Korea at a crossroads (I)

By Stephen Costello

Korea’s democratization and development into a stable middle power over the past three decades has set off a lively debate about its proper role in the bilateral alliance with the US, in the Northeast Asian region, and globally.

The drive during the 1990s to make North-South rapprochement a key part of Korea’s modern, post-Cold War development was abandoned with the inauguration of President Lee Myung Bak in 2008.Since then, various initiatives have been tried as substitute foundations or organizing principles for growing Korean capabilities. Among these have been: Korea as deputy to the US in East Asia; as good global citizen; as green tech leader; as exemplar of largely peaceful political and economic evolution; and as convener of international symposia.

In order to rationalize its rejection of responsibility for North-South rapprochement, ROK officials have stressed speculative scenario-planning for DPRK collapse, and fantasy diplomacy that takes no risks and requires little commitment. Return of OpCon to Korea has been rejected, but return of nuclear weapons has been considered. In this new world of unprepared leadership, insecurity and uncertainty have masqueraded as grand ambition.

Many observers in the US, Europe, and particularly in Asia understand, however, that the Peninsular issues are the first test of ROK regional power, capacity and leadership, because they are also tests of domestic social cohesion and national identity. Unless the leadership in Seoul is tackling its primary responsibility in a confident and capable way, other attempts at global leadership will not fully resonate. They will also never bring Korea the political power, strategic advantages and respect it could claim if North-South matters were successfully addressed.

President Park is nearing the end of her third year in office, with two short years left. She has been unable to bring substantial political peace to the functioning of the Korean government. With the textbook announcement and her reaction to demonstrations, she has spent most of her remaining ability to attract support. The zero-sum tactics and continuing leadership crisis of some opposition groups make this problem worse. The result is that she must endure increasing criticism from many different quarters, despite her party’s majority in the National Assembly and despite her stated desire to advance North-South relations.

Facing no reelection, the President could concentrate on major initiatives and legacy considerations. Her whole political life ― one might say her whole life ― has led up to what shemight do in the next two years, and the costs of her failing to do so. Herability to add to or balance the legacy of her father is evaporating. She will not have another chance to impact history. While the DPRK leader may be in power for 30 years or more and the PRC leader for another 7, the Japanese and American leaders will be gone by the time President Park steps down.

In her relations with Korea’s two major power partners, China and the U.S., President Park has been careful to create a large reservoir of trust and flexibility. Her personal interactions with Presidents Xi and Obama have been perceived as successful and have given her a high public standing. This had been her major foreign policy achievement. Over the past year those perceptions have reversed. She is now more likely to be seen as misunderstanding Korea’s relationship with China and its responsibility with the US.

Her interactions with her middle-power neighbor Japan have also been unproductive. While she has preserved a posture of standing up to historical revisionists in Japan, she has been unsuccessful in engaging with the more honest and modern Japanese leaders in society to show the way forward. She has also been unable to advance a vision of the shared Korean/Japanese strategic interests and a shared future.

Despite clever political positioning by the President, South Korea during the Park GeunHye years has notrecovered the status or leading role in North-South affairs, nor the middle powerindependence, it enjoyed during the Kim Dae Jung/Bill Clinton years of 1998 ― 2000. In those years the US accepted the role of supporter to South Korea’s leadership on inter-Korean and multilateral regional strategy and policy. It also accepted an important division of roles and primary interests, with the US leading on denuclearization policy and South Korea co-leadingon North-South and regional issues. Today, Korea can only capture its potential and secure its future by acknowledging its central role, and claiming the explicit recognition of its unique and overwhelming interest in Peninsular development and security by all concerned states and institutions. There is no competition for this role from other states.

Due to political changes in the US, it is not likely to play a role similar to the one it played in the 1990s, at least not for the next decade. This means US perceptions of US political and tactical interests will be incompatible with South Korean strategic interests on some issues. This has happened before, and in such cases one party must yield to the other. The solution can often be managed by careful sequencing of policies and tactical initiatives, along with skillful public diplomacy.

While ROK political relations with the US and China have seemed comfortable, and those with Japan have seemed manageable, its strategic position with all three is weak, and this has become more clear in past months. Its position with the US is weak because it has embraced military and strategic subservience to US policies, regardless of how realistic, enduring or strategically wise those policies are. Those policies include overall strategy toward the DPRK, strategy toward China, base funding, military procurement, threat assessments and strategic planning. Any new initiative by the Park administration ― or its successor ― must be based on a new measure of independence and self-confidence.

Despite President Park's use of South Korean economic power to stand on more equal diplomatic footing with President Xi Jinping, the ROK position with China is also weak. The key to greater ROK power in the Korea China relationship is for Seoul to take clear command of North-South relations and of reunification strategy and initiatives. It is the realistic prospect of eventual reunification (which in the short and medium term includes working agreements and moves by the North and South to recognize common economic, security and diplomatic interests) that will quickly change China’s expectations and therefore its calculations. Those changes will be in the direction of greater power to South Korea in the bilateral relationship. This dynamic was in play during the engagement period of 1998-2001.

The ROK position with Japan is politically sustainable at home partly due to the view of South Korea as victim again to a group of nationalist revisionists now in leadership positions in the Japanese administration. Korea’s posture against this group also creates an uncommon comfort level with Chinese victimhood and has provoked politically symbolic joint ROK-China gestures. This dynamic masks the weakness of the Korean position, because many policy specialists in the US and Japan think that President Park is neglecting her responsibility to distinguish between different groups in Japanese society and to show the way toward common strategies in pursuit of common interests. It also appears to some that Korea is being increasingly pulled into alliances with China. In the Northeast Asia region, the key to security and stability for the next half-century will be the Korea-Japan partnership, together with the implied and real support of the US. As long as that message is not at the top of the ROK President’s bilateral Korea-Japan agenda and manifested in actions, her position is weak. Among other consequences, coordination on new initiatives and long-term strategy toward North Korea and China is damaged by ROK-Japan political tension.

Stephen Costello is a producer of AsiaEast, a Web and broadcast-based policy roundtable focused on security, development and politics in Northeast Asia. He writes from Washington, D.C. He can be contacted at cosetllos@asiaeast.org.