by Grace Hyeonju LeePedestrians in Seoul, South Korea, in front of a banner supporting unity between the North and South at a summit scheduled for April 27, by Chung Sung-Jun
A peace treaty between two countries is a legal document that requires one sovereign state to recognize the other sovereign state’s right to exist. Yet North Korea cannot commit to any such thing with South Korea, not least because the objective of its ruling family, the Kims, has been to wipe the state of South Korea off the face of the earth. The Workers’ Party of Korea, the ruling party, identified its “present task” as the “national liberation and people’s democracy in the entire area of the country” — meaning, the entire Korean Peninsula. North Korea’s constitution declares “reunification of the country” to be “the supreme national task” and instructs the government to “carry the revolutionary cause of juche through to completion.” Juche (주체) is the doctrine pursuing the objective of the entire Korean people gathering together self-determinedly under an “independent socialist state” run by Pyongyang. Seoul and Pyongyang have a long history of this. In 1992, there were the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression and Exchanges and Cooperation between the South and the North and the Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. At the historic 2000 summit, there was the South-North Joint Declaration, after which President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea famously declared: “There is no longer going to be any war. The North will no longer attempt unification by force, and at the same time we will not do any harm to the North.” In October 2007, there was a so-called “peace declaration” in the eight-point agreement signed by Kim Jong-il and President Roh Moo-hyun. “The South and the North both recognize the need to end the current armistice regime and build a permanent peace regime,” it read. All of these deals were then canned. North Korean promises were worthless, deceitful. These agreements only seemed to hold force, until, well, they no longer did, when Pyongyang unilaterally decided to ignore, repudiate them. As some readers may know from reading my previous article, the battles in the Korean War ended in 1953 with just an armistice. South Korean officials are now calling for a “permanent peace.” Not only is it unrealistic to hope that Kim Jong-un, the leader of the North, will offer the South real and lasting peace, it is delusional. I expected that the North would offer the South unfeasible deals. If the South accepts such a fake peace maneuver, it will expose itself to more manipulation by the government in Pyongyang — not only in its domestic politics, but obviously also in its alliance with the United States, the enemy of North Korea. So the North, rather than committing to a legally binding, and potentially destabilizing peace treaty, is likely to do again what it has gotten away with in previous meetings with the South: dangle aspirational goals in jointly signed, but totally unenforceable official statements. The South Korean government now seems eager to swallow another kind of bait. Both South and North Korea left human rights off the table, not to mention the drowned 46 sailors on Korea’s naval ship, attacked by North Korea. by Yonhap News, South Korea Why, given the precedents? Because the Sunshine Policy is something of a secular religion in South Korea — at least among its adherents, who include main players in the current government. Sunshiners also seem to be convinced that only they can coax the North onto the path of common sense. South Korean officials say that any permanent peace deal will be conditioned on the North’s denuclearization and that the North has agreed to that term. However, the two governments do not agree on what “denuclearization” means. The problem is that North Korea can walk away from its peace promises at any time. And when it eventually does, it will be able to blame whomever it wishes for this tragic result. South Koreans grow weary of the prospect of endless conflict with an implacable enemy and want to believe in solutions even if it seems too good to be true. Cheongwadae (the Korean Presidential House) allowed mainstream media to cover the summit, except for some closed-door talks between the two leaders. There were some scenes the camera captured Kim smiling and laughing. The younger people especially, became blindfolded and some even described Kim, “likeable and adorable.” People forgot that he is the murderer, a criminal who killed thousands of innocent people. It later was also found that the group of hackers from North Korea named “Hidden Cobra” attacked certain South Korean websites on the day that both leaders of each nation made the announcement of peace at Panmunjeom(판문점). It may too early to say that the peace will truly come to this Peninsula. Let’s see how it will go after the meeting of President Trump and Kim Jong Un on June 12th. a
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May 2024
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