South Korea Grows Up

First the Human Rights Commission, now this:     

The South Korean government has decided to vote for a resolution on human rights in North Korea to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council this week, it emerged on Tuesday. South Korea has so far boycotted or abstained from all UN votes on North Korea including the General Assembly, except for 2006, when the North conducted a nuclear test. [….]

A government official, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said, “Previous administrations treated the human rights issue of North Korea from a nationalist standpoint. But the new government’s basic policy is to regard human rights as a universal value. The government will show the first example of concrete action in the upcoming UNHRC vote.” [Chosun Ilbo]

You know, I’m  starting to think that Lee Myung Bak  fails to recognize the divinity and supremacy of the Great General and Lodestar of the Korean Race, and judging by their reaction — a missile test —  so are the North Koreans.

As much of a change as this represents from the obsequious  policies  we’ve come to expect — and which North Korea has come to expect — from  the Roh Administration, let’s not lose all perspective over this: we are still talking about the toothless oxymoron known as the United Nations.  The  U.N. has done its worst to North Korea, to little actual effect.  The only things Kim Jong Il fears  almost as much  as his own people  are a  precipitous  end  to South Korean tribute (which China could offset) and, of course,  the United States Treasury Department  (which China could not offset).

Lee seems  serious about making North Korea’s disarmament a condition for more  aid, and what’s more, he’s drawing a link between inter-Korean aid  and inter-Korean agreements.  Not many people noticed  that a few days ago, Lee suggested that he would revive and enforce a 1992  inter-Korean denuclearization agreement (“The South and the North shall not test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons”).  The agreement was renounced by the North Koreans at a subsequent  moment of convenience and had been  regarded as a dead letter during the administration of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun.  No longer, says Lee:

“In the early 1990s, North Korea already signed an inter-Korean accord to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. I hope the North Korean nuclear issue is resolved through the six-party talks in line with the denuclearization accord that took effect in 1992,” said Lee at a policy briefing session of the Unification Ministry.

“North Korea’s leadership has to realize that the settlement of its nuclear problem would be truly helpful to inter-Korean economic cooperation and unification. The North will only be able to stabilize its regime, maintain peace and achieve economic prosperity when it gives up its nuclear program,” said the president. [Yonhap, via the Hanky]

Expecting other nations to keep their agreements with your nation  is a sign of national self-respect.  That’s a concept that Roh and his supporters  talked  up while alienating South Korea’s allies, but always set aside for the sake of an obseqious and unconditional policy toward North  Korea.  Roh and Kim  never asked  Kim Jong Il  to make any commitments to change his behavior, much less keep them.  The point being:  if South Korea is ever going to be  viewed by  other nations as something other than a satellite to be managed, an irritant to be marginalized, or a cow  to be milked,  it has  to be willing to  use its own influence to serve its own interests, nearly all of which are affected by North Korea’s intractible nuclear belligerence.  Lee is the first one in years to have done that.

South Korea has even extended the new reciprocity policy  to the most sacred of cows, the very symbol of the unifiction, the  Kaesong Industrial Park, which Lee recently said he would not expand until North Korea keeps it word and  gives up its nukes.  The North Koreans reacted by doing what they do best:  cutting off their own noses.  I don’t need to add much more here to what Robert Koehler has already said, but I will note that Kaesong had already started to have unintended social consequences that the North Korean regime probably would not have tolerated for  much longer anyway.

And it’s not just aid policy where strength translates to independence: 

“Strengthening defense capability and becoming a strong army means we should win a war in the event it breaks out,” Lee Myung-bak told top military leaders Wednesday at an army headquarters south of Seoul, according to South Korean pool reports. “Our greater role is to prevent a war,” he added. Lee […]  also said the South Korea-U.S. alliance is “very important” to deter aggression from the communist country. [AP, via IHT]

Roh paid (that word again) tribute to the concept of an independent defense.  In fact, this was a reaction to America pulling away from its alliance with South Korea, and in practice, it meant deep defense cuts.  That met with the unsurprising approval of the ChiCom regime, but in the event of a real crisis, it would have  meant that South Korea would be even more dependent on the Americans.  Behind the noise about independence and a more “equal” alliance, the South Koreans were begging the Americans to slow down their plans to  withdraw troops and turn over wartime operational command to the  Koreans.   Had  Korea proceeded with its defense cuts, and had the U.S.-Korea alliance continued to degrade, the South would have  been unable  to respond to a crisis in the North.  That  would have meant, and  could still mean, that the  Chinese  would have stepped  in to fill the void.

Acting like a mature nation will come with costs of its own.  A credible military deterrent costs money, independent statesmanship requires thought and gravitas, and a willingness to use your influence with the North Koreans may mean you’ll have to listen to a lot of empty threats, bluster,  and rhetoric from KCNA.  No doubt the North Koreans hope this will influence next month’s parliamentary elections, after which we’ll get a much better idea of how dramatically Lee will change his policies toward the North.