SEOUL: North Korea's new best friend might be the incoming South Korean parliament, closely followed perhaps, in a few months, by a new Democratic president in the United States.
Parliament meets in Seoul on Monday for the first time since April elections which saw President Roh Moo-hyun's supporters in the liberal Uri Party win a clear majority, and reduced the conservative Grand National Party (GNP) - hated by Pyongyang - to a level where it can no longer curb government initiatives to aid the North.
And probably no American has excited the North more than Democratic presidential contender John Kerry who has said that, if elected, he would deal directly with Pyongyang. That would finally answer the nagging demand atop North Korea's wish-list.
Alarm bells have been ringing across South Korea that the country can no longer take for granted an unwavering US commitment to a 50-year bilateral alliance formed to defend the South against communist aggression.
The Uri Party, however, sees this rapid evolution as an opportunity to improve relations with its combative neighbour. "A reduction of US troops in Korea and a change in their nature are expected with the US global defence posture review," Uri Party spokesman Im Jong-seok said last week, referring to a US plan to move to a smaller, faster deployed and more technologically advanced force on the peninsula.
"We should take this not as a crisis but as an opportunity to transform South-North relations, seek more active dialogue between the two Koreas' militaries and ease tension," he said.
Whether North Korea will be sincere in keeping a pledge made on Friday to cooperate to reduce military tension on the peninsula is another question. For example, South Korea accused the North of carrying out a provocative naval manoeuvre on Friday within hours of a pledge to Seoul by senior North Korean military officers to halt just that sort of gesture. Pyongyang blamed the incident on the South.
South Korea and the United States, North Korea and close ally China - four of the six countries involved in slow-moving talks to resolve a crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions - fought each other in the 1950-53 Korean War. At least on paper, they remain enemies in the absence of a permanent peace treaty.
As North Korea anticipates better ties with South Korea and the United States, the Seoul-Washington alliance may never be the same again. On the day that the new National Assembly sits, South Korean and US officials will begin a new round of talks on removing up to 12,000 US military personnel from the peninsula. This goes some way to meeting North Korean demands for all US troops to leave.
Analysts in South Korea see this as an inevitable outcome of the months of friction that began just before Roh took office. "The lack of trust between the United States and South Korea has become pretty deep," said Kim Sung-han of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul.
In recent days South Korean officials have taken pains to explain that the US troop realignment plan predates Roh's presidency and anything that his administration or allies in the Uri Party may have done to trigger a falling-out.
But the new parliament appears anything but eager to reverse or slow the weakening of the alliance. "We will make it a priority that South Korea is consulted when the United States realigns its troops in the South," a summary of Uri Party policy workshop discussions last month said. -Reuters
