Researchers urge Moon Jae-in to form a close working relationship with Donald Trump and to establish a new special envoy role for North Korea policy emulating the “Perry Process”

Researchers from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) said they are optimistic about the election of South Korean president Moon Jae-in who assumed office last week following waves of protest across the country.

Now that the vacancy left in the wake of former President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment has been filled, the South Korean government needs to work to strengthen bilateral relations with the United States amid escalating tensions in Northeast Asia, they said.

The Moon administration should immediately engage U.S. President Donald Trump and his senior staff at the White House and government agencies, said Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow at Shorenstein APARC.

“Moon would do well to establish a personal relationship with Trump,” said Stephens, who was U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 2008 to 2011. “The new administration must set up a meeting as early as possible and be ready to engage on a range of issues.”

“In a sense, Moon has to play catch-up,” said Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin, who noted that Trump already held in-person meetings with other Asian heads of state in the United States, including summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Shin added that a coherent U.S. strategy toward Asia and senior staff appointments in the State and Defense Departments would also aid in supporting the foundation upon which the South Korean and American governments work together on policy challenges, especially North Korea.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities have become more and more advanced over the past few months, and provocations have continued to ratchet up, including its firing of a ballistic missile that landed in the sea near Russia on Sunday and repeat threats to conduct a sixth nuclear test.

The Moon administration must focus on establishing trust and cooperation with the Trump administration because it is the only pathway to finding a resolution to North Korea’s program, said Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, an additional center in the Freeman Spogli Institute.

“Any solution must be compatible with the interests of Seoul, but it has to be done in concert with Washington to get Pyongyang’s attention,” said Hecker, who served as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and has traveled to North Korea seven times since 2004 to survey its nuclear facilities.

During the campaign, Moon repeatedly spoke of his proposals to reengage the North Korean regime, such as holding talks with its leader Kim Jong-un and re-opening Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint economic zone on the North Korean side of the border.

Stephens and Shin said Moon’s proposals for North Korean engagement would be a step in the right direction if pursued in due time and led under the direction of a special envoy from South Korea emulating the American “Perry Process.”

The Perry Process, proposed by former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and implemented in the late 1990s under the Clinton administration, entails the appointment of a senior-level, bipartisan representative to pursue a two-track approach of engagement through joint projects and of continued dialogue on denuclearization with North Korea.

Appointing one person in South Korea to lead North Korea policy would help centralize and streamline its organization, which currently requires coordination of activities across dozens of government agencies, the two researchers noted.

“We recognize that establishing such a position and filling the position would be far from easy,” said Shin, co-author of the study Tailored Engagement. “But the magnitude of the nuclear crisis requires restructuring the way in which the South Korean government deals with North Korea, achieving domestic consensus, and shoring up international support for its efforts.”

The United States, China, Japan and Russia are the key international countries concerned with the peace and stability of Northeast Asia, yet South Korea has both an acute need and the potential to assume greater leadership of North Korea policy, said Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar.

China, as North Korea’s largest trade partner, exercises influence over North Korea by maintaining a commercial relationship in the hope of avoiding a collapse of the regime. Yet, its leverage only goes so far, he added.

The Moon administration should consider the limits of Chinese influence before making policy decisions regarding North Korea, Fingar said, for example, whether to freeze or remove the U.S. anti-ballistic missile system, Thermal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), deployed last April in South Korea, which the Chinese government strongly opposed.

“There is little that Beijing can or will do that would persuade Pyongyang to be more receptive to initiatives from Seoul than it would otherwise be,” said Fingar, a China specialist who served as chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council. “Seoul should not ‘pay’ much to obtain Chinese assistance because China already supports reengagement and would not do more no matter what Seoul offered as an inducement.”

It is of vital importance the Moon administration seeks to strengthen trilateral cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States, and to consider holding a summit to address areas of collaboration, all of which would function alongside the China-Japan-South Korea trilateral structure toward creating stability in the region, according to Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC.

“Such cooperation is essential to the security of the region – without it, the United States cannot fulfill its obligation to defend South Korea against the threat posed by North Korea,” said Sneider, who leads the Divided Memories and Reconciliation research project. “Moreover, it’s in the interest of all three countries to tighten such cooperation to balance the rise of China.”

The Moon administration should, above all else, take time to consider its first steps despite pressures to perform early, said Michael Armacost, a fellow at Shorenstein APARC who held a 24-year career in the U.S. government.

“Getting things right is more important than making a quick splash,” said Armacost, a former U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs. “I would advise any new president to proceed at a deliberate pace, focusing particularly on the key personal issues first, and consulting widely before enunciating major policy departures.”

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In a Q&A, Stanford postdoctoral fellow Darika Saingam explains why Thailand's battle against drugs continues and what is needed to introduce good policy that works to prevent illegal drug trade and supports recovering addicts.

Despite Thailand’s decade-long crackdown on drugs, demand for illegal substances has risen. A green leaf drug known as ‘kratom’ is a symbol of this rise as young people eagerly adopt the drug for entertainment and join an older generation of laborers who chewed it to survive long hours of work in the fields—and are now heavily addicted. Curtailing substance abuse and its consequences takes good public policy and solutions must be area-specific and evidence-based, according to a Stanford postdoctoral fellow.

Darika Saingam, the 2015-16 Developing Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow, has conducted two cross-sectional surveys and more than 1,000 interviews with drug users, recovered addicts, and local public officials in an effort to better understand the evolution of substance abuse in southern Thailand.

At Stanford, she is preparing two papers that offer policy options suitable for Thailand and other developing countries in Southeast Asia. Saingam spoke with the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) where she will give a public talk on May 17. The interview text below was edited for brevity.

For decades, Thailand has been an epicenter of drugs. Can you describe the extent of the problem today?

According to a 2014 report, 1.2 million people were involved in illegal drug activities across Thailand. The total number of drug cases saw a 41 percent increase from 2013 to 2014. New groups of drug traffickers are mobilizing while existing groups are still active. Drug users who are young become drug dealers as they get older. The number of drug users below 15 years of age has increased dramatically.

According to your research, what drives Thais toward illegal drug use and the trafficking business?

Adults in Thailand use drugs to relieve stress and counteract the effects of work. Adolescents use them for entertainment. Historically, farmers and laborers from rural areas of Thailand would use opium for pain relief. More recently, a consumable tablet known as yaba has become popular along with crystal methamphetamine and marijuana. Young people are increasingly using yaba and kratom.

Thailand is still a developing country, but it is industrializing quickly. Social and cultural norms have been shifting and people want an improved quality of life. A lot of young people are unemployed and lack social support and are therefore more likely to turn to drug trafficking for economic opportunity. The economic recession and political strife in countries bordering Thailand have exacerbated the situation.

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Photos (left to right): A man holds up a kratom leaf. / Saingam examines kratom leaves as part of her research to understand illegal cultivation practices.

What is kratom and why is it popular?

For nearly a century, the native people of Thailand have chewed kratom. It is a leaf that grows on trees resembling a coffee plant. Historically, kratom was used to reduce strain following physical labor, to be able to work harder and longer, and to better tolerate heat and sunlight. Kratom is also embedded in Thai culture and given as a spiritual offering in religious ceremonies. My field research in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat has shown that these motivations are still true today.

Within the past seven years, kratom use has skyrocketed and people are using it in increasingly harmful ways. Chewing kratom is not immediately harmful to health, but combining it with other substances is. This is the recent trend. Users have created new ways to consume it such as in a drink known as a ‘4x100.’ It contains boiled kratom leaves, cough syrup and soft drinks. Additional methamphetamines and benzodiazepines are sometimes added to that mixture.

What strategies must be employed to control substance abuse?

The first step is to realize that the patterns of substance abuse are specific to each location therefore solving the problem must also be. Drug usage is also dynamic. Placing hard control measures on one substance often provokes the emergence of another in its place therefore a holistic approach is important.

Thailand should employ multiple strategies toward effective prevention and control of substance abuse. These strategies include examining the problem and creating policies from an economic perspective (supply and demand), an institutional perspective (national and international drug control cooperation), and a social perspective (structural supports for recovered addicts and mobilization of public participation).

What is the Thai government doing to address the drug problem, and what could they be doing better?

Politicians in Thailand must do a better job at representing the people. Government health workers are often gathering information, assessing needs, and reporting findings to politicians, but these needs are not being accurately addressed. An example of this is politicians ordering to cut down kratom trees – a public display that does not get at the root cause of the problem. The reality is that drug users will quickly find substitutes. According to my study, of the regular users that stopped using kratom, more than 50 percent turned to alcohol instead and did so on a daily basis. This is merely a shift from one substance to another.

On the upside, a crop substitution program created under King Bhumibol Adulyadej offers a successful working model. The program works to replace opium poppy farming with cash crop production. It began in 1969 and is cited for helping an estimated 100,000 people convert their drug crop production to sustainable agricultural activities. Crops cultivated can be sold for profit in nearby towns. The program has also introduced a wide variety of crops and discouraged the slash-and-burn technique of clearing land. It is win-win because it stymies drug trade and provides economic opportunity while also being ecologically sound. This type of program should continue to be scaled up.

Can this model be co-opted elsewhere? What lessons from other countries could inform Thailand’s approach?

Yes, the model could plausibly be implemented in other areas in Thailand and in other Southeast Asian nations.

I think a judicial mechanism such as the kind seen in France could benefit the rural areas in Thailand. The French government has established centers across the country that act as branches of the court that try delinquency cases of minor to moderate severity, and also recommend support services for drug users. Members of the magistrate and civil society actors manage center operations thus placing some responsibility back onto the local community.

I believe an opportunity also exists for Thailand to legalize kratom. Legalization would show a respect for the cultural tradition of chewing kratom leaves and allow the government to suggest safer ways of using it. Bolivia has created a successful model of this through its legalization of coca leaves. Coca in its distilled form is cocaine, but left as a leaf, it is not a narcotic. Indigenous peoples are allowed to chew coca leaves. The government policy is being credited for a decrease in cocaine production as well.