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This is an article on the Republic of Korea's diplomacy spanning half a
century on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of
The Korea Times. - ED.
On a lazy Sunday morning back in 1950, the Korean peninsula was, all
of a sudden, engulfed by a bloody fratricidal war after an all-out North
Korean invasion, an incident which brought the divided land to a state
of near-reunification.
Half a century later in 1994, another outbreak of zeal for Korean unity
gripped the South Koreans, this time caused by the unanticipated
death of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, who had ruled the northern
half of the peninsula since the birth of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Sept. 9, 1948.
In retrospect, the two incidents could be regarded as ``the best, but
lost chances'' for Koreans to achieve unification, although it is
another question whether unification should be pursued at the cost of
huge human and property losses.
In both cases, South Korean diplomats did their utmost to step up
their allian e with the nation's allies, primarily the United States, as
they were convinced that the international community's support was
vital for a process which could lead to reunification.
As the Korean War ended with a ceasefire agreement in 1953 and the
Syngman Rhee government's continuous propaganda to achieve ``a
unification by force'' was not heeded by the United States, the hopes
for unification were dashed in the middle of the Cold War.
The second chance, which came after Kim Il-sung's death and drove
many South Koreans to think that unification was on the horizon, was
also lost, as the then-Kim Young-sam government proved highly
incompetent in handling the situation.
Today's South Koreans, partly thanks to the Kim Dae-jung
administration's ``Sunshine Policy,'' don't talk much about an
immediate unification.
Rather, they are devoting themselves to efforts to achieve peaceful
coexistence with North Koreans through the promotion of exchanges,
a policy of the South Korean leader which also made it possible for
him to win the Nobel Peace Prize this year.
What has changed during the five decades is the fact that the
newborn Republic ultimately emerged as the world's 11th largest
economy from an impoverished Third World state. What has not
changed is that the nation's diplomacy is still under the incessant
influence of the United States, as well as the shadow of North Korea.
Once, globalization was the catchword of the Kim Young-sam
administration, but stark reality forced Korea to divert its diplomatic
energy to bargaining with the United States, which is not only the
Republic's patron, but a virtual middleman between the two Koreas.
From time to time, Korea has tried to actively engage with the other
three neighboring powers _ China, Japan and Russia _ but what they
presented to their small neighbor has not always been benevolent.
Regardless of whether the Korean division was the product of a
miscalculation by superpowers or the result of considerations on the
balance of power, Korean diplomats' primary goal has always been to
overcome the national division.
Despite an urgent need for diplomatic self-direction to ensure its own
survival in this geopolitically strategic location, Korea still has a long
way to go before emerging as an independent diplomatic power.
In retrospect, the nation's closed-door policy in the waning years of
the Choson Kingdom (1392-1910) and the subsequent forced opening
of the country paved the way for the four great powers _ China,
Russia, Japan and the United States _ to wage a war for
predominance over the peninsula.
Eventually, the peninsula fell into the hands of an imperialist Japan
which, armed with advanced weaponry through its early success in
Westernization, sought to colonialize the peninsula instead of playing
the role of a bridge for the transfer of advanced Western
technologies. For Korea, which had conveyed Chinese civilization to
the island nation for more than a millennium, Japan's behavior was an
outright betrayal. Therefore, the diplomacy of the Republic of Korea,
born in 1948, centered on ridding itself of the legacy of Japan's
colonial rule and reaching the world with the aid of the United States,
which established the American Military Government in Korea in 1945
and has been dominant here ever since.
Seemingly, the diplomacy of the Republic has been in the process of
fighting its inherent limits and emerging as a middle power which could
hold a wide range of multifaceted diplomatic relations with countries
across the world.
However, Seoul's diplomacy is still trapped by the legacy of U.S.
influences, as well as its voluntary dependence on Washington, a
quagmire which prevents Seoul from emerging as a fully independent
decision-maker on the diplomatic scene.
The confines of South Korean diplomacy are largely attributable to the
five-decades-long existence of a Communist regime on the northern
half of the Korean peninsula.
Traditionally, some South Korean presidents have tried to exercise
their diplomatic leverage as part of their efforts to isolate North Korea,
while others put priority on economic growth instead of shouting
anti-Pyongyang slogans or calling for national reunification.
In fact, Seoul's anti-Pyongyang propaganda was not only aimed at
cornering North Korea, but also at bolstering their own regimes in the
South, which were suffering from so-called ``legitimacy'' problems.
History tells us that it hasn't been easy for Korea to declare
diplomatic independence from the spheres of influence of the United
States but, at the same time, it is needless to say that Korea has to
equip itself with new diplomatic perspectives if it doesn't want to
repeat the infamous part of its history, or at least in order to
overcome the national division.
Peace Line
The primary diplomatic goal of the nation's inaugural president,
Syngman Rhee, who served from 1948 to 1960, was to secure
Washington's steady economic support to reconstruct the nation
from the devastating Korean War, as well as obtain military assistance
to fight North Korea's possible provocations.
Rhee, who attended George Washington University and Harvard
University and received a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1910, managed to
secure the largest-ever economic aid package from the United
States, which was crucial to feeding the people of Korea and
preparing for economic reconstruction.
However, he was not a blind follower of the U.S. leaders' instructions,
if his zeal for national unification and antagonism against Japan are
taken into account.
Although the United States sought to end the fratricidal war through a
ceasefire, Rhee even walked away from the negotiating table on the
Korean Armistice Agreement, signed in 1953. His decision, based on
emotion and in the absence of a tool to alter the superpowers'
maneuvering, enabled North Korea to long refuse a dialogue with
South Korea, claiming that it was not a signatory of the Armistice
Agreement.
Rhee also desired to normalize diplomatic relations with Japan, but
only succeeded in aggravating bilateral ties due to deadlocked
normalization talks charged with passion and rhetoric rather than
substance. The subsequent declaration of the Syngman Rhee Line, or
the ``Peace Line,'' through which Korea unilaterally demarcated its
fishing zone in the relatively narrow waters of the East Sea only
worsened the situation.
Against the wishes of the United States, it looked impossible for Seoul
and Tokyo to embark on a sincere dialogue, during what was
described by Prof. Lee Chong-sik of the University of Pennsylvania as
an ``era of emotional conflicts.'' In fact, the legacies of Japan's
1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula were insurmountable
at that time, especially for a president who had fought Japanese
imperialists during his 33-year-long exile, the professor said in his
book, ``Japan and Korea.''
Park Chung-hee's Diplomacy
The successful military coup led by president Park Chung-hee, who
was in power from 1961 to 1979, heralded a new era in Korea's
diplomacy, with Seoul gearing up to join the global village by
abandoning its U.S.-oriented policy.
First of all, his special envoy Kim Jong-pil reached a historic
agreement on diplomatic normalization in talks with Japanese foreign
minister Masayoshi Ohira in 1962. Following a lapse of three additional
years, the two countries signed a treaty on basic relations in 1965,
along with a fisheries agreement.
On the basis of the ``Kim-Ohira memo,'' Seoul garnered a sumptuous
economic cooperation package from Tokyo, amounting to $800
million. Even though the Korean public rose against president Park's
desire to normalize diplomatic relations with Japan, the iron-fisted
dictator thought his actions would lead to the nation's prosperity.
Another noteworthy decision by president Park was his dispatch of
Korean troops to the Vietnam War at the request of the United States.
At the cost of the self-esteem and blood of young Korean soldiers,
the Korean leader managed to secure large-scale assistance from
the United States and Japan, which was funnelled to his monumental
five-year economic development plan to lay the groundwork for the
nation's miraculous economic growth.
However, U.S. president Richard Nixon's ``Guam Doctrine,''
announced in 1969, resulted in the withdrawal of the 7th U.S. infantry
division from South Korea. Nixon also visited Beijing in 1972 to
announce the Shanghai joint communique with the aim of improving
ties with this once enemy state.
The two events prompted Park to grow suspicious of Washington's
intentions and to take a somewhat independent diplomatic line by
starting a secret dialogue with North Korea and bolstering his grip on
power through the ``October Yushin (Revitalizing Reforms),'' named
after Japan's Meiji Restoration.
Uncertainty on the durability of military alliance between Seoul and
Washington led Park to launch his ill-fated clandestine project to arm
the nation with nuclear weapons.
Park's tenure was also marked by an intensified rivalry with North
Korea in the international arena, especially at the conference tables of
the United Nations and even in the capitals of remote African
countries.
In the 1970s, North Korea enjoyed a golden age in its diplomacy and
its president Kim Il-sung emerged as a leader of the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM), a congregation of independent-minded third world
countries, thus posing a great challenge to South Korea.
To counter the North's diplomatic offensive in the United Nations,
Seoul also started sending friendship missions to Africa, Latin
America and the Middle East and even established resident diplomatic
missions in many African and Latin American countries.
New Ruler's Pragmatism
The 1980s are remembered as a watershed of world as well as Korean
history. Ideologies, which dominated the Cold War, began to give way
to pragmatism, forcing each country to introduce new forms of
diplomacy centered around economic interests.
President Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1988) and his successor Roh
Tae-woo (1988-1993) championed the cause of ``summit diplomacy''
for the first time in the nation's history. Visiting many countries around
the globe, they explored new market opportunities while also trying to
win foreign endorsement of the legitimacy of their governments.
Influenced by new world trends, Korea's diplomatic efforts also
focused on resolving trade disputes with its major economic partners,
while the nation also actively took part in multilateral negotiations,
including the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT).
The creation and promotion of the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) forum is one of Korea's success stories on the
diplomatic front. When the APEC ministerial meeting was held in Seoul
in November 1991, Korean diplomats successfully mediated the
participation of the three Chinas - China, Taiwan and Hong Kong - in
the meeting.
These efforts, reflecting the changing international order, culminated
in September 1991 in the two Koreas' joint admission into the United
Nations. It took more than 40 years to achieve its goal since Seoul
first submitted its application for a U.N. seat in 1949, only to be
blocked by the veto of the Soviet Union, one of the five permanent
members of the Security Council.
Nordpolitik
Led by President Roh Tae-woo, the 6th Republic's diplomacy became
synonymous with ``Nordpolitik,'' a variant of the former West
Germany's ``Ostpolitik.''
Buoyed by the successful hosting of the Summer Olympics in 1988
and witnessing the resounding fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, president
Roh focused his foreign policies on smashing the ``Iron Curtain'' as
well as the ``Bamboo Curtain'' primarily through secret diplomacy,
armed with pledges to extend loans and investment. In 1991, Seoul
agreed to extend $3 billion in loans to Moscow while Beijing emerged
as the largest destination of Korean firms' foreign investment.
Roh's attempts paid off, with Seoul succeeding in establishing
ambassadorial-level diplomatic ties with the former Soviet Union and
China, respectively, in 1990 and in 1992.
The origin of Roh's Nordpolitik, or northern policy, dates back to 1973
when the so-called ``June 23 Declaration'' was issued under the
principle of improving ties, even with Communist countries, as long as
they refrained from taking an unfriendly posture toward Seoul.
The policy marked Seoul's official departure from the Hallstein
Doctrine, under which South Korea refused to normalize diplomatic
relations with Communist countries, including North Korea.
Rapprochement between Seoul and Beijing was also a significant
milestone for China. ``Moreover, the termination of the Sino-Soviet
dispute and Moscow's sharply diminished ties with North Korea made
Chinese leaders less concerned with the possibility that adjusting their
policy toward South Korea could push Kim Il-sung into the arms of the
Soviet Union. In addition, China could see a potential domestic
political gain in establishing diplomatic relations with South Korea,
because it would force Seoul to terminate its long-standing official
relationship with Taiwan, thus dealing a sharp blow to the island
state,'' said journalist Don Oberdorfer in his book, ``The Two
Koreas.''
President Roh's diplomatic initiative crystallized in the ``July 7
Declaration'' in 1990 under which Seoul reaffirmed its will to normalize
diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and China, while offering to
help North Korea improve ties with Seoul's allies. The declaration, in
essence, meant that Seoul would seek to ensure stability on the
Korean peninsula through a ``cross-recognition'' of the two Koreas
by the outside powers.
Although Seoul's ``Nordpolitik'' opened new horizons for Korean
diplomacy, it also exhibited a number of lingering shortcomings.
Korean leaders, overly-enthusiastic to normalize ties with Beijing,
abruptly switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China,
discarding the long- time ally Taipei and pledging to embrace Beijing's
``one-China policy.'' Despite its marked concessions, Seoul failed to
secure any rewards from Beijing. Therefore, it remained trapped within
Beijing's ``two-Korea policy,'' one of the main obstacles to the
unification of the Korean peninsula.
At the same time, diplomatic relations between Korea and Russia have
also demonstrated their immaturity, as evidenced by the 1998
diplomatic row in which both countries expelled career intelligence
officers who were serving in each other's capitals under diplomatic
cover.
Many Korean officials and scholars appeared perplexed, unable to
give clear explanations of Russia's sudden diplomatic offensive. But
some interpreted this as a meticulously-planned diplomatic strategy
worked out by then-Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, as
well as Moscow's intelligence community. Their argument is based on
the belief that Russia needed to apply some shock therapy to South
Korea when it became convinced that it would be unable to secure
much from Seoul during its economic crisis.
New Diplomacy
Former president Kim Young-sam (1993-1998), who ruled the nation in
the name of a ``civilian government,'' set out his own diplomatic
initiatives in a May 1993 speech called the ``Pacific Era and Korea's
New Diplomacy'' at a meeting of the Pacific Basin Economic Council
in Seoul.
His initiatives were paraphrased by his foreign minister Han Sung-joo
as the five fundamentals of ``New Diplomacy'': globalization,
diversification, multi-dimensionalism, regional cooperation and future
orientation.
The ideas were worked out in apparent recognition of the changing
world order following the end of the Cold War - namely,
multipolarization, political reconciliation and cooperation, emphasis on
economic relations, wider dissemination of liberal democracy and
market economy, and an increasing interdependence and
globalization.
However, president Kim's tenure was marred by an unprecedented
crisis, provoked by North Korea's desire to develop nuclear weapons,
a goal which ran directly counter to the United States' post-Cold War
principle of nuclear nonproliferation.
Although his ministers attempted to diversify the future of Korean
diplomacy, President Kim is remembered as a leader ignorant of the
``ins and outs'' of diplomacy. Furthermore, he has been the subject
of considerable criticism for straining Korea's relations with its two
most important allies, the United States and Japan.
Thanks to his markedly inconsistent policies and emotional
approaches toward North Korea, Seoul invited the criticism of the U.S.
government, which regards the 1994 Agreed Framework with North
Korea as one of its most remarkable foreign policy achievements.
Kim also waged a perilous diplomatic game with Japan and sometimes
made derogatory remarks against Korea's neighbor due to his quick
temper. In November 1995, Kim even told Japan during a press
conference with visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin that he would
``teach a lesson'' to Japanese State Minister Takami Eto for praising
Japan's colonial past by saying that Japan did ``good things'' at that
time. As the Korean term is normally used when a parent or teacher
rebukes a trouble-making child, the Japanese public opinion turned
cold toward the Kim Young-sam administration.
His lack of understanding of diplomacy, coupled with Japan's
insincerity, resulted in Tokyo's unilateral abolition of the 1965 fisheries
agreement in January, 1998.
However, the Kim Young-sam government's worst failure was that his
economic policymakers and diplomats failed to remain attuned to
fast-changing international trends, marked by the relentless
cross-border movement of ``hot'' money, and neglected to introduce
sweeping reforms. President Kim himself fell short of becoming a
reformer and remained a demagogue for his five-year tenure.
Sunshine Policy
Putting an end to Korea's tumultuous era of diplomacy, President Kim
Dae-jung returned to U.S.-friendly diplomacy, thus championing the
causes of democracy and market economy.
His policies were somewhat timely in an era when Korea was
experiencing economic difficulties, dubbed the worst national crisis
since the 1950-53 Korean War, and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) had a voice in the process of formulating all of Korea's
economic policies.
Critics of President Kim's diplomacy said that he was attempting to
turn Korea into the 51st state of the United States of America.
In fact, Kim and U.S. President Bill Clinton agreed in their Washington
summit in 1998 to create a ``bilateral investment treaty,'' which
officials here said was a ``small-scale'' free trade agreement with the
superpower.
Kim, known for his ``Sunshine Policy'' toward North Korea, has also
started implementing similar policies toward Japan.
Abandoning the Kim Young-sam administration's earlier decision, the
new government voluntarily restored a self-controlled fishing
agreement with Japan in May in an effort to sign a new fisheries
agreement with Japan. At the same time, Seoul decided to
compensate the former ``comfort women'' from its own state coffers,
thus attempting to put an end to the decades-long dispute over
Japan's wartime mobilization of Korean women as sex slaves for
Japanese soldiers.
The event to be recorded as the most notable incident during
President Kim's tenure, however, was his trip to Pyongyang June
13-15 to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
The Joint Declaration, created after his historic visit, heralded
full-scale rapprochement between the two rival states on the
peninsula and helped the United States and other countries speed up
their process to improve ties with Pyongyang.
Despite criticism against his handling of domestic affairs, the Kim
Dae-jung government has heaped remarkable achievements in South
Korea's ties with North Korea and the international community.
However, he might have a longer tightrope to walk on than the
arduous journey thus far.
contributed by TheKoreaTimes