North Korea’s offer of a dialogue is unlikely to elicit a positive response from South Korea which instead is militarily drawing closer to Japan to enhance deterrence.
Soon after naming the North Korean regime as its “enemy”, South Korea has, quite abruptly, invoked the desirability of reverting to the Six-Party Talks.
Kan’s statement about sending the SDF to the Korean peninsula to rescue Japanese citizens and people of Japanese origin in the event of an emergency has raised the spectre of a possible revival of Japanese militarism.
The UNSC statement is more a testimony to Sino-US compromise arrived at after nearly a month and half of negotiations rather than being a “diplomatic victory” as has been hailed by North Korea.
While the effect of regionalism has begun to wane, the propensity of youth to vote against specific issues that they deem not beneficial is likely to be the dominant cleavage in South Korean politics.
The one country that has not condemned North Korea’s role in the sinking of the Cheonan is China, which has its own strategic and economic compulsions to back North Korea.
