Policy Forum

Sourabh Gupta, Senior Research Associate at Samuels International Associates, Inc., writes, “Nevertheless, with the number of Chinese visitors to Japan exceeding the number of Americans for the first time in 2007 and with China, excluding Hong Kong, ousting the United States as Japan’s top trading partner for the first time in 2007, 2008 might yet play witness to a veritable “early summer” in Sino-Japanese bilateral relations.”

Satu Limaye, Director of the East-West Center in Washington, writes, “Despite frozen relations from 1958 until 1988, the slow thaw in relations over the past two decades indicates that both India and China, increasingly preoccupied with economic and social development at home and much more pressing security challenges nearer to home, have decided to seek mutual gains, minimize differences and prepare for the future in a fluid Asia-Pacific.”

Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University Japan Campus in Tokyo, writes, “But at this point it is most unlikely that North Korea, which receives aid from China and South Korea and achieved a major breakthrough with America, will make concessions to Japan on the issue. Moreover, there is unfortunately little evidence that the unaccounted for abducted victims would be set free, assuming they are still alive. Consequently, Tokyo can use the U.S.-North Korea agreement as an opportunity to follow a more flexible strategy that will better serve its national interest.”

David C. Kang, Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, writes, Although the past year has seen substantial progress in capping and ultimately eliminating North Koreas nuclear weapons program, there remain many obstacles that could derail the progress made so far, and slow or even halt continued improvement in relations. The reciprocal actions laid out in the February 13, 2007 agreement are genuinely the first step in a long process for all countries involved in the negotiations, and sustained U.S. attention at the policymaking, executive, and legislative levels will be critical for the process to continue in a manner which enhances U.S. interests.

Gavan McCormack, emeritus professor of Australian National University, a coordinator of Japan Focus, and author of the recently published Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, writes, “The final question is this: is Japan’s drive to become a nuclear super-state compatible with its “Client State” role? The US has always insisted that Japan not be a nuclear weapons state, but, given a forthcoming privileged position within the GNEP, it stands to become a de facto nuclear superpower anyway. The Bush administration may be confident that it has locked Japan in to Client State subordination for the foreseeable future, but a considerable potential ambiguity opens up.”

Hyeong Jung Park, CNAPS Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes, “Whether it is successful or not, the denuclearization process will give birth to a new reality both on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia, and the challenges for both countries will be how to maintain convergent understandings and cooperative relations along the road to the future.”

Donald Kirk, a Journalist who has been covering Korea – and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia – for more than 30 years, writes, “In the end, some analysts say, Lee’s instincts for business, especially construction, may trump his notion of firmness toward North Korea. As a product of the Hyundai empire, he may well build on progress already achieved by the subsidiary Hyundai Asan in developing tourism to Mount Kumkang, above the eastern border with North Korea, and further investment in the Kaesong special economic zone, also above the line 64 kilometers north of Seoul.”

Bonnie Glaser, senior associate at CSIS as well as with Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu, Hawaii, Scott Snyder, senior associate of Washington programs in the International Relations program of The Asia Foundation, and John S. Park, expert on Northeast Asian security issues at the U.S. Institute of Peace, write, “In the event of instability in North Korea, China’s priority will be to prevent refugees from flooding across the border. If deemed necessary, PLA troops would be dispatched into North Korea… Contingency plans are in place for the PLA to perform at least three possible missions in the DPRK: 1) humanitarian missions such as assisting refugees or providing help after a natural disaster; 2) peacekeeping or “order keeping” missions such as serving as civil police; and 3) “environmental control” missions to clean up nuclear contamination resulting from a strike on North Korean nuclear facilities near the Sino-DPRK border and secure “loose nukes” and fissile material.”

James Goodby, former American Ambassador to Finland and currently is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Markku Heiskanen, a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies NIAS in Copenhagen, write, “the future security architecture of Northeast Asia will have at its core the Korean Peninsula, at peace internally and externally, embedded in a set of cooperative understandings comprising a peace regime, all supported by a regional multilateral mechanism for promoting security and cooperation in Northeast Asia.”

James Church (a pseudonym) is the author of the detective novels, Hidden Moon and A Corpse in the Koryo. In this essay, Church meets Inspector O, the primary fictional character in his books, and discusses the anticipated New York Philharmonic concert in Pyongyang in February.