OpinionWith China and the US invested in a divided Korean peninsula, South Korean president Moon Jae-in is on his own as peacemaker
Tom Plate says South Korea’s president is carrying on with the work of reconciliation with the North almost alone, because China and the US seem to have more to gain from a divided Korean peninsula
With friends like China and the United States, it might seem that North and South Korea would have no need for enemies; but then again, of course, the Koreas also have each other, and worse, it might be said that each is its own worst enemy.
For many Americans, the Korean peninsula seems quite far away, while for many Chinese, it seems all too close. This double diplomatic helix of symmetry and asymmetry has produced one of the greatest geopolitical despairs of our time. But diplomatic history over the centuries does offer the lesson, easily forgotten, that little is forever. What if things did change?
Would the Sino-American relationship – tense, roiling – benefit from a new peninsular calm? My sense is that the gain would be enormous, but, according to a stunning new book of revelatory scholarship (A Misunderstood Friendship, by Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia), “Chinese policy toward North Korea is trapped in a dilemma.”
Beijing has always regarded North Korea almost like a sliding door it controls, as a geopolitical border buffer. It cannot bring itself to see why it might be worth jeopardising that breathing room just to improve Korean lives.
For its part, Washington, the so-called defender of democracy, has always adored South Korea as a military and intelligence super base, peeping northwest towards Beijing as well as north towards Pyongyang. A less conflicted Korean peninsula might undermine the stated reason for US boots on its ground – a development to be passionately avoided, the Pentagon would surely feel.
Yes, it is a kind of Game of Thrones. In North Korea this past weekend, a military extravaganza for the 70th anniversary of the Democratic People’s Republic was offered as a fearful feast for outside eyes, not to mention for home consumption. What a wonderful, bold gesture of peninsula demilitarisation it would have been to the world if the young Kim Jong-un had cancelled this parade.