Mandela's visionary Korean 'peace park'

Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, has a terrific idea. At a dinner with fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae Jung in Seoul, Mandela proposed that a "peace park" be built in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas.

We haven’t been privy to more suggested details, but we would urge that the park take up the entire DMZ. It’s a spot that President Clinton, with reason, once called the most dangerous on Earth. Yet ironically, because it is a no-man’s land, it has become a unique wildlife refuge.

Korea expert Don Oberdorfer writes of rare white-naped cranes wheeling over "the richly forested, unspoiled 2 1/2-mile strip of land that stretches like a ribbon for 150 miles across the waist of the Korean Peninsula."

Such visions flow easily in meetings between Mandela, who oversaw the end of the apartheid juggernaut in South Africa, and Kim, whose "sunshine policy" has already achieved the unimaginable: a summit meeting in which he met with his North Korean counterpart, the formerly reclusive Kim Jong Il.

As reported in recent days, however, a shadow has fallen across Kim’s vision of sunshine for Korea. He experienced unnecessary embarrassment at the hands of President George W. Bush, who publicly professed doubts about Kim’s policy with Kim standing at his side.

Presumably because of anger over Bush’s tough talk, Pyongyang abruptly canceled scheduled Cabinet-level talks with Seoul. Add to this mix a sudden discussion in Washington of a need to renegotiate the so-called "Agreed Framework," a 1994 pledge by North Korea — by all accounts since honored — to suspend its efforts to build nuclear weapons in exchange for a Western agreement to build two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea. The project is far behind schedule.

Bush is right to review the Korea policies inherited from the Clinton administration. Certainly the Agreed Framework was negotiated under crisis conditions and — if Pyongyang is agreeable — could be improved.

But it’s worrisome to see Bush’s fledgling moves in regard to Korea policy splashing cold water on such visions as Mandela’s "peace park." We hope Bush’s mistrust, however prudent, won’t stop him from sharing such dreams.

[back to top]