Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton greets officials in Beijing. (Saul Loeb/associated Press)
Monday, May 24, 2010
By John Pomfret, Washington Post Staff Writer
BEIJING -- South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Monday that his country is stopping all trade and most investment with North Korea and closing its sea lanes to North Korean ships after the nation's deadly attack on a South Korean warship.
Lee also called for a change in the North's Stalinist regime.
The tough measures, announced in an address to his nation, were bound to ratchet up pressure on the isolated Pyongyang government and add a new flash point in U.S. relations with China.
"Fellow citizens, we have always tolerated North Korea's brutality, time and again. We did so because we have always had a genuine longing for peace on the Korean Peninsula," he said. "But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts."
Lee then said that
"no North Korean ship will be allowed to make passage through any of the shipping lanes in the waters under our control" and that "any inter-Korean trade or other cooperative activity is meaningless."
A senior U.S. official, traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in China, said the United States will back "all the steps the South Koreans are going to announce." In an indication of the seriousness with which the Obama administration views the drama between the North and South, home to nearly 29,000 U.S. troops, he added:
"We have not faced something like this in decades."
Lee apparently has ruled out military action because he does not want to trigger an all-out war. But Lee did condemn Kim Jong Il's regime.
"North Korea's goal is to instigate division and conflict. For what reason and for whom is it doing what it does? As compatriots, I am truly ashamed," he said. "It is now time for the North Korean regime to change."
Lee also threw down a challenge to China, saying:
"No responsible country in the international community will be able to deny the fact that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea."
The U.S. official said that, based on talks over the past two days, Chinese officials have not accepted the results of a South Korean investigation -- backed by experts from the United States, Australia, Britain and Sweden -- that implicated North Korea in the attack on the 1,200-ton Cheonan that killed 46 sailors. As such, it is unclear whether Beijing will support Lee's measures or his call, also made in the speech, to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council.
China's reluctance to agree with the report underscores the challenges the United States faces as it seeks to forge closer ties to Beijing. The U.S. official also noted Sunday that China and the United States still do not see eye to eye on the details of planned economic sanctions on Iran for its failure to stop its nuclear enrichment program. Of specific concern, he said, are disagreements between Beijing and Washington about how investments in Iran's oil and gas sector will be treated. China has committed to investing more than $80 billion in Iran's energy sector; tightened sanctions against Tehran could threaten those investments.
U.S. officials said the Obama administration considers the situation in Northeast Asia and Iran so pressing that on Sunday night in Beijing, Clinton dispensed with the niceties of protocol and got down to a substantive discussion in the middle of a private banquet to welcome the biggest delegation of U.S. officials to Beijing to date. The officials -- a band of 200 led by Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and specializing in fields such as health, energy and the environment, counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation, and human rights -- are in Beijing for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.
Reverberations in Tokyo
Officials and analysts said that the attack on the Cheonan seems to be redefining the security equation in Northeast Asia, bolstering the United States, damaging China and concentrating the minds of Japanese officials.
The attack has provided political cover for Japan's government -- only the second opposition party to take power in nearly 50 years -- to end an eight-month-long feud with the United States and accept a plan to relocate a U.S. Marine base within Okinawa. On Sunday, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama announced that his country would abide by a 14-year-old agreement to move the Futenma air base in Okinawa to a less populated part of the island.
Hatoyama's government had campaigned on a platform that rejected the Futenma deal and advocated a more Asia-centric view of Japan's place in the world. But the Cheonan incident reminded them
"that this is still a very dangerous neighborhood and that the U.S.-Japan alliance and the basing arrangements that are part of that are critical to Japan's security," the senior U.S. official said.
Tough options for China
The attack and its aftermath also threaten China's place in the region and could force it to make an unwanted choice between South Korea and North Korea -- two countries that it has handled deftly since normalizing relations with Seoul in 1992. South Korea wants China, which is a permanent member of the Security Council, to back Seoul's call to take the Cheonan issue to the council. So does the United States, the U.S. official said.
But that could risk hurting Pyongyang, and China appears committed to maintaining the North Korean regime above all.
"For China," the U.S. official said, "they are in uncharted waters."
China reacted slowly to the Cheonan's sinking, waiting almost a month before offering South Korea condolences. Then it feted North Korea's Kim in May, apparently offering him another large package of aid, Asian diplomats said. China's attitude has enraged South Korea.
Michael Green, a national security official during George W. Bush's administration, said the Cheonan crisis highlights just how differently China views its security needs than the rest of the players in Northeast Asia. For years, as China worked with the United States, Russia, South Korea and Japan to try to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs, these differences were obscured. But the Cheonan's sinking has changed that.
While the incident is pushing officials in South Korea, Japan and the United States to contain North Korea and even prepare for a future without a North Korean state, Green said, China appears intent on redoubling its efforts to ensure North Korea's stability.
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