Standing tall means standing up

By Bernard Rowan

This week saw more missile launches into the East Sea by North Korea. The United States, South Korea, and Japan criticized the launches. The North timed them to coincide with the allies’ press conference in Europe. Or maybe they just wanted to get rid of some old weapons. Park, Abe, and Obama reminded us of their shared commitment to regional peace as well as a nonnuclear Korean peninsula.

President Park Geun-Hye announced the Dresden Doctrine as a path to unification requiring the North’s willingness to abandon nuclear weapons. She offered the North significant help, including a development bank, joint projects, and economic training, among other incentives.

This thoughtful and proactive plan likely won’t move Pyongyang. The North kills her progress through benefits-seeking and boisterousness. However, the doctrine shows that Park and South Korea continue to develop a vision for the future that will surely arrive one day. It's a future where the South and her allies will need to carry out unification through their leadership and human and capital investments.

I admire President Park and South Korea for standing tall in this area of Korea’s continued evolution. Park has performed her own version of Reagan’s late 20th century speech calling for German unification.

However, we should juxtapose the brave and international presence of South Korea and President Park in Germany with the other meeting I mentioned. It was held this week in the Netherlands. President Obama hosted a three-way united front with Park and Japanese Prime Minister Abe. But Park and Abe failed to meet and plan their summit.

Despite the security photo-op, the leaders of two powerful Asian nations didn’t sit together. They missed a chance to improve relations.

Of course, we tend to be shallow. Just as when Bill Gates committed a blunder in greeting President Park last year, news stories focused overmuch on Abe’s lack of grace in addressing his counterpart in Korean and other non-verbals.

Standing tall means standing up to Japan and putting history to bed! Korea is a powerful nation, and that power will continue to grow. According to Matthew Stephen in a recent article for the Seton Hall Journal of Diplomacy, South Korea is a middle power, just like Japan. The South ranks sixth, just behind Japan, in the Correlates of War Composite Index of National Capabilities (CINC) index.

That index totals population, energy, military strength, and other signs of national power. Stephan states that South Korea is one of the twelve most likely middle powers, on which the security of nations, regions, and the world increasingly depend in the present global context.

South Korea shouldn’t inwardly mimic toward Japan the declining attitude that North Korea inwardly and outwardly shows to the South, to the United States, and to Japan. Regional instability rises because of irrational actions caused by confusing pride and power.

Chief in the minds of too many Koreans and Korean pundits remain the comfort women issue, Dokdo, Abe’s Yasukuni Shrine visit, and biased Japanese textbooks.

Keeping excessively focused on these views, understandable and long-standing which they might be, doesn’t advance Korea’s interests far. Do we want to be stone serious? How could Korea ever sit down with a former colonizer? This history is a permanent basis for national ire.

Don’t stop there. The United States could act this way to Great Britain. And the Chinese to Japan and Great Britain. And a host of nations to former European colonizers. And half of Eurasia to Russia. What an awful world!

The national interests of South Korea, Japan, and the United States in Northeast Asia aren’t identical, but they overlap and form a basis for cooperation and peace. This is the path to continued economic advancement, for cooperation on China, and for united strength in facing threats from North Korea as well as preparing the regional context for unification.

South Korea needn’t display pugnacity in national rhetoric or quiet contempt. Those displays of weakness don’t suit South Korea or President Park. To be frank, they show an inferiority complex that continues to reduce South Korea’s role, interest, and power in international relations and to undermine her credibility and authority, both of which need to rise this century.

The United States will need the South to take the lead in more Asian affairs, and not just on Korean unification. Tying your sails to lingering hatreds ignores the truth that yesterday’s enemy may be tomorrow’s friend. That isn’t a statement about love, family, or personal relations between Japan and South Korea. It's a statement about power, war and peace, and reality. Stand up and stand tall Korea!

Bernard Rowan is assistant provost for curriculum and assessment, professor of political science and faculty athletics representative at Chicago State University, where he has served for 20 years. Contact him at browan10@yahoo.com.