The appointment of Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state in the next U.S. administration gives us both heightened expectations and a little apprehension over its policies toward the Korean Peninsula.
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At the moment, there is not much to sift through as we try to predict how U.S. foreign policy might shift regarding this part of the world. All we have to go on is the remarks made by Obama during his campaign and some references to Korea in the president-elect's website. Now officials here are searching for what Clinton had said about this region in her campaign debates and even reviewing the Korea policies of the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990s.
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So, attention is naturally drawn to Obama's willingness to meet the leaders of rogue states, including North Korea, and Hillary Clinton chiding him for being naive. That episode, however, exposed a difference in style rather than in substance or in basic policy. Working together in the new administration, the two can bridge any such divide. What now looms ahead on the horizon of Washington's Korea policy is a push for direct talks with Pyongyang.
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Former U.S. President Bill Clinton had planned to go to Pyongyang while at the same time weighing the bombing of Yongbyon nuclear complex during the first North Korean nuclear crisis. As the former first lady, Hillary Clinton's frame of thoughts about North Korea may have largely been affected by her husband's flexibility regarding the options of carrot and stick.
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It is widely predicted here that Clinton may ask her husband to go to the North soon after the launch of the new administration. Such a meeting would probably be to discuss the dual issues of denuclearization and diplomatic normalization and to pave the way for the new U.S. president's meeting with Kim Jong-il. This scenario well suits the "tough and direct diplomacy without preconditions with all nations, friend and foe" referred to on the president-elect's home page.
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South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has repeatedly expressed his support for direct top-level dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang even while his aides were concerned about the possibility that they could cut a deal behind the back of Seoul. Already, Seoul officials detect that the audacity of North Koreans is increasing, as shown in their arbitrary restriction of cross-border passages of people and goods.
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Thus, a mild apprehension is revived as we recall the failed "Agreed Framework" process during the Clinton administration. The deal was made in Geneva without the participation of South Korea, but Seoul eventually footed the major part of the bill for the construction of North Korean light water reactors and energy supply. The Bush administration has stuck to the six-party talks, which have moved ahead at extremely slow pace.
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Obama now pledges to forge "a more effective framework in Asia" that goes beyond bilateral agreements and ad hoc arrangements such as the six-way talks on North Korea. The new leaders in Washington may view the five-year-old multilateral talks with a certain amount of disappointment. But the negotiations in Beijing have established a formula to bring North Korea into the international community through the stages of "action for action," from halting its nuclear program to finally dismantling it.
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It remains to be seen how much emphasis Hillary Clinton will put on the existing denuclearization process. Also important is where her priority will be in Obama's broad diplomatic agenda, which encompasses the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the nuclear problems involving Iran and North Korea and a host of other troubles throughout the world. We hope she will see the gravity of the situation on the Korean Peninsula before it becomes irreversible.
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