In a nuclear crisis over North Korea, why ignore the South?
As Trump, Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe wring their hands over Kim Jong-un’s nuclear plans, South Korean leader Moon Jae-in gets the diplomatic cold shoulder known as ‘Korea passing’ – and it’s likely to get worse
When it comes to finding a solution to North Korea, everybody seems to be talking to everybody else – except South Korea. While the United States, China, Russia and Japan deliberate over North Korea, South Korean President Moon Jae-in has been sidelined in an act of diplomatic isolation locals refer to as “Korea passing”, denoting the way major players have ignored, undermined or openly opposed South Korea when it comes to handling the North Korea crisis.
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Despite US President Donald Trump’s planned first official trip to East Asia next month – and US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis’ visit to Seoul on Friday for annual defence talks – Korea passing is likely only to worsen as a result of the Japanese general election, in which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party won 61 per cent of the House of Representatives on Sunday, as well as further centralisation of Chinese power under President Xi Jinping at this month’s 19th Party Congress. These events will empower Abe and Xi, whose agendas contravene what Moon is trying to accomplish.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US counterpart Donald Trump. Photo: AFP
Part of the reason for this is that South Korea has proven itself incompetent when it comes to talking the North down from military provocations. In the month of September alone, North Korea tested its first thermonuclear bomb, fired its longest-ever ballistic missile 3,700km over Hokkaido into the Pacific Ocean and threatened to detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific. This is an unprecedented escalation, yet South Korea is helpless to stop it. Moon has repeatedly made overtures to the North, inviting them to join the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, asking for military talks, trying to arrange family reunions and offering medical aid – but the North has snubbed every attempt.
WATCH: North Korea fires missile over Japan, landing east of Hokkaido
Another reason is that Moon and Trump have diametrically opposed approaches to the problem. As a result, the US no longer consults South Korea as much as it once did. While Moon has worked to open dialogue with the regime, Trump has taken a more hawkish line. In August, the US president threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen”, and in his first United Nations General Assembly speech on September 19, he warned he would “totally destroy North Korea”. His secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, tried to walk back the warmongering by saying the US had “direct lines of communication” with the regime and was trying to see whether it wanted to talk. But the next day, Trump tweeted that Tillerson was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man”, adding, “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”
WATCH: Trump counters North Korea threat with ‘fire and fury’
Trump’s aggressive stance has made him a natural partner with Abe, who is famously hawkish toward the North, further isolating South Korea. Before meeting Xi, Trump spoke at length with Abe, but did not bother to contact South Korea’s acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn. And after the North’s recent nuclear test, Trump called Abe before calling Moon. He has also openly challenged the South over a free-trade deal, the cost of keeping US troops there and only bothered to nominate an ambassador to South Korea last week, after leaving the post vacant for almost seven months. Recently, Trump bitterly characterised Moon’s approach to the North as “appeasement”.
“Trump and Abe are, some say, on a honeymoon,” said Sohn Yul, director of the Centre for International Studies at Yonsei University and an expert in Japanese politics. “So they’re very close and talk over these issues without consulting the South Korean government. There are concerns that because Trump doesn’t know much about the Korean peninsula, he relies on Abe’s view of the issue, and Abe tends to take a hawkish position toward North Korea, while South Korea is less hawkish. In that sense, this Abe-Trump cooperation is easing Korea passing.”
In addition to the US and Japan squeezing South Korea out, Tokyo directly took issue with Moon’s decision to give the North US$8 million in humanitarian aid, a decision he reaffirmed immediately after the recent nuclear test.
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Jo Dong-joon, professor of international organisation at Seoul National University, said Korea passing was nothing new. “In the late 1960s and 70s, when Nixon became president and tried to normalise relations with China, Korea and Japan were almost completely abandoned. It’s a perennial problem in East Asia.”
