Bilateral triangulation: the DPRK, the ROK and the US amid renewed talks

News broke out during the recent ASEAN Regional Forum meeting, held on July 26-27. Two days earlier, it had been speculated that the U.S. planned to meet on the sidelines with North Korean representatives. They did eventually meet, but South Korea was the first to do it, allegedly under heavy pressure from both the United States and China -- craving stability after the dangerous tension of 2010 -- to accept North Korea's willingness to talk. Both meetings, focused on the eventual denuclearization of the Korean peninsula were considered a very positive first step by all involved parties.

Washington, assuming that any move to contact North Korea unilaterally could damage Seoul’s credibility and role in future negotiations – as also attested by South Korean officials and media, who claimed that Seoul should play the leading role in any negotiations at the first hint of a North Korea-U.S. meeting[1] –, probably leaked the plans, prompting a swift South Korean reaction: the first meeting on the sidelines with the DPRK had Seoul’s top nuclear envoy as the protagonist on July 22.

However, Washington secured the visit of a top North Korean diplomat – Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan – to New York, where he is scheduled to meet Washington's envoy for Korean peninsula affairs, Stephen Bosworth. The same day he landed in the U.S., the North Korean side expressed that finally signing a peace treaty ending the Korean War would be “the first step for settling the Korean issue, including denuclearization”.[2] 

However, once again, the US were quick to engage Seoul and make sure its ally had a say and felt actively and relevantly engaged in any negotiations – thus trying to trump North Korea’s strategic gamble, based on their typical approach of having two powerful partners (whom they aim to treat as diplomatic equals to Pyongyang) ready to collide (like the US and China right now), while alienating Seoul and extracting benefits from all parties involved – by putting a North Korean apology for last year`s sinking of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan and shelling of Yeonpyeong Island on the agenda.[3]

This clear and encouraging example shows the two-sided approach of the Obama administration towards the Korean issue. As already stated during the Presidential campaign, the Obama team is open to dialogue with North Korea, having fostered this recent round of talks when grasping North Korea’s desire to negotiate, partly shown by Kim Jong-il’s recent visits to China (also used as a diplomatic test for the U.S.: talk with us or see us definitely fall into China’s lap) and his failed trip to the Russian far east to meet President Medvedev. 

However, and despite clear ideological differences with President Lee’s strategic views, the U.S. approach also shows respect for the leading role South Korea has to play in all negotiations, looking hard not to alienate Seoul by giving it the due priority in initiating talks with the North in Bali and by reminding North Korea that apologies for last years’ provocations were due to Seoul.


What the U.S. negotiators are almost certain to do will be forcing Kim Jong-il’s government into acknowledging the strategic impossibility of making its Washington-Beijing diplomatic grand bargain work, despite mounting North Korean pressure to extract preemptive diplomatic gains: as reported by the Washington Post, North Korea has already issued several statements aimed at obtaining an initial advantage in any negotiation, first asking the U.S. United States to sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War, and later warning that a new nuclear arms race could start if the U.S. continues to modernize its nuclear arsenal and expand its missile defense systems.

One more reason why Washington is not going to fall into Pyongyang's trap is its clear will to maintain a smooth military and security relationship with South Korea . With the main goal of preserving the current security status quo in East Asia by both deterring North Korea and hedging against the rapidly expanding Chinese military power, the Obama administration has been notably hawkish on this side of relations. The recent change of the chief of the 28,000 American troops stationed in Korea for a more battle-tested general attests that, under the Obama administration, the alliance has been reinforced. Equally telling is the fact that Lockheed Martin seems willing to outsource production of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and transfer stealth technology to Korea in case Seoul decides to buy such aircraft.[4] According to Lockheed’s Stephen O’Bryan, U.S. government has approved the production of the F-35 final assembly and checkout for Japanese assembly.[5] Even if the U.S. government will have the final say about the extent of technological transfer, Lockheed is optimistic about it. 

To sum it up, the Obama administration has adopted, as already advertised back in 2008, a hawkish military approach towards North Korea – also helped by the growing perception of China as a military threat and the unfolding of operations in the Iraq and Afghanistan, moving the security emphasis progressively back to the Pacific shore – and a hawkish-dovish approach as regards to diplomacy, quickly pushing hard sanctions after the 2010 incidents – with the strong support of South Korea’s conservative government[6] – but also being quick to interpret Pyongyang’s message about its willingness to negotiate again by mid-2011. One reason both sides seem more willing to talk now is .


[1] For instance, the conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo recently asserted that “Pyongyang should remember that N. Korea was only drawn back to the dialogue table on the understanding that talks with South Korea come before any talks with the U.S.”

[2] An undeniably surprising statement, taking into account that, until as recently as last month, the regime no longer referred to the possibility of abandoning its nuclear capability in return for political and economic concessions, instead arguing that it would only feel no need to retain its nuclear weapons once the American nuclear threat was removed and South Korea was cleared of its nuclear umbrella – an unlikely scenario, as it would require the end of the US–South Korea alliance.

[3] Despite this move, the U.S. is also seen as quietly pressuring Seoul to stop obsessing about the apology for the Cheonan sinking and move on with dialogue.

[4] Korea is currently seeking to develop domestic multirole fighters with stealth capability and purchase 60 high-end aircraft from a foreign aerospace company.

[5] Italy, which plans to buy some 130 F-35s, has also been allowed to have a final assembly line to produce its own F-35s as well as the ones it will deliver to the Netherlands.

[6] Despite the fact that South Korea has been the biggest economic loser of the sanctions, with an estimated $2.5 billion in trade losses, mostly related to the Kaesong industrial complex.