President Park’s unification plan is missing a Phase 2

For months now, we’ve heard Park Geun Hye telling us about how reunification would be a “jackpot” for both Koreas, but we’ve never heard her explain just how she intends to achieve this result. This left some rather important questions unanswered.

Having heard so much from President Park about Phase 3 (profit!) and so little about Phases 1 or 2, at least we know that she’s asking us to resume the collection of underpants:

South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said Wednesday that Seoul and Washington should make greater efforts to engage North Korea, saying that dialogues would make pressure on the communist regime more effective. [….]

Until now, Seoul and Washington focused on inducing Pyongyang to change by cooperatively putting pressure upon it. [Yonhap]

Oh, no they haven’t. They’ve simultaneously pursued the mutually inconsistent objectives of economic sanctions and economic subsidies, chasing talks without acquiring the leverage for those talks to succeed.

However, to make the pressure more effective, dialogues and cooperation are also necessary,” Ryoo said during the forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Wow. I can’t believe no one ever thought of that.

“Our two countries should therefore strengthen our coordination for engagement as well. We will need to show Pyongyang clearly what it can earn by giving up the path of provocation and isolation and choosing the path of dialogue and cooperation,” he said.

WADR, Minister Ryoo, I think the North Koreans know exactly what they’d earn, which explains why they continue to choose the path of isolation.

Well, I’ll say this much—I understand Park’s plan better now; after all, how different is it from the same plan we watched Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun waste a decade and seven billion-plus dollars on? And just look how far that got us. Of course, some of us observed these Sunshine Lite ideas in Park nearly a decade ago, and her North Korea policy has been a triumph of maddening consistency over experience. I’ll predict, with high confidence, that these plans will end just as well as they have before.

I don’t disagree that the efforts of the U.S. and South Korea to engage the North have often been poorly coordinated. I’m not opposed to bilateral or multilateral talks with North Korea, so long as the terms are strictly coordinated among allies, the positions firm, and the expectations realistic. I’m all for engagement — so long as it doesn’t profit the regime we’re ostensibly pressuring — although I think we’ve mostly been engaging the wrong people and wish we’d engage the right ones.

My suspicion (you could even say hope) is that Ryoo’s position isn’t really about those things, and that it’s really about Park’s current political weakness, and her desire to protect her political flanks from the Northern Wind ploy, than it is about having a coherent vision for changing North Korea’s behavior.

Ryoo also said that it is important to help North Korea actually see the benefits of cooperation with the outside world. That will be a way to “pragmatically improve the quality of life and the human rights situation of the North Korean people,” he said.

What do you mean? They have ski resorts! Problem solved!

Ryoo arrived in Washington on Thursday on a trip aimed at broadening U.S. understanding of South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s trademark push for preparations for unification with North Korea. He is the first South Korean unification minister to visit the U.S. since 2011.

But on the other hand, if Park’s true goal was to tell a weary domestic audience what it wants to hear, why would she send Ryoo to deliver these remarks in Washington, while calling on our government to support this wildly unoriginal vision?

On the face of it, the Obama Administration sounds supportive, except for the immovable object that stands in the way of everything:

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel expressed staunch support for Park’s unification vision, saying it provides a vivid picture of the benefits the North could reap from reconciliation and denuclearization, as well as the benefits that reunification will bring to South Korea and the region as a whole.

“The U.S. firmly supports this vision. We will never accept a permanent division of the Korean peninsula,” he said. “The ROK (South Korea) and the U.S. will continue to do everything we need to do to keep the peace on the peninsula through a combination of deterrence, and a strong allied defense.”

He also urged the North to give up its nuclear program, stressing that Pyongyang won’t be able to achieve security and prosperity it wants while pursuing nuclear weapons. The North’s “byeongjin” policy of simultaneously seeking economic and nuclear development will never succeed.

“It’s not a policy. It’s a pipe dream. It will not happen. North Korea can’t have its cake and eat it too,” Russel said of the North’s policy. “Our strategy raises the cost of continued defiance and ultimately leaves the DPRK no viable alternative but to honor its commitments and to come into compliance with its international obligations, first and foremost, with its obligations to irreversibly and verifiably denuclearize.”?  [Yonhap]

Is there a single politician in South Korea who remains in firm contact with reality? Unfortunately, U.S. policy toward North Korea has almost always been deferential to Seoul. It’s not hard to guess why that might be.