By Andy Jackson
North Korea's missile launch on Sunday will be a test of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's diplomatic skills, but the test will not be his skill in dealing with Pyongyang but his ability to effectively coordinate policy with Washington and Tokyo.
The missile in question is an Unha-2. A report by Davie Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists indicates that it is essentially a modified Taepodong-2 ballistic missile that North Korea had previously tested in a failed launch in 2006. This year's test appears to have gone better but was still short of a success.
While Kim Jong-il and his boys played with their toy in North Korea's less-than-splendid isolation, it was Lee who was the public face of Korea to the world at the G20 summit in London. In addition to his securing a broad agreement on fighting protectionism (although likely little more than talk in the current international economic mood), Lee gained American, Japanese and British support for a firm but moderate response to any missile launch.
Lee's successes in London will not earn him a place among the pantheon of great diplomats, but it does confirm that he is well within the mainstream among developed nations in his stance toward Pyongyang.
Now, Lee must build on his G20 success in the wake of the missile launch.
The matter has come up in an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council and will likely be a hot topic there for at least a while longer. The Security Council will likely prove to be as useful as it usually is in such circumstances, which is to say hardly useful at all.
In the end, any coordinated response of substance will have to be hammered out between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo.
I have so far been pretty pleased with President Obama's North Korea policy, if for no other reason than he does not seem to have one. Even Obama's statement in the wake of the missile launch was strictly boilerplate, saying in a prepared statement: ``With this provocative act, North Korea has ignored its international obligations, rejected unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations."
My fear is that the North Korean missile launch could goad the Obama administration into premature bilateralism just as the North Korea nuclear test in 2006 prodded the Bush administration into doing so.
A key part of Lee's post-missile launch North Korea policy will be to attempt to prevent Washington from going off the reservation and making one-on-one deals with Pyongyang with little input from its allies in the region like it did last year when it removed Pyongyang from the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. That is easier done with the aid of Tokyo.
Effectively coordinating a joint policy with Japan presents a different set of problems. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso needs to appear strong in the face of North Korean belligerence ahead of parliamentary elections which may come as soon as next month. The Japanese also remember that North Korea's previous ``satellite launch" also flew over their country before crashing into the Pacific Ocean.
It will be difficult to deal with the Japanese before the election. Even after the election, Tokyo, stung by North Korean provocations and aware of its people's hostility towards Pyongyang over the case of Japanese citizens kidnapped by the North, will be sorely tempted to continue an unyielding hard line.
In this case, Tokyo's ``playing bad cop" is almost as worrisome as Washington's periodic tendency to play good cop through unilateral engagement. By making itself impervious to diplomatic entireties to engage North Korea, Tokyo inadvertently plays into Pyongyang's strategy of dividing the allies. After all, if there is nothing that can be done to get Tokyo to deal with Pyongyang, what does Washington have to gain by including them in the process or considering their views?
(Of course, we could ask why bother negotiating with North Korea at all if, as they say, they will never give up their nuclear weapons materials under any circumstances. That is a discussion for another day.)
Lee must try to get Tokyo to moderate its stance toward North Korea somewhat and get it actively engaged in negotiations with Pyongyang. A Japan active in the negotiating process will be a much more effective ally for Lee in putting the breaks on any American diplomatic adventurism, than a Japan that voluntarily freezes itself out of the process. The first step may be to quietly ask how Korea could provide political coverage to Aso for moderating his government's stance.
While former president Roh Moo-hyun fancied himself as a balancer between Washington and Pyongyang, Lee finds himself in a position where he must act as a moderator between Washington and Tokyo in dealing with North Korea. If he fails, there will be little hope for an effective, coordinated allied policy towards North Korean nuclear weapons and missile proliferation.
Andy Jackson has taught courses on American government and has been writing on Korean politics and other issues for four years.