Why Park must visit China first

The commitment of the Republic of Korea's president to a "confidence-building process on the Korean Peninsula" should set the agenda for the ROK's relations with China. And yet ROK President Park Geun-hye's government is mechanically replicating conventional thinking by laying emphasis on its alliance with the United States. As a result, instead of visiting China on her first official overseas trip, she will fly to the US.

The war threats of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea will be on top of Park's agenda during her visit to Washington in May, though some argue that the ROK-US military alliance has already exceeded its function of deterring the DPRK.

The issues Park will discuss in Washington include transfer of operational control from the Combined Force Command, established between Seoul and Washington in 1979, to the ROK military authority in 2015, revision of the bilateral nuclear agreement which has constrained the ROK's nuclear reprocessing activities, and implementation of extended deterrence against the DPRK's long-range missiles and nuclear warheads.