Winton Dong

dht0620@126.com

CANADA and the United States co-hosted a foreign ministers’ meeting on the security of the Korean Peninsula in Vancouver from Jan. 15 through 16.

Top diplomats of Canada and the United States held an official dinner Jan. 15, welcoming foreign ministers and senior officials representing 20 nations that once sent troops as part of the “allied forces” and fought together with the United States during the 1950-1953 Korean War.

According to insiders, they gathered for a meeting intended to discuss the Korean nuclear issue and exert maximum economic pressure and further sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) so as to force it to end its nuclear and missile programs. “We will advance the global pressure campaign on Pyongyang, which has accelerated tests of nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.

The meeting was held in the name of keeping stability on the Peninsula. Yet, the signal it has sent to the world is exactly the opposite.

At present, the positive momentum of interactions between North and South Korea is encouraging. The two sides have held high-level and working-level communications including Pyongyang’s participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics and sending an art troupe to the sports event, which will be held in South Korea’s eastern county of Pyeongchang in February.

Even a small step forward towards stability and security is hard earned on the Korean Peninsula. However, at such a crucial moment when the two Koreas are showing goodwill to each other and showing a desire to improve ties, the Vancouver meeting could be anything but conducive to the diplomatic denuclearization process. All countries who once allied with the U.S. during the Korean War gathered to talk about the stability and security of the peninsula; what a farce. What message do they want to send to the world?

The Korean nation has been undergoing the tragedy of division since 1948. Ending the region’s confrontational history is an urgent demand which can no longer be delayed. Frankly speaking, the United States is itself the initiator of the dangerous situation on the Korean Peninsula. Facts have also proved that mounting sanctions will make people of the DPRK more united against and hostile to the United States and its allies. If Western countries headed by the U.S. really want to solve the issue in the interests of all, they should mainly pursue peaceful measures instead of further economic sanctions.

Meanwhile, for the Vancouver meeting to discuss the Korean Peninsula without the attendance of China and Russia, two important parties of the Six-Party Talks, is like fishing in the air. “The Vancouver meeting has no legality and representation to speak of from the very beginning, and China opposed to it from day one,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a press conference on Jan. 16. The Six-Party Talks mean that the U.S. and the DPRK can have direct dialogue with the participation of South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. Such talks were initiated in Beijing in August 2003, but have been shelved since December 2008.

Moreover, the attitudes of the U.S. Government towards the Korean Peninsula are also ambiguous. Despite the fact that Tillerson’s attitude was very strong during the Vancouver meeting, we don’t know to what extent he can represent the ideas of the Oval Office. Many times, his political words on the Peninsula have been inconsistent with and denied by U.S. President Donald Trump.

(The author is the editor-in-chief of the Shenzhen Daily with a Ph.D. from the Journalism and Communication School of Wuhan University.)