More power, Mme. President!
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By Deauwand Myers
I’m no fan of President Park. I find her political ideology, especially on social issues, to be regressive and unsophisticated. She, like other members of the Saenuri Party, too often pontificates and whitewashes the human rights abuses perpetuated by previous administrations of said party.
But conservatives, regardless of country, aren’t wrong about everything. While earlier administrations had a policy of accommodation when it comes to North Korea, Park has a much more muscular, and in my opinion, effective stance towards the fascist dictatorship.
Although well-meaning, President Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy, of vigorous engagement and generous financial and humanitarian aid to the North, was ineffective. So too, America’s policy, if not the world’s, was one of giving aid to the North in return for nuclear talks, in the hopes of an irreversible, verifiable nuclear disarmament of the hermit state.
For many years, the scenario was predictable: talks, aid, talks, more aid, interspersed with varying levels of lethal violence perpetuated by North Korea on the South, while Kim Jung Il reneged again and again on earlier diplomatic agreements.
Presidents Obama and Park realize what we should have known years ago: engaging the North is folly. Having talks and giving aid to the North is rewarding bad behavior, a moral hazard suffered by successive Korean and American administrations.
The Kim Dynasty, nothing more than a hereditary totalitarian regime, built off of generations of casual brutality, fear, brainwashing, mass murder, incarceration, and a religious indoctrination of the populace ascribing magical, god-like powers to its titular head, knows all too well what it has recently admitted: the survival of its reign rests on its low-grade nuclear arsenal.
If it did not have atomic bombs, however rudimentary they may be (the government cannot yet miniaturize an atomic weapon into a missile delivery system), I suspect the regime would have been externally removed by force a long time ago.
President Park knows firsthand the dangerous machinations of her Northern counterparts, having lived during a time of numerous attacks against the South perpetuated by the Stalinist state, including assassination attempts against her father, the dictator euphemistically called President Park Chung-hee.
Moreover, Park is aware that a majority of her nation has grown exceedingly tired of the unprovoked, lethal actions North Korea has committed, most recently of which includes the shelling of a South Korean island, and most infamously, the sinking of the Cheonan, where dozens of Korean naval officers were killed.
The Lee administration’s haphazard, uncoordinated, and inadequate response to the shelling of the island and the sinking of the Cheonan are two of the worst chapters of former President Lee’s tenure in office.
In short, President Park will not be weak or perceived as such in her dealings with the North. She will not bend to the North’s unreasonable demands; she will not beg for talks with the North on any policy initiative; she will not give money, fuel, or food to the regime.
I’ve written before that disengagement is the best engagement with North Korea. God help me, but former Vice President Dick Cheney, wrong about nearly everything, was absolutely right about this.
Sadly, there are no easy solutions to the problem of North Korea. In a society where life is cheap and poverty so abject as to be unimaginable, economic sanctions hurt and harm the population more than those in power. Yet, talking to an unreliable, dishonest partner is just as fruitless. On this issue, President Park is right, and more power to her.
The writer holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory and is currently an English professor outside of Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.