North Korean launch likely to alter regional ties

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

It has been portrayed as a direct challenge to the United States, but North Korea's Fourth of July long-range missile launch could prove an even more difficult diplomatic and strategic headache for the North's closest neighbors: China and South Korea.

Beijing and Seoul have been noticeably more restrained in their initial responses to the missile launch, but both might feel new pressure to adopt a harder line favored by the United States and Japan, regional analysts said this week.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, in a phone conversation with President Bush yesterday, said Beijing was "deeply concerned" about the North's act, but he was vague about sanctions or other punitive action against Pyongyang.

"Under such a complicated situation, it is highly necessary for all the related parties to keep clam and show restraint," Mr. Hu told Mr. Bush, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

After first denouncing the missile launch as an "unwise, provocative act," the office of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun called for "patient dialogue" -- a far cry from the unequivocal denunciations coming from Washington and Tokyo.

"Pressuring North Korea and creating tensions are not helpful in the resolution of this issue," Mr. Roh's office said. "We should resolve the issue in a way that would not create tensions on the Korean Peninsula."

South Korean officials said aid programs to the North are "under review" and could be called off or delayed. But no formal decision has been made. Lee Kwan-sei, South Korean assistant minister of unification, told reporters in Seoul that a 200,000-ton fertilizer shipment to the North approved in April will go forward.

China, host of the stalled six-party talks on the Korean nuclear standoff, fears an implosion of the North's impoverished regime almost as much as it does Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. Mr. Roh has pursued relentlessly a policy of engagement and integration with the North begun by his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, even as the military crisis has deepened.

Crucial moment

Analysts Todd M. Walters and Nicholas Kenney of the Power and Interest News Report (PINR), which focuses on geostrategic issues, wrote in May that only Japan and the United States "have any sense of urgency" in confronting North Korea to stop its nuclear programs. The six-party talks -- which involve North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China -- have been on hold since November.