It was with some trepidation that Koreans on both sides of the DMZ watched the US President George W. Bush administration come to power given the more "hard-line" position many Congressional Republicans had taken over the years regarding North Korea. However, the outcome of the administration's finally-completed Korea policy is, on the whole, quite balanced and not significantly different in terms of overall objectives from those pursued by the administration of former US president Bill Clinton.
The new policy was announced by Bush in early June this year, just prior to the Washington visit of Republic of Korea Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo and further spelled out by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly in congressional testimony later that month.
However, even before the policy review was completed, comments by senior administration officials, including the president himself, strongly suggested that we would see more continuity than change in Washington's dealings on peninsula issues (including American humanitarian assistance to the North, which continued even during the review process).
The US policy review, in many respects, merely confirmed what Bush had told North Korean President Kim Jong-il three months earlier; namely that Washington will continue to support the Sunshine Policy, the Agreed Framework, and the Trilateral Coordination Oversight Group process with Seoul and Tokyo. Bush also indicated his willingness to resume Washington's dialogue with Pyongyang on a broad range of issues, including missiles.
More talk
The main difference in approach seems to be a US desire for a more comprehensive dialogue. As Secretary Kelly spelled out during his House testimony, "the president has directed us to undertake serious discussions with North Korea on a broad agenda, including improved implementation of the Agreed Framework, a verifiable end to North Korea's missile production and export programs, and a less threatening conventional military posture."
Unlike the past administration, which favored a "step-by-step approach," Washington now plans to take a "comprehensive approach," to address the many elements that comprise peninsula and regional security and will try to make progress simultaneously on as many issues as possible -- provided, of course, that Pyongyang is willing to cooperate.
This broad approach is quite understandable, given that one of the primary complaints logged against the Clinton administration in its dealings with Pyongyang (by many South Koreans and Americans regardless of political affiliation) was that it seemed to approach the peninsula as a non-proliferation problem rather than as a regional security problem with an important proliferation dimension. Halting proliferation is not an end in itself, but a means toward the broader goal of creating a peaceful, more stable peninsula where, prior to unification (which all seem to agree is a long way off), North and South can peacefully coexist.
The Bush administration has indicated that it will try to persuade the North to reduce its massive conventional forces and otherwise engage in military confidence-building measures to achieve "a less threatening conventional military posture." This was a goal of the Clinton administration as well -- it was to be a topic in the Four-Party Talks, but Pyongyang has refused, since August 1999, to resume this dialogue.
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