Yet, the Lee Myung-bak administration is closer in spirit to the harsh early George W. Firstly, they refer scarcely at all to the very considerable political problems confronting South Korea itself. In certain respects they are also surprising. The policy suggestions contained here in slightly abbreviated form are bold and comprehensive. What follows is a slightly edited and reduced version of the document, which may be consulted in full here: The Korean Peace Foundation’s home page is here: Here, an influential group of South Korean citizens, academics, former officials, and religious leaders, following a detailed discussion of earlier North-South-US-UN-China negotiations, sets forth an ambitious agenda not just for peninsular denuclearization but for “peace and cooperation in Northeast Asia.” In this approach, the expanded importance of North-South negotiations is emphasized, while the role of the United States and China are fully recognized. Can we expect a return to 2000, when Clinton seemed about to pack his bags for Pyongyang, or to 2001, when Bush denounced North Korea in unforgettable terms? The Obama foreign policy stance remains to be clarified, but the incoming president has made clear his readiness to talk to anyone and has relied to a large extent on members or associates of the former Clinton administration, which by 2000 had reached the brink or normalization with North Korea. Rumbles of discontent from Pyongyang suggest it might be considering backing out of the process, even at this stage and at the inevitable cost. The South-North train no longer runs, the cooperative schemes at Gaesong and Gumgang have been wound back to such an extent that they barely function, the Six Party process is stalled over the US demand for verification procedures and the US has suspended energy aid until North Korea accepts its “sampling” procedure. By the end of the Bush administration, however, it had completed Phase Two of the Beijing Six-Party agreement on denuclearization and normalization and in October 2008 was deleted from the list of terror-supporting states.Īfter the vacillations and policy reverses that occurred under Bush, much remains on the plate for the incoming Obama administration. Bush, responded by becoming a nuclear power. North Korea, declared a member of the “Axis of Evil” by George W. An Initiative for US-ROK Cooperation for Peace in the Korean Peninsula and East Asia: P olicy Suggestions for the Obama Administration
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