New US Administration

Seoul Should Move Before It Gets Too Late

To sum up, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's pickup of new cabinet secretaries was a bipartisan embrace of rivals based on pragmatism.

This comes in stark contrast not just to Obama's predecessor but to his Korean counterpart, who clings to people from the same region, school and church while refusing to promote figures of rival factions within his own party to any posts of significance.

Obama's selection of key cabinet posts reflects his awareness that unusual situations require unusual countermeasures. There was a similar example in Korean politics, too. In 1997 when the nation faced an unprecedented financial crisis, the then President-elect Kim Dae-jung filled two key economic posts ― finance minister and corporate restructuring chief ― with figures he had not known personally, at the recommendation of a coalition partner: Korea was then able to get out of the crisis in a most swift and exemplary way.

President Lee Myung-bak has long posed himself as a pragmatic leader, while stressing this is an ``unheard-of'' crisis needing ``unheard-of remedies.'' Still, he is sticking to a finance minister increasingly shunned even within the governing camp for failing to earn the trust of markets. What Lee preached for a year as only an empty slogan, Obama practiced in just one month after his election.

The difference between Seoul and Washington in governing ideology and administrative style will likely become even clearer in their foreign policies, particularly regarding North Korea. Government officials here believe ― or want to believe ― there will be no drastic shift in U.S. policy on North Korea despite the administrative change, emphasizing the strong bilateral alliance.

Such wishful thinking on the part of Seoul was shattered eight years ago, when President Bush applied the so-called anything-but-Clinton policy on the North Korean nuclear issue. Obama and his Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton may not go that far. Even if Clinton decides to take up just where her husband left off, however, the Lee administration will have to do an about-face on inter-Korean policy so as not to be completely sidelined.

Obama's emphasis on cooperation and partnership in foreign policy means closer ties with China and Russia, two of North Korea's biggest allies. If and when the increasingly unpopular Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso is replaced with a more future-oriented leader, Seoul could be left alone in the new diplomatic wave sweeping this part of the world.

President Lee and his party should seek to adjust and coordinate their policy with key regional players instead of belatedly scurrying around Washington to form a line of personal contacts with Obama people.

There are far better ways for Seoul to reduce this diplomatic uncertainty and reliance on foreign allies; drop its confrontation policy and return to a year ago, finding the most face-saving way to do so. Most Koreans, except for some ultra-right supporters of Lee, would not complain about the policy turnaround. Obama is also showing governance could be different from electioneering.

Rep. Park Ji-won of the opposition Democratic Party summed up all this best when he said, ``The Lee administration has thrown back the nation's economy to a decade ago, its democracy, two decades ago, and inter-Korean ties, three decades ago.''

Lee said waiting it out could be the best strategy in the South-North relationship. It increasingly looks as if Seoul could become a passenger who missed the last train ― and doesn't even know it.