[Correspondent’s Column] Tense political conditions in run-up to Pyeongchang Olympics

Posted on : 2017-11-24 21:07 KST Modified on : 2017-11-24 21:07 KST
Nuclear standoff with North Korea poses challenge for a peaceful olympics

Had it not been for Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics would have been a bit comical. The opening ceremony would have been attended by her, while the closing ceremony would have been attended by a new President elected this December.

A more serious issue is that the departing administration would have had no attention for the Pyeongchang Olympics, while the new President would have had no time to fix the mistakes. Reports indicate that the event’s organizing committee already lost some of its centripetal force because of this political schedule.

The Pyeongchang Olympics received a political shot in the arm when President Moon Jae-in took office this May. It could fairly be called a lucky break for the games. At any rate, South Korea finally won its third bid for the Winter Olympics, and regardless of the event’s success, it needs to be staged within reason. The Moon administration is now in a desperate battle, finding itself unexpectedly shouldering the entire burden for the Pyeongchang games. Now it is trying to enlist active support from overseas Koreans in the US and elsewhere. In many ways, it’s a situation that stands to have some consequences if things go wrong.

The biggest task facing the Pyeongchang games is the “Peace Olympics.” The situation isn’t good. Chinese Communist Party International Liaison Department head Song Tao failed to find a way into dialogue during his recent North Korea visit as a special envoy for Chinese President Xi Jinping. Right on cue, the Trump administration re-designated North Korea a “state sponsor of terrorism” after nine years. The situation is tense.

Trump’s North Korea policies remain unreliable. He seems to be going a policy route of “no strategy or patience.” The messages he sent on North Korea during his recent Asia tour and the remarks by his advisors are like Jekyll and Hyde. His message to Pyongyang seems to be that he wants negotiations, yet comments nestled in there suggest he is aiming for the North Korean regime’s collapse. When the military threat is factored in, some Washington experts have called the approach even riskier than predecessor Barack Obama’s “strategic patience.”

I would like to believe, as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said, that there is still a window for diplomacy, however narrow. In a recent interview with Politico, New America Foundation senior fellow and North Korea-US expert dialogue participant Suzanne DiMaggio noted that Choe Son-hui, North Korean Foreign Ministry’s North American affairs director-general, had mentioned an agenda involving three things: a halt to joint South Korea-US military exercises, the lifting of sanctions, and a moratorium on Trump’s insulting remarks about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

We can be sure that this North Korean agenda is a list of “initial conditions” meant as part of the blinking contest ahead of negotiations. If we really believe Pyongyang wants to see all of them through, then we can also conclude that the leaders there are amateur negotiators, or are making excuses to avoid negotiating. As talks go on, the schedule and scale of the joint military exercises could be adjusted. The North Koreans also aren’t so naive as to believe that sanctions could be lifted all at once.

Recent signals from Washington point to wariness about the Moon Jae-in administration leaning too hard toward Beijing after the recent South Korea-China agreement on THAAD. It’s something we have heard a lot since the Park administration, but it’s particularly unpleasant when we take it together with Trump’s remarks in an Apr. 12 Wall Street Journal interview, where he said that Korea “actually used to be part of China.”

Yi Yong-in
Yi Yong-in

If they are really so concerned about Seoul favoring Beijing, the US government and public should throw their support behind the “Peace Olympics.” A first step toward that could be to begin an informal conversation with Pyongyang, as Tillerson suggested. If Beijing were to assuage South Korea’s concerns about the Pyeongchang Olympics and wage a large and aggressive “Pyeongchang peace diplomacy” effort involving participation by President Xi Jinping or masses of Chinese tourists, the South Korean public could start truly favoring China in their hearts.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

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