With just 70 days left before the Dec. 19 presidential election, campaign stages are full of events and political imagery. What’s annoyingly lacking are concrete policies, and nowhere else is this more visible than in the areas of national security and foreign affairs. This is hard to understand given Korea is virtually the only divided country in the world, surrounded by far larger neighbors. Both candidates and voters are responsible for this sorry state.
The relative indifference not just reflects predominant voter concerns about economy and welfare but also their thinking that whoever becomes the next leader will at least be better than President Lee Myung-bak in inter-Korean matters. Probably right, but staying just one step ahead of the incumbent is not enough, especially considering the increasingly volatile international politics in this part of the world.
It was meaningful in this regard that Moon Jae-in, nominee of the liberal opposition Democratic United Party, presented a relatively detailed and comprehensive inter-Korean policy package Thursday, ahead of his two rivals. Park Geun-hye, the conservative Saenuri Party candidate, and independent centrist Ahn Cheol-soo should quickly follow Moon’s example.
The two main pillars of Moon’s inter-Korean policy are a peace regime and economic union, which he says largely inherit the engagement tradition of the liberal party but not a return to the Sunshine Policy itself. This seems natural because a different environment needs a new approach.
Looking back, this cool-headed or principled engagement should have been the inter-Korean policy of the present administration. Lee instead took an extreme hard-line policy and the two Koreas are now seeing their relationship hit the lowest point in a decade. Fortunately, both Park and Ahn are vowing to respect the agreements reached at the second inter-Korean summit in 2007, with both stressing individual accords should first win bipartisan approval in parliament before implementation.
It is good just to hear all three major candidates acknowledge the need for improving inter-Korean ties but they, especially Park and Ahn, need to give more specific programs and timetables.
Vital as these relations are, North Korea cannot and should not be the sole element in candidates’ diplomatic and security considerations.
The region, and the whole world, is now undergoing a readjustment of hegemonic supremacy led by the United States and China. The Korean Peninsula is one of the potential ― perhaps far more likely than others ― clash points of the two giants, as it was six decades ago. The next five years or so will prove crucial for this peninsula to avoid another military conflict, move toward peaceful unification, and firmly secure its basis for survival as the world’s major military and economic powers are reviving their expansionist and imperialist ambitions.
Korea’s next president should be someone who can retake the initiative in matters concerning the fate of the whole peninsula. He or she should be able to draw national consensus on diplomatic and security matters, restore trust between the Koreas and implement bolder, more creative policies. This will be impossible for candidates mired in petty ideological rivalry, and the “politicization” of diplomacy by pandering to emotional and confrontational sentiments of inter-Korean hawks, a remnant of the Cold War. President Lee dealt with North Korea rigidly and at times impulsively. His predecessor must be flexible and cautious.
There are too few policies and programs for voters to judge which candidate best meets these requirements. Of course, words can be different from deeds. But voters must demand more details in this regard. Some experts say small countries can’t achieve diplomacy. Stated reversely, it suggests diplomacy means all middle powers survive.
And, as the candidates themselves admit, there can be no economy or welfare without security.