SUNS  4330 Tuesday 24 November 1998



SOUTH KOREA: WASHINGTON WIELDS CARROT, STICK IN VISIT

Seoul, Nov 23 (IPS/Ahn Mi Young) -- U.S. President Bill Clinton offered South Korean President Kim Dae Jung both carrot and stick in their summit talks here over the weekend.

The carrot was the Clinton government's full support for Kim's engagement policy toward the North, which has come under fire from critics in this country.

The stick was Clinton's call on South Korea to buy more products from the United States, wielding the same pressure he did in Japan to open its markets and buy more American products.

In this case, Clinton delivered the U.S. trade call to export less semiconductors and to import more American beef. The trade pitch treads on sensitive ground at a time when economies like South Korea are trying to export more to recover growth, pushing up their trade deficit with the U.S.

Still, the Nov 21 summit turned out to be "substantial" at least in bringing Washington and Seoul closer in their policy toward North Korea.

"North Korea has a great historic opportunity with the leadership with President Kim Dae Jung and the position that he states," Clinton said at a press conference Saturday in Seoul.

A chorus of appeasement and warning against North Korea by the two heads of states was what both sides needed to quash talks about the alleged "policy gap" between Washington and Seoul.

Perceptions of policy differences stem from Washington's increasing pressure on the North to open up suspected nuclear sites to inspection, at a time when the South was determined to pursue an engagement policy under the Kim government.

The Clinton administration has gotten tougher than ever against North, warning that it may consider scrapping the 1994 nuclear agreement with Pyongyang unless it opens to inspection a suspicious underground site in Kumchangni, some 40 km north-west of Youngbyon, the North's main nuclear complex.

Meanwhile, Seoul has been trying to keep its "sunshine" policy toward the North intact.

This has led to a curious reversal of roles, contrasting with the situation under the previous president, Kim Young Sam.

At that time, the US administration pursued a policy of engagement toward North Korea that irritated Seoul, which maintained a hardline stance under Kim Young Sam.

But North Korea's behaviour through all of this has been more or less consistent. On the day of the Clinton-Kim summit, it was as usual sending opposite signs of peaceful and aggressive intentions,
simultaneously.

On Thursday, North Korea played friendly host to the 780 South Korean tourists at its scenic Mt Kumgang. Most of the visitors were in Northern soil for the first time since they moved to the South during the Korean War (1950-1953). On the same day, a North Korean vessel on the alleged espionage mission was spotted on the western sea off Seoul.

Likewise, an American envoy returned from a trip to North Korea and said the U.S. has compelling evidence that North Korea was building underground, nuclear-related facilities.

Under past presidents, these events would have been enough to prompt South Korea to abort any appeasement with the North, but Kim Dae Jung remains unshaken.

Clinton himself welcomed the South Koreans travelling to North Korea's Mt Kumgang as significant positive change on Pyongyang's part. "This was a beautiful picture," Clinton said of the visit.

But while the two leaders got along well on that score, the harder part came along when Clinton broached the trade imbalance between South Korea and the U.S.

The U.S. thinks that South Korean shipments of semiconductors and steel have risen too steeply, allegedly on unfairly low prices. Washington also believes that South Koreans imported too little of U.S. beef and pharmaceuticals because of complicated import procedures that constitute market barriers.

Such trade pressure comes at a time when Seoul is probably at its weakest juncture and South Korean officials wanted the Clinton-Kim meeting to encourage more U.S. assistance at a time of economic crisis.

Apart from talking about trade and North Korea, Presidents Kim Clinton were only too happy to laud the values of democracy and the free market while the economy recovers.

"President Kim is one of the world's most eloquent advocates of the proposition that democracy and prosperity must go hand in hand," Clinton said in a post-summit news conference.
A former dissident who served time in prison, was put under house arrest, exiled and survived several assassination attempts, Kim is the first Korean opposition candidate to become president

Clinton also used the occasion to praise the responses to the crisis by South Korea and Thailand, both of which have adhered closely to the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, by saying they had chosen the "democratic" way. "Here in Asia, countries that responded to the crisis by deepening democracy, Korea and Thailand for example, are faring better because the difficult solutions they propose have more legitimacy with their people," Clinton argued.