Routledge Handbook of Korean Politics and Public Administration by Moon M. Jae; Moon Chung-In;

Author:Moon, M. Jae; Moon, Chung-In;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Inter-Korean initiative

If the key to balancing big power relationships with the US and China consists of the artful diplomacy of non-action, Seoul can ill afford such passivity when it comes to defusing its foremost security threat, a hostile North Korea. The North represents an existential threat as well as a transformative opportunity for the South. If the status quo were destabilized due to conflict, South Korea could stand to lose much of what it has built over decades of development and democratization. On the flipside, if North Korea were to open up its society and economy and moderate its foreign policy behavior, South Korea could benefit considerably. South Korea’s vital national interests are jeopardized unless Seoul takes the initiative in inter-Korean relations.

The dilemma for Seoul is that an activist approach to inter-Korean relations can easily generate tensions with the big powers, which have their own security concerns and geopolitical priorities when it comes to dealing with a nuclear North Korea. The United States, China, and Japan consider North Korea a top national security priority. Washington in particular has placed a strong national security emphasis on North Korea ever since the first nuclear crisis of 1993–1994. With the ICBM and thermonuclear tests of 2017, the US elevated its threat perception to a new level by confronting the prospect of a North Korean capability to hit the US homeland with nuclear-tipped missiles. H.R. McMaster, Donald Trump’s then-national security advisor, stated, “The greatest immediate threat to US and to the world is the threat posed by the rogue regime in North Korea” (Washington Post 2017). The Trump National Security Strategy put it in stark terms: “North Korea seeks the capability to kill millions of Americans with nuclear weapons” (White House 2017, 7). The possibility of a surgical strike, “bloody nose” or preventive war moved from fringe ideas to mainstream policy proposals. By systematically presenting the possibility of the use of force “if diplomacy fails,” the Trump administration upended the normal superpower-ally relationship with South Korea. President Moon Jae-in found himself in the unusual role of having to restrain Washington, drawing a red line with his own ally by insisting that war was not an option on the Peninsula.

When inter-Korean talks suddenly opened up in January 2018, American experts voiced fears that dialogue would “drive a wedge” in the alliance, anxieties that reflected widespread doubts about Seoul’s reliability. Moon took pains to credit Trump and promise close coordination with the White House, leading North Korea to excoriate him. In a departure from the Sunshine era of putting North Korea first, Moon explicitly linked progress in inter-Korean relations under the paradigm of peaceful co-existence to progress in US-DPRK relations under the framework of normalization and denuclearization. Thus, Moon made the US central to his first, carefully planned summit with Kim Jong Un as well as their spontaneous, follow-up meeting in Panmunjom. The Trump-Kim summit in Singapore was, in turn, a victory for Moon’s linkage strategy.

Moon’s prioritization of Pyongyang and Washington and embrace of a mediating

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