*the upcoming summit between Korea and the United States is likely to be a turning point for peace on the Korean Peninsula. ⓒOffice of the president republic of Korea
Il Young Jeong
Research Professor_Institute of Social Sciences_Sogang University
At present, confrontation between the US-ROK alliance and North Korean continues to escalate without any diplomatic dialogue. North Korea is threatening the United States by advancing its nuclear weapons program and continuing to openly test intercontinental ballistic missiles. With tensions on the Korean Peninsula intensifying, the upcoming summit between Korea and the United States is likely to be a turning point for peace on the Korean Peninsula. In this article I submit my own question for President Biden: “What is the United States’ proposal for fostering peace on the Korean Peninsula?”
Dear President Biden,
I am a Korean researcher who has long been studying affairs on the Korean Peninsula. The US-ROK summit to be held this month comes at a time when the situation on the peninsula is rapidly deteriorating. In this letter, I would like to ask a few questions about the United States’ role in creating peace on the Korean Peninsula, as well as offer some of my own perspective.
The Korean Peninsula Remains an ‘Island’ of the Cold War
It has been more than 30 years since the end of the Cold War, but the Cold War continues to cast its shadow across the Korean Peninsula. As one of the battlefields of the Cold War, the Korean Peninsula remains officially at war and continues to cope with the constant threat of war. For the rest of the world, the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, but the Korean Peninsula remains as the last ‘island’ of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and China, which once formed a key axis of the Cold War, helped open an era of reconciliation by normalizing diplomatic relations with South Korea. Yet, on the other side, the United States and Japan have so far failed to normalize relations with North Korea.
I often wonder: if the US had leveraged the strength of the US-ROK alliance to establish formal diplomatic relations with North Korea back when the Soviet Union and socialist states of Eastern Europe collapsed in the early 90s, would we have peace on the Korean Peninsula today? I am sure I am not the only one who feels we lost out on a key opportunity. Now, North Korea is armed with nuclear weapons, and establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula has become a much more difficult task.
At the same time, however, peace on the Korean Peninsula remains a critical task for the sake of peace in South Korea, in Northeast Asia, and around the world. I look forward to President Biden joining us on this historical task.
Why Did Efforts to Denuclearize the Korean Peninsula Fail?
The first step we need to take is to calmy and objectively evaluate why the past 30 years of efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula have failed. It is self-evident that North Korea itself is primarily responsible for the failure to denuclearize the peninsula. What we must seek to understand is why our responses to North Korea's nuclear challenge have failed.
I believe that for the past 30 years North Korea has constantly been weighing two possible options for its survival: normalizing relations with the United States and nuclear armament. There have been numerous dialogues and agreements in those 30 years, and during that time the prospect of denuclearization and the normalization of U.S.-North Korea relations have both become diplomatic weapons. Unfortunately, up to this point, the US has been reluctant to trust North Korea and has generally been lukewarm about normalizing diplomatic relations with the North. As a result, we are now facing a nuclear-armed North Korea.
It is clear that North Korea has been seeking a way to guarantee its national security, both in the past when it first began pursuing nuclear armament and it still is in the nuclear-armed present day. The US-ROK alliance has repeatedly made security guarantees, including offering a peaceful resolution to the Korean Peninsula issue and promises of non-aggression against North Korea. If we genuinely cannot tolerate the prospect of a nuclear North Korea, the only remaining path forward is for the US to guarantee North Korea’s national security by normalizing relations between the two countries.
I understand why the current U.S. administration and Congress do not have faith in dialogue with North Korea. However, the North Korean nuclear issue is not just a North Korean issue. It is a South Korean issue, a Northeast Asia issue, and ultimately a world peace issue. I hope that the U.S. will calmly re-evaluate the reasons for its inability to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. (For more detail, I recommend “Three Reasons the United States Failed to Denuclearize the Korean Peninsula”)
Sanctions Against North Korea are a Tool for Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Not a Goal Themselves
When North Korea conducted two nuclear tests in 2016, the international community expected North Korea to capitulate under the force of the responding sanctions regime. However, North Korea has continued to use its isolationist strategy to endure sanctions. Although the COVID-19 pandemic created a situation where the international community's sanctions have been nearly perfectly realized, the Kim Jong-un regime remains unshaken.
I believe it is both difficult and undesirable to try to achieve denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula through sanctions against North Korea. First, North Korea has endured long-standing U.S. economic sanctions since the Korean War, so the effectiveness of US sanctions is limited, compared to other countries in the past who have been more economically involved with the US or global economy. It is also worth noting that North Korea uses its enemies, including the United States, to strengthen its political system. In North Korea, an external crisis can be turned into propaganda that serves to maintain the Kim Jong-un regime’s power.(For more detail, I recommend “Crisis Doesn’t Mean Collapse: Changing Perspectives on North Korea's Ability to Endure Economic Crises”)
As a result, the international community's sanctions have given the Kim Jong-un regime the necessary pretext to further clamp down control over North Korean society and to mobilize the North Korean people with anti-American slogans. North Koreans, who were taught the Korean War was a war of aggression started by the United States, are buying into the North Korean government’s distorted version of history. It is not Kim Jong-un who suffers from sanctions, but rather the North Korean people. Sanctions against North Korea are a tool for denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, but they should not be used to simply force the North to wither away.
How the US Can Responsibly Address Peace on the Peninsula
South Korea is no longer alone in being threatened by North Korea; even the United States has to acknowledge that it is no longer safe from North Korea's nuclear threat. The strategy of waiting for North Korea to give in to sanctions has only made it more difficult to solve the Korea problem. To be blunt, I think the "strategic patience" strategy taken by the past Obama administration was a painful mistake. During the time spent being “patient,” North Korea succeeded in arming itself with nuclear weapons and increasing the range of its missiles.
I humbly ask the United States to proactively work to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula. First, I hope that the United States can work together with China in the name of Korean peace. South Korea has been fighting for a long time to protect the democratic values promoted by the United States. However, the Korean Peninsula must not turn into a battleground for US-China strategic competition. Both the United States and China must come together to cooperate for peace, even if that cooperation is limited to the Korean Peninsula.
Second, the dark specter of the Cold War cannot be erased from the Korean Peninsula without first normalizing US-North Korea relations. I hope that the US will propose concrete actions it can take to demonstrate to North Korea its hopes to normalize relations. This is a task that goes beyond simply normalizing relations but is an essential pre-requisite for establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula. This process would start, for example, by opening US-DPRK liaison offices in Washington and Pyongyang.
Third, we need to flexibly utilize sanctions against North Korea so that they can fulfill their intended purpose of incentivizing denuclearization. Above all, we should investigate and discuss ways to use the sanctions ‘snapback’ clause to advance North Korea's denuclearization measures. In addition, we must seriously consider ways to alleviate the pain that sanctions cause everyday North Koreans. To this end, we will need to ease the restrictions of the UN's reporting process for humanitarian aid to North Korea such that we can entrust international organizations to provide humanitarian support in North Korea.
Peace on the Korean Peninsula is a matter affecting the lives of Koreans in the North and South alike. I look forward to the upcoming US-ROK summit and hearing your considerate and courageous decision for peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Sincerely,
Il-young Jeong
*IL-Young Jeong is a research professor at Sogang University in Seoul. His key research interests include North Korea's social control system, inter-Korean relations, and peace on the Korean Peninsula.
*This article is a column published in OhmyNews. https://omn.kr/23fre
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