SEOUL-CENTRING KOREA
Encouraging the North–South relationship offers the best hope for North Korea and the world.
Following Kim Dae Jung’s visit to Pyongyang in June 2000, South Korea engaged North Korea on a wide range of economic, cultural, sporting and transport fronts. The Seoul–Pyongyang railway line, cleared of mines, waits now only on the completion of a narrow 300-metre strip of track to link North and South (and thereby create a connection from South Korea, and Japan, to Russia, China and Europe). The service could be opened in months, and is blocked only by Washington’s objections. The pipeline is full of joint South–North projects, including one to open Gaesong city, which is in North Korea but less than 100 kms from Seoul, as a special economic zone; that too is now frozen. Although Seoul has been slowly accomplishing something once thought impossible—the restoration of a measure of trust between north and south, one Korea and the other—its ‘Sunshine’ policy is dismissed in Washington as vain and worthless, or worse, dangerous appeasement. Delegations are entertained and contracts signed and implemented, mutual trust is engendered, fear diminishes and confidence grows, but from Washington’s perspective Pyongyang is ‘evil’, and there can be no compromise with it.
The recent outpourings of analysis and comment on the Korean problem around the world are characterised by righteous indignation and denunciation. They tend to be shaped, consciously or unconsciously, by an imperial frame of reference, insisting that Pyongyang submit to the will of the international community when what is really meant is the will of Washington. To the extent that one adopts an alternative, Korean, frame, and a Seoul-centred approach, the problem begins to look different. Nobody understands North Korea better, or, in the present climate, is more positive and encouraging about dealing with it, and has more to lose from getting it wrong, than the government and people of South Korea.
Gavan McCormack is Professor of Pacific and Asian History in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University.
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