Roy Moo-Hyun in Washington

I'll be interested to hear how this goes.


Heart and Seoul in Washington
By Donald Kirk

WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush hosts South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun at the White House on Thursday in a summit that's likely to be the most difficult and potentially most tendentious meeting ever held between the leaders of the two countries. The two presidents are so far apart on the most basic issues that no amount of diplomatic double-talk appears likely to paper over the chasm. So deep are the differences that South Korean officials are saying the two sides have agreed that no joint communique will emerge from the meeting.

Somehow their aides and advisers may devise a waffling statement to which both of them can subscribe, but both sides agree it would be a miracle if they came to real terms on how to deal with North Korea or on breaking down trade barriers that are holding up talks on a free-trade agreement (FTA).

It's hard to say which of these two areas of discussion is more controversial. The topic of North Korea grabs the headlines while that country's leader, Kim Jong-il, wields the threat of an underground nuclear test that would proclaim it a full-fledged nuclear power, but US efforts to penetrate South Korea's largely closed agricultural markets arouse much greater concern to well-organized South Korean farmers.

The US and South Korea, moreover, are at odds on the basic future of their alliance. The United States has persuaded South Korea to go along with a grand design for scaling down the number of US troops while building a huge new base 80 kilometers south of Seoul. The base would accommodate the US military headquarters, now in the center of the capital, as well as the last US combat troops.

The plan confronts South Koreans with the question of whether their country is really prepared to face the North militarily. Southern officials blame what they see as the hardline policy of the United States for the failure to persuade the North to return to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons. This policy, they believe, is responsible for raising the risk of a second Korean War.

The solution, in the official South Korean view, would be for the US to talk directly with North Korea rather than insist that it return to six-party talks as a prerequisite for any form of dialogue. South Korea's unification minister, Lee Jeong-seok, advanced this view in a 50-minute meeting on Monday with Christopher Hill, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, when Hill touched down in Seoul on the final leg of a trip in which he also stopped off in Tokyo and Beijing.

Lee's call for "no restrictions on the form of dialogue" reflects the overriding desire of President Roh to pursue reconciliation with Pyongyang regardless of the threat posed by North Korean nuclear warheads or missiles that may some day be capable of carrying them to targets as far as the US west coast. Roh is sure to try to press the case for reconciliation in Thursday's summit, while Bush holds fast to the need for resuming six-party talks. The question is how the two will manage to appear to uphold the US-Korean alliance while Roh calls for what Bush sees as a dangerous form of appeasement.

Roh may also try to convince Bush on what he sees as the folly of the US drive for stiffening economic measures against North Korea if it continues to refuse to return to six-party talks. Hill raised this possibility at every stop on his trip, calling for "vigilance" in enforcing the United Nations Security Council resolution, adopted after North Korea test-fired seven missiles in early July, banning any dealings with the country that might provide technology or funding for missiles or weapons of mass destruction.

Presumably the advisers to both Roh and Bush are so highly attuned to the differences between them that they have scripted a summit in which the two presidents manage to talk politely. Otherwise, the summit could break down in open disagreement, further jeopardizing an alliance that already is clearly frayed. Somehow the two presidents must also find the words to promote a free-trade agreement that both governments profess to favor. Negotiations with Seoul on an FTA appear to US officials as just about as difficult as efforts at bringing Pyongyang back to six-party talks.

While Hill was getting nowhere in his talks with South Korean officials, Wendy Cutler, assistant US special trade representative, leading the US side in the FTA negotiations, concluded what she said was a "disappointing" third round of talks with the South Koreans in Seattle. Basically, the Koreans refused to agree to open up agricultural markets, knowing full well that significant concessions would provoke a renewal of violent protests by rice farmers fearful of losing their livelihoods to US competition.

There's no way Roh and Bush can avoid this issue. They may, however, gloss over it, talking up the benefits of free trade while ignoring the controversy. They may also come up with an implicit tradeoff - US concessions to South Korea in return for a show of South Korean support for the alliance.

US and South Korean scriptwriters may also hope to find common ground even on the topic of North Korea. The formula would be a new version of multilateralism. Hill, in Seoul, suggested that approach in a call for a multilateral forum - a "mechanism", as he called it in an exercise in voodoo diplomacy - that might function without North Korea. Roh, at the meeting of Asian and European leaders in Helsinki, called for a multilateral security framework in Northeast Asia. Diplomatic wordsmiths may manage to merge these pleas into a formulation reflecting both concepts.

Roh and Bush may also find common ground on the topic of North Korean nukes, deploring the development of North Korean nuclear warheads and calling on Pyongyang not to upset everyone by an underground test. A vaguely worded statement on that topic could get around the whole question of how to respond to a test. Bush may well see a test as a reason not just to strengthen economic sanctions but to build up defenses in the region, notably in Japan. Roh has already suggested he does not believe a test would be all that important - certainly no reason for giving up the quest for North-South reconciliation.

Roh may, however, be up for a clarion call against escalation of tensions as seen in North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Such a statement would mollify the US while also appeasing another constituency of which he is acutely aware, his own conservative opposition, angling to take over in South Korea's next presidential election at the end of next year.

For Bush and Roh, the challenge is to give an appearance of continuity and a common approach. Ideally, the final script for the summit will be a bland concoction of diplo-speak. But will they be able to stick to the script? The great challenge is for both sides to avoid any sign of acrimony while neither backs down from previously known views.

Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.