Opportunity Time for the Koreas

...soldiers when the two countries are coming together so quickly...

...troops as a counterbalance to the designs of foes near and far...

...After meeting North Korea's Foreign Minister at the forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Bangkok on July 28, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright cautioned against displaying overconf idence about the prospects for peace...

...others go back many years...

...More important than any other understanding so far may be the agreement in principle to reconstruct the rail link binding the two Koreas...

...Storm clouds are also forming over Washington...

...An open confrontation over the SOFA could embolden thousands to march on the American Embassy...

...Strains have also marked the delicate negotiations over renewal of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) governing the legal standing of U.S...

...In addition, ever since Seoul transferred diplomatic recognition from the Nationalist Chinese regime on Taiwan to the Communist government in Beijing in 1992, China and South Korea have vastly improved commercial and cultural relations...

...But that would certainly be preferable to a renewal of military hostilities, to the "second Korean War" everyone has long dreaded...

...Beijing clearly prides itself on retaining enormous influence not only in Pyongyang but also in Seoul...

...The Japanese put an end to both the dynasty and KoreanChinese relations...

...For Kim Dae Jung, therefore, the challenge is to promote his "sunshine" policy of reconciliation and at the same time persuade those who want American troops to go home that such a withdrawal would be premature...

...Although Chinese troops rushed to the defense of the North in the Korean War, rescuing it from certain total defeat, South Koreans seem to have forgotten that...

...A question aid-givers have to face is whether they are propping up a dictatorial regime whose policies have produced the starvation...

...presence actually has a balancing effect, reminding Korea's historic foes to the east, west and north that another power is on hand to block any steps they may be thinking of taking to dominate the peninsula...

...Interestingly, one of the chief American negotiators at Geneva, Tom Hubbard, has just left his post as Ambassador to the Philippines and soon will be back again as acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific...

...No commercial traffic has moved overland between North and South for over half a century...

...Ten years later, upon defeating Russia, Japan solidified its control over the entire peninsula, formally annexing it in 1910...

...Surely the North realizes Japan is still the dominant economic power of the region...

...Seoul officials would like to see the SOFA changed as well, but risk inflaming uncertain national passions by overemphasizingthe issue...

...In any event, the Korean Peninsula continues to be the focal point of great power rivalry, as it was more than a century ago...

...For all their considerable differences, similarities in manner, gestures and habits have built up over the centuries of their lovehate relationship...

...North Korea still maintains more than a million men under arms, and there is a strong possibility that its military capability will be augmented by China and Russia...

...They often profess to dislike or even "hate" the Japanese, yet a foreigner cannot help noting an underlying cultural affinity...

...headquarters at Yongsan in downtown Seoul, where they wave placards showing Korean women who have been violated, in some instances murdered, by GIs...

...The reason is that Beijing has put on a fresh face as a force for peace...

...Besides being South Korea's biggest trading partner, it is the major source of tourists...

...But neither they nor the Russians have lost interest in the peninsula...

...The listing, and the North's nuclear and missile programs, are expected to be discussed by U.S...

...South Koreans imagine the day when goods will move from China and Russia, even from Europe, down the Korean Peninsula for shipment from South Korean ports...

...airline, they refused to submit to special search procedures for passengers from countries on the State Department's terrorism sponsorship list...

...In the 1950s, the Kremlin supplied arms and ammunition, as well as its own pilots and warplanes, to Kim II Sung...

...Similarly, the Americans are praying no untoward incident will provide more ammunition for anti-American demonstrators during a new round of SOFA talks...

...influence in South Korea may wane...

...If the Americans still are highly visible on the streets of Seoul's Itaewon district, the Russians have completely taken over Pusan's "Texas town," which owes its name to the presence of American servicemen during and after the Korean War...

...and North Korean off icials at a meeting in New York scheduled for late September...

...Thus the diplomatic war would go on as the great powers compete for commercial, cultural and political influence on the Korean Peninsula...

...It was because of this kind of sensitivity that the American military command made an almost abject apology for the dumping of about 20 gallons of formaldehyde at the American mortuary in the U.S...

...influence in Pyongyang will increase if North Korea and the United States open liaison offices in each other's capitals, particularly if American investors plunge into the North with the lifting of the trade embargo...

...Neither the joint declaration nor the tentative steps toward normal commercial and personal relations are bound to alter that reality...

...regrets that representatives of the North could not attend the United Nations summit...

...Of course, the scenario will prove illusory should the North insist on building more missiles for export to the Middle East and elsewhere, or on pursuing the development of long-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear, biological and chemical warheads...

...The struggle for influence and domination over Korea will go on—and might well get out of hand without the stability offered by U.S...

...The overarching question is whether U.S...

...headquarters complex at Yongsan...

...If the troops remain, they argue, at least the terms of their stay have to change...

...By contrast, U.S...

...aid to North Korea, and doubts about the wisdom of helping to build nuclear reactors for it under the terms of the 1994 Geneva Framework Agreement...

...A second question is whether North Korea's efforts to forge new diplomatic relationships is a reflection of the ruling elite's desire to preserve itself...

...Increasingly, Koreans are listening to Japanese popular songs and going to Japanese movies, once completely banned...

...Donald Kirk, a veteran NL writer, is the author most recently of Korean Crisis...

...Although neither China nor Russia nor Japan is contemplating a physical takeover of the Korean Peninsula at the moment, military considerations are never far from the thoughts of their leaders, or of ours...

...The concern in Washington is that withdrawal of the U.S...

...And the South broke ground for a rail link to the North...

...Many South Koreans, though, are asking why they should continue hosting 37,000 U.S...

...Every conceivable statistic may indicate the South is far stronger than the North, but there is one where it lags behind—namely, the size of its Armed Forces...

...The American brass are doubly annoyed by South Korea's reluctance to engage in joint exercises that might offend the North...

...A tad more than a century ago, in 1894-5, China and Japan fought over Korea in a war that Japan won...

...As long as the North keeps such a huge fighting force within 50 miles of the demilitarized zone, no one can rest assured that the threat of a renewal of hostilities has dissipated...

...He places the Korean Peninsula among his top priorities...

...That is why the United States is playing such a careful diplomatic game...

...Radicals already routinely stage demonstrations outside the U.S...

...forces here can endure for long in a period of such heightened concerns...

...Today its weapons salesmen are busy trying to sell submarines plus other war machines to the South, and Russian ships call regularly at Korean ports...

...American commanders were privately furious at having to stop strafing practice on the range in Maehyang-ri, about 50 kilometers southwest of Seoul, because of prolonged protests by local residents allied with radicals...

...Nobody speaks more optimistically than American policymakers about the possibilities for rapprochement resulting from the June summit...

...The most evident sign here of the latter is an increase in "anti-Americanism" that is apparent in the sloganeering of radical organizations...

...Tokyo may decry Pyongyang's missile threat, but it realizes the advantages of commercial agreements the North desperately needs...

...In particular, they want GIs accused of serious crimes to be turned over to Korean authorities upon indictment...

...The United States stayed on the periphery: compromising, uncertain, all too willing to cede Korea to Japanese domination as it focused on its own newly acquired Asian colony, the Philippines...

...The issue of reunions of families divided by the Korean War will reveal the sincerity of Kim Jong II's overtures...

...Despite significant symbolic acts, such as the Olympic solidarity, the dream of a single united Korea, neutral among surrounding nations, seems hardly less distant than it was during the final tragic years of the Yi dynasty and the worse tragedy of the Korean War...

...But it is Japan whose influence is paramount here, not least because the South has removed most of the barriers to its exports and cultural influence...

...The common interests of the two countries are scheduled to be further explored at a meeting of their Defense Ministers in Hong Kong in late September, and a visit by Kim Jong II to Seoul is planned for the spring...

...The U.S., knowing that indictments are likely to be issued automatically when they are requested by prosecutors, is unwilling to surrender personnel to the Koreans before conviction and final appeal...

...I hesitate to call him "Chairman" Kim because that designation refers only to his chairmanship of the National Defense Commission, definitely the center of power in the North but still not the entire regime...

...Moscow has formed extraordinarily warm relations with Seoul since the collapse of Communism in 1990...

...forces would create an alarming and destabilizing vacuum...

...In Frankfurt, where they were to board a U.S...

...The Clinton Administration may engage in more talk than action on the topic, but the next government may feel compelled to install a Star Wars-type program—which would prompt China and Russia to build up their own responses...

...Since radicals are eager to find any pretext to call for complete American withdrawal, controversy over the SOFA gives them yet another talking point...

...Indeed, division is viewed by those powers as a bulwark that ensures no one will gain excessive influence in the North or the South...

...national missile defense plan, once called "theater missile defense...

...Two or three of these cases are of recent vintage...

...In the Face of a Great Power Game Opportunity Time for the Koreas By Donald Kirk Seoul The onrush of stunning events on the Korean Peninsula in the past several months has produced new possibilities for improved relations between both Koreas and the United States—and for new tensions...

...Nor can they understand why crowds of demonstrators carry on outside the gates of American bases, attacking troops that are there to defend them...

...Like China, though, Russia apparently prefers to play the diplomatic card for now...

...A misstep, a misstatement, they realize, could upset the Korean leaders at a time when they are attempting to build on the summit and avoid having the high-sounding expressions of thejoint declaration drowned out by another round of North-South acrimony...

...The military is first in line for food pumped in by other governments, including the South, and it also grows much of its own...

...Another important result of the June summit was an informal understanding between Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong II that American troops should stay in Korea...

...The American Ambassador to Korea, Stephen W. Bosworth, in just about every speech he makes, seeks to align the United States with Kim Dae Jung's sunshine policy...

...As the North improves relations with South Korea, the likelihood is that it will somehow come to terms with Japan as well...

...In the process, U.S...

...It not only encouraged Kim Jong II to agree to the summit, it also probably urged him to broaden his diplomatic offensive vis-àvis the rest of Asia and the world...

...The potential for escalation increases with the U.S...

...From small beginnings, he believes, the two Koreas may be reconciled...

...President Vladimir V. Putin's July 19 stopover in Pyongyang, on his way to the G8 summit in Okinawa, was a graphic reminder to everyone of Russia's proximity...

...The brief meetings of 200 families in midAugust, during observances in both Koreas of "liberation" from Japanese colonial rule on August 15, 1945, will be meaningless if they fail to lead to reunions of several million other families divided by the War...

...The success of Chinese diplomacy in both North and South Korea conjures up images of the Yi dynasty, when mandarins visited every year, paying homage while doing business...

...For his part, Kim Dae Jung sees a policy of gradualism as an essential alternative to war...

...A renascent Russian war machine could again rush to the North's defense...

...Meanwhile, in a pointed public demonstration of their new commitment to cooperation, the North and South had their Olympic teams march jointly in the Games' opening ceremony in Sydney...

...While most North Koreans are hungry and many are starving, there is no question that the country's fighting machine manages to get enough food to function...

...There is no doubt that China, Russia and Japan remain as interested as ever in Korea...

...In background briefings, his ministers explain that the U.S...

...Just as China and Russia have established themselves in South Korea, so the United States and Japan may establish themselves in the North...

...As everyone here is aware, the lessons of modem history do not begin with the Korean War or, for that matter, the era of Japanese colonialism...

...The North, unpromisingly, is silent and elusive about the military threat it poses...

...There is widespread conservative opposition to U.S...

...They do not want to appear overtly opposed in any way to the Korean efforts...

...Along with Ambassador Bosworth and others, he hopes to convince skeptical South Koreans that it is necessary to maintain the present military balance in the South, and doubters in Washington that the Geneva agreement is of great importance...

...All this assumes much greater significance when viewed against the backdrop of the Pyongyang summit in mid-June, and the signing there of a "joint declaration" expressing the need for reconciliation by President Kim Dae Jung and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong II...

...Moreover, in trying to maintain the status quo on the Korean Peninsula, the great powers are playing a deadly game with the lives of millions of starving North Koreans...

...More recently, she wrote Pyongyang to express U.S...

...soldiers in Korea...