Seoul must call for US positivity on N. Korean issues
The government made extensive diplomatic efforts to get U.S. President Barack Obama to visit the country next week. Seoul will have to make even greater endeavors to turn the two-day visit into a diplomatic success.
For now, the prospects are not very bright, according to diplomatic sources, who say there would be few noteworthy agreements or special events during Obama's hurriedly-arranged stay here.
Yet the two countries, especially Seoul, can ill afford to waste away the hard-won diplomatic opportunity.
It would be best if the U.S. leader, who will visit Tokyo on his way to Seoul, puts a brake on the Japanese government's historical regression and military rearmament for the sake of cementing the trilateral alliance. While here, Obama is hoped to not only send a stern warning against North Korea's additional provocation but also offer strong incentives for Pyongyang not to do so.
In a worst-case scenario, the American president may stop at expressing a perfunctory regret on Tokyo's recidivism and urging Seoul to agree on closer military ties with its unrepentant neighbor, while doing almost nothing to lure the North back to the multilateral negotiation to denuclearize the isolationist regime.
As far as the U.S. curbing of Japanese behavior is concerned, there is of course little that the South Korean government can do. But Seoul should continue to tell Washington that if the U.S. unduly resorts to Japan as a check against an increasingly assertive China, it will not help but hurt America's ''pivot to Asia" strategy by unnecessarily provoking previous victims of imperial Japan, including South Korea. And that the U.S. should know better than any other countries the danger of a fully armed Japan.
With respect to solving the North Korean nuclear issue, Seoul ought to be more active but careful. As most Koreans see it, Washington has all but abandoned a diplomatic solution on the North's nuclear programs either because it is preoccupied with seemingly more urgent and important issues in the Middle East, and more recently Ukraine, or because the U.S. finds it more strategically convenient to let the communist country play with nuclear toys and use it as a pretext to build a missile defense network to check China, or both.
It is at this point that Seoul's strategic and security interests do not necessarily go together with those of its most important ally, because, as President Park Geun-hye stressed, South Korea cannot live side by side with a nuclear-armed adversary even for a day.
Pyongyang, which has seen Libya and Ukraine regret having abandoned or dismantled their nuclear programs and weapons, will likely stick to its own more tightly than ever. President Park must tell her U.S. counterpart how and why the solution of the North Korean nuclear problem can be Obama's lasting diplomatic legacy with the least cost at least for now.
There is little that South Korea can accomplish diplomatically without U.S. help or endorsements. It is also true, however, Seoul may be able to attain nothing if it waits indefinitely only watching Washington's face. Obama's upcoming visit may be the final opportunity for President Park to hammer this point home before the U.S. leader leaves the White House.
The government made extensive diplomatic efforts to get U.S. President Barack Obama to visit the country next week. Seoul will have to make even greater endeavors to turn the two-day visit into a diplomatic success.
For now, the prospects are not very bright, according to diplomatic sources, who say there would be few noteworthy agreements or special events during Obama's hurriedly-arranged stay here.
Yet the two countries, especially Seoul, can ill afford to waste away the hard-won diplomatic opportunity.
It would be best if the U.S. leader, who will visit Tokyo on his way to Seoul, puts a brake on the Japanese government's historical regression and military rearmament for the sake of cementing the trilateral alliance. While here, Obama is hoped to not only send a stern warning against North Korea's additional provocation but also offer strong incentives for Pyongyang not to do so.
In a worst-case scenario, the American president may stop at expressing a perfunctory regret on Tokyo's recidivism and urging Seoul to agree on closer military ties with its unrepentant neighbor, while doing almost nothing to lure the North back to the multilateral negotiation to denuclearize the isolationist regime.
As far as the U.S. curbing of Japanese behavior is concerned, there is of course little that the South Korean government can do. But Seoul should continue to tell Washington that if the U.S. unduly resorts to Japan as a check against an increasingly assertive China, it will not help but hurt America's ''pivot to Asia" strategy by unnecessarily provoking previous victims of imperial Japan, including South Korea. And that the U.S. should know better than any other countries the danger of a fully armed Japan.
With respect to solving the North Korean nuclear issue, Seoul ought to be more active but careful. As most Koreans see it, Washington has all but abandoned a diplomatic solution on the North's nuclear programs either because it is preoccupied with seemingly more urgent and important issues in the Middle East, and more recently Ukraine, or because the U.S. finds it more strategically convenient to let the communist country play with nuclear toys and use it as a pretext to build a missile defense network to check China, or both.
It is at this point that Seoul's strategic and security interests do not necessarily go together with those of its most important ally, because, as President Park Geun-hye stressed, South Korea cannot live side by side with a nuclear-armed adversary even for a day.
Pyongyang, which has seen Libya and Ukraine regret having abandoned or dismantled their nuclear programs and weapons, will likely stick to its own more tightly than ever. President Park must tell her U.S. counterpart how and why the solution of the North Korean nuclear problem can be Obama's lasting diplomatic legacy with the least cost at least for now.
There is little that South Korea can accomplish diplomatically without U.S. help or endorsements. It is also true, however, Seoul may be able to attain nothing if it waits indefinitely only watching Washington's face. Obama's upcoming visit may be the final opportunity for President Park to hammer this point home before the U.S. leader leaves the White House.
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