[INTERVIEW] 'Seoul fails to position itself amid N. Korean crisis'

Global Peace Foundation (GPF) Chairman Moon Hyun-jin speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., Nov. 15. / Courtesy of GPF

By Kim Hyo-jin

WASHINGTON, D.C. ― The Moon Jae-in government is not doing enough to resolve North Korea's nuclear issue, its foreign policy lacking clarity, says one NGO director.

"The leadership of South Korea is not doing its people any favors by having a willy-nilly position in North Korea policy," Global Peace Foundation (GPF) Chairman Moon Hyun-jin said in an interview with The Korea Times, Nov. 15.

He claimed Seoul has to position itself as a major partner with the U.S. and push its agenda forward in close coordination with the alliance.

Dismissing Seoul's so-called "balance diplomacy" between the U.S. and China as naive, he stressed his view is purely based on the acknowledgement of Northeast Asia's current geopolitical shift.

"American leadership is defining the region right now," he said. "America wants to hold hands with South Korea more so than ever ― for South Korea to be coy about it is very foolish. South Koreans need to wake up and realize the severity of the situation here."

He pointed out the Trump administration made the Korean Peninsula issue a top priority, for the first time in U.S. foreign policy history.

The American initiative in dealing with North Korea is natural, as the U.S. has legitimate concern over the belligerent country posing a nuclear threat toward it, Chairman Moon said.

What South Korea does not realize is that the regional stakeholders, he claimed, China and Russia, now respect the U.S. position and are actually tied to it, mindful of their future national interest.

"America is sending the signal to China and Russia if the nuclear program the Kim Jong-un regime is developing is not halted, it will not tolerate it and do something about it," he said. "Under such circumstances, China and Russia are all going to change their calculus."

In this changing dynamic, he advises the Moon Jae-in government to strengthen the alliance with the U.S. and Japan, and more importantly, put forward reunification of the peninsula as its national end game.

Promoting unification may be difficult to have empathy for at this point, but Chairman Moon believes it is important for South Korea to provide the global community an idea of what should be the long-term agenda on the peninsula.

"U.S. is still developing its North Korea policy. In the short term, it is saying it absolutely needs to stop the nuclear program but what's going to happen thereafter?" he asked.

"South Korea should take it as an opportunity to explain the best way to deal with (the peninsula issue), not only in the short term but also in the long term, is through the unification process."

He claimed this time the global community will be on board with the unification movement once the South Korean government takes the initiative.

"We have to do everything to make sure there is no military confrontation so that is why the objective of unification is so important at this time," he said. "If South Korea makes unification its national agenda, the world community will start to galvanize around South Korea."

For a decade, Chairman Moon has campaigned globally on the need to unify the two Koreas.

This year, with the message that the current security crisis can be an opportunity that brings about peaceful resolution, the NGO director held a two-day international forum at the heart of American political power ― Washington, D.C.

Dozens of U.S.-based North Korea experts, civic leaders and South Korean politicians gathered to discuss solutions for the North's nuclear threat. The event will continue in Seoul between Dec. 7 and 8.

Chairman Moon organized an alliance of over 850 NGOs, Action for Korea United (AKU) in 2012 and mounted various campaigns including one to encourage South Koreans to donate 1,000 won, equal to the cost of three meals for one North Korean. The AKU grew into South Korea's largest NGO for unification.

The AKU launched the One-K Global Campaign Organizing Committee for its long term and expanded unification campaign in 2015.

The committee released a song that promotes Korean unification made by Grammy-winning producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in March 2017, first at the One-K global concert in Manila with K-pop idol groups participating.

His multifaceted campaigns for unification have no boundaries, varying from cultural sector, civic society to academia. Chairman Moon said his next plan is to establish new media that has a "politically balanced perspective," expressing discontent on the existing ones courting to the biggest shareholder's interest.

Moon is the third son of the late leader of the Unification Church, Moon Sun-myung, who opened the door to North Korea in the 1990s with multiple North Korean businesses.

Moon's father established the international company Mt. Geumgang in 1994, started offering tours of Mt. Geumgang in 1998, and the following year established Pyeonghwa Motors ― a joint car venture between South and North Korea.

Moon recalled, though it was a family legacy that runs in his blood, what made him jump into the movement in 2010 was a hard lesson from the Sunshine Policy, part of the efforts to engage with Pyongyang by the 1998-2003 liberal Kim Dae-jung government.

"There was a tremendous opportunity throughout the 1990s to have an agenda that could lead to unification, but if you look at the Sunshine Policy, it did not have a clearly stated endgame or outcome so it failed," he said.

"So you should have clarity what the outcome of that engagement is. You are not just talking for talking's sake. You are not just talking to build goodwill. You are actually talking to have an outcome that is the unification of the Korean Peninsula."

He said he expects the Moon government not to fall into the same fallacy this time, taking the opportunity of the heightened global attention to the peninsula.

"If South Korea takes that stance now, you have the global audience that has not existed before. And all of a sudden that aspiration of the unified peninsula can be something that can capture the imagination of the global community very much like Nelson Mandela's struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi's struggle for independence against colonial Britain and Martin Luther Kings' fight for civil rights," he said.

"Our dream this time can be on that level."