South Korea signals tougher stance against North
Updated
Barely a month into the job, South Korea's new president has signalled he'll be taking a much tougher line against North Korea than his liberal predecessors.
Presenter: Joanna McCarthy
Speaker: John McKay from Analysis International in Melbourne
MCKAY: I think without any doubt it has been much more hardline than the old government. For the last ten years the South Korean governments have been attempting what used to be called the Sunshine Policy, which was predicated on the fact that if the South opened up to the North, was nice to the North, offered it incentives, then the North would respond. I think the feeling that became evident in the presidential elections late last year was that many people in South Korea have become tired of waiting for the North to respond. They feel that the North has been offered far too many concessions and has done far too little in return. And so there is a much harder line now and I think that fits with the opinion of both the United States, certainly the opinion of Japan and I guess given the landslide election results with the majority of the South Korean electorate.
MCCARTHY: And now there are reports that South Korea will be supporting a UN Human Rights Council resolution criticising the North's human rights record. How provocative will that be from the perspective of North Korea?
MCKAY: I think it will be very provocative, North Korea has already complained that the Americans are being much more provocative and hardline than they were at the time of the six-party agreement, so-called in Beijing. It was argued that there had been something of a triumph of US diplomacy that contrary to the policy of the Bush administration in many parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East, that in Asia there was a negotiated settlement. Christopher Hill, the US negotiator heralded the success of this softer more inclusive approach to the North. But it appears that the hardline element in Washington has fought back quite successfully that there is now much more agreement in Washington that there needs to be a harder line, that the North needs to declare all of its nuclear weapons before anything else is done. This fits in very much with the approach of the Japanese government, which is always had a much harder line, particularly in relation to the abductee issues. And now South Korea, which had been at odds with the United States in the past about policies towards North Korea because the South had been much more open and much more conciliatory, is now coming into line much more with the United States policy. North Korea is bound to see this as a sort of ganging up on North Korea on will probably react quite badly to this I think.
MCCARTHY: And on the issue of disarmament, will the tougher line from the South help sway the balance in six-party talks in your view?
MCKAY: I don't think so, I think there's been absolutely no evidence in the past that the North is swayed by what appears to the North as a hardline alliance against it, in fact the North in the past has always dug in in such situations. And of course much will depend on what the Chinese attitude towards all of this is. The Chinese were responsible I think for bringing North Korea into the six-party talks and for developing some kind of framework for an agreement. If China sees South Korea and the United States and Japan ganging up on North Korea as the Chinese might see it then I'm not quite sure what the Chinese will do. I don't think we can expect the Chinese simply to come in with South Korea and apply still further pressure on the North. I think that the Chinese will have some problems with this approach.
