SEOUL: North Korea has been condemned internationally for conducting its most powerful nuclear test yet, but, across the border, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is also attracting flak for his policy of pursuing engagement with Pyongyang. Rebuked by U. S. President Donald…
SEOUL: North Korea has been condemned internationally for conducting its most powerful nuclear test yet, but, across the border, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is also attracting flak for his policy of pursuing engagement with Pyongyang.
Rebuked by U. S. President Donald Trump, Moon is facing growing calls at home to change course and take a tougher line against North Korea, even from his core support base of young liberals, according to hundreds of comments posted online.
Moon, who swept to power after winning a May 9 election, remains hugely popular but his policy of pursuing both pressure and dialogue with the North is now under scrutiny.
Trump was blunt about the situation facing South Korea, one of Washington’s biggest allies in Asia.
« South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they (North Korea) only understand one thing,  » he said in a tweet on Sunday, after the nuclear test.
Within South Korea, doubts about the « Moonshine » policy of engaging the North have been growing in recent weeks because there has been no change in the pace of the North’s ballistic missile testing since Moon took office.
The North twice test-fired intercontinental ballistic missiles in July. Now, despite international warnings, it conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sunday.
« You said you will not have dialogue with the North if the North conducts a nuclear test. Keep your word,  » said a post on the Facebook page of the presidential Blue House from a user named Kim Bojoong.
Moon said during his campaign for the presidency that dialogue would be « impossible for quite some time » if the North were to go ahead with another nuclear test.
However, Moon indicated on Sunday at a National Security Council meeting that he had not given up on talks with the North, a sentiment he repeated on Monday in a telephone call with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
« Pressure must be strengthened until the North comes to the table for dialogue,  » the presidential Blue House quoted Moon as telling Abe.
« RATHER FEEBLE »
In another post on the palace’s Facebook page, user Shin Sanggyun said: « We know things are tough for you, mister president, but our response to the North’s nuclear pursuit has been rather feeble. »
It is time South Korea start considering using its shipbuilding expertise to build nuclear submarines and junior aircraft carriers, Shin said.
The Facebook posts were among hundreds of similar messages left on official social media maintained and monitored by the Blue House including its Twitter account and on the country’s largest Naver.com web portal.
Sentiment expressed on South Korea’s social media, where users are predominantly people in their 20s and 30s, has been a barometer of political support for Moon, a former human rights lawyer swept to power by an anti-graft movement that brought down his predecessor Park Geun-hye.
Moon’s support rating has slipped slightly in recent days but he remains hugely popular.
A public opinion survey by the Realmeter polling agency conducted two days before Sunday’s nuclear test and released on Monday showed support for Moon fell by 0.8 percentage point from a week ago to 73.1 percent.
But support among youngsters was strong with Moon getting an 85 percent approval rating among people in their 20s.
South Korea’s conservative opposition parties said the Moon government’s expectations about North Korea were unrealistic and isolating the country from its allies.
« While the Moon Jae-in government made appeasement gestures and haggled for dialogue despite the North’s continued provocations, we have become a nuclear hostage,  » a senior Liberal Korea Party member, Kim Tae-heum, said on Monday.
Moon’s push for dialogue was bound to hit a dead end because Pyongyang never really considered the South as a dialogue partner, said Kim Jun-seok, political diplomacy professor at Dongguk University in Seoul.
« They have to acknowledge us as a partner for talks, but all North Korea wants is to talk with the United States,  » Kim said.
(Additional reporting by Christine Kim; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Even before North Korea detonated its most powerful nuclear bomb yet, Japan was calling for moves to cut off its oil supply.
Even before North Korea detonated its most powerful nuclear bomb yet, Japan was calling for moves to cut off its oil supply.
Afterward, U. S. President Donald Trump threatened to halt all trade with any country that does business with Kim Jong Un’s regime. China, which supplies most of its food and fuel, on Monday called the warning “unacceptable.”
Some sort of oil embargo is likely to come up as the international community discusses a response to the nuclear test, starting with a United Nations Security Council meeting later Monday. China has resisted such a move in the past over fears that North Korea might collapse, but has grown increasingly frustrated with its rogue ally.
Still, while China might make a gesture to Trump in an effort to defuse his criticisms, it may not be the panacea the U. S. president is looking for, and do little in a practical sense to slow Kim down.
“A temporary or partial ban is possible, but the Chinese government will definitely refuse to cut off oil exports completely or permanently to North Korea, ” said Shi Yinhong, an adviser to China’s cabinet and international relations professor at Renmin University in Beijing. “If China agreed to cut off oil exports completely, China would use all its tools but not achieve any purpose, and the consequence could be costly.”
Since the Korean War, Beijing has avoided prodding North Korea to the point it might collapse, fearing a destabilizing economic blow and the possibility of the U. S. military gaining influence on its border via a unified Korea. That calculation has held even while China’s interests have diverged from those of North Korea.
Relations between President Xi Jinping and Kim have been cool — a shift from prior leaderships in both countries — with state-run media occasionally sparring. Kim’s decision to conduct the nuclear test as China prepared to host leaders from the so-called BRICS nations was seen as a slight to Xi.
China supplies most of North Korea’s crude oil, according to the U. S. Energy Information Administration, but it’s hard to know exactly how much: China hasn’ t reported any volumes in its published customs data since 2013. Based on reported volumes, North Korea’s oil use over an entire year would be less than the U. S. East Coast consumes in a single day.
Oil products are transported by North Korean tanker to the port of Nampo, near the capital Pyongyang, while crude oil is sent via an aging pipeline from the Chinese border city of Dandong, Reuters reported earlier this year. While other countries supply the regime with fuel, the total figures are suspected to be under-reported, according to the EIA.
Even if China did agree to ban all oil supplies, North Korea would likely have stockpiles to sustain critical operations for months and could earn cash for its weapons programs from its remaining non-sanctioned exports, Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist for IHS Markit, said in an email. Paltry Consumption
“These FX inflows may be sufficient to allow the North Korean ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons programs (to continue) operating, ” he said. It would take a ban on all exports, a complete blockade of fuel and the elimination of remittances from North Korean workers abroad to bring North Korea to the negotiating table, he said.
North Korea’s oil consumption last year was paltry. It averaged 15,000 barrels a day, according to an EIA estimate based on reported trade information, compared with almost 2.6 million barrels a day in South Korea and 12.5 million in China.
The agency estimates North Korea crude imports at about 10,000 barrels a day, all of which goes to its only operating refinery, the Ponghwa chemical facility, located near the Chinese border. China also reported sending 6,000 barrels a day of oil products to North Korea last year, according to the EIA, citing UN customs data. Figures from China’s General Administration of Customs shows those shipments include fuel oil, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and lubricants.
China says it will only implement sanctions agreed by the UN. In February it banned purchases from North Korea of coal and iron ore for the rest of the year, and in August it supported the  Security Council vote to tighten sanctions that targeted about a third of North Korea’s $3 billion in exports. Around 90 percent of North Korea’s documented trade was with China in 2016.
Economists at Citigroup Inc. said the nuclear test could be the “red line” sufficient for China and Russia to back additional UN sanctions, including curbs on oil and energy exports. But it’s less clear if agreement can be reached for a complete embargo.
“It is also unclear if more sanctions would suffice to change North Korea regime behavior, ” the Citigroup analysts wrote in a note.
An editorial in the Communist Party-affiliated Global Times on Sunday questioned if a ban would deter Kim.
“If China completely cuts off the supply of oil to North Korea or even closes the China-North Korea border, it is uncertain whether we can deter Pyongyang from conducting further nuclear tests and missile launches, ” it said.
Any further sanctions against North Korea would be meaningless, said Shen Dingli, deputy dean of Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies in Shanghai.
“Sanctions would be more like gestures, ” Shen said. “North Korea is engaged to develop nuclear weapons, and none of the two powers can change that.” 
— With assistance by Keith Zhai, Jing Yang, Enda Curran, Dan Murtaugh, and James Mayger

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