Chance for New Leadership

By Tong Kim

The Lee Myung-bak government is facing daunting challenges from left and right at home and from the North all at the same time. At home the government is worried about an uneasy aftermath of the emotional funeral of the late former President Roh Moo-hyun. From the North, it has been pushed into the worst security crisis in recent memory.

The outpouring of sympathy from millions of mourners across the country for the tragic death of Roh, who was rejected by conservatives from the beginning and abandoned by progressives toward his final presidential months, has two significant meanings: political and moral reinstatement for the deceased and an expression of discontent with the living president in office.

Posthumously, Roh was hailed as a president who was devoted to democracy, fighting authoritarianism and struggling to end regionalism. He cared about the less privileged. His supporters believe that he was pressured by prosecutors and the press to the point of taking his own life. The opposition Democratic Party has vowed to seek accountability for his death.

Following in the footsteps of his predecessor Kim Dae-jung, Roh tried to solidify peace on the Korean Peninsula in the hope of national unification. He was under no illusions when he decided to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in October 2007. If anything, he may have been ahead of his time on the North, as he was on several controversial domestic issues.

On the first anniversary of the Oct. 4, 2007, summit agreement, Roh said it had become ``a dead tree, dried up and no leaves left on it," but he hoped the tree's roots were still alive that the tree ``may come back to life if watered with care." Upon taking office, he had struggled to be certain that the United States would not start a war in Korea. Later he tried to induce more U.S. flexibility on the denuclearization of North Korea. He passed away two days before the North carried out its second nuclear test.

North Korea will not be fazed by any new, tougher sanction from the U.N. Security Council. Sanctions did not work on the North in the past. The DPRK is not concerned about the displeasure of China or Russia regarding its continuing provocations. It has become a country that follows through on its threats. The six-party talks are dead. The North keeps firing more missiles and reportedly it is now preparing for an ICBM launch, which could be conducted in as early as two weeks.

The North may carry out a third nuclear test to deal a final blow to denuclearization. It has resumed producing more plutonium. It keeps making new threats and renewing the old threats. The fate of the Gaesong Industrial Complex remains at the mercy of the North Koreans, who are becoming increasingly more provocative in rhetoric and action.

The conservatives in Seoul, after the Lee government fully joined the Proliferation Security Initiative, are questioning the reliability of the U.S. ``expanded deterrence" for South Korea and they are discussing whether the South should develop its own nuclear capability. The ruling Grand National Party (GNP) is recommending that the government reconsider taking over wartime operational control from the United States.

The South Korean defense ministry moved up the Watch Con (watch condition) to its second highest level, saying that its military is ready to counter any military provocations from the North. The defense minister has warned that if the North fires missiles at South Korean vessels in the West Sea, his military would destroy the North Korean missile launch locations.

As tensions rise in Korea, senior officials in the Obama administration, including the defense secretary, have reiterated the U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea. The U.S. Army chief of staff says the United States is capable of fighting a conventional war in Korea, while engaged in the war on terrorism. The secretary of state warned that Pyongyang would face the consequences of its increasing belligerence.

Neither Seoul nor Washington seems to have any plan to get off the dangerous collision course, as if diplomacy has ended with regards the goal of denuclearizing North Korea. Nobody seems to understand why the North Koreans are taking a more risky path at this juncture. Most North Korea watchers have simply been speculating about what is going on in Pyongyang since Kim Jong-il had a serious stroke last August.

In Seoul, many realized belatedly that the Lee government's tough policy was counterproductive for denuclearization and that it instead helped precipitate the current situation of confrontation with the North. Some GNP leaders want to take advantage of the renewed North Korean threat to rally public support for the Lee government.

But such threats no longer have a terrifying impact on ordinary South Koreans, and such tactics won't work because they have been used frequently by past authoritarian regimes in the name of national security. By the same token, North Korean is accustomed to them, to the effect of diminishing returns. So far, public insensitivity to security threats has not been bad for the stock market and economy.

The present crisis of double jeopardy offers an opportunity for President Lee to show a kind of new leadership that can bring about national reconciliation and rebuild a broad base of support for his government. He needs to practice the politics of integration instead of the politics of division.

To this end, he may first want to fire the attorney general and the chief prosecutor, and then move to accommodate some of the well intended but unfulfilled political and social agendas of the late president Roh, who also was responsible for hardening the political divide along ideological lines. Lee needs to transform his North Korea policy into a truly pragmatic one, which can contribute to easing of the tensions and to the resumption of dialogue and cooperation.

South Korea ought to recover its leading role in dealing with the North Korea issue. The diplomacy of engagement, instead of harsh rhetoric or ineffective sanctions, should be given another chance in the absence of a better option. War is no option for South Korea, even if North Korea would be gone at the end.

If Lee Myung-bak does not act decisively to reform domestic politics and to invent a new approach to North Korea, he might lose even more of the confidence of the people, and there would be more difficulties waiting for him that will cripple his ability to recover the South Korean economy, for which he was elected. What's your take?

Tong Kim is a research professor with the Ilmin Institute of International Relations at Korea University and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He can be reached at tong.kim8@yahoo.com.