Abroad

Seoul Diplomatic Danger

Will France be the first major Western power to extend diplomatic recognition to North Korea? That is a rumor circulating persistently here, and the stakes are high for all concerned. The rumor evokes some credence—President François Mitterrand visited the North Korean capital of Pyongyang shortly before his election last year, and the North Koreans have recently established a trade mission in Paris. But the gesture, whatever value it might have for a Socialist government in the West, carries a threat of serious reaction, especially in the commercial sphere. South Korea does big business with the French, to the amount of half a billion dollars a year, and has been lately dickering for the construction of two French nuclear reactors. In addition, the French are interested in contracts for subways in Seoul and Pusan, for a steel mill, a gas liquefication plant, satellites for transmitting the 1988 Olympic Games, and so forth. Such enterprises and projects, South Korean government sources say, would be gravely jeopardized if Paris recognized Pyongyang. Such recognition might, however, gain some tolerance from South Korea if there are sufficient counterweights, for instance, the wholesale recognition of South Korea by the Eastern bloc countries, and the admission of South Korea into the United Nations as a separate state—something that North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union, insistent on following the united-Vietnam model, strongly oppose. Since these things are hardly within the reach of a French government, the point is moot. Nor did the recent visit here of French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson do anything to clarify it. Meanwhile, French business interests here in the South Korean capital are worried that the Mitterrand government would be trading the present profitable commercial reality for the shadow of political prestige, if that is what the recognition of North Korea could be said to entail.

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Seoul Diplomatic Danger

Will France be the first major Western power to extend diplomatic recognition to North Korea? That is a rumor circulating persistently here, and the stakes are high for all concerned. The rumor evokes some credence—President François Mitterrand visited the North Korean capital of Pyongyang shortly before his election last year, and the North Koreans have recently established a trade mission in Paris. But the gesture, whatever value it might have for a Socialist government in the West, carries a threat of serious reaction, especially in the commercial sphere. South Korea does big business with the French, to the amount of half a billion dollars a year, and has been lately dickering for the construction of two French nuclear reactors. In addition, the French are interested in contracts for subways in Seoul and Pusan, for a steel mill, a gas liquefication plant, satellites for transmitting the 1988 Olympic Games, and so forth. Such enterprises and projects, South Korean government sources say, would be gravely jeopardized if Paris recognized Pyongyang. Such recognition might, however, gain some tolerance from South Korea if there are sufficient counterweights, for instance, the wholesale recognition of South Korea by the Eastern bloc countries, and the admission of South Korea into the United Nations as a separate state—something that North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union, insistent on following the united-Vietnam model, strongly oppose. Since these things are hardly within the reach of a French government, the point is moot. Nor did the recent visit here of French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson do anything to clarify it. Meanwhile, French business interests here in the South Korean capital are worried that the Mitterrand government would be trading the present profitable commercial reality for the shadow of political prestige, if that is what the recognition of North Korea could be said to entail.