President Lee’s “grand bargain” is ignored during S. Korea-China-Japan summit

Posted on : 2009-10-12 12:23 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
While China signals resumption of its role as six-party talks chair, S. Korea sticks to setting precondition of N. Korea’s abandonment of its nuclear program
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As far as the North Korean nuclear issue is concerned, the second trilateral leaders' meeting of China, South Korea, Japan held Saturday in Beijing rearticulated a consensus between North Korean National Defense Commissioner Kim Jong-il and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on confirming China’s role as chair nation of the six-party talks following discussions between North Korea and the U.S.

President Lee Myung-bak’s assessment of the need to quickly resume six-party talks and his opinion that Kim’s remarks should not be trusted because they represent “conditional participation” in the six-party talks process predicated on North Korea-U.S. dialogue was left out in the cold. The large-scale “grand bargain” that President Lee has been presenting received nothing more than the lowest level of “sympathies” in terms of diplomatic rhetoric, and even the talk about “sympathies” was the Cheong Wa Dae’s (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House) own estimation. Wen simply stated, “We will proceed with discussions with an open attitude.” Analysts say that Wen’s statement indicates he is not completely disregarding Lee’s plan.

Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, who said Friday that he thought the grand bargain was a “correct and proper idea,” lowered the level of his agreement Saturday by stating that there were “aspects of President Lee’s ‘grand bargain’ that I also agree with.”

Wen also made firm remarks that seemed to target concerns in the South Korean government that China’s plan for large-scale aid to North Korea could conflict with the sanctions of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Wen presented something close to a rebuttal by saying, “China will be providing aid to North Korea for economic advancement and improvements in the people’s lives, and in accordance with the spirit of the U.N.S.C. resolution.”

Wen also presented new information at the summit about Kim Jong-il’s intention to improve relations with South Korea and Japan. Analysts are saying this is nothing new as Kim had already essentially expressed the same idea to President Lee through the special mourning delegation dispatched in August to Seoul to offer condolences for the late President Kim Dae-jung, and informal working-level contacts between North Korea and Japan are already under way. Following talks with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Friday, Japanese Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya said, “North Korea looked to be itching for dialogue with Japan.” Wen also said that he met with Kim for a total of ten hours, including one long four-hour meeting. He also that Kim’s intentions to improve relations with South Korea and Japan was the “strongest sense I got from this visit to North Korea.”

These remarks by Wen recall the role played by then-President Kim Dae-jung in June 2000 following the inter-Korea summit. By fulfilling the function of communicating and mediating Kim Jong-il’s desire to improve relations with the U.S. and Japan, Kim Dae-jung opened the way for headway to be made in those relations. North Korea has now given that role to China, and China intends, as Wen put it, to play a “leading role” based on the “positive results” of his North Korea visit. “If we do not grab this opportunity, it could disappear,” Wen said.

Analysts are also saying that China’s role has already been fine-tuned with the U.S. The time, place, method of dialogue, dialogue participants and scale of the discussion team for the North Korea-U.S. bilateral talks are being worked out, and meanwhile, Ri Kun, director of the North Korean foreign ministry’s North American bureau, has been invited to the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) being held on Oct. 26 and Oct. 27 in La Jolla, San Diego in the U.S.

Prime Minister Hatoyama, who appears to have received a more specific version of Kim’s message from China, said he “intends to believe what [Kim] says.” He also made two points clear, namely that the Chinese prime minister had clearly stated that North Korea-U.S. discussions would precede six-party talks, and that the issue of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea was brought up in parallel with the issue of North Korea’s nuclear program and missiles. This latter approach represents a break from the previous Liberal Democratic Party administrations’ approach of placing priority on resolving the abductee issue.

What about South Korea? President Lee repeatedly stressed that South Korea can provide the cooperation North Korea wants on the precondition of North Korea’s abandonment of its nuclear program. President Lee was quieter about the “grand bargain” and said, “It is not a proposal, but rather it is what the countries in the six-party talks were all thinking, and it seems like the stage for enacting it is now here.” Regarding inter-Korean dialogue, he merely stated that he was taking an “open stance,” but this was still linked with denuclearization. In essence, this means that there is no separate business for South Korea and North Korea to carry out. For this reason, there is no need for Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, to stop in South Korea as he tours Japan on Sunday and China on Monday.

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

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