Challenges on the Korean Peninsula

The Honorable Thomas Hubbard
Senior Advisor, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP
and former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea

Washington, D.C., November 16, 2004

As many of you know, I arrived in Seoul as ambassador on September 11, 2001, a date that none of us will ever forget. My first few days were spent shoring up embassy morale and physical security and receiving the support and sympathies of Koreans from all walks of life. I was deeply moved by the degree to which Koreans stood with us at our time of grief and national challenge. Koreans were very helpful to us in dealing with the terrorist challenge, and during the ensuing three years, I was constantly impressed by the ability of our two governments to work together on a range of other challenges – North Korea, Iraq, modernization of our military ties, and growing trade and investment ties. Nonetheless, I spent much of my tour in Seoul dealing with a palpable downturn in public support for U.S. policies, and as I approached departure I often heard Koreans comment that I must have had the hardest time of any U.S. Ambassador in recent history. Many Americans offered similar words of sympathy. My standard response was: “au contraire, it was my predecessors who had to deal with authoritarian governments who had the hard time. I had the good fortune to deal with democratic governments.” That was easy to say because I actually believe it. But despite what I consider to have been a creditable period of cooperation between democratic allies who have much in common and face difficult challenges, I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t acknowledge a pervasive sense of unease about the relationship on both sides as I departed my post.

I suspect you will find few places in the world where U.S. ambassadors have had an “easy” time since 9/11. It goes without saying that 9/11 had a profound effect on how Americans view the world and how foreign policy affects our security. Our global priorities shifted dramatically. But let’s face it: Koreans, like citizens of most nations, share our concern about terrorism, but they didn’t directly experience the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that 9/11 had a less dramatic impact on their view of the world...The government’s support on Afghanistan and Iraq notwithstanding, the Korean public has exhibited some of the same misgivings about alleged US “unilateralism that we have seen in Europe. More profoundly, Korean national attention remained riveted on issues closer to home, such as North Korea, the stability of the US military presence, and Korea’s economic and strategic place in a Northeast Asia that is increasingly driven by China’s expanding role. Though concerned about terrorism, many Koreans have seen America’s focus on terrorism as detracting from our commitment to Korea, an anxiety that was exacerbated by unexpected US plans to reduce forces and the sudden decision to dispatch Second Infantry Division troops to Iraq.. Perhaps reading more into the Axis of Evil statement than they should, many Koreans also fear that our fixation on stamping out terrorism and its equally evil twin, nuclear proliferation, could lead us to actions vis a vis North Korea that would threaten their most fundamental interest in peace on the Peninsula.

In Korea, unease over perceived shifts in US priorities has been exaggerated by a dramatic change in political leadership -- one that brought to power a younger generation that scarcely remembers the Korean War and grew up with largely negative views on the United States and the value of the alliance. To put it in the most simple terms, Korean politics took a turn to the center-left just as US politics took a turn to the right. There is still strong public support for our troops, but Korea’s new generation of political leaders came to office unaccustomed to dealing with Americans and is highly susceptible to slights and perceived inequalities in the relationship. Given the political gap between our leadership, I think our two governments have done a pretty good job of managing our relationship and I expect management of the alliance to be smoother in the second Bush Administration than it was in the first. Among other things, the relationship between our President and the down-to-earth Roh Moo-Hyun has appeared more comfortable than-that with Kim-Dae-Jung, and visits to Korea in the past year by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and Powell suggest that the Bush team recognizes the need to nurture the relationship. Our agreement to heed Korea’s strong appeal for delay in troop reductions has gone a long way to defuse that issue, and the movement of our forces out of Yongsan in the center of Seoul, while expensive and painful to many Koreans in the short run, is a long-overdue step that will relieve a chronic source of public friction as it becomes a reality. Bush administration officials have made a concerted effort to get to know and show respect for Korea’s new leaders. On the Korean side, Roh Moo-hyun quickly grasped the importance of the alliance and has valued his relationship with President Bush, cemented through good meetings and frequent phone calls. I agree with the assessment made by Assistant Secretary Jim Kelly at another gathering the other day that the accession to power of Roh Moo-hyun and his 386 generation supporters has had the effect of broadening the base of of support for the alliance, something that bodes well for the future.

That said, North Korea remains a tremendous challenge for the alliance, and we have yet to overcome a public perception that we’re not really following he same course on this critical issue for both countries. The last meeting between President Bush and President Roh took place about this time last year at the APEC meeting in Bangkok. In what both governments considered to be a highly successful Summit, the two Presidents registered general agreement on the need for troop redeployments and stressed their determination to pursue a peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear problem through the Six Party talks. Importantly, President Roh voiced his commitment to send combat troops to Iraq – a very tough decision that still has not received due recognition in the U.S. The week after the Bangkok meeting, and still feeling the glow of productive summitry, however, I was brought back to earth by attending two conferences involving influential Koreans and Americans in Korea.. In one, I heard representatives of a conservative U.S. think tank tell Korean government officials that the Korea-American alliance had never been in worse shape. “Our alliance is going down the tubes,” one participant declaimed, “because Koreans are undermining our effort to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons.” In the other conference, a self-styled “peace forum,” I heard a respected former Clinton Administration official also proclaim the Korean-American alliance to be in deep trouble. He blamed the situation on an alleged failure of the Bush administration to genuinely coordinate with our Asian allies. At both conferences, Korean participants consistently called for a more forthcoming U.S. posture in the six party talks and voiced concern that the real U.S. policy toward North Korea is regime change a la Iraq.

As these exchanges suggest, perceived differences over North Korea are at the center of unease in the relationship, and I doubt that we will overcome our public opinion problems in South Korea until our two governments re-instill confidence that we are pursuing a common strategy on this issue. South Koreans share our concern over nuclear weapons and strongly support the six party talks, which they give President Bush credit for launching. At the same time, South Koreans across the board place the highest priority on peace on the Peninsula, genuinely favor engagement over confrontation at this point in history, and would like to see the United States be more active in drawing North Korea out of its isolation Polls indicate that amazing numbers of South Koreans see America not only as the biggest obstacle to Korean unification but even as the greatest potential threat to peace on the Peninsula. Many Americans, on the other hand, incorrectly perceive Korea to be beginning its walk away from the Alliance. We need to find a way to bridge this gap through a more objective analysis of current realities. Among other things, just as South Koreans need to recognize that the U.S. is not going to go back to the Clinton era of aggressive bilateral engagement with the North, U.S. policy makers need to recognize that, barring a dramatic deterioration in the situation (say, a nuclear test,) South Korea is not going to go back to Kim Young-sam’s posture of confrontation.

The dangers posed by North Korea are real and must be addressed forthrightly. There is no question that North Korea is at fault for this second nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. The fact is we would have had a crisis over North Korea at some point during the last four years regardless of who was in office in Seoul and Washington. North Korea’s pursuit of a uranium enrichment capacity was bound to come to light and undermine the 1994 Agreed Framework as it was originally conceived. However, without rehashing how we got to this point, we have to recognize that the problem has gotten worse -- we face an objectively more dangerous situation in the absence of the restraints that the 1994 Agreed Framework, imperfect though it was, imposed on North Korea’s plutonium-based program. Supplementing the deterrent power of our combined military force, which remains essential, the Proliferation Security Initiative is an important sign of our determination to contain North Korea’s proliferation threat. At the same time, I believe sound national security considerations as well as concern for our allies’ interests call for a more determined U.S. effort to lay a basis for eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs through dialogue and negotiation. We cannot predict, much less rely on, North Korea’s willingness to abandon its nuclear programs. However, I believe we owe it to ourselves and our friends and allies in Northeast Asia to seriously test the issue.

To my mind, establishment of the six party talks represents an important achievement. It is a creative effort to get all the main parties together and pool their influence. Having gone through the Agreed Framework negotiations in Geneva and elsewhere, I know how important it is to have our allies South Korea and Japan in the room with us as we talk to North Koreans, and it is immeasurably important to have the Chinese in a leading role. I admire Jim Kelly for the time and energy he has devoted to establishing the six party talks, including maintaining the crucial trilateral coordination involving Japan, but I do not expect the talks to bear fruit unless the U.S. is prepared to lend substance to the process through the kind of bilateral engagement that occurs between central parties in all multilateral negotiations. If the talks are to be successful, Jim Kelly or his successor needs to have the kind of instructions that enable him to outline with greater clarity how North Korea’s interests will be better served by joining the international community than by continuing to brandish a nuclear threat. We obviously shouldn’t succumb to blackmail or offer bribes, but we ought to be able come up with incentives that better test North Korean intentions. I am convinced that we can be more active bilaterally without undermining the multilateral process and that we can devise a scheme that will give the North Koreans confidence in the outcome of negotiations without resorting to bribery. Effective verification is, of course, key to our confidence in any negotiated outcome. It is quite possible that North Korea will not give up its nuclear card, in which case we will have to consider some difficult options. But it is in our interest to test the proposition as soon as possible – as Vice President Cheney has said, the situation is not going to get better with time.

We are fortunate that President Bush and President Roh, along with the other players in the six party talks, will be meeting in Santiago so soon after the U.S. election. If what emerges from these meetings is a clear signal of solidarity and determination to move forward with North Korea, they could help reenergize the six party talks. Another successful meeting between two Presidents who will be working together during the three plus years remaining in Roh Moo-Hyun’s presidency will also help rebuild confidence in the value and strength of the U.S.-Korea alliance.

If you’ll excuse my belaboring the point I’ve been making all along, I see development of an effective common strategy toward North Korea as the most serious challenge for the Korea-American alliance. If I had more time this morning, I would address more fully other issues that affect the U.S.-ROK relationship. Now that I’m an ordinary citizen I don’t have to be as comprehensive as I was as Ambassador. However, I should note the importance of our economic ties. Trade and investment ties, including how quickly we should pursue a Free Trade Agreement, will deeply affect the tone of the relationship, as will the perennial question of visas. In my view both sides should be working to establish the basis for both an FTA and visa waiver status. Broader strategic issues such as evolving attitudes toward China and America’s role in the Middle East will also have an important impact on Korea’s perceptions of the United States. As I said earlier, the Bush and Roh Moo-hyun governments have worked well together in establishing the six party talks and launching the most significant adjustment of our military posture in decades in what now seems to be a mutually satisfactory way. Korea has meanwhile been a staunch ally in the war against terrorism. I am confident that these steps will lead over time to a relationship that is recognized as more equal and reciprocal on both sides of the Pacific. But public perceptions have recently lagged behind the reality of close cooperation between our two governments. What is most needed now is a renewed sense of common purpose and coordinated action with regard to North Korea – a security challenge of the highest importance to both us.