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                  S. Korean President Issues Warning to North

   by Steve Herman

   While the international community discusses new sanctions for North
   Korea, South Korea's outgoing leader is warning Pyongyang that the
   isolated state's days are numbered.
   In a farewell speech to the nation, six days before leaving office,
   South Korean President Lee Myung-bak warned Pyongyang its missiles and
   weapons are taking the North closer to what he called "a dead-end."
   Lee urges his compatriots to hastily prepare for reunification of the
   Korean peninsula. The president asserts that "even though the North
   Korean regime is refusing to change, its citizens are quickly changing
   and nobody can block that."
   Still, there is no outside evidence of any citizen protests in isolated
   North Korea, which human rights advocates describe as one of the
   world's most repressive states.
   In past months, North Korea has defied international sanctions by
   launching a rocket into orbit and claiming a successful underground
   test of a third nuclear device.
   Negotiations are underway in New York, with Chinese and American
   diplomats seen as the key players, for a fresh round of United Nations'
   sanctions on North Korea.
   Frustration about Pyongyang's continued defiance of existing U.N.
   resolutions barring it from ballistic missile and nuclear weapons
   development is evident at a forum underway in Seoul (Tuesday and
   Wednesday).
   North Korea dominates the agenda at the Asan Nuclear Forum, where
   academics and diplomats are in disagreement about who to blame for the
   perceived diplomatic failures and what to do next.
   Joel Wit, the U.S.-Korea Institute's senior research scholar at the
   Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies is calling on
   Washington to "re-examine" its current approach of weak sanctions and
   weak diplomacy.
   Witt is a former U.S. State Department official who worked extensively
   on nuclear arms control and North Korea issues.
   Gary Samore coordinated control of weapons of mass destruction in the
   first term of the Obama administration. He says Washington's options
   regarding North Korea are "very difficult."
   "Using military force is not attractive because that could trigger a
   broader conflict on the Korean peninsula. Sanctions are hard to impose
   because North Korea is isolated and China protects North Korea," said
   Samore. "Our experience with diplomacy with North Korea is a very
   unhappy experience because they cheated or reneged on every agreement
   they reached."
   At the Seoul forum, Chung Mong-joon, a wealthy governing party lawmaker
   (whose foundation funds the Asan Institute), notes his country "needs
   to think the unthinkable." And, that scenario, Chung says, may mean
   South Korea having its own nuclear arsenal as "the only way to
   negotiate a grand bargain with North Korea."
   Chung characterizes the protection provided by the United States with
   its nuclear force as a "torn umbrella" in need of repair.
   South Korean reporters are pestering forum attendees for responses to
   statements by Chung and other prominent South Koreans that Seoul needs
   its own nuclear weapons or should ask Washington to redeploy tactical
   nukes on the peninsula.
   MacArthur Foundation President Robert Gallucci says U.S. nuclear
   weapons are not needed in South Korea, from a military perspective.  He
   says it would be an even worse choice for the country to build its own
   nuclear bomb.
   "That would be a grievous mistake. It's a decision, of course, that
   South Korea, now a treaty adherent to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
   Treaty, would have to make in its own sovereign interests," said
   Gallucci. "And, my view is that those interests would not justify the
   acquisition of nuclear weapons. And, I believe the consequences would
   be serious and negative for South Korea and other states in the
   region."
   As a diplomat in 1994, Gallucci negotiated a deal with Pyongyang on
   nuclear reactors intended to avoid a confrontation between the United
   States and North Korea.
   Many analysts assert Beijing's cooperation is critical to resolving the
   current crisis.
   China could cripple North Korea's meager, but desperately needed,
   international commerce and its related financial transactions. It has
   expressed increasing frustration with Pyongyang's recent provocation.
   But Chinese analysts say their government has no desire to suffocate
   North Korea to the point of collapse. That would create a humanitarian
   crisis on China's border and the prospect of a unified Korea allied
   with the United States.
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/south-korean-president-issues-warning-to-north/1606326.html