Obama and the Koreas

U.S. Senator Barack Obama did not mention North Korea by name when he referred to securing nuclear weapons and materials from rogue states on Wednesday. Nor did he condemn the communist state as part of an “axis of evil,” as President George W. Bush did several years ago.

Instead, he refrained from directly reviling North Korea as a rogue state in his speech on foreign policy. By doing so, the Democratic presidential candidate appeared to be acknowledging progress being made in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

But Kim Jong-il would do well not to take too much comfort in the idea of Obama being elected, because North Korea might still face tough sanctions from his administration. Obama is firm in his fight against nuclear proliferation. He said that “securing all nuclear weapons from terrorists and rogue states” was one of his five goals in making the United States less vulnerable to security threats from the outside.

Obama implied that he regarded North Korea as little different from Iran when he said, “By keeping our commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we’ll be in a better position to press nations like North Korea and Iran to keep theirs.”

In referring to Iran, he said “no tool of statecraft should be taken off the table” because “preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is a vital national security interest of the United States.” He added, “I will use all elements of American power to pressure the Iranian regime, starting with aggressive, principled and direct diplomacy — diplomacy backed with strong sanctions and without preconditions.”

Given all these remarks, Obama would certainly tighten the screw on North Korea. North Korea would easily turn itself into a target of condemnation by the Obama administration should it fail to honor its end of a nuclear deal with the United States and four other nations. As such, Kim Jong-il had better not entertain the illusion that he could clinch a better deal from Obama than Bush, who has recently dropped the communist state from the list of states sponsoring terror, in recognition of progress in the six-party talks.

As far as the North Korean nuclear activities are concerned, Obama should find a staunch ally in South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. In the past, Lee has repeatedly committed himself to withholding large-scale aid to the North until after it has abandoned its desire for nuclear weapons.

For Lee, it is encouraging that Obama wishes to better ties with South Korea. He said, “It’s time to strengthen our partnerships with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the world’s largest democracy, India, to create a stable and prosperous Asia.”

Nevertheless, Lee will certainly find it more difficult to develop a rapport with Obama than with Bush, with whom he shares his conservative values and conviction on free trade.

True, Obama said, in a previous speech, that he believed in free trade. But he claimed the free trade agreement with South Korea, now awaiting ratification from both sides, was seriously flawed. He said, “I don’t think an agreement that allows South Korea to import hundreds of thousands of cars into the U.S., but continues to restrict U.S. car exports into South Korea to a few thousand is a smart deal.”

Contrary to his claim, the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement could not be smarter because it is mutually beneficial. Obama should be aware that the agreement will boost bilateral trade and, according to one economic think tank’s estimate, halve Korea’s trade surplus against the United States. Moreover, automobiles are only one of the numerous traded items covered by the agreement. Free trade should serve as a vital component of the Korea-U.S. partnership that is envisioned by Obama.