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A second inter-Korean summit meeting has been announced, seven years after the first, but there are more concerns than hopes for the meeting. Because the date was determined before the agenda, views vary on what Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Jong-il will discuss in Pyongyang late this month. Concerns are that the South could end up helping the North's South-Korea strategy by striking some abrupt deals.
Alarmingly, Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung already told a parliamentary committee that the Northern Limit Line, the de facto sea boundary off Korea's west coast, is "not a territorial concept," and the Defense Ministry has postponed a mobile exercise by South Korean forces that was to coincide with the joint Korea-U.S. Ulchi Focus Lens drills.
None of the pending inter-Korean issues -- the NLL, declaring peace and a peace treaty, and forming some kind of federation -- are of a nature to be unilaterally pushed by the president without public consensus or parliamentary approval. That is common sense. But the government is quite capable of striking deals that run counter to common sense in Pyongyang late in August.
President Roh has told the North that he can discuss any issue at an inter-Korean summit, saying, "Let's meet anytime, anywhere to discuss any problem," and "We're willing to make many concessions to the North."
But this is no time to attempt a compromise on the NLL. The reasons are clear. To begin with, there can be no compromise: one side or the other will simply have to give up its position. In the past half-century our side has regarded the NLL as the de facto maritime boundary demarcating the activities areas of the North and South Korean military and has physically controlled that boundary. In contrast, the North has kept saying the NLL is illegal, having been unilaterally set up by the UN Command in the armistice at the end of the Korean War, that it's the cause of military clashes between the two Koreas, and that it is a question of war or peace. Searching for a compromise on the NLL problem under such circumstances, from whatever motives, can only be seen as a unilateral concession to the North. No territorial concession is permissible.
Second, Article 10 of the North-South Korea Peace Agreement concluded in 1991 stipulates, "The maritime non-aggression boundary between the North and South shall be discussed continuously in the future." But the discussion referred to here is premised on a situation where peace on the Korean Peninsula has been consolidated by full compliance with all agreements involving the North-South Joint Committee, a body implementing the North-South Korean Basic Agreement, and the Joint Nuclear Control Commission, the body handling the Joint Declaration on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. If the leaders of the two Koreas negotiate the NLL in a meeting in the current circumstances, where the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia are seriously threatened by the North's nuclear capabilities, it will hurt not only South Korea's security but also a resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Third, the NLL must be reviewed in conjunction with an assessment of the general military situation on the Korean Peninsula and the region surrounding it by our military authorities and UN Command before it is taken up by the two Koreas. It is crucial for us to maintain close military cooperation with UN Command, the body that established the NLL, at a time when the North's military threat to the South is intensified by its nuclear capabilities and when Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command is being dismantled.
We must not hasten to redraw the NLL. We can naturally review the problem once peace has settled, the North Korean system has been reformed and opened, the North's military threat to the South removed completely and mutual military trust established. That means the complete resolution of the NLL issue will be possible only when the nation is about to be unified.
This column was contributed by Park Yong-ok, senior vice president of the Hallym Institute of Advanced International Studies.
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