Haste makes waste when it comes to the North

Chae Byung-gun
The author is the editor of international news at the JoongAng Ilbo.

As the U.S. presidential election draws near, there are continued calls for the South Korean government to quickly initiate inter-Korean talks. If Donald Trump, who held the historic U.S.-North summit, returns to the White House and tries to rekindle a “big deal” with Pyongyang, South Korea could be left alone. We should always be prepared for inter-Korean dialogue. But it is undesirable for Seoul to initiate such talks. When it comes to North Korea, impatience should be avoided from the start.

North Korea only moves when it receives something in return. For the regime, which needs to keep the world out to maintain its legitimacy, South Korea’s existence is a threat. The freer and more prosperous the South becomes, the more North Koreans see a powerful alternative to the Kim Jong-un regime.

More than 30,000 North Korean defectors have already resettled in the South despite Pyongyang’s methodical efforts. North Korea, by contrast, is not an alternative for South Koreans. Therefore, it is essential for the North to block the “capitalist winds” from the South to preserve its regime. From the North’s perspective, there is no reason to meet with the South without tangible rewards.

A North Korea expert told me that a mid-sized business owner had once asked him for advice about his plan to build a factory in the North. “If you want to make money, don’t go to North Korea. But if you want to leave the factory building there and return to South Korea, then you can go,” the expert told the businessman.

Everyone involved in inter-Korean trade knows better.

When doing business with South Korea, the North just dismisses the spirit of “the same people.” It only wants dollars from the South. Therefore, we must be strategically prepared before meeting with North Korea.

What to give depends on what to get. Obviously, the South’s goals are denuclearization, coexistence and co-prosperity between the two Koreas. But the South cannot give the North the gift it wants right now, which is withdrawal of its hostile policy, including the lifting of sanctions.

The destructive power of sanctions comes from the exclusion of companies, institutions and individuals doing business with the North from the U.S.-led Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift. But that is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Treasury. Therefore, in order to talk to North Korea, you must find out what the United States is willing to offer. This requires strong trust between South Korea and its ally.

Secondly, the South is not the final destination for the North’s dialogue. Since the North Korean regime’s foundation in 1948, the country has consistently maintained hostile policies toward the United States. It failed to win the 1950-53 Korean War due to U.S. interventions, and it claims that the South regime is a puppet of the West.

Pyongyang’s goal is either U.S. withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula, a guarantee of its regime’s security or both. As confirmed during the Moon Jae-in administration, Pyongyang wants a direct deal with Washington even if it actively engages in inter-Korean talks. During the North-U.S. summit at Panmunjom in 2019, neither the United States nor North Korea wanted a trilateral meeting with the South Korean president.

There are two risks to inter-Korean talks. First, if such dialogue is used for domestic politics without a coherent strategic goal, the South will end up squandering money or helping the North make more nuclear missiles. Second, if you manage to avoid this and finally bring the North to the negotiating table, there is still the possibility of a direct deal materializing between Pyongyang and Washington at any point.

In this regard, the two pillars that stabilize inter-Korean relations are North-U.S. relations and South-U.S. relations. Inter-Korean relations will be unshaken when U.S.-North relations are smooth, and inter-Korean relations will stay in place when the South-U.S. relations are strong.

If the South wants to talk to the North, its top priority must be to come up with a card that can lure Pyongyang to dialogue while working towards denuclearization. This card will be more powerful if it can be found in collaboration with the White House, whether it be during the Biden or the Trump administration.

Finally, this card must include a deal that links the progress of North-U.S. relations to the advancement of inter-Korean relations. If Seoul moves hastily without strategic preparations, both Pyongyang and Washington will read it easily. Impatience without strategy only leads to extortion and isolation.