Dialogue: Why NZ must move to improve our relations with North Korea

By TERENCE O'BRIEN

Following the first-ever presidential summit between the two Koreas in June, the prospects for a solution to the acute differences that have divided the peninsula for half a century may be just that much closer.

The imprint of new leadership in both North and South is making a mark. The North has displayed a desire to end its international isolation, and has joined the South in commitment to a pathway of peaceful co-existence leading eventually to reunification.

Neither side anticipates early unification. In the South, President Kim Dae Jung talks of at least 20 years and North Korean sources have spoken of 50 years, even more. Given a long record of mutual recrimination and belligerence, the process requires a profound change of heart on both sides and represents a prodigiously ambitious prescription for long-haul success.

Both sides have set their faces against a German-type solution whereby one country (the South) simply absorbs, but at vast cost, the other. The North, through its enigmatic and underrated leader, Kim Jong-il, favours a Hong Kong-type arrangement - one country, two systems.

The regime in the North is deeply intent upon survival, and its diplomatic offensive to normalise relations with a whole range of countries, New Zealand included, is clearly for that purpose.

But the campaign is actively encouraged as well from the South, where Kim Dae Jung believes it provides a foundation for peaceful coexistence between the two Koreas that is indispensable for ultimate unification, his lifetime ambition.

Normalisation by other countries with the North represents, in effect, therefore, a display of support for the South. New Zealand should move purposefully ahead in establishing its relations with the North.

There is basic complementarity between the economies of North and South Korea, although the deadening impacts of fierce self-reliance and natural disaster has prostrated the economy in the North.

A process of incremental economic connection driven by South Korean conglomerates such as Hyundai and Samsung, by shared Confucian principles of support for clan and family and by straight-out sentiment between peoples, will provide, it is hoped, the engine power for gradual reunification.

For New Zealand, South Korea ranks as its fifth-largest trade partner and the economic implications are, therefore, of vital significance.

The leadership of the two Koreas needs above all to demonstrate to the outside world, and particularly major powers, that the process they have begun will remove longstanding contentious issues. Chief among these is the North's military potential for weapons of mass destruction.

Their co-responsibility is imposing. It is obvious that unification is essentially an issue for the two Koreas themselves, alone; but it is plain that outside powers, mainly the United States, China, Japan and Russia, do not intend to concede all initiative.

The US, as an unrivalled global power with a military presence on the peninsula (37,500 personnel) and commitment to non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and missiles, has extensive direct interest.

Although the South is its military ally, the US has encountered some problems of adjustment to President Kim Dae Jung's purposeful policies of engagement with the North. It is concerned that the paramountcy of US interests might be affected by the extent to which the two Koreas alone set the pace. Undercurrents of this American anxiety endure.

A review of US policy, before the unanticipated June summit of the Korean leaders, affirmed that American implication in Kim's engagement policy and diplomatic normalisation with the North could be contemplated only after effective termination of the North's nuclear and missile-related activities.

That stance has not changed as a result of the Secretary of State's ground-breaking call at Pyongyang, or President Clinton's prospective visit, which would constitute a sizeable feather in the North's cap.

Effective diplomacy displayed by both Koreas has obliged the US to respond by further coordinating its approaches trilaterally with the South and with Japan. The US intends thereby to assert influence over the post-Korean summit phase, while Japan, whose economic support will be crucial to ultimate success, has yet to normalise its own relations with the North.

Both Korean leaders keenly comprehend the need to sustain American support. The reassurance by the South, which is apparently reciprocated in the North, that American military forces should remain on the peninsula even when unification is accomplished, skilfully defers a potentially difficult issue.

But the views of China, which enjoys better relations than the US with both North and South Korea, cannot be disregarded here, as both Koreas are perfectly aware and as the US is obliged to admit.

US and Chinese views coincide, however, around their shared strategic interest in a peaceable, prosperous peninsula. But an eventual American decision under the next president to install a regional missile defence system aimed at North Korea would surely derail the process and infuriate China.

There remains among the conservative opposition in democratic South Korea, as well as among some in the American security community, abiding suspicion of North Korean motives and a belief that a divided peninsula has not outlived its utility.

Breaching the 38th parallel demilitarised zone dividing the Koreas is akin to the collapse of the Berlin Wall a decade ago. Strategic security mindsets invariably take much time to adjust.

The whole reunification process is, and will remain, vulnerable from within and without. The scheduled presidential election in the South in 18 months will be an especially sensitive time. Yet the award of the Nobel peace prize and the recent successful Asia-Europe Summit in Seoul chaired by South Korea, where European leaders strongly backed Kim Dae Jung, will have strengthened his position and resolve.

* Terence O'Brien is a foreign policy analyst.