We are peace-drunk

By Oh Young-jin

Assistant managing editor

Today’s column is not intended to be a critique of the current government.

However, it may end up resembling one because mostly current issues will be mentioned.

Bear in mind that these issues have a far deeper history than the past three and half years under the current regime. Rather, this column should be taken as an attempt to highlight a lack of national leadership, a common problem among regimes, incumbent and past, resulting in a waste of national energy and causing internal disputes.

Simply put, what we Koreans need is a leadership that helps us look outside for expansion and convert our deep-seated defensiveness into offensiveness (Sun Tzu, author of the Art of War, said that the best offense is a good defense and make sure a fight is fought on your terms).

The reason that we don’t have this outward-looking, expansionist and offense-minded leadership is due to our national illness called, “peace drunkenness,” a state of helplessness in which we don’t choose peace by belief but for the lack of any other options.

However, I reject this fatalistic view and believe that it is not too late to channel it so it can be a positive force, a job for the next leader of the country.

For that, we need a Machiavellian mind that applies a cool head to the hottest issues and a Bismarckian determination that sees through the implementation of national goals.

First, let’s size up some of our problems.

Our handling of Japan’s latest challenge to our sovereignty over Dokdo, the easternmost Korean islets, is emotional and lacks direction. People demonstrated traditionally and organized flash mobs in condemnation of Japan’s diplomatic act of aggression but fell short of evolving into an urgent national narrative.

Hong Joon-pyo, chairman of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP), suggested having the Dokdo garrison manned by Marines. Currently, a police squad is stationed there.

Hong’s suggestion, however, merits no serious consideration not only because it is a populist idea but because it is reactive to Japan’s verbal aggression and lacks an initiative to turn the table back on Japan. I would give a higher score to any suggestion to conquer Tokyo than to Hong’s suggestion only because the former suggests a greater degree of imagination.

Hong is a patient of peace drunkenness.

President Lee Myung-bak’s Aug. 15 Liberation Day speech went a step ahead of Hong when he tried to define terms of capitalism on evolution, calling for shared growth between haves and have-nots, ethical corporate management and an end to the promotion of populist welfare initiatives by political parties, which are preparing for next year’s parliamentary and presidential elections.

Take one layer off from President Lee’s rhetoric and it is plain to see he is engaged in serious populist maneuvering to help extend his party’s grip on power. I don’t blame him for being a populist but am disappointed in his lack of outward-looking, example-setting leadership for the nation. Lee also sidestepped from the Dokdo issue and the U.S. decision to call the body of water between Korea and Japan the “Sea of Japan” rather than the East Sea as promoted by Korea.

Perhaps, it is no longer realistic to get inspiration from our leader similar to JFK during his “A Strategy of Peace” speech at the American University in Washington, D.C., in June 1963. The speech was full of American spirit at its finest, challenging America’s cold-war rival Soviet Union to compete to better serve humankind. JFK’s speech proved that peace can be stronger than nukes.

Expecting a similar initiative from President Lee may be implausible not because he is beneath JFK had but because of scathying public scrutiny.

If Lee declared a bold step toward North Korea, our reactions would be one of three. The first would be that Lee doesn’t have the political capital to carry it out because he has mangled inter-Korean rapprochement, nurtured by the previous two successive liberal governments.

The second would be that we are small so we have to follow big powers so whatever Lee says doesn’t really matter. The third is that Lee doesn’t know politics and all he cares about is the economy but he is not even good at that.

Another example is the lack of effective responses to North Korean provocations on Yeongpyeong Island and the sinking of frigate Cheonan, in our waters. On both occasions, the leadership as well as the nation went into a state of shock, casting lingering doubts on each other ― people about the government’s ability to protect them and the leadership left to cater to the emotional mood swings of the people.

Lee is a victim of peace drunkenness.

Peace drunkenness is an illness that prematurely brings old age to a young nation because it blocks growth energy, causing an implosion. It is not hard to see the symptoms ― squabbling among ourselves rather than against outside enemies and a lack of trust in leadership. In this sense, the next leadership should take as one of its priorities efforts to rally the nation around the leader and help him or her regain confidence so as to put us back on a growth track.

But the treatment for this peace drunkenness should start where we can.

We have to look beyond our immediate interests and rally around our leader in any case.

We have to look outward and seek chances to expand.

We have to be friends rather than foes.

We have to respect those better than us and encourage them to be the best.

We have to tie ourselves to a common zeitgeist.

It’s too bad that these suggestions weren’t made by somebody else more respectable than I am so as to give them a chance for a greater number of people to give them a shot. Barring that, I aim to try and practice them myself.