By Cho Jae-hyon
South Korea deserves a lot of credit for seamlessly hosting the G20 summit on Nov. 11 and 12. For months, a countless number of government officials and police officers as well as volunteers sweated and toiled in preparation for the event.
And there was no major street demonstration large or violent enough to hamper the gathering. Given the notoriously militant labor groups here, the absence of any drastic rally reflects the government’s excellent job.
As pretty much expected, the meeting itself was shy of producing any impressive outcome. South Korea was the true winner of the gathering, standing taller on the world diplomatic stage.
But it was until Nov. 23 when North Korea fired artillery shells on Yeonpyeong Island, a once peaceful fishing island on the disputed maritime border in the West Sea.
The provocation, the first of its kind on South Korean soil since the 1950-1953 Korean War, wiped out the positive impact the G20 summit had on the country’s international reputation the Lee Myung-bak administration has endeavored to promote so hard over the last three years.
The deadly sudden attack underscored how fragile the national brand of South Korea is and how intransigent the geopolitical “Korea risk” is. It’s a rude wakeup call that the promotion of national brand could turn to nothing but a house of cards on this peninsula on tenterhooks.
The G20 summit was a critical event for President Lee, an opportunity to show his knack for diplomacy and draw a stronger support from the people for the remaining half of his term. It should have been a turning point in a good way. Without the North’s aggression, a festive mood would have been lingering until now.
The attack deprived the government of a chance to publicize how much the summit has elevated the country’s global status. And the people are struck in horror with the specter of war again rearing its ugly head.
It has never been truer than now that the two Koreas are “technically at war,” the famous phrase describing the state of Korea due to the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty.
War veterans are holding street rallies almost every day in Seoul, demanding the government pay back the North for its shelling. Many South Koreans are also lashing out at the military for failure to strike back with more firepower.
In his first public address since the Yeonpyeong incident, President Lee said Monday that “tolerance and endurance only resulted in a bigger provocation” and vowed to make sure that “the North will pay the price dearly” if it provokes again.
Should we wield the military stick to tame the unruly regime? Some conservative newspapers already went as far as writing a scenario that the Lee administration would cooperate with the United States to enforce a “regime change” in the communist country, modeled on the Iraq case.
It sounds courageous to say that we should pay back the North 100 times and 1,000 times. They are confident that only stern reaction without mercy is the surefire way to block further aggression from the North.
But things are not that simple. The costs of the latest skirmish are already immense _ Korea doesn’t look as safe as before in the eyes of many foreigners. The confrontation won’t do any good for South Korea’s bid to host the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang in 2018 and the World Cup in 2022.
Thousands of residents in Yeonpyeong and nearby islands in the waters off the maritime border have been evacuated from their homes and lived in saunas or temporary shelters for more than a week with no idea of when to return home.
It’s so natural for the residents to be scared of going back to their homes. It’s no longer a home sweet home for them. But the government has no clue about how to deal with them due to a lack of precedence and legal grounds.
These are only part of the costs created by the one hour of skirmishing. What if warfare with its unpredictable state is expanded? Seoul and most of its satellite cities are within the North’s artillery range. The consequences of even one shelling of the capital would be more than catastrophic.
A growing number of people are calling for strong revenge on the North. But revenge is sweet only for a moment. Striking back multiple-fold will be far easier than cleaning up the mess that will be left behind. The last thing we need is an escalation of tension.
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