THE KOREAS TO TALK August 8, 2007
Posted by wmmbb in East Asia.trackback
BBC News reports that talks will be held between North and South Korea. I had not realized that the proposed summit to take place at the end of this month will be the second one between the leaders of North and South Korea. The previous talks took place seven years ago. The president of South Korea is facing an election this years so his political motivation is relatively easy to understand. What is intriguing following the recent deal to end the development of nuclear weapons that the North Korean government would be interested in talking with the South. At first brush, I am inclined to think, so much for the Bush doctrine of never talking or dealing with your adversaries.
The end of the Korean dispute, and with it the withdrawal of the American military presence in South Korea should have been part of the peace dividend so far unrealized on the end of the Cold War. Korea had since 1910 been a colony of Japan. The United States and the Soviet Union had decided to partition Korea at the 38th Parallel at the Potsdam Conference of 1945. So the circumstances in Korea are not analogous to the situation in Germany.
Curiously, I think this, and the earlier agreement to end the nuclear weapons program in North Korea, might well be considered the peace dividend of the Iraq/Afghanistan War in that suckering of certain individuals living in caves on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan have created the space for the governments of the two Koreas to talk. Nonetheless it is an interesting and historical development.
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