we all hate Bush. Even a former dictator state like South Korea is becoming more democratic. I just can't understand how the hell the republicans came back to power in the US...

At least Korea is united over one thing - anger at the US
There is a new desire for freedom on both sides of the 38th parallel

Martin Woollacott
Friday December 20, 2002
The Guardian

The division of Korea, predicted the South Korean radical and dissenter Paek Ki-wan, would make his country "a nail stuck in the flow of history". That obstructive quality, the way in which Korea constantly pulls us back to the struggles of half a century ago, has certainly been evident in recent months. It seems that the two Koreas cannot, will not or have not been allowed by the powers to settle issues which in other countries and regions are now only memories.

The North Koreans in October worried the world by revealing that their work on nuclear weapons, supposedly suspended, in fact has never stopped, while, in the south, presidential elections have been dominated by the connected questions of relations with the north and with the US. The most serious demonstrations against the American military presence in South Korea for many years marked the final days of campaigning. The common thread that ties together these different manifestations is the Korean desire for freedom from outside pressures, so often expressed and so rarely fulfilled.

Nuclear defiance in one half of the peninsula and electoral change in the other together represent a challenge to the established policies of America, Japan, China and Russia. What they suggest is a certain convergence of northern and southern objections to solutions, or rather the lack of them, imposed from outside, above all by the US.

The context is clearly different. In the north, those objections come from a narrow military and party elite that sees its survival threatened by American policies, especially since the Bush administration took over. To make matters more difficult to read, they are refracted through the personality of Kim Jong-il, who is, according to different observers, either a shrewd leader or a spoiled and perhaps mentally unstable man. In the south, yesterday's victory of the liberal candidate Roh Moo-hyun is a democratic phenomenon reflecting a shift in generations, slippage in the power of the political right, and a desire for spending on social policies rather than military hardware, as well as the feeling that the US is dangerously mismanaging Pyongyang.

In spite of these differences, however, what it amounts to is that the north thinks that it is being mistreated by the US, and that the current of opinion in the south which agrees with that view is growing and is still represented, with Roh succeeding Kim Dae-jung as president, at the highest political level. Indeed Roh, with his expressed doubts about the American military's usefulness in Korea, may well represent a more openly radical position. Even so, he will have to operate in power, just like his predecessor, with conservative partners and political associates.

Protests against the American presence have been ostensibly concerned with the treaty which, under most circumstances, shields US military personnel from the South Korean justice system. But the anger at the deaths of two schoolgirls crushed by an American military vehicle during recent manoeuvres also expressed a more fundamental questioning of the need for American protection. South Koreans know that while a North Korean attack could cause terrible damage, Pyongyang long ago lost the capacity to invade and conquer the south. South Korea's economic and military strength has for years so outweighed that of North Korea that it could deal with them without American help, at least on the ground, as Roh hinted during the campaign. The only military card the north has left was its nuclear, chemical and bacteriological potential, as a last resort if it came under attack. Indeed, that is the rub, for what matters strategically on the peninsula now is not the threat to South Korea but the threat to North Korea.

Korean troubles in their most recent form go back to the reunification of Germany, following which the North Korean elite began to suffer the disquieting experience of hearing other people talk about them as if they were dead. As the country lost its Chinese and Russian subsidies, the coming collapse of North Korea and the reunification of the peninsula on the south's terms were subjects on everybody's lips. Critics of the "agreed framework" of 1994 between the US and North Korea were told that, long before the US had to deliver, North Korea would have disappeared. That was the deal under which the pursuit of nuclear weapons would be halted in exchange for aid and trade, normalisation of relations and an American pledge not to use nuclear weapons against North Korea.

Often forgotten in accounts of North Korean duplicity is that the Americans have not kept most of these promises. The desire to get North Korea quickly into a well-deserved grave is still evident, a typical instance being recent leaks from the Bush administration about the idea that a collapse could be precipitated by a huge outflow of refugees, similar to that which precipitated change in eastern Europe.

K im Dae-jung understood the north's siege mentality, grasped that a North Korean collapse in whatever form would be a calamity for both sides, and tried to emphasise economic over political links as the two groped for agreement, only to find Pyongyang suspicious of that approach as well. Nevertheless he made progress, but that was undercut by Bush's dismissal of his "sunshine policy" at their meeting in March 2001. Since that encounter, the administration has again and again compounded the problem, notably with the "axis of evil" speech, and more recently with the September 20 announcement on pre-emptive attack, and with the interception of the North Korean ship taking missiles to the Yemen.

Bush has added a personal note in telling Bob Woodward: "I loathe Kim Jong-il." It is thus not altogether surprising that the North Koreans have been cheating on agreements which they feel the US has also not honoured. Yet, when Washington did belatedly decide to explore the diplomatic possibilities again, the North Korean admission in October that nuclear weapons work had continued was, in the view of the respected analyst Selig Harrison, an attempt "to wipe the slate clean and revive dialogue". If so, the US has not responded, preferring instead to ask China, Russia and Japan to put more pressure on North Korea.

Koreans have a well-grounded view that the best interests of their country have weighed little in international decision-making. They see the US and others colluding in the annexation of their country by Japan, because Japan was more important to the west than they were. They see the division of the country and the war that followed as the result of a combination of initial American inattention and later obsession with the communist threat. Now, once again, many feel Korean interests are at risk because of deals done and dogmas shaped in a distant capital. That is the message from both sides of the 38th parallel.

m.woollacott@guardian.co.uk


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