In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

Two South Korean marines guarding an island near the West Sea demarcation line that has been the site of several inter-Korean incidents in recent years last Friday mistakenly shot their K-2 rifles at a Korean civilian airliner traveling from Chengdu with 119 passengers on board that was making a final approach for landing at Incheon International Airport. The plane was too far away to be in danger, but the incident drew a public apology from the ROK Ministry of National Defense and a request to South Korean authorities to ensure air safety from the PRC Foreign Ministry spokesperson. Setting aside the mildly unsettling fact that I flew out of Incheon the following day, the incident illustrates the dangers of accidental conflict that accompany heightened tensions following the breakdown of inter-Korean talks following last year’s military incidents between the two Koreas.

The incident highlights the dilemma that the government of the Republic of Korea faces regarding how to calibrate an effective response to North Korean provocations without inadvertently contributing to heightened tension. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin has repeatedly stated that South Korea would surely respond to North Korean provocations and prominent recommendations by a South Korean civilian-led Commission for National Security Review released last December has advocated a revised policy of “proactive deterrence” under which South Korea has a right to self-defense, including preemption, in the event of a North Korean attack. Revised rules of engagement designed to equip frontline soldiers with the tools necessary to respond rapidly and lethally to future North Korean aggression also carry with them enhanced risk that a field-level response to a perceived North Korean threat could result in unintentional escalation, regardless of the decisions or desires of the commander-in-chief.

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In an interview with the Korea Herald earlier this year, Hur Dong-Soo, CEO of Korea’s GS Caltex, called his company’s investments in heavy-oil upgrading facilities a “green growth business.” As the phrase “green growth” becomes ever more common – now used in reference to everything from solar panel exports to a stimulus-backed cure-all for ailing national economies – such claims beg the question, what does green growth really mean?

Korea is striving to meet the green growth vision that President Lee Myung-bak first announced in August of 2008. He has received several international awards for his environmental leadership. But some ask, where does Korea’s green growth strategy stand now?

Is it a strategy for cashing in on the growing global demand for clean energy products, like wind turbines and smart grid components?  Is it the goal to derive more power from renewable sources?  Or, is it investing in technology to meet the demand for cleaner-burning petroleum products, as GS Caltex is doing?

According to a new report from UC Berkeley and the Denmark-based Green Growth Leaders Council, the answer may be all of the above. The Council, which includes Dr. Young Soo-gil, Chairman of Korea’s Presidential Committee on Green Growth, met for the first time on April 13 to consider the report’s findings. After reviewing the existing literature, the report authors found six different definitions of green growth and three separate policy debates about it, each with different ambitions. These range from the proposal that reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be compatible with economic growth, to the more ambitious notion that investments in low-carbon technology can drive job growth, and finally, to the idea that green investments can spur an entirely new “green industrial revolution.”

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North Korea’s National Defense Commission yesterday released a rare public statement on inter-Korean relations in response to Lee Myung-Bak’s May 9 Berlin speech inviting Kim Jong Il to attend next year’s Nuclear Security Summit. The statement came only days after Kim Jong Il’s return from last week’s visit to China where he met with PRC President Hu Jintao, and it responds to the May 19 revelation by South Korea’s Blue House spokesperson that secret contacts had been made with North Korean counterparts in advance of Lee’s Berlin invitation. The North Korean statement confirmed that the contacts had occurred and that the South Korean side had actually proposed three summit meetings, including meetings in Panmunjom and Pyongyang prior to a meeting at the March 2012 Nuclear Security Summit, but it effectively derails prospects for a stable inter-Korean relationship over the next eighteen months.

The statement concluded with a three-point ultimatum: 1) “Our army and people will no longer deal with the Lee Myung-Bak gang of traitors. 2) We will enter a nationwide, full-scale offensive to put an end to the anti-Republic confrontation maneuvers of the Lee Myung-Bak gang of traitors. 3) Our army and people will take practical actions for the present to deal with the confrontation racket by the gang of traitors.”

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At a State Department briefing earlier this week, the spokesman stated that U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea Ambassador Robert King may be tasked to lead a food assessment mission to North Korea. This announcement comes following a round of consultations led by Ambassador Stephen Bosworth last week in South Korea to manage differences on the issue, since United States sees food assistance as an issue separate from politics while the South Korean government sees food assistance as a form of leverage by which to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table. The consultations resulted in begrudging South Korean government support (or at least the absence of objections to) the U.S. decision to send an assessment team to North Korea.

The decision to send a U.S. food assessment mission itself does not mean that the United States will actually decide to give food aid to North Korea, but it does open the door to that possibility. A major obstacle remains the outstanding issues between the United States and North Korea that must be addressed if food assistance is to be approved, including the unmonitored disposition of food aid that was disbursed in North Korea after the departure of monitors at the time of North Korea’s decision to prematurely end provision of food assistance in March of 2009.

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There has been a protracted debate over whether the United States should give food assistance in response to North Korea’s appeals for assistance from earlier this year, with an exchange between Stephan Haggard and Lee Jong Cheol as the most recent example. Both U.S. Institute of Peace and the Heritage Foundation have also sponsored programs on the subject within the last week.

The overall debate is an extension of one that began over fifteen years ago with the initial entry of international organizations in response to North Korea’s famine of the mid-1990s, and it essentially revolves around two characteristics of humanitarian response to North Korea that are distinctive from other complex humanitarian emergencies: 1) most humanitarian interventions occur in the context of a breakdown of political authority, but international aid workers must work with North Korean political authorities to meet humanitarian needs, and 2) North Korea’s need is a function of system failure, but it is also a potential source of revenue that might assist in sustaining that system. Two recent food assessment missions by international and private humanitarian agencies (a rapid food security assessment by U.S. NGOs in February and another by the UN World Food Program in March) have documented the existence of growing humanitarian need in North Korea. How should the United States and the international community respond?

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NHK live broadcasts on the tsunami that swept coastal villages in Eastern Japan on March 11 were a shocking scene to the Korean people. Japan now confronts the aftermath of triple natural disasters – an earthquake of a record 9.0 magnitude, a devastating tsunami, and the threat of radioactive contamination –  that have left 11,417 dead, 16,273 missing, and more than 350,000 people struggling to survive at crowded shelters.

Following the daily progress of these unbearable natural disasters, Koreans moved quickly to help the Japanese. The Korean government’s decision to dispatch a rescue team within days of the crisis was the earliest action by any government. Korea has sent 53 tons of boric acid to help control the badly broken Fukushima nuclear plants, and on March 19, delivered 100 tons of water and 6,000 blankets for the Japanese in shelters.

The government was not the only helping hand. On March 12, the Chosun Daily initiated a movement for donations from Korean citizens, which drew more than 10,000 participants in a single day and led actions from other media and public organizations. The Korean Red Cross amassed 21.3 billion won ($19.6 million) in two weeks, the largest amount of voluntary donation at times of natural disasters both in and outside Korea. Myeongdong, the most well-known tourist spot for Japanese, displayed a banner saying “Cheer up, Japanese friends. We are always with you,” while the Korean Salvation Army appealed for charitable donations from passersby. Even the Korean comfort women, victims of Japanese colonialism who have demonstrated at the Japanese embassy every Wednesday for the past 19 years, observed a time for mourning and donated money for Japan on March 16. In three weeks, South Korean donations reportedly amounted to a total of 50 billion won ($46 million).

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I was a last-minute substitute speaker this week on the U.S.-South Korean nuclear relationship at the Carnegie Endowment’s 2011 Nuclear Policy Conference. (A podcast of the event is available here.) The focus of our panel on “U.S. Nuclear Cooperation: How and With Whom?” was on issues surrounding a new U.S.-ROK nuclear cooperation agreement to replace the current agreement that expires in 2014, and featured an excellent review by State’s Richard Stratford of nuclear cooperation agreements the United States will be negotiating with at least 17 countries by 2014.

The main focus of my presentation was on the challenges and pressures Korea poses as it negotiates a revised nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States in terms of its own perceived needs as a new exporter of nuclear plants. U.S. non-proliferation policies are in apparent conflict with the aspirations of the Korean industry to provide the full range of services, including enrichment and reprocessing, so as to maintain international competitiveness in this sector. This aspiration is also at odds with a Congressional desire to tighten restrictions contained in U.S. nuclear cooperation agreements with other countries, and raises some interesting questions about how long it is possible for the United States to sustain its role in shaping the parameters for nuclear activity in other states through its web of nuclear cooperation agreements. Fred McGoldrick last year provided an in-depth analysis of these challenges in a paper available here.

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Less than three months after North Korea’s shelling of South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, North and South Korea opened preliminary, colonel-level talks yesterday to set an agenda and date for ministerial-level defense talks. However, the talks adjourned without reaching an agreement, raising questions about prospects for renewed diplomacy to address North Korea’s nuclear program. South Korea accepted inter-Korean Red Cross talks on humanitarian issues, but even those talks may be constrained by North Korea’s failure to take responsibility for past provocations against the South.

Both Koreas have reason to reinitiate inter-Korean dialogue, but the two sides appear to be talking past each other. North Korea has shifted from a policy of provocation to diplomatic charm offensive for the second time in two years because it needs to relieve food shortfalls and expand economic assistance from South Korea so as not to rely exclusively on China for its economic needs. South Korea faces international pressure to reengage in talks following the Hu-Obama joint call for renewed dialogue last month in Washington. It also faces domestic pressures from a South Korean public, which expects the administration of President Lee Myung-bak to retaliate strongly against North Korean provocations but is also concerned about a lack of progress in inter-Korean relations and is beginning to think about next year’s South Korean parliamentary and presidential elections.

Read the full report, originally published on the Council on Foreign Relations website.

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

Both North and South Koreans appear to have had disproportionately high expectations in the run-up to last week’s Hu-Obama summit, judging from their reluctant willingness to edge toward tension reduction and dialogue following the November 23rd Yeonpyeong Island artillery shelling and high tensions surrounding South Korea’s live-fire exercises on December 20th. In anticipation of potential improvements in Sino-U.S. coordination, North Korea launched a diplomatic charm offensive during the first two weeks of January. South Korea finally responded shortly following the Hu-Obama summit with proposals for inter-Korean military talks and talks to address nuclear issues. The Sino-U.S. Joint Statement provided a push to the two Koreas by calling for “sincere and constructive inter-Korean dialogue” and by explicitly mentioning enriched uranium as an item that should be on the agenda of renewed Six Party Talks, but the joint statement also exposes clear limits to Sino-U.S. agreement on how to approach North Korea.

The Sino-U.S. Joint Statement fails to explicitly mention UN Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874, and does not explicitly reiterate the need for stepped up counter-proliferation and export control efforts focused on preventing the transfer of fissile material-related technologies or know-how. This is a significant omission, given that China’s role in implementing an effective counter-proliferation program toward North Korea is critical. The statement also failed to explicitly mention or attribute responsibility for “recent developments” that have heightened tension on the Korean peninsula. There is no indication of agreement on a further UN role in addressing tensions on the Korean peninsula. The statement does not explicitly define “necessary steps” that would enable a return to the Six Party Talks process, indirectly underscoring the absence of a viable jointly-agreed process for achieving the shared objective of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

This piece was originally published on the Council on Foreign Relations blog Asia Unbound.

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

Recent turbulence on the Korean Peninsula raises several key questions: What is the best way to assure stability there? How can the U.S.-ROK alliance play its due role while still being perceived as a stabilizer by other stakeholders, and how can China positively interact with the two allies?

If China still feels that the “evidence” that the ROK-led investigation secured regarding the Cheonan’s sinking in March last year was not decisive enough to point to Pyongyang, the DPRK’s artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong should have perplexed Beijing. It would certainly be desirable if Seoul could exercise more restraint on its military drills in the waters that the DPRK has claimed, but the North’s shelling of Yeonpyeong is hardly acceptable at all.

There is a rationale that America, as the ROK’s staunch ally, would stand firmly in support of its ally. The U.S. exercised certain restraint in the wake of Cheonan by not sending an aircraft carrier to the West Sea/Yellow Sea. Washington could not sit idly by not dispatching the USS George Washington after the Yeonpyeong attack, as it would otherwise lose credibility among its allies and send a wrong message to North Korea that its aggressiveness could stand without being properly deterred.

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