YONHAP NEWS

Obama faces N. Korea's brinkmanship even before developing policy

   By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, April 25 (Yonhap) -- The new Barack Obama administration is facing North Korea's time-honored brinkmanship even before developing a policy on what to do with a nuclear-armed North Korea developing a nuclear warhead delivery system.

   With the advent of the 100th day of Obama's presidency nearing, the U.S. president is also seeking wider access to South Korea's auto market and consolidation of their decades-old alliance amid growing tension instigated by a nuclear-armed North Korea.

   By far, the most significant incident Obama has experienced in his relationship with either Korea as U.S. president, however, was Pyongyang's recent rocket launch that had awakened him before dawn at a Prague hotel.

   "North Korea's missile test stimulated the first direct statements on North Korea from the president himself," said Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation.

   Despite the fact that "the administration is still in formation and the relatively low priority of North Korea in relationship to many other issues facing the new administration," Snyder said that "the official statement and President Obama's public remarks in Prague on the day of the North Korean launch have ramifications as an initial event and early test that could influence the shape of the Obama administration's policy."

   At that time, Obama described the launch as similar to the North's Taepodong missile and called for "stern punishment," although North Korea says it was part of a space program aimed at sending a satellite into space.

   After the launch, the U.N. Security Council issued a presidential statement calling for financial and trade embargoes of three North Korean companies involved with missiles and other weapons of mass destruction.

   The sanctions invited a strong reaction from North Korea, which threatened not to attend six-party nuclear disarmament talks, restart its nuclear facilities and enhance its nuclear deterrence, adversely affecting Obama's efforts to revive the nuclear talks that have been in limbo since December over how to verify the North's nuclear activity.

   "North Korea's provocative behavior has constrained the administration's range of inducements that it might otherwise have been willing to offer," Bruce Klingner, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said. "The Obama administration has been so consumed with responding to North Korea's missile launch that they have not had the opportunity yet to devise their long-term approach to Pyongyang."

   "Initial indications are that the Obama administration is unwilling to chase after Pyongyang or to offer additional benefits to buy North Korea back to the negotiating table," he said.

   David Straub, associate director of Korean Studies at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, however, said that Obama will stick to its campaign pledge to complement six-party talks with bilateral engagement with the North to persuade the reclusive communist state to abandon its nuclear as well as missile ambitions.

   "The Obama administration's North Korea policy was clear from its inauguration," said the former head of the Korea Desk at the State Department. "Working in close cooperation with the Republic of Korea and Japan, it is pursuing a principled, long-term approach to the challenges posed by North Korea."

   While campaigning last year, Obama pledged to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il or any other leaders of rogue states without preconditions, saying, "The Bush administration has come to recognize that it hasn't worked, this notion that we are simply silent when it comes to our enemies."

   Obama has been reaching out to former U.S. foes, like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, in what is called the "remedy diplomacy" to balance the unilateral "cowboy diplomacy" pursued by the former Bush administration.

   The new U.S. president has not done that yet for North Korea.

   U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she wants to have missile talks with North Korea, which were suspended under the administration of her husband, Bill Clinton, amid North Korea's demand for up to US$1 billion annually in return for its ban on the development, shipment and deployment of missiles.

   Stephen Bosworth, U.S. special representative for North Korea, also said in early April, "In my experience of dealing with North Korea, pressure is not the most productive one of approach. We have to combine pressure and incentives."

   Some analysts say North Korea's provocative acts since Obama's inauguration in January are a strategy to up the ante in its pursuit of bilateral talks with the Obama administration instead of the six-party talks that have been pursued on-and-off for the past six years.

   "North Koreans fear that the growing Chinese economic influence on North Korea might eventually translate into Beijing's enhanced political influence in North Korea," said Suh Jae-jean, president of the Korea Institute for National Unification, noting the growing trade and investment that China, North Korea's staunchest communist ally, has made in the North for the past decade or so.

   Another issue facing Obama, who will have spent 100 days in the White House on Wednesday, is the free trade agreement signed by the Bush administration that is still awaiting Congressional approval.
Obama has taken issue with what he calls lopsided auto trade, although South Korea disputes the U.S. figures, which include hundreds of thousands of autos produced by Hyundai Motor's plant in Alabama.

   Some experts say that ongoing restructuring of the U.S. auto industry will help promote ratification of the trade deal despite growing protectionism in the Democrat-controlled Congress, which fears the deal would undermine support from local trade unions, a key political base, due to possible job cuts during the worst recession in decades.

   Straub described Obama as "a supporter of free trade," although he noted that "as a candidate and as a president, like any other head of a democratic government, he must take into account the concerns of his citizens and his national interests."

   The scholar added, "The top officials of our two governments will find mutually satisfactory ways to address existing concerns and ratify the KORUS FTA within the next year or so."

   U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk recently said he is "looking for new solutions to the issues that have dragged on" amid U.S. officials and experts talking about "creative ways" of avoiding renegotiation of the Korea FTA by way of side agreements on the sensitive auto and beef issues.

   Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama held a summit early this month in London and "agreed that the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement could bring benefits to both countries and committed to working together to chart a way forward."

   South Korea's National Assembly foreign affairs and trade committee last week approved the FTA with the U.S. in a prelude to possible ratification by the plenary parliamentary session in June.

   South Korean officials have said they will not renegotiate it, and hope the upcoming Lee-Obama summit will make a breakthrough on the auto and beef issues.

   Barry Bosworth, senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution, however, said that "the Korean government was misled."

   "The submission of a major trade bill to the Congress in the midst of a severe recession is too risky," he said. "I think most trade specialists believe it is a good agreement, but it comes at a bad time, and it is not an issue on which Obama needs to battle with the Congress at the present time."

   Klingner agreed. "The pervasive sentiment within both the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress is that of trade protectionism, though it hides behind the more benign moniker of fair trade," he said. "It would be impossible for Obama or any Democratic legislator to reverse their opposition to KORUS without at least some face-saving measure to stave off union criticism," he said.

   The bilateral alliance, meanwhile, appears not to be problematic despite the leaders' ideological differences.
Since Obama's election in November, concerns have risen that the ideological gap between conservative Lee and liberal Obama might revive the kind of difficulty then Presidents Roh Moo-hyun and George W. Bush had in coordinating their North Korea policy and realigning their decades-old alliance.

   Some feared an aggressive approach to North Korea by Obama would collide with Lee's pledge not to seek inter-Korean reconciliation unless the North abandons its nuclear weapons programs.

   However, Klingner said, "There has been no substantive change to the ROK-US alliance during the short tenure of the Obama administration."

   "However, the status quo is seen as strongly reassuring from earlier South Korean expectations that the conservative Lee Myung-bak and liberal Barack Obama would have difficulty reaching consensus," he said. "Secretary of State Clinton's remarks during her Asia trip strongly supporting President Lee's approach toward North Korea and the importance of the ROK-US alliance also removed many South Korean concerns."

   Recalling their "excellent first meeting" earlier this month, Straub said, "Their personal chemistry is good and their basic approaches to bilateral issues are similar. At their meeting in June, they are likely to explain their vision for a strengthened alliance and enhanced cooperation globally."

   hdh@yna.co.kr
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