Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 

By Mark P. Barry

Only one modern nation state has been divided nearly 68 years, suffered over four decades of harsh foreign occupation, and relies not on a peace treaty but a 60-year-old truce. That country is Korea—a tragedy by any standard in today’s world.

With the 24-hour news cycle, Americans have fixated on North Korea’s latest threats, but that’s focusing on the wrong issue. The underlying cause of the problem of North Korea is the lack of a peace treaty following the 1953 Armistice that halted the Korean War. Because there has been no permanent peace, the Korean Peninsula is inherently unstable in a neighborhood in which the interests of four major powers converge: China, Russia, Japan, and the United States.

The world media’s obsession with North Korea, its bizarre behavior and larger-than-life threats ignore the fact the North has remained a festering problem in international relations for decades. Since 1990, the almost exclusive international focus has been on Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The North’s nuclear capability is extremely important and cannot be ignored, but the nuclear issue won’t be solved by focusing on it alone.

The only lasting way to solve the problems presented by North Korea is to bring about a permanent peace agreement for a peninsula still in a state of war that will lay the basis for eventual reunification. In the process, the nuclear issue will be resolved as part of comprehensive mutual security arrangements. The absence of permanent peace in Korea not only gets short shrift in the media, it is a reality shunned by policymakers, who merely recalibrate U.S. policy toward the “Norks,” as former Obama Asia official Kurt Campbell dubbed the North, and excuse the lack of wise use of American power and diplomacy on Korea being the “land of lousy options.” But as analyst John Delury said, “everything that Washington and Seoul are doing is reactive….We need to break that cycle and essentially…go on the offensive, not with weaponry, but with diplomacy.” 

Clearly, the primary purpose of current North Korean behavior is for domestic regime consolidation. Kim Jong Un, only 29 or 30, has to live up to the enormous reputation of his father and grandfather. In his first year of leadership, he tried to return balance to his regime by de-emphasizing the military and re-emphasizing the party—as it was in the days of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung. This was necessary to try to rebuild the North’s shattered economy.

However, these steps likely brought Kim Jong Un opponents in the military, especially after he sacked some of its top leaders. Although Kim Jong Un is backed by his uncle, and more importantly his aunt, the late Kim Jong Il’s sister, this is not enough. In the North’s peculiar regime dynamics, Kim needs the absolute obedience and support of the military, otherwise there may be ongoing instability and unrest inside both the military and the regime as a whole. We are likely to see North Korea’s extreme behavior reach its peak by April 15, the 101st birthday of Kim Il Sung – preceded by another missile test this week (to make up for the failed one of a year ago). From then on, we may see a moderation of North Korean behavior, since it declared on March 31 and April 1 that it will focus on the economy while relying on its nuclear deterrent for security.

But, recent weeks have been one of the most dangerous periods in the peninsula since the Korean War. It has been less an issue of North Korea possibly attacking the U.S. or Japan, but more the risk of it undertaking new provocations against South Korea. Because the South is highly motivated to respond to the North’s threats, there is the ever-present danger of miscalculation by either side. Small actions can easily be misinterpreted and tensions can ratchet up in the blink of an eye. A second Korean War easily could begin unintentionally in any number of ways.

A remote though plausible scenario is North Korea may have concluded it has no choice but to lash out. The North Korean leadership is not suicidal, but as some analysts conjecture, the regime knows its weaknesses and feels increasingly cornered. Under present conditions, it might risk it all because everything it holds dear, in its judgment, is already endangered. The North may choose to gamble on a lightning-fast reunification drive, seizing what territory it can, to bring it a greater chance of regime survival.

For the past five years, South Korean policy has amounted to waiting for an impending North Korean collapse. The previous Lee Myung-bak administration thought the best way to deal with North Korea was to do little other than wait and pick up the pieces after it fell apart on its own accord. But this did not happen, even upon Kim Jong Il’s death, and South Korea’s policy of no engagement or aid to the North under almost any circumstances ended unsuccessfully. In fact, it arguably created a vacuum of relations that the North filled in 2010 when it sunk a South Korean naval vessel and shelled an island near the DMZ.

The new South Korean administration of President Park Geun-hye, which took office in late February after the North’s third nuclear test, is attempting to establish a new policy of trustpolitik, designed to separate the nuclear issue from other aspects of inter-Korean relations. However Madam Park inherited an already very difficult situation, which only mounted in intensity over the last few weeks. Right now, there is only so much she can do. She is also dependent upon America’s security protection, including its nuclear umbrella, provided by a 1954 treaty. Under present circumstances, she cannot easily move forward diplomatically until the threat wanes.

Now more than ever we need clear policy direction and diplomatic action towards the establishment of a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. President Obama’s first term policy of “strategic patience,” which amounted to benign neglect, can no longer suffice. One cannot avoid a problem and expect it to get better. We should not wait for North Korea to find another opportunity to ratchet up tensions even further and more dangerously.

We have the precedent of the 1997-98 Four Party Talks, which included the U.S., China and the two Koreas. Its purpose was to lay the basis for the “successful conclusion of a peace agreement which would bring lasting peace and stability to the Korean Peninsula and contribute greatly to the peace and stability of the entire region.”  These talks should have continued, but they fell apart because of mutual mistrust between the U.S. and North Korea. The U.S. briefly attempted senior-level engagement with the North in October 2000, with North Korea’s top marshal meeting President Clinton in the White House, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visiting Pyongyang three weeks later. A joint communiqué was even issued then, stating that “neither government would have hostile intent toward the other” and confirming “the commitment of both governments to make every effort in the future to build a new relationship free from past enmity.” But senior-level engagement halted and relations deteriorated in the early George W. Bush administration.

President Park is expected to visit the White House in early May. It will be her first chance to meet President Obama. There will be no better opportunity after this most recent crisis with North Korea for these two countries to agree that the goal should be the establishment of  ongoing negotiations toward a permanent peace agreement on the Korean Peninsula. The cooperation should be sought of China, Russia, Japan, as well as the United Nations, to resume a political process inconclusively begun at the 1954 Geneva Conference on Korea.

Discussion of a peace agreement should no longer be taboo in South Korea or the U.S., and only these two presidents can bring this sea change in policy direction. Interim steps will surely be needed, as noted by analyst Leon Sigal, but a treaty ending the Korean War must be the final goal. 

A Korean peace treaty is a vital necessity, and the joint responsibility of the two Koreas and four major powers. It is the only comprehensive solution, which can deal with all outstanding political and security issues as part of its settlement. Otherwise who knows what the next crisis on the Korean Peninsula will bring.

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Mark P. Barry is an independent Asian affairs analyst who has followed U.S.- DPRK relations for the last 22 years. He met the late President Kim Il Sung in 1994.

[Photo courtesy of ShutterStock]