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The new Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said in his inaugural press conference on Monday that an inter-Korean summit meeting is "a task for the two heads of state¡± and a ¡°long-pending issue." Ruling Uri Party chairman Kim Geun-tae said late last month that he will ask the president to dispatch a special envoy to North Korea for the purpose of promoting an ¡°unconditional¡± inter-Korean summit, and the former Uri Party chairman Chung Dong-young said March or April next year would be the right time for the summit, when the presidential election is some six months away.
This government is now obsessed with an inter-Korean summit. Until the middle of its tenure, officials asked what the point would be unless the North Korean nuclear crisis has been resolved. But their rhetoric has recently changed: now the two heads of state must meet unconditionally. President Roh Moo-hyun keeps saying the North's nuclear weapons are nothing to worry about: he is begging Kim Jong-il for a meeting.
The Kim Dae-jung administration paid Pyongyang US$500 million to make the first inter-Korean summit in 2000 happen. Having extracted that much money as the price for meeting a vigorous South Korean president in the first half of his tenure, North Korea is surely going to demand several times the money for meeting a lame duck. There is a strong smell of hustling for a summit about the government¡¯s refusal to impose any additional sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear test, and in its earmarking of W1 trillion (US$1=W923) for ¡°economic cooperation¡± with the North next year.
If it can ensure the elimination of the North's nuclear weapons and peace on the peninsula, we must do everything in our power to bring another inter-Korean summit about. But the chances are nil that Kim Jong-il, who stakes his survival on getting recognition from the U.S., will negotiate about his nuclear arms with a South Korean president on the way out.
We have learned our lesson from the first inter-Korean summit: Seoul announced the 2000 summit three days before the general election, and Pyongyang was manufacturing nuclear bombs while staging a huge public show of peace on the peninsula.
Of course, if it thinks it can sway the election, the government will do everything to make a summit happen. It will take a show of strength from a united public to make it clear that the security of 48 million South Koreans cannot be bartered for an election win.
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