hankyoreh

The Korean Peninsula is facing a looming twofold crisis. Inter-Korean relations are as taut as a balloon on the verge of bursting. Relations between the US and China are on edge over discussions of the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system with US Forces Korea.
It‘s a deadly combination, where no side is able to control matters if they get out of hand. Indeed, the crisis has only spiraled further as the key players - South and North Korea, the US, and China - take sides in a large-scale game of chicken.
A similar twofold crisis occurred in 2010. To begin with, relations between Washington and Beijing were at a low. US pride had been injured by the 2008 eruption of a global financial crisis, and China started becoming arrogant. A power shift between the two seemed likely to happen at any moment. It led that year to a head-on collision between two forms of proud exceptionalism: US patriotism vs. Chinese nationalism.
Other comparisons also come to mind. In Jan. 2010, Beijing announced punitive measures against US companies to protest the country’s sale of weapons to Taiwan. The frictions only escalated after the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan corvette that March. During the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi that July, the US openly sided with Vietnam and the Philippines in the disputes with China over territory in the South China Sea.
In terms of inter-Korean relations, both sides pushed and pushed back in equal measure: the breakdown of working-level talks on resuming Mt. Keumgang tourism in February, the ROKS Cheonan sinking in March Seoul‘s May 24 Measures banning trade in response, and the staging of joint South Korea-US military exercises. The Lee Myung-bak administration in Seoul was intent on retaliation against Pyongyang for its alleged role in the sinking; North Korea became increasingly on edge.
The twofold crisis finally erupted on Nov. 23 with North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. I still remember the chill running down my spine as I watched live television footage of the bombardment from the press room at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Seoul. Jeffrey Bader, then the senior director for Asian affairs on the White House National Security Council (NSC), later wrote in a book that Seoul had considered its own large-scale retaliatory strike in response.
There was an out back then. What kept the crisis in check was Washington and Beijing‘s shared understanding that war could not be allowed on the peninsula - their desire to keep the status quo. An emergency China visit by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg served as a mechanism for Washington to calm Seoul and Beijing to calm Pyongyang. In some sense, it was only possible because US-China frictions had lasted so long.
The situation now looks even more dangerous. Both South and North Korea have internal decision-making systems where too much power is held by one person, leaving them without much flexibility or resilience. The Kaesong Industrial Complex had been an unofficial, unseen channel for them to trade views. Now it is closed.
The approaches the US and China have adopted to manage the situation may not function. Chinese influence over North Korea has noticeably waned. It’s also unclear how well the Park Geun-hye administration will respond to the demands Washington makes to avoid “decisive moments.” Even the Kaesong shutdown decision was reportedly made first by Seoul and only shared with Washington later.
The biggest problem is the US and China‘s apparent lack of urgency in managing the situation. With neither side giving an inch on the THAAD deployment issue, that management could end up sliding down the priority list. A clearer picture of where policy priorities stand can be found in Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent decision to add new wording about “guarding national security industries” when articulating Beijing’s three principles on the North Korean nuclear issue.

Yi Yong-in

China continues to demand a withdrawal of the THAAD deployment plans. The Obama administration, for its part, cannot afford to look soft on Beijing ahead of the presidential on Nov. 8. Doing so would leave the Democratic Party candidate on the defensive against Republican challengers who are openly critical of China. It’s this lack of any safeguards that makes the twofold crisis in 2016 even more dangerous than 2010‘s.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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