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  Learning Times> News Corner > 국내뉴스코너
 
  Date : 2012-05-30
Sanctions on Pyongyang

Time for cool-headed calculation of gains, losses
 
A three-way war-of-nerves is going on between North Korea, the United States and China over a possible nuclear test by Pyongyang. 
 
The United States is strongly warning against any further provocation by the reclusive regime; North Korea denies such an intention but links it to Washington’s sanctions; and China is pressing both sides, making clear its opposition against any activities that complicate the situation on the Korean Peninsula.
 
Noticeable for its absence is South Korea’s voice on the matter. Seoul of course maintains a similar position to America’s and indirectly conveyed it to Pyongyang through the United States. Yet it hardly mitigates the emptiness most South Koreans feel about Seoul’s relative diplomatic isolation.
 
And that seems to be too far a cry from years ago when the U.S. and even Chinese officials asked for Seoul’s intermediary role in breaking the deadlock in multilateral denuclearization talks. 
 
Exactly two years have passed since Seoul severed nearly all exchanges with Pyongyang to punish what the South saw as the North’s torpedoing of its battleship Cheonan and killing 46 sailors aboard about two months before, completely freezing the already chilly relationship. Such a stern move was somewhat inevitable in view of what South Koreans felt about the North’s provocation. 
 
The problem with the knee-jerk, emotional action, however justifiable it was at that moment, was the lack of analysis of its longer and broader effects, as is the case of the Lee Myung-bak administration’s North Korea policy as a whole. 
 
For instance, the Unification Ministry predicted Pyongyang would suffer up to $300 million in annual losses of hard-currency income at the time. But the sharply increased trade between North Korea and China more than offset it, and a private institute estimates the economic loss caused by inter-Korean stalemate the past four years at $8.27 billion for the South and $1.64 billion for the North. The average loss of 200 South Korean firms doing business with North Koreans also stood at 2 billion won. 
 
Again, larger damage came from the loss of diplomatic initiatives. A recent report that a senior U.S. official visited Pyongyang just before the North’s failed launch of a long-distance rocket reaffirmed Seoul’s diplomatic alienation. The ``direct deal” between the United States and North Korea reflects not just the basic nature of the North’s nuclear crisis and what the United States needs from the aspect of its domestic politics but the irrecoverably damaged inter-Korean ties that forced Seoul’s biggest ally to bypass it.
 
The Lee administration was elected on an anti-engagement platform, which itself reflected many South Koreans’ sentiments. Yet Lee’s tactical mistakes of making what should be a mid-term goal of denuclearization as a precondition for any inter-Korean exchanges, and his rigid approach in emotional reaction to both the North and his predecessors have combined to pull down the inter-Korean relationship _ and Lee’s own reputation in this area _ to the nadir.
 
Both blind pacifism and visionless hostility cannot be answers for inter-Korean diplomacy. Cooperation amid principles should be a third-way solution. Unfortunately, it has become apparent that is not the road Lee will take.
  
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