Posted on: Friday, June 18, 2004

EDITORIAL
Will a reluctant Bush miss Korean spring?

Venerable Hawai'i peacenik Glenn Paige called this week to remind us that we're shortchanging a blockbuster peace story in Korea.

Tuesday was the fourth anniversary of what at the time was a stunning development, the meeting in Pyongyang between the Kims — North Korea's "dear leader," Kim Jong Il, and former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

The enormous promise of that meeting has since been tempered by the failure of Kim Jong Il to fulfill his promise of a reciprocal visit to Seoul, by the alarming crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions and by the Bush administration's resolute opposition to any warming in relations with the North.

Still, as Paige, a retired UH political science professor and president of the nonprofit Center for Global Nonviolence, points out, there's a surge of hopeful, if relatively low-key, signs on that long-troubled peninsula:

• North and South Korea are removing the huge loudspeakers that for decades have blared propaganda at each other across the demilitarized zone. The South has even switched off a giant screen that flashed messages at the North. The final screen wording read: "Peace, Reconciliation and Co-operation."
• Navies from the North and South are in radio communication to prevent the bloody naval clashes that have occurred in recent years in disputed waters. The agreement resulted from a recent conference of inter-Korean military officers.
• 130 North Korean delegates took part this week in ceremonies to mark the 2000 Kim-Kim summit, and hundreds of families divided by partition of the peninsula have been allowed to visit with each other.
• Levels of humanitarian aid to the North, as well as tourism and investment by the South, have steadily increased. Roads and railways across the DMZ have been reconnected.

But the limited signs of warming relations between the North and South, and between the North and its regional neighbors, suggest the fascinating possibility that these governments may go ahead and settle this crisis without Washington's participation.