hankyoreh

The issue of a peace agreement on the Korean Peninsula is a polarizing one. Opponents claim a withdrawal of US forces following a peace agreement would lead to South Korea going communist. Proponents say a peace agreement between the US and North Korea would be a realistic and appropriate move. Peace agreements proposed by North Korea in the 1960s and 1980s were unacceptable to the South in their terms and parties - but since the 1990s Pyongyang has changed its position on both aspects.
After a military regime seized power in the South in May 1961, the North proposed an inter-Korean peace agreement conditional on a US Forces Korea (USFK) withdrawal. In Mar. 1974, it suggested a bilateral agreement with the US - perhaps inspired by witnessing the US’s direct resolution of issues with North Vietnam at the Paris Peace Accords in the early ’70s. From then until the late ’80s, North Korea maintained the position that a peace agreement should be discussed with the US and unification issues with the South.
But on Jan. 21, 1992, North Korean international secretary Kim Yong-sun made a historic proposal in New York to then-US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Arnold Kanter. Pyongyang would not demand a USFK withdrawal, Kim said; if the North and the US established diplomatic relations, the troops would be allowed to stay on the peninsula even after reunification. Having witnessed the reunification of Germany and the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in the late ‘80s and early ’90s, Pyongyang may have hoped to have the US guarantee the security of its regime, even if it meant allowing USFK’s stationing.
Yet the North continued holding the same position even in 2000, when the international climate had changed and fears of “unification by absorption” had mostly disappeared. When then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled to Pyongyang on Oct. 25 of that year after an inter-Korean summit that June 15, Kim Jong-il stressed the need for US-North Korea diplomatic relations as an extension of Kim Yong-sun’s Jan. 1992 remarks in New York. The US military, Kim said, had been “playing a role in stabilizing the political situation on the Korean Peninsula since the Cold War‘s end.”
It is worth noting that the same demands for diplomatic relations conditional on the stationing of USFK that had first been produced by the Kim Il-sung regime in 1992 were carried on in 2000 under his son Kim Jong-il. This could be seen as evidence of North Korea’s understanding of the nature of the post-Cold War international order in Northeast Asia.
The question now is whether current leader Kim Jong-un holds the same view.
Establishing diplomatic relations between the US and the North after fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War would require legal procedures for replacing the current armistice agreement with a peace agreement. In that sense, diplomatic relations and a peace agreement are two aspects of the same process. In October of last year, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong proposed a US-North Korea peace agreement in a speech before the UN General Assembly. After reports surfaced of secret discussions of the peace agreement issue between the two sides in New York late last year, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi came out on Feb. 17 with a proposal for parallel negotiations on denuclearization and peace agreement. Pyongyang made another call for a peace agreement the following Mar. 22.
Since a peace agreement would take the place of the armistice agreement, it is not merely an issue between Washington and Pyongyang. As per the inter-Korean summit declaration of Oct. 4, 2007, any negotiations would also have to include China, a signatory to the armistice agreement, and South Korea, which would be subject to the practical effects. In legal terms, the North can make no progress in discussing an agreement or diplomatic relations with the US so long as it insists on a bilateral agreement alone.

Jeong Se-hyun

While attending a G7 meeting in Hiroshima on Apr. 7, US Secretary of State John Kerry alluded to the possibility of a non-aggression treaty with the North. Coming as it did as a time when the North is subject to sanctions, his statement could be taken as having peace agreement negotiations in mind. It‘s also very likely that future negotiations will take the form of parallel denuclearization and peace agreement talks, with China and the US cooperating. If that happens, the South should have its own measures in place already for peace agreement discussions.

The first step is to figure out if North Korea still holds to the same position as Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in the ’90s on the stationing of USFK as a condition for a peace agreement. In terms of who the parties to an agreement would be, we would have to see if Pyongyang intends to adhere to the October 4 Declaration, which was regarded as a “last instruction” from the late Kim Jong-il. Item 4 of that declaration refers to the three or four countries involved declaring an official end to the Korean War. This means in turn that South and North previously agreed to the former being a direct party to the end of the armistice agreement and peace agreement talks.

If North Korea under Kim Jong-un has since abandoned the position of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-un and returned to its stance from the ’80s, then it cannot even begin to hold discussions toward the peace agreement it wants. That’s the reality of international politics in Northeast Asia today.

By Jeong Se-hyun, former Minister of Unification

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