By Sunny Lee
BEIJING — The Lee Myung-bak administration should refrain from launching any major new initiative on North Korea as the President’s term nears its end. Lee’s tough policy on Pyongyang has its own merits and he is advised to exit his presidency keeping policy continuity and allow the next occupant of the presidential office to make a switch, if any, said a well-known Korea expert.
“We know the good cop, bad cop story. Lee has been playing a bad cop role with North Korea. A bad cop also has its own merits,” said Shin Gi-wook, director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.
Speculation continues on whether President Lee’s appointment of Yu Woo-ik as new unification minister would signal a U-turn in Lee’s policy toward the North. Yu, a close confidant of the President, has replaced hard-liner Hyun In-taek.
Lee was elected on a pledge to get tough on North Korea. Upon election, he reversed the Sunshine Policy of engagement and reconciliation with North Korea, a signature policy of the two previous liberal administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun.
But now with 70 percent of Lee’s tenure having already passed, the public is also beginning to add up the score of Lee’s North Korean policy, on whether it has been successful in goading Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear programs and refrain from provocations. Not necessarily.
North Korea sabotaged Lee’s hard-line initiative by sinking the Navy frigate Cheonan and shelling Yeonpyeong Island. The tension on the peninsula last year was at the highest point in the last two decades. Some even saw it nearing the brink of war.
“It’s true that the inter-Korean relationship suffered a setback under the current Lee administration. But Lee’s hard-line policy has not only its downside, but also has its upside,” said Shin.
“The downside is obviously that the security risk on the Korean Peninsula has increased. At the same time, Lee’s tough policy on North Korea also has its positive side of clearly signaling to Pyongyang that the South is no longer a punch bag that it can play around with at will.”
With Lee’s term waning, the question is where South Korea goes from here. The country will elect new members of the National Assembly in April 2012 and a new president in December of the same year.
Some voters have been increasingly disenchanted by Lee’s hard-line posture on the North. Sensing the uneasiness in voter sentiment, Hong Joon-pyo, head of Lee’s own Grand National Party (GNP), demanded the need to tone down the hard-line posture on North Korea. Hong even visited the Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC), a symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation, located within the North’s territory, to show to the public that the GNP could be “flexible.”
Lee accommodated such a view by replacing the hawkish unification minister Hyun with Yu. The new unification chief, only two weeks in office, has already been making brisk moves.
In his inaugural speech, Yu said he would “try to create an atmosphere for dialogue and untangle knots in relations with North Korea.” He also said he would seek a “methodological flexibility” in his approach to North Korea.
On Oct. 6, Yu also told the National Assembly that he “would not exclude the possibility of holding a summit” with North Korea.
There are some pundits who are increasingly leaning toward the view that Lee will attempt to clinch a photo-op with Kim Jong-il before he steps down so as to ramp up his legacy. His immediate two predecessors all held a meeting with the North Korean leader. One of them, Kim Dae-jung, even won a Nobel Peace Prize for thawing the inter-Korean deadlock.
Watching Yu’s brisk moves, some see the pendulum is now swinging from hard line to soft line.
Shin advises against it. “The Lee administration should not take a major new initiative on North Korea. Rather, it should graciously exit the presidency keeping the continuity of his North Korea policy posture. It should give the right to change the policy to the next administration, whoever becomes the president,” said Shin.
The Constitution limits a South Korean president to a single five-year term. Shin sees Lee starting a new major initiative on North Korea at this stage as burdening the next South Korean administration, which will have to deal with the policy platform Lee leaves.
“Former President Roh pushed for a summit with North Korea toward the end of his term in 2007. It became a political burden for newly elected president Lee Myung-bak to shoulder when took office the next year. When Lee scrapped the agreement Roh hammered out with Kim Jong-il and didn’t carry out the inter-Korean pact, Pyongyang naturally became angry. We should not repeat the mistake,” said Shin.
According to Shin, Lee’s role as an outgoing president is to pave the way for the incoming one to take that initiative.
As a bad cop, Lee has been credited for establishing a principle in inter-Korean relations, refusing to give a free lunch to North Korea. Even Chinese analysts who bemoan Lee’s tough North Korean policy acknowledge that Lee’s posture has its merits too. That is, as South Korea has withheld aid to North Korea, North Koreans felt cornered and became more open to adopt market principles in their economic projects with China.
As president, Lee repeatedly said he wouldn’t sit down with Kim Jong-il simply “for the sake of talking,” underscoring that he is a leader who pursues substance, not appearance.
But with his days in office numbered, Lee will also look back on his legacy and might feel tempted to “make up” where he was lacking. Obviously, North Korea will loom large on the list. Historians may record it as a “stalled period” in inter-Korean relations.
Shin suggests that Lee stick to his words. “Politically, this is a time when you may be tempted to seek appearance. But I want him to continue to play his role as a bad cop and preserve his policy consistency. The inter-Korean ties may have been stalled, but it has been also a learning period for both sides. Pyongyang learned that its usual blackmailing doesn’t work anymore. Seoul learned that a tough policy is not a magic bullet in shaping North Korean behavior. It was a reconfiguration time for both.”
“Lee should graciously exit as a bad cop and give the right to determine the new course of North Korean policy to the new administration. As the Bible says, new wine should be put into new bottles,” said Shin.