SEOUL - The prospect of John Bolton, fiery US ambassador to the United Nations, careering through Seoul, making speeches denouncing North Korea, attempting to talk South Korean leaders into hard-nosed enforcement of the UN sanctions against the North, was more than South Korean officials could bear.
A day or two after getting word that Bolton would be coming to Seoul, his visit was abruptly canceled, even as underlings at the US Embassy were trying to negotiate a schedule.
The reason ostensibly was that he would be tied up giving a
lecture or two in Japan, but behind the cancellation was one simple fact: President Roh Moo-hyun simply did not want to see the man, and Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon was off to Beijing trying to work out how to keep North Korean leader Kim Jong-il from ordering up yet another nuclear test.
Ban, who takes over as secretary general of the UN at the end of the year, saw no reason he should have to put up with Bolton before then. South Korean officials let it be known that they viewed him, if not exactly "PNG" - persona non grata, as one policymaker once described him, only half-jokingly - at least as a loose cannon whose presence would roil the waters while the government is making a valiant attempt at appeasing all sides at once: the Bush administration as it presses for a forceful response, North Korea as it threatens unspecified reprisals if the South aligns with the US on sanctions, and conservative and radical critics at home.
Bolton pulled out of what he had believed would be a great opportunity to follow up on the UN sanctions when it became apparent to everyone, except possibly him, that his visit would embarrass the South Korean government in a most sensitive period. Roh at this stage is too busy managing a top-level cabinet reshuffle that may give an appearance of change.
The most visible sacrificial lamb of the reshuffle is the left-leaning unification minister, Lee Jeong-seok, whose resignation was clearly a sop to conservatives who saw him as an apologist for North Korea. Yoon Kwang-ung, the defense minister, and Kim Seung-kyu, director of the National Intelligence Service, have also offered to resign in a shakeup that seems unlikely to change much of anything, possibly not even appearances.
Lee, not quite out the door, put his imprimatur on the first small step toward action on sanctions, saying the government would deny entry to South Korea for North Koreans named by the UN sanctions committee as having anything to do with the North's nuclear and missile programs.
In other words, on those few occasions when South and North Koreans get together for military or trade talks, the South would refuse to countenance anyone on the UN blacklist, at least if on South Korean soil. And Lee added that the South would make sure not to export any banned products to North Korea, including luxury items, such as the fine wine and high-priced European cars that Kim Jong-il likes to dispense among the ruling circle of military people and party hacks.
Such gestures, though, were not likely to mollify the government's conservative critics - or go far to answering US demands for serious South Korean cooperation on blockading sensitive products as they entered or left the North.
Conservatives could not quite get over the spectacle, played out in front of South Korean cameras, of the head of the ruling but troubled Uri Party dancing with a North Korean waitress in a restaurant inside the Gaesong investment zone about 65 kilometers north of Seoul across the line in North Korea.
"Some people think Kim Geun-tae was there to cheer North Korea," said Paik Jin-hyun, professor at Seoul National University's Institute of International and Area Studies, smiling. "They say he danced with a North Korean to celebrate this nuclear test."
Uri Party chairman Kim had to go through with a public apology for his embarrassing moment but reserved his most impassioned comments for the media that he blamed for having "irresponsibly distorted the truth". He had, said a South Korean official who was there, not really danced but simply "received the hospitality" of his hosts.
A statement by conservative members of Kim's political party, however, revealed the sensitivities surrounding South Korea's relations with the North - and the whole issue of how to respond properly to North Korea's emergence as a nuclear power. The debate assumed added urgency in view of the North warning that South Korea would "pay dearly if international sanctions joined by the South bring forth destructive results for inter-Korean relations" - a threat clearly intended to stop the South from cutting off trade, investment and tourism that have already funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the North's nuclear and missile programs.
Kim Geun-tae, said disgruntled party members, should "take responsibility for his inappropriate visit" to Gaesong - a mission that he had insisted on doing "in defiance of both international and external criticism and security concerns over the North's reckless nuclear threat".
The debate reflects the divisions inside Korea as the test began to recede from memory, or at least from front-page headlines, and the increasingly unpopular government of President Roh carries out a prolonged "review" of just what to do about a wide range of contacts, including investment in Gaesong and tours of the Mount Kumkang region.
"If we don't suspend these transactions, I don't know at what time we are going to suspend them," said Paik. "If you are not ready to suspend right now, what will be the right time?" He and others scoff at the argument that such drastic action would provoke North Korea into armed conflict - even a second Korean War. "That's absolutely wrong," he said. "I don't think Kim Jong-il is suicidal. He has too much to lose."
Nor does Paik believe the US going to risk war by attacking North Korea in fulfillment of Pyongyang's fear of a "preemptive attack" - a rationale regularly offered by North Korea for staging the test and refusing to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program.
"The US has only two brigades in South Korea," he said, referring to the two combat brigades still positioned between Seoul and the border with North Korea. "The US is not ready for war. North Korea is not ready. This is a typical fear or scare tactic."
But how should South Korea respond - besides going to the extreme of shutting down contacts that embody the whole drive toward North-South reconciliation?
"South Korea's engagement policy should be a mixture of carrots and sticks," said Park Young-ho, senior fellow at the Korea Institute of National Unification. He suggested that the South mingle willingness to ship rice, cement and other supplies to North Korea with withdrawal of such assistance in line with the North's refusal to negotiate.
"It's not a matter of war and peace," he said. "When South Korea stops supplying the North, are we going to lead South Korea into another Korean War? That's a ridiculous argument. It's politician's rhetoric."
South Koreans who have dedicated the past few years to the Gaesong and Kumkang projects, however, staunchly oppose any moves to slow them down. The emphasis, they say, should be on expanding contacts.
"Not only the government but the companies surely want to keep producing products," said Koh Kyung-bin, director general of the Gaesong office at the Unification Ministry, responsible for the government's relations with North Korea. So far 15 South Korean companies are fabricating light industrial products inside the zone, he said, "but many foreigners are visiting nowadays", checking out possibilities for investment in a project that now absorbs 10,000 North Korean workers and about 1,000 South Korean managers and technicians.
There was no denying, though, that both the zones are channels through which North Korea receives much-needed cash to use as it wishes - including, the US has alleged, for nuclear and missile projects in violation of the sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council resolution barring all such dealings with North Korea.
Jung Nara at Hyundai Asan, the general contractor for building up both the zones, said the company has so far paid royalties of close to US$900 million for the privilege of operating in the zones - a lump sum of $450 million for the Gaesong zone and $452 million so far for the Kumkang zone, a figure that goes up with each tourist who pays a South Korean travel agent to go there.
So far 1,366,933 tourists have gone to the Kumkang region since the tours began eight years ago, including 194,712 in the first nine months of this year. The number declined after the nuclear test on October 9, said Jung, but she expects the figures to recover assuming the North holds off on a second test. "Until we get some word from the government, we continue normally," she said. "We hope this program will keep going."
The conservative reaction may prove just as critical as whatever North Korea does. Uri Party leader Kim's two-step with the North Korean waitress was not "just a simple mistake", said Chun Yu-ok, an acerbic party spokeswoman, since he's "well aware those North Korean waitresses were strictly trained and brainwashed by North Korean authorities".
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