뉴욕타임즈 "이명박 대통령 대북 정책 중국 지지 얻기 힘들듯"

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/world/asia/29korea.html?scp=1&sq=south%20korea%20john%20north%20korea&st=cse

중국의 대북 경제 영향력에 대한 우려가 한국에 있지만, 그것은 중국의 의도가 아니라 이명박 정부의 대북정책에서 비롯된 것이라고 <뉴욕타임스>가 28일 보도했습니다.

존 델루리 아시아소사이어티 미중관계센터 부소장과의 인터뷰를 보도한 뉴욕타임스는 부소장과의 인터뷰 중에 "중국의 대북 영향력 강화는 "북한을 경제적으로 식민화하려는 전략에 따른 결과라기보다 이명박 대통령이 '햇볕정책'을 포기한데 따른 결과"라고 보도했습니다.

이명박 정부가 전직 대통령들의 햇볕정책을 철회한채, 대북 강경책을 펴면서 북한에 대한 영향력을 잃어갔고, 일종의 '어부지리'로 중국의 영향력이 확대되고 있음을 장고하고 있습니다.  

델루리 부소장은 "중국은 남한과 (대북) 경제적 관여의 부담을 나누는 쪽이 낫다고 생각하지만, (선택이) 필요할 경우 북한의 유일한 판로(販路)로서의 역할을 계속 유지할 것이며 지하자원 확보에 대한 요구가 강하고 안정 지향적이며 제재에 반대하는 중국은 남북간 협력이 무너진 빈틈을 계속 채우려 할 것이다. 천안함에 대한 중국 지지 얻기 힘들다. 상황이 이러한 까닭에 전문가들은 30일 이 대통령이 상하이 세계엑스포를 계기로 후진타오(胡錦濤) 중국 국가주석을 만나도 천안함 사태와 관련해 이 대통령이 기대하는 지지는 얻기 어려울 것"이라고 전했습니다.

 Memo From Seoul

China Gains Influence in Korean Affairs as North and South Warily Seek Its Help

SEOUL, South Korea — On Friday, President Lee Myung-bak will travel to China under growing pressure at home to make the case for crucial Chinese support for tough international sanctions against North Korea if, as is widely expected, the North is found responsible for the sinking of a South Korean ship. But he is unlikely to win that support, experts say, a reflection of China’s growing role in the Korean Peninsula.

Since taking office in 2008, Mr. Lee has wound down his predecessors’ “sunshine policy” of aid and engagement with the North, heightening Chinese fears of instability and driving the North into China’s economic embrace. Ultimately, that could give Beijing greater leverage in determining the fate of the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, a situation that many South Koreans would consider to be a nightmare.

“China’s influence has become so important that we can almost say that it can now claim the first and last piece of the apple on the Korean Peninsula,” said Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul, using a Korean saying to suggest that China can have whatever it wants.

Even conservatives, who have usually opposed aid to the North, warn of North Korea’s becoming a “Chinese colony” whenever reports circulate of Chinese companies taking over North Korean ports and mines at bargain prices.

Those fears are undoubtedly overblown, but they contain a kernel of truth, experts say.

South Korea’s concern “about China’s rising dominance over North Korea in economic terms is well founded,” said John Delury, associate director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. “However, I think it’s the result of Lee Myung-bak’s decision to let the sunshine policy unravel, rather than a strategic plot by China to ‘colonize’ North Korea economically.”

China, which supplies an estimated 70 percent of North Korea’s trade, is the one country that can provide the necessary economic pressure to push the isolated North to the brink of collapse — or, as Washington, Seoul and Tokyo hope, press it to agree to concessions over its nuclear weapons program.

But Beijing is always going to be wary of stronger sanctions. It fears an implosion in North Korea that could release a flood of refugees across its border or put it under pressure to intervene militarily should South Korea and the United States move into the North to seize its nuclear arsenal and build a Western-leaning, unified Korea on China’s border. Its paramount concern regarding North Korea is to preserve stability, more than to punish it for truculent behavior or persuade it to give up its nuclear weapons.

“China is more interested in maintaining the status quo and avoiding instability, and believes that more trade will help to keep things from falling apart in North Korea,” said David Straub, a North Korea specialist at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford who was formerly a senior State Department official who specialized in Northeast Asian affairs.

China juggles its diplomacy between North Korea and its adversaries, just as North Korea plays the regional powers against one another to secure a lifeline that sustains it and allows it to avoid political changes while maintaining its nuclear programs. In the past, sanctions have brought only mixed results against the North; as often as not, they have stiffened its defiance.

Jin Jingyi, a Chinese specialist on Korean affairs at Peking University, said that the sinking of the South Korean ship had highlighted the weakness of Mr. Lee’s position. “The fact that South Korea keeps talking about international cooperation with China and others shows that Lee Myung-bak has lost the initiative in inter-Korean relations,” Mr. Jin said.

“China will be very cautious,” he continued. “It won’t think pressuring the North will help solve the problem.”

China, which seeks to enhance stability and reduce economic risk in the region, would like to see better inter-Korean relations, experts say, but just the opposite has happened under Mr. Lee.

“China would probably rather share the burden of economic engagement with the South, but if necessary, it will hold its ground as North Korea’s sole economic outlet,” said Mr. Delury of the Asia Society. “The resource-hungry, stability-centric, sanctions-averse Chinese will continue filling the void left by the dismantling of inter-Korean cooperation.”

In South Korea, people remain deeply suspicious and fearful of China, which sided with the North during the Korean War. Officially, the goal of both North and South Korea is the reunification of the peninsula, but that is currently unlikely. North Korea loathes the American military presence in the South, just as South Koreans bristle at Chinese influence in the North.

China, for its part, knows that the Koreans historically have never been pliant neighbors and that North Korea is an unreliable place to invest, as demonstrated by the North’s heavy-handed threats to confiscate South Korean investors’ assets at its Diamond Mountain resort and Kaesong. China reportedly has complained to the North about its aid trains “disappearing” inside the North, apparently stolen and torn apart.

“Despite their public rhetoric about the closeness of their ties, officials in both China and North Korea each tell even American officials how much they dislike the other,” said Mr. Straub, the North Korea specialist at Stanford. “North Korean officials have on numerous occasions suggested to American officials that it would be in the interests of our two countries to have a strategic relationship — to counter China.” 

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