[Editorial] Beginning small shall be key for Lee’s massive imaginative and prescient for cooperation with North Korea

Throughout his assembly with Chinese language President Xi Jinping on Jan. 5, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung reportedly proposed 4 main inter-Korean and worldwide cooperation tasks, together with the Higher Tumen Initiative, aimed toward bettering inter-Korean relations and selling cooperation within the area, whereas asking for Beijing’s cooperation and for it to play a mediating function. 

It’s a significant improvement, because it formalizes as a summit-level agenda the imaginative and prescient for cooperation that the Lee administration has been cooking up since taking workplace. Nonetheless, there stay many obstacles on this path, together with the problem of lifting sanctions on North Korea. 

We hope that the Lee administration begins small with simple, possible tasks to discourage the notion that the Lee administration is obsessive about huge tasks that don’t think about goal realities concerning worldwide geopolitics, such because the freeze in inter-Korean relations. 
 
Primarily based on feedback by a number of nameless senior authorities officers, the Hankyoreh reported that in their summit on Jan. 5,  Lee proposed 4 main tasks for cooperation, together with the development of a high-speed railway linking Seoul, Pyongyang, and Beijing; peace tourism within the Wonsan-Kalma resort; inter-Korean well being care cooperation; and South Korea’s inclusion within the Higher Tumen Initiative. 

On Jan. 6, Lee met with Chinese language Premier Li Qiang, successfully China’s No. 2, and made the identical proposal. Lee reportedly requested China’s cooperation and mediation. 

In line with stories, Xi stated it was a “good proposal,” however reminded Lee that China’s present affect on North Korea is restricted as a result of excessive deterioration of inter-Korean relations, and stated that “endurance” can be mandatory. 

Each well being care cooperation, which is a humanitarian undertaking, and peaceable tourism to the Wonsan-Kalma coastal vacationer zone that opened in July are areas which might be both exempt from sanctions or not topic to them, that means that every one that’s wanted to pursue them is an settlement between South and North Korea. 

Nonetheless, constructing a high-speed railway linking Seoul, Pyongyang and Beijing represents an enormous improvement undertaking that might require huge quantities of funding in North Korea from each South Korea and China. Such an enormous undertaking would require the lifting of sanctions on North Korea — which itself would require fixing the issue posed by the nation’s nuclear weapons program. In the end, it’ll necessitate four-party talks between South and North Korea, the US and China — that means each Xi and US President Donald Trump need to get entangled.  

The final undertaking in Lee’s proposal, the Higher Tumen Initiative, would require Russian involvement, that means it must occur after the tip of its battle with Ukraine. 

On this gentle, it’s clear which tasks are a precedence and which should be reserved for down the highway. In a report issued by the Unification Ministry on Dec. 19, the Lee administration indicated that it’s making ready “complete well being care cooperation initiatives, together with infectious illness response and modernizing county-level hospitals.”

The report additionally acknowledged that they might pursue “the resumption of tourism to Mt. Kumgang in coordination with worldwide peace tourism within the Wonsan-Kalma resort area.”

There was no point out of the opposite two tasks that Lee proposed to Xi. Probably the most pressing duties are easily resolving the incident involving North Korean claims of drones intruding on their airspace and rebuilding belief between Seoul and Pyongyang.

To keep away from getting forward of ourselves, we should make preparations and proceed slowly however certainly from the bottom up.

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