The eyes of diplomatic experts are turning to the Korean Peninsula, as the deadline for suspending most cross-border exchanges approaches.
Responses from conservative leaders, however, can hardly be more carefree. President Lee Myung-bak said Wednesday the government would maintain ``consistency" in its North Korea policy, meaning Seoul would not do anything to find a breakthrough in the strained relationship.
As a candidate, Lee told former President Kim Dae-jung that he would inherit Kim's ``sunshine policy" of engaging North Korea, which was basically a two-track policy of separating nuclear and inter-Korean issues. In his first comment on inter-Korean relationship after taking office, however, the President linked all cross-border ties to denuclearization. Lee's consistency was strictly limited by the time frame.
The governing Grand National Party is going even further. GNP Chairman Park Hee-tae said, ``There are many absurd and exaggerated pledges in the inter-Korean agreements signed by previous governments." When Barack Obama was elected, Park and other GNP officials said there would be little change in U.S. foreign policy under a new administration. The ruling party officials applied the same criteria of consistency only on foreign governments.
Rep. Lee Hoi-chang, president of the far-right Liberty Forward Party, highlighted this, saying, ``The inter-Korean relationship should restart from the ground up on this occasion," effectively calling for going back to the 1990s. It offers little comfort to find consistency as the nation's conservative leaders mean it in terms of Lee's retrogressing remarks.
North Korea of course is full of problems, not least of which include its one-sided abrogation of inter-Korean contracts and the official vilification of the top leader of their dialogue partner. As far as the stalemate of the past nine months is concerned, however, it is hard to deny the South's ``inconsistency" in its foreign policy was the main reason.
No less dangerous in President Lee's North Korea policy is it based on ``wishful thinking," rather than facts and plausible analysis. Lee said recently North should repeal its strategy of opening the door to the Americans while shutting it to the South Koreans.
This would be possible only if Pyongyang and Washington remained estranged, as they did under the Bush administration. According to the ``Obama-Biden Plan" on the U.S. president-elect's Web site, however, the new administration is vowing to conduct ``tough and direct diplomacy" to find a breakthrough in diplomatic deadlocks. If Lee bases his confidence on Obama's promise to ``consult with Seoul" in foreign policy during phone conversations, he may be confusing basic courtesy with a commitment, a rarity in diplomacy in which national interest in everything.
In the mid-1990s, Clinton administration officials complained that dealing with Seoul was harder than negotiating with Pyongyang. The same situation could recur in the coming years unless Lee changes his mind.
Already, the situation has become so bad that there is now skepticism among politicians of the effects of sending a special envoy.
The government ought to hurry not to aggravate the inter-Korean relationship further lest the ultra-right Lee's wishes should come true, turning the historical clock back nearly two decades.