I didn’t see this translated in the English edition of the Chosun Ilbo, so I guess I might as well mention it here: Korea’s Paper of Record is reporting–with not a single source mentioned in the entire piece–that President Roh came damn close to discontinuing his government’s policy of engagement with North Korea following Pyongyang’s February "nuclear declaration."
The Chosun claims that Roh, who pursued up to that point policies so friendly to the North that they were causing a rift in the Korea-U.S. alliance, was so steamed that Pyongyang had repaid his efforts by declaring themselves a nuclear state that he considered issuing a "North Korea statement" of his own. He reportedly expressed to his advisers his frank thoughts on North Korea, namely, 1) Seoul’s North Korea policies needed to be completely changed; and 2) his government needed to apologize to the people for building up their expectations in vane.
Roh thought he should express these in an address to the nation, but put it off based on reservations from his advisers, who counseled the president that "now was not the time." The Chosun said that had the president been allowed to act on his instincts, "intra-Korean relations and the six-party talks would be completely different from what they are now."
The paper also recounted June’s Roh-Bush summit in Washington. According to the report, U.S. President Bush, flanked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, told Roh that "Rice is more reasonable than me, and I more reasonable than Rumsfeld." The paper claims that at the meeting, Bush turned to Rummy, who had been insisting on the principle of USFK strategic flexibility, and told him that having listened to Roh’s explanation, the Korean president’s reservations about the idea were correct.
A couple of other stories in there, including just how close National Security Council deputy chief Lee Jong-seok came to getting sacked, and what might have been the case if the NIS–which was responsible for providing protection and security around Dr. Hwang Woo-suk’s team–had decided to investigate when suspicions about the good doctor’s research results were first raised.
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“his advisers” Gee, the cynic in me wonders if that would have been none other than Unification Minister Chung?
if this is indeed true (you never know with korean media), it is very interesting, and cetainly casts some positive light on good old No Mu-Hyeon from my perspective. What Nomad said could well be true, but i don’tthink there are any shortage of “advisers” of that political colour in the present administration.
Have Roh’s instincts changed permanently? Seems even more imperative to speak out now about N.K. than before….
Chosun wouldn’t run this story unless it was absolutely sure what it was talking about. There may be problems with it, but the overall gist just has to be based in fact.
Meanwhile, it might be worth asking why English Chosun didn’t translate the story, and what that generally means for the world’s understanding of SK’s approach to NK, or at least of Roh.
(It _might_ do the story now, since someone there monitors some of the English language Korea blogs and will read this post.)
Well I don’t believe it. Roh has some semblence of a backbone? If you had seen him on TV apologizing to the Korean public about the deaths of couple metal pipe wielding rioters during the clash with the police, you would say no freakin way. He makes Jimmy Carter look like Gengis Khan.
If the CI story is accurate - and I’m willing to go with Oracknay’s suggestion that it’s substantially true — then this will, IMO, turn out in the long run to be regarded as the single biggest error in the Great Pretender’s tenure, even though that analysis perforce will be of the coulda,shoulda, woulda counterfactual variety.