Pyongyang is intensifying verbal attacks on Seoul and Washington in the aftermath of the U.N. Security Council resolution against its rocket launch. North Korea’s state media reported Sunday that Kim Jong-un has expressed firm resolve to take ``substantive and intensive measures of national importance,” the strongest hint yet of an impending nuclear test.
The communist state’s time-honored style of bluster and blackmail is nothing new except for its directness and roughness. North Korea no longer equivocates concerning its nuclear ambition, saying all this is ``targeted” at the United States, and threatening to take ``physical countermeasures” against South Korea if it helps enforce sanctions against the beleaguered regime. Also noticeable is the haste and nervousness of its rhetoric.
What has driven Pyongyang into such hurried action and blunt words, especially at a time when new, more open-minded administrations in Seoul and Washington are brightening the prospects for shifts back to engagement and dialogue?
Looking back, this is not the first time the isolationist regime has rejected offers of goodwill. It was soon after U.S. President Barack Obama offered to ``extend an open hand if you are willing to unclench your fist” that Pyongyang undertook a second nuclear test.
Is the North Korean leadership foolish or shortsighted, or both? Or is Pyongyang so sophisticated that it has long concluded that negotiations, bilateral or multilateral, to denuclearize the reclusive state would always end up as a victory for the North, and the more so the more time that passes and the larger its nuclear arsenal becomes. Right or wrong, such a strategy has worked so far, despite the enormous pain it has inflicted on the impoverished, starving North Korean people.
Pyongyang might also be calculating there will be clear limitations to Beijing’s joining the international sanctions in view of North Korea’s geopolitical value, with the Middle Kingdom wanting to restore its status as Asia’s, and the world’s, leader. Who’ll be the biggest loser from the desperate diplomacy of the militarist state? For the G2, North Korea is not formidable but bothersome at most, and ranks low on priority lists, while Japan will use Pyongyang’s belligerency to rearm itself. South Korea will suffer most diplomatically if Seoul continues to wait and see, as it has done for the past five years.
If waiting can no longer be Seoul’s strategy, the nation, and next President Park Geun-hye, has two options. First, it can abandon its own denuclearization policy in an eye-for-an-eye tactic, which will prove to be difficult ― because of the recalcitrant allies ― and dangerous. Second, Park can separate the nuclear crisis from other inter-Korean affairs, and unconditionally restart dialogue for economic and social exchanges. In the process, Seoul should win assurances from Pyongyang not to repeat provocations. All this is especially important because regional diplomacy can no longer be limited to this peninsula.
Northeast Asia is rapidly becoming a region with the highest potential of reigniting a 20th century-style conflict, where the world’s three largest economies may be engulfed in unexpected troubles by the slightest causes and excuses. Korea, small fry even if unified, has little standing room amid the giants’ trial of strength. Divided, this peninsula cannot even guarantee its survival.
Park has no alternatives but to find a solution to improved inter-Korean relations. Seoul should drastically expand its economic and social leverage over Pyongyang to prevent the latter from daring to directly approach Washington. It will require tremendous confidence and patience but it is the only way to keep 80 million Koreans safe and homogenous, while not being swayed by surrounding giants.
Whether Park will remain not just a good but greater also depends on it.