Jane Moon
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The United States’ relationship with North Korea has been strained, to say the very least.
Naturally, there is going to be hostility toward North Korea, after all, they have grossly violated a Security Council resolution with the launch of a rocket this month. But the rest of the world, specifically South Korea, Japan and the United States, must come up with some sort of solution to dealing with nuclear threats.
I had the honor of meeting Chung-dong Young, a 2007 presidential candidate for the United New Democratic Party of South Korea and the former unification minister under Roh Moo-hyun to discuss how to deal with the tiny but hostile nation.
According to Chung, there are three ways to tackle North Korea’s nuclear problem — force, engagement and disengagement.
The only way to reasonably deal with North Korea is through engagement. They have already shown us they are capable of causing massive harm and massive hysteria in the media.
Engagement doesn’t mean military engagement. It can include having open talks and negotiating with them, possibly their nuclear reactor for humanitarian aid.
Force, especially with North Korea, will get us nowhere but a tougher situation.
President Bill Clinton had negotiations between North Korea and the U.S. set up, until power shifted and foreign policies changed in November 2000, according to Chung.
President George W. Bush’s administration initially refused any direct talk with North Korea, and North Korea backed off from the nuclear proliferation treaty in 2003 and announced it had nuclear weapons in 2005. This shows coercion does not work in dealing with North Korea.
Now Kim Jong-il is trying to flex his muscles at new leaders — South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak and President Barack Obama — by launching rockets and rebuilding his country’s nuclear facilities.
North Korea probably felt cornered after having shaky relations with South Korea and seeing its leader deal with health problems.
It is important that countries try to work with North Korea so, in the long term, a trusting relationship can be formed.
Having talks is the first step to unification of North and South Korea. Though the prospect of bringing together the last and only divided country in the world is far in the future, every step matters.
What I admired about Chung’s approach to the heavy topic of North Korea was that he didn’t only talk about disarming them because they’re dangerous or volatile. He wanted to have one Korea with cultural, social, financial and political unity.
Though I would be lucky to see this happen in my lifetime, we must take leaps forward instead of steps back.
It would be great triumph to work with North Korea, even just to have open talks with them again. Our leaders have a tough situation on their hands, because they must think about what will happen tomorrow and how this will affect relations in the future.
This delicate step by step process needs a lot of patience, civil dialog and engagement.
There’s no easy way to say exactly what the U.S. should do, but the it should do all it can to have peaceful talk and possibly avoid conflict.
Send Jane your thoughts on how the world should engage North Korea to [email protected].