Moon's bigger challenge in Washington

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Opinion

Sat, April 21, 2018 | 03:08

Lee Seong-hyon

Moon's bigger challenge in Washington

Posted : 2017-06-27 17:37

Updated : 2017-06-27 17:37

By Lee Seong-hyon

For President Moon Jae-in, crafting a successful photo-op moment with President Donald Trump is not the biggest challenge he will face during their first summit later this week. His bigger and more important challenge is to beat the widespread (and quite persistent) perception that he is another Roh Moo-hyun.

It was psychiatrist Karl Menninger who observed decades ago that attitudes and perception are more important than facts and reality. President Moon has some work to do on Washington's perception of him. Most of all, the Washington policy community remains quite suspicious that the Moon government has inherited the "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with North Korea from his liberal predecessors, notably Roh Moo-hyun.

At the May 23 memorial service for the late President Roh, who committed suicide by jumping off a cliff, Moon said, in front of Roh's bereaved wife, that this would be his last visit to the memorial and he wouldn't visit it for the remainder of his presidential term:

"President Roh Moo-hyun, I miss you, I miss you ever so dearly. But during the rest of my term, I shall keep you in my heart only. This is to be the last time that I attend this memorial ceremony as standing president. I hereby return you to the people."

In that way, Moon symbolically cut the umbilical cord from Roh. During his inaugural address, Moon also declared that he would "become a president for all." He knew that now he would represent the entire nation, not just Roh and his legacy. But even after cutting the umbilical cord, the DNA is still carried on to the next generation. Politics may not be an exception either. For Moon, carrying on Roh's political DNA is both a source of pride, but also a source of vulnerability that exposes him to attacks by conservatives.

For instance, when Moon picked Im Jong-seok for his chief of staff, many conservative pundits highlighted Im's "pro-North Korea" activities as a college student. Im became famous in 1987 for leading the organization of an unauthorized visit to North Korea by a fellow student activist. He served three-and-a-half years in jail for that. He is also suspected of masterminding a student sit-in in 1985 at the U.S. Information Service building in Seoul. Due to this background, in 2001, he was denied a visa to visit the U.S. Media reports show that Im has since moderated his political views. Nonetheless, his history still haunts him.

Moon also fought hard to shed off "leftist" credentials during his presidential campaign that were commonly associated with his past links to Roh. Moon's engagement posture toward North Korea, in this sense, was easily taken as a sign that he would be "soft" with the Pyongyang regime and negligent about national security. To shed such an image, a group of retired army generals and senior colonels from the Defense Security Command, a powerful military unit that conducts intelligence and counter-intelligence investigations, showed their full support for Moon in the days leading up to the presidential election. Moon pledged to create a "strong nation" and promised to increase the defense budget to 3% of GDP.

Former President Roh was blamed by critics for being eager for engagement with North Korea, but hesitant in pointing to North Korea's human rights conditions. Moon should assure Washington that he is paying attention to these. In fact, there are signs that President Moon went through a big part of his learning curve from working in the Roh government where he served as chief of staff. "We need to calmly reflect and review what we were lacking. We need to learn a lesson from it," Moon reflected in a recent memoir.

Yet Moon should be also true to himself. When psychiatrist Menninger talked about "perception," his emphasis was more on self-perception, rather than others' perception of him or her. It is true that like his center-left predecessors, Moon wants to play a balancing role between the regional powers and make significant progress in inter-Korean relations.

In the end, Moon has a double mission of being true to himself, while also not alienating the conservatives who share many of the concerns Washington has on him. This is a delicate balance to maintain.

Lee Seong-hyon, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Sejong Institute. Reach him at sunnybbsfs@gmail.com

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