of them are now in their forties). The “386 generation” politicians seem to consider North Korea charity rather than military threats considering their policy toward North Korea. 20 They have not complained about human right abuse in North Korea while they have been assertive when it comes to providing aid to North Korea or opposing the Bush administration’s North Korea policy. President Roh’s reliance on the “386 generation” politicians, therefore, had a tremendous impact on foreign policy. South Korean policy toward the United States has been driven by the principle of self-reliance, and the Roh government has not been shy about expressing its disagreement with the United States. The recent move to have the wartime operational control transferred from the U.S. military is a good example of the self-reliance-based policy. In terms of dealing with North Korea, however, a nationalist approach has been employed that appealed more to the younger generation. As a result, polls show differences in generational reactions toward President Roh’s North Korea policy. For instance, 34.7 and 32.8 percent of people in their twenties and thirties respectively support President Roh’s policy toward North Korea while only 24.2 and 26.9 percent of those in their forties, fifties, and over, respectively, support President Roh’s policy. On the other hand, 33.5 and 37.3 percent of those in their twenties and thirties respectively disapprove of President Roh’s policy toward North Korea. However, the disapproval rating for those in their forties, fifties, and over, reaches 50.9 and 45.6 percent respectively.21 Due to President Roh’s tendency to adopt policies appealing to his supporters, primarily the younger generation, his election of President Roh aggravated generational differences. These differences may come from differences in the perception of national identity. Older generations experienced the Korean War and witnessed the Vietnam War. As a result, the North Korean (Communist) threat has always been real to them. Therefore, U.S. military support was necessary to maintain peace and to enjoy economic development. However, younger generations have not experienced a war. Given the economic difficulties of the 1990s, younger generations do not think that the North Korean military threat is real. Even the nuclear test on October 9 did not seem to change the perceptions of these groups. Moreover, they have been led to believe by the Kim Dae-jung government that aid to North Korea is an investment for the reunification of the nation. As a

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result, North Koreans are brothers and sisters to them rather than military threats. Although the wave of anti-Americanism in South Korea that accompanied the last presidential election appears to have receded, quite a few Koreans still resent Washington for the unequal treatment and disregard of Korea’s concerns. The issue will have to be dealt with in the near future to maintain the close alliance relationship.

National Identity, National Interest, and Foreign Policy According to Oxford University political science professor Rodney Bruce Hall, national identity determines national interests, which in turn produces policies.22 In South Korea, presidents have played a key role in determining national identity, national interests, and foreign policies, including policies toward North Korea.23 Korean political scientists Ki-Jung Kim and Deok Ryong Yoon proposed two perspectives concerning how national identity in South Korea affects policies toward the North: (1) the state-centric paradigm and (2) the nation-centric paradigm.24 The state-centric perspective views inter-Korean relations as those between two sovereign states. Due to the antagonistic nature of the relationship, South Korea’s national interest lies in protecting its survival as a sovereign state against North Korea’s military threat. To this end, the ROK-U.S. alliance is critical for national security and should remain a core strategy in the future. This perspective was the dominant national security ideology during the military authoritarian regimes of earlier decades. In contrast, the nation-centric perspective considers inter-Korean relations to be an internal issue of the Korean people. According to this perspective, South Korea’s policy toward the North should focus on the North Korean people, and therefore, reconciliation and cooperation should be pursued consistently and persistently. An implication of this perspective is that cooperation in nonpolitical sectors will lead to political integration and eventual unification. To avoid any military confrontation, the South should be patient and tolerant in dealing with the North. This view has been the foundation of the Roh Moo-hyun administration’s policy toward North Korea, which is the reason that the Roh government has been consistently quiet despite the UN’s concern about human rights in North Korea. As discussed, the state-centric perspective was dominant in South Korea under the military authoritarian regimes, but the nation-centric perspective gradually took over after the transition to democracy. We argue that two factors made significant contributions to this change. First, generational changes led to policy changes more sympathetic to the nation-centric paradigm. The population in their thirties and forties has been considered the prime mover of public opinion. When Kim Dae-jung took office, the characteristics of those in their thirties and forties were different from those

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in these age groups under authoritarian rule. For instance, those who were in their thirties and forties during the military dictatorship either experienced the Korean War or at least were influenced by the devastation of the war. Moreover, they lived through the tensions of the Cold War. These experiences led them to be anti-communists. On the contrary, those in their thirties and forties in the 1990s did not experience the Korean War, but went through political upheaval under authoritarian regimes in the late 1970s and 1980s. These differences in political conditions led them to be less concerned about the threat from North Korea. In addition, the end of the Cold War, normalization with the former Soviet Union and China, economic difficulties and starvation in North Korea, and the increased role of China in East Asian politics and trade weakened the perspective that viewed the North as the main threat to South Korea. Second, democratization in South Korea has also contributed to changes in national identity. The power transition that occurred as a result of democratization led to changes in political elites. The new political elites associated with President Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun introduced a new national identity and promoted the engagement policy based on the nationalist perspective in terms of relations with the United States and North Korea. President Kim Dae-jung’s legalization of the teachers’ labor union also affected the change in national identity of the younger generation. The legalization of the union led to the dominance of union members at schools, and had a large impact on the younger generation’s perceptions of North Korea and the United States. This occurred because members of the teachers’ labor union interpret recent Korean history differently and sympathize with North Korea. To them, the economic development achieved by the military dictatorship was based on the sacrifice of labor, while ties between governments and business gave rise to massive corruption. They also view North Korea as part of the Korean nation. They argue that North Korea is no longer a threat, and therefore, the United States continues to maintain troops in South Korea for their own national interests rather than to protect South Korea. These are the perspectives that have been delivered to young students. In addition, this approach provided the left with an opportunity to come out in public under the nationalist banner. For instance, a professor recently argued that the Korean War was an attempt by the North to achieve unification. Without U.S. intervention, casualties would have been smaller. This interpretation is very similar to North Korea’s argument regarding the Korean War. Supporters of this view wanted to destroy the statue of General MacArthur in Inchon, although government officials, including the president, expressed their opposition to the move. Five members of the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee wrote a letter expressing their concerns regarding the effort to destroy the statue of General MacArthur and

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requested that South Korea sent the statue to the United States if they were going to tear it down. President Roh Moo-hyun further played to the support of the younger generation. Growing up in a poor family, President Roh did not go to college and never traveled to the United States before he was elected president. He argued that the relationship between South Korea and the United States must be “equal” even if that meant arguments with the United States because of disagreement. This approach attracted high levels of support from the younger generation, which were his main political supporters. As a result, a majority of the public in South Korea does not view North Korea as a military threat. According to a recent survey by the Korean Institute of Defense Analysis (KIDA), only 20.7 percent of the respondents regard North Korea as a military threat in the next ten years. In other words, four out of five people do not think that North Korea will attack South Korea. Given that North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950 and has been the main security threat since then, which is a huge change.25 Another surprise is that people in the twenties and thirties think that U.S. President George W. Bush poses a greater threat to Korean security than North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.26 The rationale behind this view is that if the United States uses force to destroy North Korean nuclear weapons, there may be another Korean war. South Korea wants to avoid another war on the peninsula at any cost. On the other hand, the United States wants to make sure that North Korean nuclear weapons do not end up in wrong hands. To this end, the U.S. government is not ruling out any option including the use of force. Due to the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations’ nationalistic approach based on compatriot perspective, the younger generation tends to blame the United States more than North Korea even though its development of nuclear weapons is the cause of all the security concerns. A series of speeches by former president Kim Daejung blaming the Bush administration for North Korea’s nuclear test may enhance this perception.

Conclusion The election of President Roh Moo-hyun along with his policies toward North Korea and the United States, and South Korea’s response to the recent missile and nuclear test by North Korea clearly indicate the changes in national identity and security perceptions in South Korea. The current discussion about the transfer of wartime operational control and the discord between the United States and South Korea in dealing with North Korea is a great example of the changes in South Korea’s national identity. To explain these developments, we have analyzed the changes in both the domestic and international political environments. A number of factors seem to be responsible for the changes. First, President Kim Dae-jung’s

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“sunshine” policy and his nationalist approach led the public to believe that reunification is near, and North Korea is no longer a military threat. This misled perception also affected the public’s view of the United States once the Bush administration adopted a hard-line approach in dealing with the North. Second, differences in war experiences between older and younger generations led to different reactions to the policies of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun governments toward North Korea and the United States. The lack of war experience led the younger generation to be idealistic in perceiving the North. A series of incidents that contributed to the rise of anti-Americanism complicated the situation. Third, the end of the Cold War and the normalization of relations with China led to the end of the traditional perception of an alliance structure based on a Cold War mentality. This change along with the increased amount of trade with China, in turn, increased the importance of the Chinese role in regional economic and security issues at the expense of the United States. Fourth and most importantly, changes in political elites with the election of Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun gave way to the rise of progressive, leftist politicians. These administrations adopted a nation-centric paradigm in foreign policymaking based on a compatriotic perspective. As a result, foreign policies have changed accordingly. In conclusion, concurrent changes in the domestic and international political environments surrounding the Korean peninsula led to the changes in national identity of South Korea, which is reflected in the calculation of national interest. Given the low support for the Roh Moo-hyun government’s policy toward North Korea, however, the next administration’s approach is likely to be different from the current approach.

Notes 1. New York Times, October 15, 2006, www.nytimes.com. 2. PSI is designed to prevent the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). To this end, participants in PSI will inspect air, ground, and sea transportation suspected of carrying WMD materials. 3. Joongang Ilbo, http://bbs.joins.com/list.asp?tb name=d report. 4. Korea Times, July 9, 2006, www.koreatimes.com. 5. Michael Hogg, Deborah Terry, and Katherine White, A Tale of Two Theories: A Critical Comparison of Identity Theory with Social Identity Theory, Social Psychology Quarterly 58 (1995): 255-269. 6. Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1981. 7. Ted Hopf, The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory, International Security 23 (1998): 171-200. For a comprehensive review of the literature on social identity theories, see Neal G. Jesse and Kristen P. Williams, Identity and Institutions: Conflict Reduction in Divided Societies, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005.

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8. South Korean troops participation reached approximately 600,000. 9. Digital Chosun Ilbo, August 26, 2005. 10. Martin Hart-Landsberg, Korea: Division, Reunification and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998. 11. Uk Heo and Jung-Yeop Woo, South Korea’s Response: Democracy, Identity, and Strategy, in Identity and Change in East Asian Conflicts: China-Taiwan and the Koreas, Shale Horowitz, Uk Heo, and Alexander Tan, eds., New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2007. 12. For more detailed discussions of the “Sunshine” policy, see Uk Heo and Chong-Min Hyun, The “Sunshine” Policy Revisited: An Analysis of South Korea’s Policy toward North Korea, in Conflict in Asia: Korea, China-Taiwan, and IndiaPakistan, Uk Heo and Shale Horowitz, eds., Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 13. Young Whan Kihl, Seoul’s Engagement Policy and US-DPRK Relations, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 10 (1998): 21. 14. Voice of America, April 10, 1997; see also Uk Heo, Kwang H. Ro, and ChongMin Hyun, Redirecting South Korean Security Policy, Pacific Focus 15 (2000): 59-71. 15. Digital Chosun Ilbo, November 4, 1997, www.chosunilbo.com. 16. Joongang Ilbo, June 4, 2001, www.joins.com. 17. Norman D. Levin and Yong-Sup Han, Sunshine in Korea: The South Korean Debate over Policies toward North Korea, Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2002. 18. When James Kelly confronted North Korea in 2002, Pyongyang admitted that they have a HEU-based nuclear program. However later, they denied the program. 19. Time Asia (February 24, 2003). 20. Morton Abramowitz and Stephen Bosworth, Adjusting to New Asia. Foreign Affairs 82 (2003): 119-132. 21. Korea Gallup Database. 22. Rodney Bruce Hall, National Collective Identity: Social Constructs and International System, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, 5. 23. See Levin and Han, Sunshine in Korea. 24. Ki-Jung Kim and Deok Ryong Yoon, Beyond Mount Kumkang: Social and Economic Implications, in Kim Dae-jung Government and Sunshine Policy: Promises and Challenges, eds., Chung-in Moon and David I. Steinberg, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999. 25. Joongang Ilbo, March 19, 2006, www.joins.com. 26. A recent survey done in March 2006 still shows that 14.8 percent of the respondents thought of the United States as a security concern to South Korea in Joongang Ilbo, March 19, 2006, www.joins.com.

Index Abe, Shinzo, 3, 98–101, 110, 129, 180 Agreed Framework, 18–19, 22, 29, 30, 139, 177, 182 Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression and Exchanges and Cooperation, 195 Armitage, Richard, 182 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, 186 Aso, Taro, 98 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 136, 141 Regional Forum (ARF), 156, 163–64 axis of evil, 2, 180 Banco Delta Asia, 184 Behind the Scenes of Demonizing China, 116 A Beijing Man in New York, 124 Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism, 71 Bush, George W. (Bush Administration), 2, 4, 8, 19, 22, 26, 29, 55, 62, 83–85, 105, 107, 172, 176–79, 197, 199, 203 Charter for European Security, 157 Cheney, Richard, 175

China Anti-Americanism, 116–17, 127 Anti-Japanese, 117, 127–28, 130 CCTV (China Central Television), 125 Communist Party, 115, 117, 119, 121–24, 128, 131 Cultural Market, 117, 124, 127–28, 130 Grand strategy, 34–38 Japan policy, 40–41 Korea policies, 44–50 North Korea nuclear weapons crisis, 41–45 Olympic Games, 116, 118, 126–27 Opposition to U.S. policy on North Korea, 25, 28, 31 Peaceful rising “heping jueqi”, 106 Propaganda Department (CCP), 115 Rivalry with Japan, 96–102 Role in North Korean nuclear weapons crisis, 23–25, 29, 30 Sino-U.S. relations, 102–6 Taiwan policy, 39–40 China Can Say No, 116, 123–24, 126–28

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Index

Chinese Academy of Social Science, 114, 127, 130 Chinese Red Hackers Association (Honker’s Union of China), 120–21 Chumong, 114 Chun Doo Hwan, 57 Chungyojo, 180 Civil-Military Emergency Preparedness, 160 Clinton, William (Clinton Administration), 18–19, 29, 54, 197–99 Cohen, William, 197 Cold War, 14, 16, 54, 155, 194, 195, 202, 204 Combined Forces Command (CFC), 181 Commercial nationalism, 116, 124 Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 158 Confidence and security building measures, 157 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), 159 Cui Jian, 124 Cultural Revolution, 78, 131 Deng Xiaoping, 5, 35–38, 45–46, 82 Deutch, John, 197 Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, 99, 115, 117 Dokdo/Takeshima islands, 7, 108, 115 Energy community in Northeast Asia, 147 EP-3 U.S. Spy Plane Incident, 119 European Union, 161 Fallon, Admiral William, 97 February 2007 agreement, 104, 109–10 Forum Security Cooperation (FSC), 156, 159–60 Future of the Alliance Policy Initiative talks, 181 Gaesong Industrial Complex, 58–59, 65, 75, 150, 179

Gorbachev, Mikhail, 138 Great China, 125 Hactivism, 120–21 Helsinki Final Act, 156 Helsinki Summit Declaration, 158 Hill, Christopher, 175 Hua Guofeng, 82 Hu Jintao, 3, 36–38, 46, 103, 129, 143 Immortal Admiral Lee Sun-sin, 115 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 139, 160 Iraq, 70, 85, 172–73, 175 Iron Silk Road, 141, 148–49, 151 Japan Rivalry with China, 96–102 Article IX, 3, 97–98 Self-Defense Force, 97 Textbook issue, 99–101 North Korean nuclear weapons, 24 Jia Qingguo, 118–19 Jiang Zemin, 36–38, 46 Joint Communique of July 4, 1972, 195 juche, 2, 71, 77–78, 86 Kang Sok-Ju, 182 Kelly, James, 173, 182 Kim Dae-jung, 3, 9, 17, 55, 58, 142, 172–73, 177–79, 187, 193, 195–96, 198, 200, 203–4 Kim Il-sung, 71, 83–84 Kim Jong-il, 3, 6, 34, 46, 48–49, 51, 54, 61, 71, 73–74, 76–77, 79, 81, 83, 109–10, 141, 144–45, 172, 174–75, 177–80, 183, 196 Kim Young-sam, 195–96 Koguryo, 108, 114, 130 Koizumi, Junichiro, 3, 7, 182 Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), 139 Korea, North Abduction of Japanese nationals, 109–10 Civil society, 72, 76–77, 83–89 Debt to Russia, 142

Index Defectors, 81 Deterrence, 19, 28 Economic reform, 61, 72–76, 87 Fear of engagement, 19 Foreign training programs, 79–80 Ideological legitimacy, 77 Insecurity, 14–16 Investment in, 55, 59, 64 July 2006 missile test, 8, 85, 98, 103, 109, 144–45 Nuclear weapons, 15–16, 19, 197 October 2006 nuclear test, 8, 21, 85, 98, 103, 109, 144 Political opportunity structures, 76–77 Regime change, 71–72, 77, 86–89 Religious groups, 82 Resident NGOs, 76, 179 Spiritual pollution, 80 UN sanctions against, 19, 85, 144, 150 Korea, South 386 Generation, 180, 200 Anti-American sentiment, 179, 199 As East Asia balancer, 106–7 Constitutional Court’s ruling, 174–75 Relations with the United States, 20–22 Nationalism, 20–21 Korean Institute of Defense Analysis (KIDA), 203 Korean War, 14–15, 200 Lee Kwanyu, 126 Looking at China through a Third Eye, 125 Lu Xun, 122, 124 Lynch, Daniel, 119 Man Portable Air Defense System, 160–61 Mankyungbong-ho, 192 Mao Zedong, 35, 38, 82, 125 Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), 199 Minjian Sixiangjia, 128 Moscow Declaration, 141

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Mount Geumgang, 178, 185–86 Multilateral regional security management, 24, 26, 27 Nanjing Massacre, 117 National identity, 201 National Missile Defense, 140 Nativist theory, 122, 124 Neo-Confucianism, 122 Neonationalism, 115–16, 128–30 Nihonjinron, 128 Northeast Project, 114, 130 Northeast Security Architecture, 165 North-South Relations, 14–15, 17, 20–21, 75, 137, 146 North Korean Human Rights Act, 84 Nuclear nonproliferation regime, 18, 25 Deterrence/compellence and, 25–26 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), 16, 18, 30, 139, 140, 143–44, 173, 182 “One China Policy”, 101–2 Open Skies Treaty, 159 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 155, 158–64 1999 Istanbul Summit, 157 Conflict Prevention Center, 160 Secretariat, 157 Orientalism, 122 Parhae, 114, 130 Park, Chung-hee, 16, 57 Partners for Cooperation, 158 Peaceful Rising, 3, 105–6, 129 People’s Daily, 121, 127 Popular nationalism, 125, 130–31 Powell, Colin, 142, 175 Preemptive War, 172–73 Pritchard, Charles (Jack), 182 Proliferation Security Initiative, 85, 177, 185, 193, 197 Putin, Vladimir, 140–42, 148, 150, 183 Resource Mobilization Theory, 81 Rice, Condoleezza, 98, 103–4, 175

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Index

Roh Moo-hyun, 3, 9, 56, 58, 62–63, 106–7, 129, 142, 148, 172–73, 175, 177–78, 187, 193, 197–99, 201, 203–4 Roh Tae-woo, 2, 17, 21–22, 25 Rumsfeld, Donald, 175, 181 Russia, 25, 28, 31, 95 trade with North Korea, 138, 141 trade with South Korea, 139, 140 and Far East, 145–47 Said, Edward, 116, 122 Sasser, James, 121 Saudi Arabia, 187 Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, 99, 115, 117 September 11 terrorist attacks, 157, 172, 176 Sino-American Hacker War, 119 Sino-Japanese relations, 96–102 Sino-U.S. relations, 102–6 Six-Party Talks, 5–6, 22–24, 26–29, 33–35, 45–49, 102–4, 109, 143, 145, 150–52, 156, 165, 183–86, 198 Small Arms Light Weapons, 161–62 Strategy and Management, 130 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), 174 Sunshine policy, 3, 9, 17, 30, 54–55, 58–59, 62, 64–66, 142, 172–73, 177–78, 187, 195–97, 203–4 Taepodong missiles, 56, 103, 184, 192 Takeshima/Dokdo islands, 7, 108, 115 Taiwan, 101–2, 105 Taiwan Strait Crisis (1996), 116, 126 Three-party talks, 34, 47 Three Principles and Three States of Unification Formula, 195 Tiananmen Democratic Movement, 127 Tibet, 116, 118

Trip-wire strategy, 181 Turkey, 187 Two-level game analysis, 29–30, 83 United Nations, 84–85, 115, 139, 161, 192, 193 Resolution 1695, 185 Resolution 1718, 185–86 United Nations Command, 181 United States Bombing of Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, 116, 119, 121 Conflict with North Korea, 13–14, 16, 18–19, 28, 30 Declining power in Asia, 21–23, 27 Global Posture Review, 176 Global War on Terrorism, 172, 176, 188 National Security Strategy, 105, 172–73, 176 Neoconservatives, 176 Nuclear Posture Review, 105 Plans to attack North Korea, 18, 22 Relations with China, 102–6 Uri Party, 174 U.S.-Japan Alliance, 108–9 U.S.-ROK Alliance, 62–63, 108–9, 171, 175, 201 Vietnam War, 194 Weapons of Mass Destruction, 13, 15, 17, 22 Wen Jiabao, 3, 96, 100–101 Xiong, Lei, 116 Yasukuni shrine, 3, 7, 101, 108, 115 Yeltsin, Boris, 138–39 Yongbyon, 182 Zhang, Yimou, 123–24

About the Editors and Contributors TERENCE ROEHRIG is Associate Professor in the National Security Decision Making Department at the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of two books From Deterrence to Engagement: The U.S. Defense Commitment to South Korea (Lexington Books, 2006) and The Prosecution of Former Military Leaders in Newly Democratic Nations: The Cases of Argentina, Greece, and South Korea (McFarland Press, 2002). He has also published articles and book chapters on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Korean security issues, human rights, and transitional justice. JUNGMIN SEO is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he teaches Chinese and Korean politics. His main research interest is the various forms of nationalism in contemporary East Asia. UK HEO is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of seven books, and his article has appeared in Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Political Research Quarterly, and others. He is currently serving as President of the Association of Korean Political Studies. SHALE HOROWITZ is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is the author of From Ethnic Conflict to Stillborn Reform: The Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (Texas A&M University Press, 2005) and coeditor of Identity and Change in

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East Asian Conflicts: China-Taiwan and the Koreas (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Conflict in Asia: Korea, China-Taiwan, and India-Pakistan (Praeger, 2003), and The Political Economy of International Financial Crisis: Interest Groups, Ideologies, and Institutions (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). He is the author or coauthor of articles in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History, International Interactions, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, and other journals. SEUNG-HO JOO is Associate Professor of Political Science, the University of Minnesota–Morris. His research interest areas include Russian foreign policy, Russo-Korean relations, and Korean foreign relations. Dr. Joo is the author of Gorbachev’s Foreign Policy toward the Korean Peninsula, 1985–1991: Reform and Policy (Edwin Mellen, 2000) and coeditor of North Korea’s Second Nuclear Crisis and Northeast Asian Security (Ashgate, forthcoming), The United States and the Korean Peninsula in the 21st Century (Ashgate, 2006), The Korean Peace Process and the Four Powers (Ashgate, 2003), and Korea in the 21st Century (Nova, 2001). He has authored over forty-five book chapters and journal articles. He is Associate Editor for North America of Pacific Focus (2003–present) and was a Korea Foundation Field Research Fellow (2005). DAVID C. KANG is Professor of Government and Adjunct Professor at the Tuck School at Dartmouth. He is author of the forthcoming “China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia.” PATRICK M. MORGAN is Professor of Political Science and Tierney Chair of Global Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Irvine. A specialist on national and international security affairs, he writes frequently on U.S.-Korean relations and is a member of the Executive Board of the Council on U.S.-Korean Security Studies. KYUNG-AE PARK is Korea Foundation Chair of the Institute of Asian Research at University of British Columbia. She is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of many scholarly publications on issues of North and South Korean politics, foreign relations, and gender and development, including Korean Security Dynamics in Transition, China and North Korea: Politics of Integration and Modernization, and articles to various journals, such as Comparative Politics, Journal of Asian Studies, Asian Survey, and Pacific Affairs. Since 1995, she has made several trips to Pyongyang and hosted North Korean delegation visits to Canada, playing a key role in promoting Track-II exchanges and diplomacy between Canada and North Korea. JUNG-YEOP WOO is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His research focuses on

About the Editors and Contributors

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international conflict, international political economy, East Asian security, and Korean politics. His publications include three book chapters on South Korea’s defense policy, on the Korean war, and Korean national identity. His article (coauthored with Dr. Uk Heo) appeared in Korean Social Science Journal. THOMAS A. WUCHTE is a graduate of West Point and received a postgraduate degree in international relations and Russian studies from the University of Illinois. Previously assigned as a senior military advisor supporting multilateral security negotiations at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Mr. Wuchte’s current area of research is centered on the establishment of better cooperative security structures in Northeast Asia by looking at European models that have worked in the post-Soviet transition period. MIN YE is an Assistant Professor in the Politics and Geography Department at Coastal Carolina University. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, he worked in China’s Ministry of Internal Trade (now the Ministry of Commerce). His research interests include international conflict and crises, foreign policy analysis, and formal theory. He has published several articles and book chapters in both English and Chinese. ESOOK YOON is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kent State University, Ohio. Her research interests are in the fields of IR and comparative politics, with a special interest in environmental politics and security in East Asia. She has published book chapters including one in a forthcoming book (In-Taek Hyun and Miranda Schreurs, eds., The Environmental Dimensions of East Asian Security, The United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006) and articles with journals including Comparative Strategy, Asia Pacific Review, and Korean Policy Science Review.