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Good neighbors are quiet neighbors.
Regular readers of my columns know I have my own complaints about President Park and her administration:
I would like to see President Park propose and pass policies encouraging more equitable pay for women, a more generous social welfare system for the poor and working poor, family-friendly policies for working mothers and fathers of young children (such as more paid maternity/paternity leave and more generously subsidized child care), an anti-discrimination bill for women, racial, and sexual minorities, a more progressive tax policy, and a much-needed reform of Korea's sprawling network of bureaucracies and agencies that must deal with natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and national defense.
When campaigning for the presidency, Park promised to deal with some of these issues, yet she has not dealt with any of them. Instead, her political capital is being whittled away by her ill-advised selection of scandal-ridden nominees to high-level cabinet positions, and a grossly inept and inadequate governmental response to the Sewol and MERS disasters.
One bright spot in the Park Administration's tenure has been its smart, even deft, handling of foreign and geopolitical affairs. Not only has Park engaged North Korea in a formidable and pragmatic way (one of the few areas of policy within the Saenuri Party's platform with which I thoroughly agree), but she has used her time in office to put Korea in a better position in relation to its much larger neighbor, China.
China's aggressive building of artificial islands in the South China Sea to add credence to Beijing's sovereignty claims over much of this water has made a lot of Asia uneasy.
On the other hand, U.S. lobbying for Korea to deploy THAAD missiles on the peninsula as both defense and deterrent against North Korean aggression and, secondarily, as a strategic mechanism to blunt a Chinese offensive in the East Sea has made China uneasy.
(For those who are unfamiliar with it, THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] is a missile defense system meant to intercept incoming missiles at high altitudes via its own projectiles, destroying the weapons high above, long before these incoming missiles reach their target).
In both cases, the Korean government has remained ostensibly silent. Why?
I wrote before that for the security of Korea in the unlikely event of a North Korean attack, deploying THAAD is a no-brainer and will be done. I still hold to that, but I understand why Park and her government have been quiet about its eventual (and inevitable, in my view) installation.
As with all Korean presidents, North Korea poses an existential and constant threat to South Korea's survival, both in theory and in reality.
Park has a unique and personally painful understanding of the cruel and dangerous game of peninsular intrigue the North plays. Her mother was assassinated by a North Korean sympathizer in a failed attempt to assassinate her father, President Park Chung-Hee.
Further, President Park grew up when South Korea was much weaker than the North, and where abductions, murders, incursions, and general harassment (particularly at and around the North/South border, better known as the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ) by North Korea was common and a source of constant apprehension among the Korean citizenry.
In truth, Park may have been a much better minister of foreign affairs than a president. Her perspective on the North is clear-eyed and unequivocal: North Korea must be isolated to the point of submission and its eventual destruction.
That the Korean government is silent or noncommittal on the South China Sea and THAAD deployment issues has helped improve Chinese-Korean relations. In fact, China's relations with Korea are the best they have been in a very long time. As Chinese-Korean relations thrive, the reverse is happening with Chinese-North Korean relations, which is the long end game for Korea in the first place.
Park's strategy against Kim, et al is isolation of the North to the nth degree, and because China is basically the North's only trading partner, where everything from banking to commerce to vital energy and food supplies flow, Korea's good relations with China, juxtaposed with a cooling and often tense relationship with North Korea, is proving to be an effective geopolitical tool.
The less-threatening and pro-American that Korea seems to China, the less China will feel it needs to prop up the impoverished North and the Kim regime as a buffer from democracy and the U.S.
Historically, most probably because of its location, Korea has had to play the role of the intermediary and sometimes vassal state between nations of greater size and power: China, Japan, and Mongolia are examples.
Such a position is not to be envied, but this history offers lessons in intelligent diplomacy. Korea being quiet and accessible to its neighbors will bear fruit in the coming years.
Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.
