A Northeast Asian Version of the Helsinki Process
Youngho Kim (Department of Political Science, Sungshin Women’s University)
Introduction
North Korea’s Nuclear test in October 2006 has casted doubt on the current approach to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem. In January 2007 the stalled six-party talks resumed to find out a solution to the problem. North Korea came to the negotiation table from the position of strength with its nuclear weapons in hand. The prospect for the six-party talks is much lower than the negotiations for the Geneva agreement in 1994. Fundamental shifts in dealing with North Korea are needed to peacefully solve the North Korean nuclear problem.
The Helsinki process is presented as an alternative model to deal with the North Korean nuclear issue. The Helsinki Final Act of 1975, also known as the Helsinki Accords, was the final product of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe held in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The Helsinki Accords was a set of agreements among 35 countries including the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and 32 European nations except Albania. The Helsinki process represents a process in which the Helsinki Final Act had been implemented since its signing.
The Helsinki Accords consist of three “baskets.” Each basket deals with the security, economic, and humanitarian issues. The Helsinki process was successful in creating a cooperative multilateral framework and easing Cold Was tensions in Europe by adopting a comprehensive approach. It was comprehensive in the sense that the Helsinki Accords emphasized the interconnectedness of the security, economic, and humanitarian dimensions. Before the Accords, security and economic issues attracted more attention and the humanitarian issue was disregarded as an impediment to solving the security issue. The Helsinki Accords represented an innovative approach that gave weight to non-military dimensions during the Cold War period.
The Helsinki Accords also set forth 10 principles guiding relations among 35 countries. These principles involve sovereign equality, refraining from the threat or use of force, peaceful settlement of disputes, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedom. The principle on human rights includes the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief. Except the principle on human rights, the joint statement of the six-party talks on September 19, 2005 declared the same principles guiding North Korea’s relations with the United States and other neighboring countries. A Northeast Asian version of the Helsinki process is an attempt to apply the lessons of the Helsinki Accords to the current North Korean nuclear issue as well as the security situation in Northeast Asia.
The issue of North Korean human rights was eclipsed by the urgency of its nuclear weapons program. The issue was not at the forefront of the bilateral negotiations between the United States and North Korea during the first North Korean nuclear crisis. The Geneva Agreement of 1994 followed in the tradition of arms control negotiations unlike the omnibus negotiations of the Helsinki process. Jung-Ryum Kim, the former secretariat of President Park Chung-Hee, was dismayed to see former President Jimmy Carter meet Kim Il Sung on the luxurious cruise on the TaedongRiver in Pyongyang to solve the first North Korean nuclear crisis.[1] Jimmy Carter as the champion of human rights diplomacy during his presidency put great pressure on the authoritarian government of PresidentPark to improve human rights conditions in South Korea. In contrast, he did not mention severe human rights violations in North Korea during his visit to Pyongyang. The Bush administration refused to hold bilateral talks with North Korea and was successful in organizing the six-party multilateral format to defuse the second North Korean nuclear crisis. Yet despite the changes in the format of negotiations, the Bush administration followed in the footsteps of the Clinton administration by excluding the human rights issue from the agenda of the six-party talks. The authoritarian regimes of South Korea in the past were silent on the North Korean human rights issue because they had their own human rights problems.
The North-South Korean joint declarations and agreements on the governmental level do not involve any mention of the issue of North Korean human rights. Cases in point are the North-South Korean Joint Declarations of July 4, 1972 and June 15, 2000. The North-South Korean Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-aggression, and Exchanges and Cooperation of December 13, 1991 and the Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean peninsula of January 20, 1992 do not include any clause on the improvement of human rights conditions in North Korea. The neglect of the human rights issue by the United States and South Korea in their dealings with North Korea derived from their strategic calculations to give priority to the security issue.
The lack of information on human rights conditions in North Korea also constituted a major barrier to put the issue on the agenda in the negotiations with North Korea. Access to North Korea by the United Nations and other independent human rights organizations was tightly restricted by the North Korean regime. With the coming of the great famine in 1995 international relief agencies began to report eye-witness information on deteriorating human rights conditions in North Korea to the outside world. The testimonies of North Korean refugees painted a vivid picture of severe human rights violations. The members of the European Union offered diplomatic recognition to North Korea with the discussion of human rights as part of the package of diplomatic normalization talks. The accumulation of reports on a serious pattern of human rights violations in North Korea, including public executions, torture, detention of political prisoners in the gulag, awakened the international community to pay more attention to the issue of human rights in North Korea. The public opinion made it difficult for both the United States and South Korea to be exclusively concerned with the security issue in their dealings with North Korea.
This paper attempts to explain why the Helsinki approach to deal with North Korea has appeared as an alternative model to the current six-party talks. The Helsinki process in Northeast Asia has been proposed to overcome the pitfalls of the past engagement policy toward North Korea. The paper will show that there exists consensus among the countries in the region that deteriorating human rights conditions in North Korea can be a cause for instability and disrupting the “long peace” in the region. Next, the paper will discuss how to make the new model feasible by taking into account the geopolitical conditions of the region. The South Korean initiative and alliance cohesion among the United States, Japan, and South Korea are necessary conditions for developing the Helsinki process in the region. This paper will conclude by discussing the need to build on the six-party talks to develop the Northeast Asian version of the Helsinki model with the help of the non-governmental among scholars and experts.
A Northeast Asian Version of the Helsinki Approach to North Korea
The US Congress took the initiative in accommodating public concerns about North Korean human rights abuses by passing the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. The bill stipulates that “the human rights of North Koreans should remain the key element in future negotiations between the United States and North Korea, and other concerned policies in Northeast Asia.” Before the bill passed, the imminent collapse of the North Korean regime was expected by a large number of refugees fleeing from North Korea into China. Yet the bill does not pursue regime change as its goal on the pretext of promoting human rights. The bill reflects a genuine desire for improvements in human rights conditions, refugee protection, and the transparency of humanitarian assistance. The bill did not intend to gain tactical advantage in the on-going six-party negotiations. The bill makes it clear that the United States will reciprocate with goodwill if the North Korean regime shows openness to the outside world and substantial improvements in the human rights practices.
The US Congress encourages the Bush administration to initiate the Helsinki approach to deal with the North Korean human rights issue in the bill. The Helsinki process contributed to the establishment of the regional framework for discussing human rights issues in close relations with security and economic issues during the Cold War period in Europe. It is the belief of the US Congress that a Northeast Asian version of the Helsinki process comprising all countries in the region would be more effective to achieve the goal of improving human rights conditions in North Korea. Yet the joint declaration of September 19, 2005, adopted at the end of the six-party talks, did not mention the North Korean human rights issue. The failure to incorporate the issue on the agenda of the six-party talks demonstrates that the passage of the bill cannot guarantee discussion on North Korean human rights on a multilateral basis. The current stalemate of the six-party talks since November 2005 and the test-firing of missiles by North Korea in July 2006 make it necessary to find an alternative model to solve both the North Korean nuclear program and human rights issue.
The key element of a Northeast Asian version of the Helsinki model is to take a comprehensive approach in engaging North Korea. The Helsinki process emphasized the interconnectedness of security, economic aid, and human rights issues. The comprehensive approach enabled the Soviet Union and East European countries to make concessions on human rights provisions in return for security guarantees and economic aid from the Western countries. The Helsinki process contributed to the collapse of the Soviet bloc by promoting the liberalization and democratization of Communist society.
Because of this historical precedent, the process is often misconstrued as an attempt to pursue regime change when it is applied to deal with North Korea. Yet the Western countries in the Helsinki process was motivated by a genuine desire for improving the real conditions of people living in the Soviet bloc. The collapse of the Soviet bloc was an unintended result of the Helsinki process. The Western countries did not use human rights provisions as a tactical tool to promote regime change. By improving living conditions and strengthening indigenous forces in the Communist society, the Helsinki process sought to promote the “mellowing” of the Communist regime from within as George F. Kennan stressed in devising the containment strategy. The theoretical premise for the development of the Helsinki model toward North Korea should be the continuation of engagement policy, not part of regime change strategy.[2] It is self-contradictory to seek to devise the Helsinki model for North Korea in the belief that human rights cannot improve without a change of the Kim Jong Il regime because security guarantees and economic aid are part of the package for the new model.
A Helsinki approach to deal with North Korea can be explained as an attempt to overcome the pitfalls of the past engagement policy toward North Korea. In doing so, the new approach seeks to reinforce the engagement policy. The engagement policy of the Kim Dae Jung administration made unilateral concessions and provided financial aid for North Korea without reciprocal concessions from North Korea on the security and human rights issues.[3] The secret transfer of millions of dollars to Pyongyang days ahead of the June 2000 summit was criticized as checkbook diplomacy to bribe the regime. The engagement policies of the Kim Dae Jung government and the current Roh government are tantamount to appeasement policy. The unreciprocated aid to North Korea helps the Kim Jong Il regime to survive dependent on life-support from South Korea and the outside world. The improvement of human rights and living standards of people in North Korea is a legitimate way of sustaining the regime’s survival.
The North Korean human rights issue is a major factor for causing instability in the Northeast Asia region. There already exists the problem of refugee flows into China since the great famine of 1995. The implosion of North Korea will have a very disruptive impact on the security of the Chinese-North Korean border. Enormous economic costs need to be shared by the countries in the region with the collapse of North Korea. Consensus exists among the countries in the region that deteriorating human rights conditions in North Korea is a key factor for instability in the region as well as on the Korean peninsula.[4]
Another common ground for consensus is to preserve the “long peace” of the past five decades in the Northeast Asia region and extend it to the 21st century.[5] It is striking to see that the period of the long peace after the end of the Korean War departs from the pattern of the relations among great powers surrounding the Korean peninsula during the first half of the 20th century. The Korean peninsula was at the center of many conflicts of the 20th century. These included the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, the Manchurian Incident of 1931, the Sino-Japanese War of 1937, the Pacific War of 1941, and the Korean War of 1950. After the Korean War, a five decade period of peace endured in the region. An objection can be raised to the term “peace” to explain the stability of the period. The Korean division and the rivalries over the disputed territories among the countries in the region led to North Korean provocations and crises. Yet these incidents did not develop into a major war comparable to those in the first half of the century.
Despite the fact that the long peace was not an ideal permanent peace, the stability for such a long period contributed to political development and economic prosperity in the region. All the countries in the region except North Korea benefited from the long peace. Promoting and preserving the long peace can be a common structural ground of the Northeast Asian international system on which a new Helsinki model to deal with North Korea can be built. A state that failed to adapt to and benefit from the long peace system will adopt a revisionist policy to change or subvert it.[6] Other countries that consider the long peace system in their national interests will pursue a status quo policy to maintain and strengthen it. The formation of the six-party talks was possible because the status quo states agreed to curb the revisionist policy of North Korea with its nuclear weapons program. This multilateral security dialogue can be expanded to incorporate the issue of human rights in the agenda for future negotiations.
Feasibility of the Helsinki Approach to North Korea
Despite the fact that consensus exists among the countries in the region on the desirability of developing the Northeast Asian version of the Helsinki model, specific initiatives should be taken to make the new model feasible and hospitable to geopolitical conditions of the region. The US Congress and non-governmental organizations took the initiative in promoting the Helsinki approach to North Korea. The initiative cannot be realized without the full support of South Korea. Yet the Roh Moo Hyun government is consistent in its policy of neglect toward human rights abuses in North Korea. The Roh administration abstained from voting in the meetings of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The South Korean government is fearful that any mention of human rights violations will antagonize North Korea and take the risk of compromising the policy of reconciliation and cooperation between the two Koreas. Its fear is unwarranted because the engagement policy is not a unilateral concession and embracement process, but a reciprocal process of providing incentives in one issue area in return for concessions in other issue areas. The willingness of the South Korean government to take the human rights issue seriously is the first step to devising the Helsinki model to North Korea.
The South Korean initiative is essential because security culture in the region is oriented toward bilateral alliances. Unlike Europe, historical and cultural differences constitute a barrier to the development of multilateralism in the region. Historical legacies and animosities between China and Japan prevent them from taking the initiative. South Korea is in a better position to persuade other countries to join the Helsinki process in the region. Finland played the dominant role of initiating the Helsinki process in 1969. The term “Helsinki process” was coined to appreciate the role of Finland. The South Korean initiative will be helpful in organizing the multilateral process.
To take a diplomatic initiative for promoting the new process, the South Korean government should make careful efforts to dissipate concerns about alliance cohesion in the US-South Korean and US-Japanese bilateral alliances. The strained alliance relationship under the Roh government is detrimental to the development of the multilateral process. Japan might refuse to join the Helsinki process in the region if the US-Japanese alliance is undermined as a result of the creation of the new model. The United States is also reluctant to join the process if the Helsinki model in the region is to loosen up alliance cohesion. During the Helsinki negotiations in Europe the United States was concerned that the Helsinki process might undermine alliance cohesion between the United States and NATO and lead to the dissolution of NATO.[7] Close consultation between the United States and South Korea is essential in initiating the Helsinki model to North Korea.