Angry Bush Challenged by Roh
09.09.07 - 09:22am
Rather unsurprisingly, the US President is not used to being challenged head on so there were annoyed looks and nervous laughs all round when the South Korean President did just that yesterday.
The confrontation, described as a “testy exchange” by MSNBC, came at that Pacific Rim Summit in Australia when President Roh Moo Hyun questioned Bush’s position on a formal end to the Korean War:
The tense moments with Roh came as the leaders each made statements to reporters after their meeting. Roh concluded his by questioning why Bush had not mentioned the issue of the war’s end.
“I might be wrong. I think I did not hear President Bush mention a declaration to end the Korean War just now,” Roh said through an interpreter. “Did you say so, President Bush?”
“It’s up to Kim Jong Il,” Bush said.
Roh pressed on. “If you could be a little bit clearer,” he said, prompting nervous laughter from the U.S. delegation and a look of annoyance from Bush.
The Guardian said Bush had been “prodded” into what amounted to commitment to a formal end to the Korean War, with a security arrangement to replace the armistice which has been in place since 1953, adding:
In a further sign of progress, nuclear experts from the US, China and Russia will travel to North Korea next week at the regime’s invitation to survey the nuclear facilities targeted for closure.
The unusually cordial diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang have raised hopes for a peace deal to their highest level in decades, but there is still a long way to go before the two sides are likely to agree on terms for a verifiable disarmament of North Korea’s nuclear programme.
However, with dreary predictability, the MSNBC story contains an all too oft-repeated misrepresentation of the division of the Korean peninsular, downplaying the role played by the great powers:
The two Koreas were divided by the conflict, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, meaning they still remain technically at war.
That the two Koreas were “divided by the conflict” is not really correct, as Korea was artificially divided by Russia and the United States at the end of the Second World War, with each concerned to install their own dictator, backed by communists in the north and former Japanese collaborators in the south.
The Stalinist government in North Korea, has interest in moving to the Chinese model. I think that explains some of the overtures, toward the west.
I agree, although I think the cultural and economic conditions in North Korea make such a move much more difficult in practical terms. Pretty much anything which reduces the danger of war on the Korean peninsular has to be a good thing.
Of course, the aim should be a Korea reunified under an open government.