What can be expected of the upcoming North-South summit?

Posted on : 2007-08-09 12:03 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST

An inter-Korean summit, the second of its kind and the first in seven years and two months, will be held in Pyongyang at the end of August. Former U.S. State Department advisor Robert Manning called the inter-Korean summit that was held June 13-15, 2000, “three days that shook Asia.” One hopes the upcoming, second summit will be three days that bring fundamental change to the Cold War regime on the Korean peninsula.

In the larger context of things, the background on the agreement to have another summit was the September 19 Joint Statement from Beijing. The government of president Roh Moo-hyun pursued the idea of another inter-Korean summit in September 2005, but that came to be held back by the issue of North Korea’s money tied up in Macao’s Banco Delta Asia (BDA) earlier this year.

It was only in mid-June of this year, when the BDA issue was solved, that the Beijing Joint Statement began to be really implemented. It was on July 3 that Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi, upon visiting North Korea’s National Defence Commission chairman Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang, said there were “some certain signs that the situation on the Korean peninsula is being mitigated.”

Also in early July, South Korea proposed high-level contact between the heads of the intelligence agencies of both countries, Kim Man-bok of Seoul’s National Intelligence Service and Kim Yang-kon of the North Korean agency responsible for the “reunification front,” or operations in and relating to South Korea. In response to the proposal, Kim Yang-kon proposed on August 2 or 3 that the two sides hold a summit between the heads of state of North and South Korea in mid-August.

The upcoming summit is important in the sense it is the “entry point,” instead of the “exit,” for resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis, because it presents an opportunity for North and South Korea to stand between two wheels: the denuclearization of, and then the establishment of a peace regime on, the Korean peninsula. The government explains that the meeting will be “a chance to simultaneously promote a resolution to the nuclear issue and the development of inter-Korean relations.”

The next round of six-party talks are scheduled for around the time of the summit, toward the end of August. In September the foreign ministers of the countries participating in the six-party talks will meet, and there will also be a summit meeting between the United States and South Korea. This is, then, the point where Pyongyang needs to make the right and final decision about moving to the “disablement” stage regarding its nuclear program. On July 12, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that North Korea had made the “strategic choice” to remove its nuclear weapons program.

One can also expect to see a real start for the four-party process involving North and South Korea, the United States and China, described in the Beijing Joint Statement as the “appropriate separate forum” between “parties directly interested in a permanent peace regime for the Korean peninsula.” This would also include a declaration of the end of hostilities stemming from the Korean War, as already described by U.S. President George W. Bush.

“This is a situation in which there are encouraging and significant changes taking place in the political situation for the Korean peninsula and the surrounding region, in what is the first concrete phase in substantially resolving the North Korean nuclear issue,” said Baek Hak-soon of the Sejong Institute.

This second inter-Korean summit will bring the peninsula to the next phase, the first summit having produced the June 15 Joint Statement that opened up an era of inter-Korean cooperation and reconciliation. North and South Korea want to open up a new era of economic cooperation, by agreeing on surveying underground resources in the North Korean region of Tanchon, among other things, and supplying the North with raw materials for light industry. The two Koreas have been unable to reach a final agreement, but they have made progress in discussions, at talks between military brass, on the Northern Limit Line (NLL) and on ways to prevent further clashes on the West Sea.

The leaders of both Koreas can be expected to agree on the guiding principles and direction for the next phase of discussion and agreements at other levels.

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