North Korea has once again shattered the “morning calm” of not only its southern neighbor but that of Northeast Asia as a whole by launching a long-range missile. Even China, the regime's strongest backer, has expressed its “regret” over Pyongyang's defiance of the UN. This may add to tensions in the region, that are already running high amid territorial conflict between China and Japan, on one hand, and Japan and South Korea, on the other. Complicating the situation is the election, this week, of right-wing governments in South Korea and Japan.
South Korea's Park Geun-hye and Japan's Shinzo Abe are conservative, pro-US leaders. But this does not necessarily mean that Washington and its two closest Asian allies can work together to confront the security issues roiling this economically vibrant region. South Korea's relations with Japan are emotionally charged owing to the fact that Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony before and during World War II. There are uncomfortable facts about the military atrocities Koreans suffered under Japanese masters including the use of Korean damsels as “comfort women” by Japanese soldiers and Tokyo's refusal to admit and apologize for such crimes. As prime minister in 2006-07, Shinzo Abe had enraged South Koreans by saying the “comfort women” were, in fact, common prostitutes. The dispute over the archipelago of islands in East Asian seas figured prominently in the political campaigns leading to the recent election of new leaders for China, Japan and South Korea. China has staked claims to a handful of rocks in the East China Sea. Another set of uninhabited outcroppings in the Sea of Japan provided the stage for jingoistic gestures in Japanese and South Korean election campaigns. South Korea has less direct tension with China, but the South Koreans know it is the Chinese largess that keeps the government in Pyongyang afloat and enables it to divert precious resources to costly adventures. One can dismiss Washington's fears of North Korea threatening the US West Coast with a nuclear-armed missile as the kind of incendiary rhetoric we witnessed in the run-up to the Iraq War. But there is no doubt it adds to the tensions in Northeast Asia and “symbolically shows how grave the security reality South Korea faces is,” as President Park Geun-hye put it. Park Geun-hye is the daughter of a staunch anti-Communsit Park Chung-hee who was South Korea's president for 18 years. Her mother was assassinated 38 years ago in a North Korean-led attack that missed its real target, then President Park Chung-hee. Still she is unlikely to take a hawkish stand against her Stalinist neighbor. The new president has made it clear that she will try to find a middle ground between the two much-criticized approaches of previous presidents — Roh Moo-hyun, who bent backward to placate North Korea, and the outgoing Lee Myung-bak, who treated the North as an implacable adversary, a position some say cost him last week's election. Park is also willing to meet with 29-year-old North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “if it helps in moving forward North-South relations.” The new president's policy of greater engagement and “robust deterrence” is certainly worth a try, given the fact that US threats and sanctions have so far failed to produce any discernible change in North Korea's behavior.
