Mr Kim has the neighbours in

Mr Kim has the neighbours in

Aug 9th 2007
From The Economist print edition
By all means sup with Kim Jong Il. But use a long spoon—and don't spend the night


IF YOU don't entertain much, your guests may be unreasonably chuffed when you do ask them round. Kim Jong Il, the ruler of North Korea, must recall the euphoria he helped generate in South Korea seven years ago when he met its then president, Kim Dae-jung, for the first and only summit between the two countries. Having waited long enough for his invitation to regain its scarcity value, the tousle-haired dictator is at it again.
As before, the outside world has nothing to lose and much to gain from hearing what Mr Kim has to say—even more so since in the interim he has acquired a few nuclear weapons. But the South's current president, Roh Moo-hyun, would be well-advised to play down expectations about his summit with Mr Kim in Pyongyang at the end of the month. The meeting will rekindle dreams of a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons and perhaps even reunified as one country. But Mr Kim's only aim is to keep his dreadful regime in power.
Even so, the moment is more propitious than for some years for achieving the limited goals a summit should set itself: of easing tensions on the peninsula, where the war of 1950-53 has never formally ended (just this week seemingly pointless gunfire was exchanged across the border); and of coaxing North Korea out of isolation. In February, after talks between the two Koreas, America, China, Japan and Russia, Mr Kim agreed to close down his plutonium-producing nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and some other plants in exchange for international aid in the form of fuel oil. Long stalled by a squabble over about $25m of North Korean funds frozen in a bank in Macau, that deal is at last moving. Last month the nuclear plants were closed down—if not yet irreversibly. The International Atomic Energy Agency praised this co-operation. The six-country talks resumed, meaning their five working groups—covering, for example, denuclearisation and normalising relations with America and Japan—also start work again.
It is far too early, however, to believe that North Korea is really ready to come in from the cold. Mr Kim's outbreak of hospitality may stem from two cynical political calculations. He knows that a visit to Pyongyang, giving Mr Roh something to show for his conciliatory approach to North Korea, will help his standing at home. Mr Roh's term ends in December, and polls suggest that the opposition—which favours a harder line—will win the presidential election. Not for the first time, Mr Kim may want to meddle in the South's politics.
No time for another Mulligan
Second, Mr Kim's real skill—overshadowing even his fabled golfing talents (an 18-hole course in 19 strokes)—lies in sowing dissension among his negotiating partners. The unity of the other five countries in dealing with Pyongyang is a rickety structure built of conflicting aims. For obvious reasons, South Korea, occupying the now-rich half of a country arbitrarily sliced in two by a bloody war, is the softest touch of the five. Japan, outraged at the abduction by North Korea of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, hangs tougher. China, Mr Kim's only foreign friend, wants to avoid the collapse of his government and the flood of refugees it might bring. America, too, does not want the region to become another global crisis. But it badly wants to stop Mr Kim from making bombs.
North Korea's regime, despite its manifest failures (even to provide enough to eat), has survived in the cracks in the international system: the Sino-Soviet split; the suspicion between America and China; Seoul's fraught relations with Tokyo. The most important message Mr Roh can take to Pyongyang is that those cracks have narrowed, and no amount of wheedling or bluster from Mr Kim will allow them to widen.

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EDITORIAL

Why Kim Jong-il is Meeting a Lame-Duck President
The North and South Korean governments announced jointly that their leaders will hold a summit in Pyongyang on Aug. 28. The summit was widely expected. It is a well-known fact that South Korean officials, from the former prime minister to a close aide of the president and even lawmakers on his side, traveled to Pyongyang and China, begging North Korea to agree to a summit. Recently, there were even forecasts that the summit would take place in August.

Given the Roh Moo-hyun administration’s obsession with a summit with North Korea, it may have been a foregone conclusion that a visit to Seoul by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, as promised during the 2000 inter-Korean summit, would never happen. President Roh said he would pave the way for regular summits between North and South Korea. But as long as every South Korean leader goes cap-in-hand to Pyongyang to seek an audience with the North Korean leader, the value of regular summits will diminish.

It is highly desirable for the leaders of North and South Korea to meet and talk. There are hopes that the summit could have more impact than any other meeting to help North Korea dismantle its nuclear program. At present, the six-country nuclear talks face the crucial stage of reporting North Korea’s fissile materials and disabling its nuclear facilities.

But until now, North Korea has strictly excluded South Korea from discussion of its nuclear program. North Korea has been saying that issue is something it wants to discuss with the United States. For North Korea, its nuclear program is its main bargaining chip in getting the U.S. to open diplomatic channels and normalize relations. It has been North’s consistent policy to demand only financial concessions from South Korea depending on the results of talks with the U.S. There is no evidence that North Korea has changed this policy, and it may think of this summit as another means of opening a path to the U.S. If North Korea sticks to the policy, then the U.S. and North Korea will play the key roles in bringing about changes in the Korean Peninsula, while South Korea may risk seeing itself relegated to a supporting role. If that happens, then this summit would merely be a venue for lip service to the grand unity of the Korean people, while all South Korea ends up with is a huge bill.

In an interview with the Hankyoreh Shinmun daily in June, Roh said the incoming CEO is the one who pays for the bills drawn by the outgoing CEO. He said regardless how few months he has left in office, if he makes agreements with the North Korean leader, his successor would not be able to reject them. In other words, he’s saying that nobody can mess with the things he does during his final months in office. This is how Roh thinks. If the summit is held this way and sidesteps the nuclear dilemma, whose resolution would mark the beginning of normalization in the Korean Peninsula, then the meeting could end up causing great harm for South Korea.

Realistically, President Roh has about three months left in office when he attends the summit. This goes against common sense. It is highly suspicious that the North Korean leader has now agreed to a summit he had been turning down over the past four years at a point when the lifespan of the Roh administration has almost run out.

The summit was announced at a time when the opposition Grand National Party is in the midst of a primary to select its presidential candidate. The summit will take place exactly eight days after the GNP announces its presidential candidate. And after that, the liberal ruling camp will hold its primary and then the presidential election will take place. The timing is perfect to pour cold water on the GNP’s momentum, while supporting the rise of the ruling camp. The previous summit in 2000 was announced just three days before Koreans hit polling stations to vote for National Assemblymen. It is impossible not to point out the political nature of the summit, considering how their announcements took place so close to South Korean elections.

Starting this year, North Korea appeared notably impatient about the results of South Korea’s presidential election, even warning that a war would break out if the GNP came to power. Even South Korea’s progressive ruling camp, whose mass defections and name change failed to boost its popularity, has been betting everything on the summit.

North Korea will inevitably demand repayment for helping the South Korean government by agreeing to a summit. Pyongyang collected US$500 million under the table for agreeing to hold the 2000 summit. When the next administration steps into office, it will get the lowdown on the events that led to this summit. There is a strong possibility that massive aid for North Korea has already been offered and incredible amounts of money will end up coming from South Korean taxpayers. This administration cannot unilaterally strike deals that could burden the next administration.

After the inter-Korean summit was announced, a majority of South Koreans expressed apprehension, as postings in cyberspace show. They saw right through the true intentions of the North and South Korean governments. In a survey by Gallup Korea on June 23, only 20 percent of Koreans felt an inter-Korean summit should take place during President Roh Moo-hyun’s term in office, while 69.8 percent said it should happen after the presidential election considering its impact on voters. Roh must remember when he travels to Pyongyang that Korean people are watching him.