What President Lee shouldn’t do

STANFORD, Calif. — There are two things President Lee Myung-bak, whose term will end in about a year, shouldn’t do. On North Korea, he shouldn’t initiate a major new policy. On foreign policy, he should not pit Seoul’s alliance with Washington against its emerging relationship with Beijing; they are not a zero-sum game. That’s the counsel of Shin Gi-wook, the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

Shin Gi-wook

By Sunny Lee

STANFORD, Calif. — There are two things President Lee Myung-bak, whose term will end in about a year, shouldn’t do. On North Korea, he shouldn’t initiate a major new policy. On foreign policy, he should not pit Seoul’s alliance with Washington against its emerging relationship with Beijing; they are not a zero-sum game. That’s the counsel of Shin Gi-wook, the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

North Korea has installed a new leader, Kim Jong-un. Strategists have been debating on how the South should utilize the new development by changing the current course of its policy. Yet Shin thinks Lee should stay the course.

“Lee’s term is nearing its end. A president on his final leg shouldn’t start a new major policy on matters of national security and foreign policy. That’s common sense. I hope Lee respects this honor code,” Shin told The Korea Times at his office located inside Encina Hall at the university.

“On the North Korea front, priority instead should be given to managing icy inter-Korean relations to stave off further escalation of tension,” said Shin.

The advice from Shin, an influential scholar — who drafted policy recommendations on U.S.-Korea affairs that were sent to President Barak Obama’s administration — may disappoint supporters of the Sunshine Policy who advocate engagement and reconciliation with the North. They see Lee’s hard-line policy on North Korea as a failure because it didn’t tame or moderate Pyongyang’s belligerence as it was supposed to do.

South Korea will hold parliamentary elections in April and a presidential election in December. Swinging voter mood on North Korea has been an important factor in the highly unpredictable domestic political circus.

An outgoing president often faces pressure from his own political party, not to mention the opposition camp, to tweak his policy on North Korea to woo voters. It is also a time for the president to dwell on a legacy. Here, a “breakthrough” on inter-Korean relations is an easy publicity stunt a southern leader can cling to.

Lee’s point man in charge of inter-Korean affairs, Yu Woo-ik, recently declared to the local Hankyoreh newspaper: “Many things can happen in the remaining one year!”

But Shin doesn’t want any surprises on the North Korean frontier. “Previous South Korean presidents fell into this trap and railroaded ambitious new project plans with North Korea during the final leg of their presidency. Doing so will burden the next administration, which has to pick up from where the previous government left off.”

“When the new South Korean administration doesn’t follow up, North Korea gets upset too. So, I think Lee should graciously exit the presidency without starting a major new policy on North Korea and leave it to the incoming administration to decide,” said Shin.

Dealing with the dragon in Year of the Dragon

Last month, President Lee made a state visit to China, South Korea’s largest trading partner. Beijing used the occasion to urge Seoul to speed up a free trade agreement (FTA) deal, which remains a controversy in South Korea. Some fear that the deal will push the country deeper into China’s sphere of influence. Its agricultural sector will be decimated, some argue, as cheaper Chinese products will pack the shelves of South Korean supermarkets.

Shin advises that Seoul should deal with the matter in a cool-headed manner. “In the bigger scheme of things, the move toward a Korea-China FTA is an irreversible trend. It’s time to get past debating whether Seoul should or should not do the FTA. Rather, now the attention and focus should be paid on how to maximize and safeguard Seoul’s national interest when it negotiates details of the deal with China,” said Shin.

“The rise of China” is a buzzword in South Korea, just like anywhere else in the world. The problem with the South’s intellectual community is that it hasn’t quite formed a consensus on how to look at the soaring dragon. They also don’t know how a powerful China will behave in the future toward Korea. Some fear that a rising China is intent on restoring its millennia-long influence over the peninsula.

Shin views the uncertainty partly lies with China itself. “It seems China has neither fully prepared itself to debut as a global empire, nor has it gained quality to claim so.

“China also made a mistake of letting its neighbors worry about its rise. Some of them even developed a psychology to check China. If China wants to become a bona fide member of the G2, it also needs to arm itself with soft power, commensurate with its hard power. It has a long way to go,” observed Shin.

Amid uncertainty surrounding Beijing’s intentions, the Lee administration strengthened its traditional alliance with the U.S. The strategy of advisers surrounding Lee went that as long as South Korea maintains a good and strong alliance with the U.S., it would also give Seoul more leverage in dealing with its giant neighbor.

Shin cautions against this logic. “Seoul should never pit its alliance with America against its ties with China. They are not a zero-sum game. While continuing to maintain a robust alliance with the U.S., Seoul also needs to accommodate rising China, not checking against it. What Seoul wants is to have good relations with China and to keep its alliance with the U.S. at the same time,” said Shin.

“The last thing Seoul wants to do is to create a situation where it has to choose one, between the U.S. and China.”

As for North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong-un, Shin judges that the young Kim has established legitimacy for the position, “but it’s premature to determine whether he will be able to establish a solid power base like Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il.”

In fact, Shin believes the biggest challenge the untested leader currently faces is power consolidation that can secure his status in a sustainable fashion. For that matter, Shin expects Kim will soon have to make an important strategic choice.

“In the near future, Jong-un will be at a crossroads in which he has to choose whether to follow the policy platforms of his father on matters of reform and nuclear weapons, or make a different choice.”