Waiting Out North Korea
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Abstract:
The controversy generated by President George W. Bush's reference to North Korea as part of an ‘axis of evil’ highlighted the chasm between American and South Korean perceptions of engagement with Pyongyang. Bush's visit to the South the following month, during which he denied the United States had any plans to attack the North, helped to calm the furore. But lessons need to be drawn from the episode in order to maintain the cohesion of the US–South Korean alliance and the effective coordination of diplomatic approaches to the North. While Bush's choice of words may have been imprudent, it is important to focus on the nature of South Korean engagement with the North and whether it is arousing unrealistic expectations of systemic change in Pyongyang. Engagement on many levels with the North is becoming an increasingly urgent task, but North–South summitry should be downplayed as an immediate goal. A ‘passionless’ form of engagement should be pursued that fully recognises the difficulty, if not impossibility, of changing the way the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il runs the country.Document Type: Original article
Affiliations: 1: James Miles is the Beijing correspondent of The Economist
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