Is Reality Returning to Seoul?

In the wake of its modest election beating and newly-implausible deniability that Sunshine has failed to do anything but exacerbate North Korea’s intransigence, could these be the first hints that we have entered the post-Sunshine age? Chun Young-Woo, the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Policy Director, was in New York last week at a conference on the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and said this:

Addressing a second-day session, Chun, who heads the South Korean delegation, said, “Although we will continue to pursue six-party talks to resolve the nuclear dispute, nothing can bring about a breakthrough unless North Korea makes a strategic decision to permanently abandon nuclear development.”

He said North Korea’s effective pulping of the treaty “inflicted a major blow to the NPT’s credibility.” “The North Korean nuclear dispute is seriously threatening peace and security not only on the Korean Peninsula but also in Northeast Asia and the world.”

Chun called for a thorough crackdown on the nuclear arms black market and for a stop to nuclear weapons development disguised as peaceful nuclear activity. He suggested the Supplementary Protocol to the treaty, which strengthens the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency, should be applied to all countries without exception.

To hear someone from Uri so so little like Chong Dong-Young and so much like John Bolton must have been shocking in Pyongyang, but given what I consider to be a significant signal that the thinking in the U.S. Congress is getting as hard-line as the views on this site, President Bush talking about concentration camps, and the State Department’s lead negotiator talking about making human rights an issue, South Korea may well be triangulating furiously to retain its relevance.

Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon got the memo, too, and describes the “nuclear dispute” as being at a “critical stage,” laying the blame squarely on North Korea for being “unreasonable.” And what of the tension between the Chung Dong-Young, the Minister of Silly Talks, and Minister Ban regarding U.N. sanctions? Ban is still saying what he was saying two weeks ago:

. . . Ban said he had “nothing to say in particular” about referring the matter to the UN Security Council, though he did say resolving the dispute outside the six-party talks was a possibility.

In other words, nothing. But that’s certainly an improvement from “hell, no.” It’s the last part of that quote, however, that must have been calculated to cause concern in Pyongyang. The sharp ideological shift suggested by these comments, not to mention the Chosun Ilbo’s own gloomy tone, show obvious worry that was inexplicably absent throughout most of North Korea’s nuclear buildup. Events appear to be accelerating rapidly, Washington is showing signs of abandoning diplomacy (belatedly), and Seoul is reduced to the status of worried bystander.