World View: North Korea missile test brings China and S Korea closer

The test launch by North Korea last Friday of a Musudan intercontinental-ballistic missile – albeit unsuccessful as it exploded a few seconds after lift-off – has again caused ripples of nervousness throughout South Korea. Angry responses to yet another violation of UN Security Council resolutions that explicitly prohibit North Korea from using or testing ballistic missile technology have seen rapid security council moves, importantly, backed by China, to ramp up sanctions against the rogue state.

The Musudan launch has finally pitched "the world against North Korea", says Lin Sungman, South Korea's vice-minister for foreign affairs.

Although not formally acknowledged by Seoul yet, a senior South Korean diplomat argues that this test and the fourth illegal testing of a nuclear bomb in January mark a qualitative shift in the North's military capabilities from potential nuclear weapons power to actual full-blown nuclear power. It has both the ability to produce a bomb of devastating lethality and to deliver it over huge distances.The Musudan rocket is understood to have a range of at least 1,864 miles, long enough to strike, among other targets, US military bases in Guam.

That reality may well be behind the hardening of Beijing's attitude. It is determined that its unpredictable and unbiddable ally, notably under the latest of the Kims, 33-year-old Kim Jong Un, should not be able to wield nuclear weapons, a perspective tempered until recently by its determination not to precipitate regime collapse and hence its unhappiness with sanctions.

The fear of regime collapse is shared in South Korea, the Seoul diplomat conceded – despite the South’s yearning for reunification, both states dread the possibility of mass migration across their borders and the huge cost of propping up a basket-case economy. Both have an unstated interest in preserving in the medium term the northern state.

Destabilising region

China is also aware its failure to bring Kim to heel is inevitably driving the South closer and closer to the US, whose offer to install a missile defence system is under discussion although opposed in the South by those who do not want to alienate China. The latter views that strategic shift with horror as deeply destabilising to the region.

But there is a convergence in urgent calls for North Korea to rejoin the stalled six-party talks, although as Lin puts it wryly, the trouble is “you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. He speaks from bitter experience of North Korean prevarication and abandoning of agreements

Lin was speaking this week at a conference in Seoul on the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula organised and sponsored by the Journalists Association of Korea, attended by over 80 journalists from 50 countries.

South Korean politics

The conference took place against the backdrop of a major legislative elections defeat in the South for the conservative President

Park

Geun-hye and her Saenuri Party. It lost its majority in a rout that leaves it in second place, its support in the 300-strong parliament down to 122, one seat behind the more progressive Minjoo Party. Like

Enda Kenny

, the president, who appoints the cabinet and has considerable executive powers, will have to try to rule with minority support for the 22 months her term still has to run. Observers suggest concerns that her legislative programme may be blocked and she may be seen as a lame-duck president may push her to be more activist on the foreign stage, not least in relations with the North.

Although the election hinged on her failure to deal with the economy – there is widespread anxiety over sluggish growth and rising youth unemployment – there are strong differences between her and Minjoo over the North. These could make any initiative from the president deeply controversial and would certainly face sharper parliamentary scrutiny. The latter has had a much more conciliatory approach to Pyonyang, stressing negotiation and dialogue, more akin to Social Democratic Ostpolitik in Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Park, it is feared, may feel she needs to talk up the threat of the North and revive her party's tradition of anti-communist witch hunts. Saenuri often refers to left-wingers as "jongbuk", or untrustworthy sympathisers with North Korea, a tactic that may have alienated moderate voters and contributed to her defeat. She is seen as arrogant and aloof, and autocratic within her own party where there arecritics of her northern policy.

And the North continues to raise tensions with military provocations and a bellicose language that has seen Park dismissed as a prostitute, threats to abandon a no-first-use policy and even to bomb the White House.

psmyth@irishtimes.com