hankyoreh

A truck drives across the Tumen River from the Chinese city of Tumen into Namyang

On Nov. 30, the UN Security Council adopted a sanctions resolution against North Korea, 82 days after the North carried out its fifth nuclear test on Sep. 9. North Korea’s neighbors hope that adopting this resolution will lead to specific ways to fundamentally resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.

The reason that the resolution took so long to pass was that it was not easy for the US to reach a compromise with China. The crux of the resolution is imposing a quota system on North Korea’s exports of coal to China, which were regarded as a weak point in the resolution adopted after the North’s fourth nuclear test at the beginning of the year. While the efficacy of the resolution depends as always on China, China’s attitude is quite different from South Korea, the US and Japan’s over-reliance on sanctions. China and Russia hold that the resolution must not be used to impede the basic needs of the North Korean people or to strengthen the foreign military presence on the Korean Peninsula.

The current policies of South Korea, the US and Japan – which rely on sanctions against North Korea and call on China to play a larger role – have only enabled North Korea to strengthen its nuclear arsenal. Now is the time for South Korea and the US to clearly acknowledge that the nuclear issue cannot be resolved through pressure and sanctions alone and to seek alternatives. Whatever those alternatives may be, they must begin with restoring the framework of dialogue. Since not only the US but also South Korea are preparing to hand over power to a new administration, it will not be easy to forge new policies, but this is in fact a good opportunity for a fresh start. Since the next administration in the US is not tied to the current policy failure, it could easily initiate dialogue.

North Korea needs to face up to the fact of its intensifying international isolation and move down the road toward denuclearization. If the North wants to use dialogue to reach a peace treaty, the right choice is to act first by freezing its nuclear activity, for example. Committing a new provocation to protest the UN resolution represents short-sighted adventurism that would only worsen the situation.

The administration of President Park Geun-hye should bear much of the blame for the North Korean nuclear issue getting this continually worse. It’s a mistake for government officials to nonetheless be talking about maintaining or even expanding current policies. It’s time to think about what can be done to find new momentum for resolving the nuclear issue.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]