Enriching Substance Is More Important Than Enlarging Size

President Lee Myung-bak has just entered his third year in office in a more upbeat mood than most of his predecessors did.

Lee's approval rating, which hovered around the low-teens a year ago, is now approaching 50 percent, aided mainly by his accomplishments abroad, such as the scheduled hosting of the G20 summit and winning a $20-billion dollar deal to build atomic power plants in the United Arab Emirates.

At home, too, he settled the yearlong dispute over compensation for the victims of the brutal crackdown on evictees in a Seoul redevelopment district, while various surveys show a majority of people are for revising the administrative capital plan, as pushed by the government.

Even normally aggressive North Korea has turned notably pliant, expressing a will to improve relations with the South, hopefully through holding another summit.

So President Lee did not seem to be aiming too high when he said, in a New Year's address Monday, the government will make 2010 a year to elevate Korea to a far greater country than now, and lay the foundation for joining the ranks of advanced countries. Lee was also right when he set his key administrative tasks as creating more jobs and extending the nation's diplomatic reaches to Asia and Africa.

As always, however, what matters is how.

Even worthy goals can turn worthless unless the methods and processes are equally agreeable. Tired of watching the annualized parliamentary paralysis and consequent railroading of major bills, people are skeptical whether there would be any difference this year, if President Lee and his governing party keep resorting to only majority status instead of communication and compromise, resulting live-or-die resistance from the opposition parties.

Nor will the much-trumpeted G20 summit be much more than another expensive vanity fair if it is used ― or abused ― to silence justifiable voices of demands from organized labor and civic groups.

In inter-Korean relations, too, Seoul can hardly afford to remain complacent with the misguided perception that its strategy to tame the impoverished regime has finally begun to work. President Lee was right in this regard to stress the need for bringing about a ``turning point'' in inter-Korean relations this year, proposing to set up liaison offices in each other's capital. He even showed flexibility in deciding the venue for the possible third summit, stressing what's important will be the ``content'' of another meeting between top leaders of both Koreas if and when it takes place. It would be far better, therefore, if the South drops its three-year-long precondition that the North must make the first move by denuclearizing.

This year marks the multiple decennial anniversary: it is the 100th year since Korea was annexed by Japan by force, 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, 50th anniversary of the April 19 Student Uprising, 30th anniversary of the Gwangju Democracy Movement and 10th anniversary of the first South-North summit.

Against this backdrop, global and regional political situations are so rapidly changing that they confound any attempt to predict what will happen in a year or two. And what can seem to be favorable situations, in both the economy and diplomacy, can turn disadvantageous soon for a relatively small, emerging power like Korea.

Only bipartisan sympathy and national unity can ensure Korea's safe escape from recurring crises, which can be attained only by a modest leadership that ceaselessly seeks to communicate better with all sectors of society.