hankyoreh

Since modern times began, political orders in Northeast Asia have collapsed, been attempted, and become entrenched through war. The China-centered order of the past fell with the First Sino-Japanese War. Japan’s attempts at a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” were pursued through that conflict, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Second Sino-Japanese War. After World War II, the Cold War order became fixed in place through the Korean War. All these wars shared one common characteristic: they either started or were otherwise waged on the Korean Peninsula.
After the Cold War ended, the region entered a period of building a new order. Many now believe the order will be one of peace rather than war. Perhaps they are thinking of the more than six decades of peace that have prevailed since the Korean War when they conclude that such conflicts are only a remote possibility. Is that really the case, though? Here on the Korean Peninsula, the only region in the world where an armistice system prevails, we have purported hydrogen bombs being tested and B-52 strategic bombers taking to the skies. We can add to that the B-2 stealth bombers and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines that appear in the peninsula’s sky and waters when joint military exercises are conducted. Along the Military Demarcation Line, a “loudspeaker war” has reignited. Both sides have said they are not afraid to go to war. But just as no one in Aesop’s fable believed the shepherd boy when he said the wolf was coming, few people today believe the peninsula likely to be wracked by another war.
Be it in war or in peace, the region’s political order continues to center on the peninsula. And the North Korean nuclear issue lies at the heart of that. The six-party talks were the product of efforts to establish a regional order peacefully. They resulted in the September 19 Joint Statement of 2005, which laid out a vision for that order’s distant future. Yet it’s an agreement that has failed to yield much in practical terms.
Why should that be? Is it because certain parties don’t want a new order to be built peacefully? And that’s why we keep facing the same rollercoaster ride of saber-rattling? Peaceful regimes always require a period of rivalry and settling in before harmony is achieved. It’s a difficult process.
The collapsing and building of international regimes through war, in contrast, is comparatively simple and certain. It’s a clear-cut case of the winner setting the rules. And that may be the reason the regional battle to tear down the old order and set up a new one has kept going since the Cold War’s end. Yet the pattern of that battle has changed. Perhaps it’s because people today have a greater sense of sovereignty and human rights than ever before, but you can’t just indiscriminately bomb civilians anymore. Wars are long-term affairs, and when they end the result never looks like actual peace. Consider the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria; where old olders were overturned by war, chaos now reigns. What happens if that kind of chaos arrives in Northeast Asia - if the Korean Peninsula becomes like the Middle East? History shows different forces often tend to converge to produce results that no one desires.

Jin Jingyi

North Korea’s recent fourth nuclear test is like a black hole right now, sucking up the inter-Korean trust-building process, visions of peace in Northeast Asia, and President Park Geun-hye’s conception of reunification as a potential “jackpot.” It also seems to be exerting its pull on Seoul’s relations with Tokyo, Beijing, and Pyongyang; Pyongyang’s with Beijing; and Beijing’s with Washington. The nuclear issue has an influence that extends to international relations in Northeast Asia.

As ever, China remains the target. The situation taking shape now is one where Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo are forming a structure of mutual assistance to put pressure on Beijing. All of them desperately want China to choke off North Korea. They talk about cutting off crude oil supplies and economic exchange; some have even mentioned sealing off borders. They seem to want China to become an adversary to a country it shares a 1,334-km border with. Isn’t that ultimately what the US and Japan are asking for?

Without a doubt, North Korea should pay a price for its nuclear test. But the nuclear issue isn’t one that can be resolved peacefully and fundamentally through sanctions and pressure alone. There also need to be efforts at things like freezes in the South Korea-US joint military exercises and North Korean nuclear program, or a peace regime for an end to that program.

The possibility for now is that the already rough winds of UN sanctions and joint military exercises could combine with the loudspeaker broadcasts to generate a warlike atmosphere on the peninsula once again. We need to do what we can to avoid reliving the nightmare of Korea becoming the epicenter for another new, war-forged regional order.

By Jin Jingyi, Peking University professor

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