23-24 Sept. 2019, Berlin

Jun Kyu Lee
(Senior Researcher, Institute for Unification and Peace Policy,
Hanshin University, Republic of Korea)

1. As we showed in Part I the agreements agreed to in the process between the two Koreas and international efforts to resolve the Korean Questions, including the historic achievements of six party talks and the Two Koreas Summit Meetings, have great implications not only for the Korean Peninsula but also for the future peace order in Northeast Asia and East Asia. Let’s call those efforts to resolve Korean Questions ‘Korean Peace Process’.

It is President Kim Dae-Jung who has made the decisive progress of Korean Process which is the strategy to dismantle “the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula”. He learned from Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik and emphasized exchanges and cooperation between North Korea and South Korea, particularly in the non-political and non-military issue area. And the priority in the external policies of his government was diplomacy toward 4 Powers-USA, China, Russia, Japan- surrounding the Korean Peninsula.

2. The division, war, and ideological-military confrontation on the Korean Peninsula is a product of the Cold War. As I mentioned yesterday, the word ‘Cold War’, according to historian John Dower, is “parochial and cruel jokes”. Anyway, we usually use the word. Therefore, I am using the East Asian Cold War.

Conversely, the Korean Peninsula was a decisive factor in the formation of the East Asian Cold War and thus it became the focus of the Cold War in this region. For example, 1951, during the Korean War, the Treaty of San Francisco was signed, which established the post-war order in East Asia. While Japan became the first US ally and a “military base state” under the San Francisco system created by the treaty, the ROK has become a “front-line state” to containment of “global communism”. Okinawa and Guam became strategic footholds for the US to operate in the Asia Pacific region politically and militarily, while the militarization of Okinawa and Guam was accelerated for that purpose.

Therefore, the advance of the Korean Peace Process, in other words the structural transformation of ‘the division system on the Korean Peninsula’ – a concept attributed to Professor Baek Nak-cheong, a prominent intellectual in Korea -, is not only limited to peace on the Korean Peninsula but also an opportunity to dismantle the existing East Asian Cold War structure.

Furthermore, the Korean Peninsula is located at the nexus where the great powers’ interests have intertwined and clashed. Even now, the US and China are waging a war of nerves over issues related to the Korean Peninsula.

The rise of China’s role at the stage of international politics is ambivalent from the perspective of Korean Peace Process. Prior to the surprising meeting between the US, DPRK, and ROK leaders at Panmunjom in June 2019, Xi Jinping himself visited the DPRK to have summit talks. Given the trade conflict between the US and China and potential clash between the superpowers’ grand strategies, Indo-Pacific Strategy and One Belt One Road, there is a concern that superpowers’ Power Politics may affect the peace process on the Korean Peninsula. However, China fought the US, South Korea and the UN forces during the Korean War. It cannot be denied that China is a main actor in the peace process on the Korean Peninsula.

Regarding the discussion about the current relations between the ROK and Japan and Moon Jae-In government’s policy toward Japan including ‘ending GSOMIA’, I would like to make a few comments. Simply speaking, GSOMIA is about the exchange of military information and securing military secret between the ROK and Japan, which is related to ROK-Japan military cooperation and connected to MD (Missile Defense) System. That is the reason the US backed it up. Basically, I agree the decision, ‘ending GSOMIA’ because I participated in the movement resisting against the agreement. But I have some questions. My questions are “Was it such a bold decision?”, “Does the Moon government and government party have a strategy or policy against power struggle/power shift and the potential clash between superpowers’ grand strategies?”.

3. In East Asia, power politics of Great Powers are tangled, including the current trade conflict between the US and China, maritime disputes between the US (along with Japan) and China, the rise of the ‘Japan Problem’- historian Wada Haruki’s concept-caused by movement toward the Right and the potential clash between the US’ grand strategy, ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’, and China’s Grand Strategy, ‘One belt, One Road’.

Proceeding on the Korean Peace Process is a necessary condition for creating East Asian Peace order but is not a sufficient condition. Therefore, transformation of international political order at the level of Northeast Asia or East Asia should take place. In other words, the transformation of international relations and structures in East Asia, where various elements of conflict and conflicts exist and often new conflicts appear, is required.

To promote the process of peace and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and to spread the process throughout East Asia, I have actively proposed the Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NEA-NWFZ) Initiative as a regional agenda. NEA-NWFZ is yet should be developed. It is not yet the agenda of inter-governmental level. Therefore NEA-NWFZ is the initiative of civil society. However, I believe the NEA-NWZF building can be a useful tool, a kind of ‘facilitator’, for a multilateral security system in Northeast Asia. East Asia has meaningful foundations for NEA-NWFZ. Japan’s three non-nuclear principles are representative. The Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone sets a good precedent. Mongolia has successfully achieved Nuclear-Weapon-Free Status through the UN.

4. Finally, I’d like to propose two tasks on the horizon for the practice of civil society or people’s movement.

We must create consensus on the civic initiative calling for a regional multilateral security cooperation framework based on common security. The establishment of a cooperative order for a sustainable and positive peace in East Asia is not possible only by inter-state negotiation or limited to market integration. Civil solidarity pursuing universal values such as peace, human rights and nuclear abolition should continue the movement to promote the regional multilateral cooperation and project the civil agenda in its process.

Furthermore, the East Asian perspective and its practice which are not limited to Northeast Asia are required. Southeast Asia already achieved history by creating a regional multilateral cooperative order. For example, ‘Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality Declaration (ZOPFAN)’, ‘Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia’, ASEAN, ARF (ASEAN regional forum), ‘Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone treaty’ and so on.

Collective practice aimed at an East Asian multilateral common security system should be closely linked to the historic achievements of Southeast Asia.

Many international political researchers say that it is difficult to build a multilateral order in East Asia, unlike Europe. One of the main reasons raised by the researchers points to cultural differences. However, thanks to the Information and Communication Technology Revolution, culture sharing is rapidly spreading, and human exchange and economic cooperation have continued to increase.

The functionalistic or neo-functionalistic assumption that exchange and integration of non-political and non-military issues such as cultural, human and economic exchanges will naturally lead to cooperation and integration in political and military issue area lacks practical relevance. Therefore, the role of civil society is important, and it is necessary for civil society to offer the alternative for exchange, cooperation and integration, and at the same time to call for cooperation between nations toward common security and peace.

Secondly, the discourse and practice of common security must meet with the discourse and practice of peace. The concept of common security emerged as a criticism and resistance against the discourse and its practice of mainstream security discourse but it is still a state-centered logic system, military-based security theory, and assumes an internal/external enemy and danger/threat, which is not so different from mainstream security discourse-practice. This is a limitation that appears because it is based on the concept of security. That’s why the discourse and practice of common security meet with those of peace that are aimed at anti-war, and furthermore anti-military bases, disarmament, breakaway from militarism and the resistance and emancipation against structural violence beyond anti-war. In doing so, it must create a dialectical Aufhebung at the horizon of practice.