By Oh Young-jin
When I was a child, I couldn’t wait to get older. Then, age was felt like a military rank: the older, the higher.
By the time I passed the median point in Korean men’s life expectancy, I began to feel scared about the flight of time. Then, it felt like a 150km per hour four-seam fastball that I kept swinging at but always missed.
Nowadays, it is no longer a fastball but more like a wicked curveball that I never fail to miss every time when I try to hit it (I am not that young but not as old as you may think by now).
If I have gained any wisdom from my change of perception about the passage of time, I have realized that it has never been a fastball or a slow curve. It is me that has defined it as such.
Thus, it is important to put any given amount of time to its best use rather than complain about the lack or surfeit of it. This realization proves to be hard to put into practice. I still fancy an infantile wish of inventing a special remote control that enables me to rewind or fast-forward certain times in my life.
I am sure that I am not the only one who is entertained by such a frivolous thought because I remember reading a children’s story about it when I was young (there was also a movie that I didn’t watch).
In the spirit of maintaining my level of frivolity, I am picking three leaders and give my rendition of their outgoing year of 2010. I hope that they will be able to use the upcoming couple of days well to make it better.
Our President has had a mixed year. On one hand, he is credited with leading Korea out of the global economic crunch, capped by the successful hosting of the G20 Seoul Summit. Compare Korea with the United States and Europe, and Korea under Lee’s leadership should be taken as an economic case study. The G20 meeting also illustrated Korea’s rise to the ranks of advanced countries, providing a chance for Korea to play a mediation role in tricky global financial issues. Only for these achievements, Lee should have been regarded as keeping his end of the bargain he made to the nation when he was elected three years ago.
However, North Korea’s naughty behavior has eclipsed all his achievements.
He has come under fire for a lack of crisis management ability as commander in chief during and in the aftermath of Pyongyang’s unwarranted provocations. He said the wrong things at the wrong time more than once and handled North Korean affairs to the true meaning of his nickname “Bulldozer,” when in fact the subtlety of a surgeon was needed.
Now can he make up for his loss of face with the remaining days of this year? No time? True but I would say that he can make the first important step by ordering his PR team to come up with a better way of bringing his fair society campaign more to the hearts of the people (Some think that Lee’s efforts at compassion are handouts the rich give to the poor in year-end charity).
There is no chance that they can atone for their heinous acts within this year or next year and for the years to come. North Korean leader Kim and his heir Kim Jong-eun are behind the March torpedoing of a South Korean Navy vessel in our waters that killed 46 sailors and the November artillery attack on Yeongpyeong Island, killing two marines and two civilians.
Everybody knows but few would say that the only viable alternative with North Korea is a regime change because of their nuclear capability, among other things. But how to bring about the leadership change is a conundrum. Will we have to send a hit squad or give them incentives and invite them to the negotiating table? Or do we have to inaugurate a Nobel Prize for the “obnoxious two” and name them as the first recipients in a hope that they will behave better? If anybody has a suggestion to make the obnoxious two responsible global citizens, raise your hands. I don’t see any.
Barack Obama, our hero-turned-mediocre leader, has had a tough year, being sandwiched between the gullible public and the wicked Republicans on one hand, and no-holds-barred House Speaker Pelosi and “hip shooter” Paul Krugman. Still, he won a Pyrrhic victory in the passage of a long-stalled nuclear arms treaty with Russia in return for an extension on tax cuts for the wealthy. Mr. President, take your well-deserved rest until the end of the year and start anew next year.
Julian Assange, spend your time in jail well! I sympathize with you for the freedom of speech but I can’t help but think that you have opened a new can of worms and we are scared what will come out of it. If your deed is vindicated next year, I will take you out of Miscellaneous and give you an independent entry. That is if I write a year-end review.