Mitch Shin
On April 10, the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea won a landslide victory in the 22nd general elections. Due to the low approval rating of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, the ruling People Power Party again failed to secure the majority of the 300 National Assembly seats.
As the opposition parties won 192 seats, pundits and some in the PPP have demanded Yoon to change his stance on politics, urging him to work with the DPK and the opposition parties for the remaining three years in office. The demands have been made from growing concerns that the DPK may retake the presidency in the 2027 presidential elections if Yoon sustains his unpopular political style.
Among a series of issues he needs to work with the opposition parties, Yoon should first cooperate with the opposition parties over North Korea issues.
Since Yoon took office in May 2022, North Korea has aggressively tested advanced ballistic missiles while Seoul strengthened its alliance with Washington. When Yoon focused on rebuilding the country’s relations with Tokyo, Pyongyang took bold steps in which some pundits in the U.S. said that an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula could occur.
Although Pyongyang will unlikely go to war with Seoul, it has been apparent that the more steps Pyongyang takes, the more obstacles Seoul and Washington would need to remove in the future.
In September 2022, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his nuclear weapons are no longer bargaining chips while announcing a new nuclear law that described the North as a “responsible nuclear weapons state” with the specification of five conditions for using nuclear weapons.
Firming his stance on building up nuclear weapons as an ultimate means to protect his country, Kim also publicly showed his changed stance on relations with South Korea. Defining South Korea as a “principal enemy,” Pyongyang also abandoned its policy of seeking unification with South Korea.
Amid the stalled inter-Korean dialogue and the nuclear talks between the U.S. and North Korea, Pyongyang seems to have supplied munitions involving short-range ballistic missiles to Moscow as a gesture to support it in the ongoing Ukraine war. As Russia is one of the five permanent members in the United Nations Security Council who have impeded the U.S.-led moves to impose additional sanctions against North Korea recently, the deepening cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang creates space for Kim to beef up his country’s military capabilities with the unknown exchanges from Moscow. In other words, Pyongyang seems to have concluded that it no longer needs to be desperate in convincing the U.S. to withdraw the economic sanctions if it can illicitly receive financial sources from Moscow and Beijing by strengthening ties with them.
Zhao Leji, a high-ranking Chinese official, recently met Kim in Pyongyang and reaffirmed ties with North Korea. China seems to have been a bystander in the intensified geopolitical dynamics but the recent visit of the Chinese official showed Beijing will be on the side of Pyongyang if the conflicts on the Korean Peninsula ostensibly occur again. Without Beijing's support as highlighted repeatedly in the past, the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula cannot unfold, which Seoul and Washington already know. However, the Yoon administration appears to have no interest in utilizing Beijing’s leverage to pressure Pyongyang to take steps toward its denuclearization.
Conservatives in South Korea may contend that strengthening ties with the U.S. as the way Yoon has pursued is the most effective overture to tackle the nuclear threats of North Korea at this time. In light of the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, however, it is no longer a choice but a mandate move for Seoul to recalibrate its policy on Pyongyang.
In the months leading up to former U.S. President Barack Obama's departure from office in January 2017, one of the main challenges he grappled with was North Korea's nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missile development. Consequently, he warned his successor, Donald Trump, about these critical issues before the new U.S. leader assumed office.
In order to show off his capabilities as being better than those of Obama, Trump made dramatic moves that consequently led him to be the first sitting U.S. president who directly negotiated with the North Korean leader. Although he failed to get Kim to give up his nuclear weapons in Hanoi, he demonstrated the ways that the U.S. could bring North Korea to the negotiating table.
According to polls, it is uncertain who is going to win in the presidential elections. As Kim hoped to exclude Yoon’s predecessor Moon Jae-in when he was in dialogue with Trump years ago, however, Yoon will clearly be off the negotiating table if Trump defeats U.S. President Joe Biden in November. In this case, it would be a more favorable environment for Kim to persuade Trump to accept a phased denuclearization plan that could ultimately make the U.S. pursue an arms control deal first. If so, North Korea may find space to discuss the preconditions for the withdrawal of the U.S. and U.N. economic sanctions which hawks both in Seoul and Washington can agree is the worst scenario.
No major policy shifts on North Korea will be made if Biden is re-elected. However, Yoon would still need to recalibrate his policy on North Korea just in case the second Biden administration attempts to sit down with Pyongyang more seriously than it did
To make sure that South Korea is a main driver on North Korea issues, Yoon should show his diplomatic flexibility that opens the possibility of negotiating with Kim. Even though he may want to sustain his hawkish image, he should start thinking about the scenario of his progressive successor leading the country in three years time. In the rapidly changing international security environment, it is time for the South Korean government and the National Assembly to coordinate on devising a long-term policy centered on peace and dialogue on North Korea so that it can be implemented no matter who takes the presidency in the future.
Mitch Shin is a chief correspondent for The Diplomat and a research fellow at the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy. Shin was a nonresident research fellow at the Institute for Security & Development Policy and Stockholm Korea Center and a nonresident Korea Foundation fellow at Pacific Forum.
President should recalibrate his policy on North Korea
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22.04.2024
Mitch Shin
On April 10, the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea won a landslide victory in the 22nd general elections. Due to the low approval rating of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, the ruling People Power Party again failed to secure the majority of the 300 National Assembly seats.
As the opposition parties won 192 seats, pundits and some in the PPP have demanded Yoon to change his stance on politics, urging him to work with the DPK and the opposition parties for the remaining three years in office. The demands have been made from growing concerns that the DPK may retake the presidency in the 2027 presidential elections if Yoon sustains his unpopular political style.
Among a series of issues he needs to work with the opposition parties, Yoon should first cooperate with the opposition parties over North Korea issues.
Since Yoon took office in May 2022, North Korea has aggressively tested advanced ballistic missiles while Seoul strengthened its alliance with Washington. When Yoon focused on rebuilding the country’s relations with Tokyo, Pyongyang took bold steps in which some pundits in the U.S. said that an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula could occur.
Although Pyongyang will unlikely go to war with Seoul, it has been apparent that the more steps Pyongyang takes, the more obstacles Seoul and Washington would need to remove in the future.
In September 2022, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his nuclear weapons are no longer bargaining chips while announcing a new nuclear law that described the North as a “responsible nuclear weapons state” with........
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