hankyoreh

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (left) greets his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong-ho before their meeting at the International Convention Center in the Laotian capital of Vientiane on July 25. (Yonhap News)

It was around 11 am on July 25, and reporters from South Korea, Japan, and other countries were hovering in front of the VIP lounge (Room 12) and conference room (Room 15) of the National Convention Center in Vientiane. They were there to cover bilateral talks between the North Korean and Chinese foreign ministers, which were set to start at 11 o’clock.
But it wasn’t just the reporters who were waiting around in front of the doors. Several young diplomats with the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs were also there. Room 15 was the meeting place for the North Korea-China talks, while Room 12 was a place to rest while North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho waited for his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, whose foreign minister talks with ASEAN were going longer than scheduled because of the South China Sea issue.
“We haven’t had any negotiations with a North Korean foreign minister in the time I’ve been working here,” said one young diplomat with the ministry’s Office of Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, which handles the nuts and bolts of talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. “It’s disappointing.”
The young diplomats in front of Room 15 also tried to pin down Chinese foreign ministry officials as they raced by and engage them in dialogue. Like the reporters, they were trying to get information. But diplomats don’t have to keep their ears to the ground when countries are on good terms; they get “debriefings” after the main diplomatic event. Could the young diplomats’ waiting and listening be a sign that a South Korean diplomatic nightmare has made its return?

The first North Korean nuclear crisis started in the late ‘80s and was resolved by the adoption and proclamation of the Geneva Agreement between Pyongyang and Washington on Oct. 21, 1994. Before that, the Bill Clinton administration was considering a surgical strike on the North’s nuclear facilities in Yongbyon. The crisis of war was averted through a North Korea visit by former US President Jimmy Carter and negotiations with then-North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. The talks were difficult, lasting just over a month, but neither side gave up. No contribution was made in the process by the South Korean government, led at the time by President Kim Young-sam (in office 1993-98), a strict hard-liner on the North. During the crisis of June 1994, the administration called together its National Security Council for a map exercise involving a hypothetical war scenario, while then-Minister of Unification Lee Hong-gu vowed “retribution at all costs for North Korea’s attempts to start a war.” In other words, not much different from the kind of scene usually encountered today.

Left out in the cold due to his incompetence and arrogance, Kim tried to sabotage the emerging Geneva Agreement as the final talks approached. The US, he claimed in a New York Times interview on Oct. 8, 1994, was being “led on.” Meanwhile, the Blue House pressed its local diplomats to provide “real-time reports” on what Pyongyang and Washington were discussing in Geneva. For nearly a month, South Korean diplomats working in Geneva had to wait and keep their ears open toward the US delegation at the talks. Not once did they manage a word with the North Korean delegation.

“For South Korean diplomats, it was miserable,” recalled a retired diplomat who had been forced to listen for information at the time.

The September 19 Joint Statement that emerged from the Six-Party Talks in 2005 was a blueprint for ushering Northeast Asia out of the Cold War era. It is ranked as one of the crowning achievements of South Korean diplomacy alongside the Kim Dae-jung/Lim Dong-won process (also called the “Perry process” after former US Defense Secretary William Perry), which achieved a turnaround in the twofold security crisis of the 1998 discovery of a suspected nuclear facility at Kumchang Village and the launch of the Taepodong missile on Aug. 31 of that same year through an inter-Korean summit and the attempted normalization of Pyongyang-Washington relations in 2000. The September 19 Joint Statement was made possible thanks to “creative cooperation” diplomacy by South Korea, which worked with Six-Party Talks chair country China to mediate between North Korea and the US during their tense standoff after the second nuclear crisis erupted in Oct. 2002.

The final question for that statement was how to deal with Pyongyang’s demands for a light water nuclear reactor. North Korea saw this as a way of guaranteeing its peaceful use of nuclear power, while the US was dismissive. South Korea and China managed to bridge the gap by including phrasing about discussing the issue of a reactor “at an appropriate time.” It was a clever bit of diplomatic maneuvering employing creative ambiguity: mentioning the reactor, but adding the qualification about waiting for an appropriate time to discuss it.

In working with China, a country it had been pitted against in the Korean War, South Korea managed to bring both sides to the negotiating table: the US, its sole ally, which was ready to walk away, and its “enemy/partner” in North Korea. Seoul held many discussions in the process, not just with Washington but with Pyongyang as well. Once the inter-Korean discussions ended, representatives from the US and Japan delegations would head to the South Korean delegation for debriefing. Once the North Korea-US discussions ended, both sides would find the South Korean representatives and advise them to interpret the other party‘s “real intentions.” The emergence of the September 19 Joint Statement showed that North Korea could be both a constraint on South Korean diplomacy and an asset boosting its standing and broadening its sphere of activity. This is why the statement has been called the pinnacle and crowning achievement of South Korean diplomacy.

The ASEAN Regional Forum and foreign minister talks in Laos on July 24-26 showed what an inconvenient reality South Korean diplomacy faces today. Seoul’s antagonisms with Pyongyang and conflict with Beijing were on full display. China, which had been South Korea’s partner in making the September 19 Joint Statement happen just over a decade earlier, has been vocal about its unhappiness in the wake of the decision to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system with US Forces Korea. It has attempted to pressure Seoul into changing its mind by making a diplomatic show of embracing Pyongyang, which has faced international isolation since its fourth nuclear test in January and the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2270. Today, there is no warmth between Seoul and Beijing. Meanwhile, the South and North Korean foreign ministers did not sit down for talks. South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Yun Byung-se called the THAAD decision “something a responsible government should do” - but then left the young diplomats who would like to help resolve the nuclear issue by sitting down with their North Korean counterparts in the position of having to wait and listen instead. Is South Korea’s “waiting and listening” diplomatic nightmare of 1994 being revisited?

By Lee Je-hun, staff reporter in Vientiane

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