hankyoreh

Gyeonggi Province

President Park Geun-hye called peaceful reunification the “ultimate and fastest approach to resolving” the North Korean nuclear issue on Sept. 4 on the way back from her recent China visit.

Park also said she and Chinese President Xi Jinping had agreed to “cooperate on the peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula.”

The remarks came during a talk with Blue House reporters on board Park’s presidential aircraft while returning to Seoul from Shanghai. Park went on to say that “various discussions” with China would begin on “how to achieve peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula in the near future.”

Park described the plans as showing “the administration’s commitment to cooperating [with Beijing] on checking various forms of provocations, including North Korea’s nuclear tests.”

Park also commented on an upcoming trilateral summit with China and Japan.

“While Japan has yet to present a forward-thinking approach on issues of historical perspective, I proposed that we needed to approach things in an impartial manner for the sake of peaceful discussions in Northeast Asia, and President Xi agreed,” she explained.

Park went on to say that the “date would be set after discussions with Japan on the trilateral summit.” The comments are her first confirmation that the summit is being pursued.

At the moment, Park is radiating confidence. As her remarks on the presidential aircraft show, she expects to parlay the summit’s outcome to gain some traction for diplomatic efforts in the latter half of her five-year term. In particular, the visit showed that South Korea is more than the middle of a “US-China sandwich” in diplomatic terms. Indeed, Washington was reportedly against Park traveling to Beijing for China’s V-Day parade in the first place, and unhappy about her visit in general.

During her visit, Park attended the Victory-Day event and met with Xi, whose support she gained on issues such as inter-Korean dialogue and a trilateral summit with Tokyo. Her efforts could be seen as a small attempt to break from previous diplomatic posture in Seoul, which typically defined relations with Beijing solely in terms of the framework of the alliance or relationship with Washington.

“The message she sent is that [Seoul] is not going to approach its entire relationship with Beijing within the US alliance framework,” said Sungkyunkwan University professor Lee Hee-ok.

The change in diplomatic steps also comes in the wake of a recent abrupt shift in inter-Korean relations from military confrontation to dialogue - leading questions about what kind of diplomacy Park will be engaging in over her remaining two-and-a-half years in office.

Park could now use the China summit as a basis for pushing a more explicit vision for restoring relations with Pyongyang and achieving cooperation and development in Northeast Asia.

“We’re at the right kind of starting point now,” said Handong University professor Kim Joon-hyung.

“What we are going to need now is the diplomatic skill to produce concrete results,” Kim added.

The first major event on Park’s diplomatic schedule now is a summit with Washington, which is scheduled to take place around Oct. 16.

“This should not be a meeting that’s about Park explaining or justifying to Obama why she went to China,” argued Seoul National University professor Chun Chae-sung.

“She needs to prepare and present an argument that is about seeking out ways of achieving cooperation in Northeast Asia that include everyone: the US, China, and Japan,” Chun added.

The argument is that Park needs to buck the “whose side are you on?” frame at the discussions and outline ideas for cooperation and development that are capable of winning the support of all countries involved.

The focus at the upcoming trilateral summit with Japan that South Korea agreed upon with China - which is scheduled to take place sometime in late October or early November - is expected to be on relatively “soft” issues of economy and culture rather than heavier political or military topics. But achieving a stronger level of trilateral cooperation will require a new approach to dialogue that addresses the potential exclusion Tokyo may feel from the closer ties between Seoul and Beijing. Closer coordination could also prevent the current adversarial relationship from overshadowing what could be a stepping stone to the first bilateral summit with Tokyo since Park took office in 2013.

Inter-Korean relations remain the most crucial element, since the situation on the peninsula has a direct impact on the overall security climate in Northeast Asia. The fact that signs of discord took little time to emerge after Seoul and Pyongyang’s agreement on Aug. 25 - with the two sides disputing whether North Korea expressed “apology” for a landmine blast earlier that month, or simply “regret” - is raising serious concerns. At the same time, analysts also view it as encouraging that both sides are showing an active commitment to honoring the terms of their agreement, including working-level discussions for reunions of divided familes.

For Pyongyang, the appearance of Park alongside Xi at the Tiananmen parapet in Beijing may have come as a shock. There is also the possibility that a growing sense of international isolation will leave it with a realization of the inevitability of change and openness. But using China to exert leverage in achieving change in North Korea is a strategy with limited prospects.

Despite their agreement on general principles of opposing tensions on the peninsula and achieving denuclearization, Seoul and Beijing also showed differences on various points at the summit. On the issue of unification with North Korea, South Korea advocated achieving the goal as soon as possible, while China advocated achieving it at “some future time.” A reference in the South Korean statement to “discussions on the unification issue” was omitted from the Chinese statement. The more circumspect approach from Beijing appears to be a reflection of concerns about Pyongyang’s reaction.

“It’s a positive that the administration appears to be moving more toward building a base [for unification] as it moves into the second half of its term, rather than talking about ‘unification-by-absorption’ scenarios like before,” said Chun Chae-sung.

“We need to establish a frame of regarding exchange and cooperation with North Korea and building a foundation of trust as our basic goal, and enlisting the support of countries like US and China to achieve that,” Chun argued.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer in Shanghai, and Choi Hye-jung, staff reporter

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