The Marmot’s Hole

(NOTE: Please don’t slam me on typos or grammar. I had to hammer this one out on the quick before going home.)

Bruce Klinger over at the Heritage Foundation has a somewhat large piece on Korean politics and the upcoming presidential election. It is a good piece of work both in the range of issues covered and how they tie into policy recommendations that Klinger makes for the American government.

There is relatively little new material there for folks who have been following Korean politics closely. But let’s be real here, there are very few people State-side (including those in the halls of power, who comprise the target audience for these kinds of articles) who know anything at all about Korean politics and how it affects relations with the USA. I certainly would give this the big all cap MUST READ for the boys and girls at State, the Pentagon, the White House and Congress, among others.

Having said that, there are a few interesting tidbits that anyone would find interesting (as summarized by me):

• The capital region is ready to go for the GNP because of Roh’s ‘balanced development’ policies.
• The post ‘386 (486 now) generation’ tends to be more conservative (20 year-olds are the GNP’s strongest supporters, according to Realmeter tracking polls) but are not as ideological.
• A Lee Myung-bak victory is not a sure thing. We know that but unsuspecting folks who see the poll numbers might think he is a shoe-in to win.

Klingner also lays out a set of policy recommendations for the US government. Here is one part:

Foreign Policy. The U.S. should:

• More closely integrate policy toward North Korea by advocating greater conditionality in South Korea’s engagement policy. South Korea should incorporate its aid into the six-party pro­cess to maintain leverage against Pyongyang to continue denuclearization efforts rather than providing an alternative, less monitored venue.
• Delineate the North Korean issues in which Seoul should take the lead and those that are the respon­sibility of the U.S. or six-party talks participants.
• Understand that the majority of South Korea’s public continues to favor engagement with North Korea, although voters are split over the ways and means of implementation. Washington should emphasize, however, that 10 years of asymmetric benefits have failed to produce tan­gible changes in North Korea or to moderate its belligerent behavior.

Anything Washington can do along those lines would certainly help. A South Korean engagement policy that includes real reciprocity would a huge change from what we see now. It would not being going back to the days of demonizing Kim Jong-il, but it would mean that Seoul would expect some concessions from Pyongyang in return for all the aid it is sending.

It would also make it more difficult for Pyongyang to try to play Seoul and Washington off of each other. In case anyone has forgotten, that is one of the big reasons the Bush administration wanted the six party process in the fist place.