The Marmot’s Hole

The Dong-A Ilbo is suggesting that U.S officials are openly expressing their hope that South Korean presidential adviser Song Min-soon is NOT named to replace Ban Ki-moon as foreign minister.

As exhibit A, the Dong-A cites State Department spokesman Sean McCormack’s briefing from Oct. 26:

QUESTION: That same minister [Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok] yesterday announced he was going to resign, as did the Defense Minister of South Korea. The Foreign Minister will have to step down because of his new position at the UN. Are you concerned that perhaps — I don’t know how long it will take them to replace these ministers, but are you concerned that sort of a vacuum at this time is not a good idea to have, having to deal with North Korea?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, those are matters for the South Korean Government and the South Korean people to decide. It’s a matter of essentially internal domestic politics as to who fills those positions and the timing of when those positions are filled.

But we also have to remember too that there’s a very experienced and strong cadre of people, professionals at the ministries, who will continue working on these issues as well. But this is a serious and high-profile enough issue that I would expect that it will have the full attention of the highest levels of the Korean Government.

According to the Dong-A, the language emphasized above is considered exceptional, and amounted to a complaint concerning South Korea’s policies toward the North and the possible formation of Seoul’s new foreign policy team.

The paper also said White House officials, perhaps with their eye to mid-term elections, have been stressing the solidity of Korea-U.S. cooperation, but unofficially, they’ve been saying very different things.

One U.S. government official said (and I’m translating from Korean here), “Take a look at U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s comments after her Asian tour. She sincerely praised China and Japan’s cooperation, but her tone concerning South Korea and Russia was completely different.”

Another official said (again, translated), “Prior to Rice’s Northeast Asia tour, China was expected to be the most uncooperative nation, but in fact, the place were differences in opinion were most pronounced was South Korea.”

Washington is reacting particularly sensitively to talk of Song Min-soon replacing Ban Ki-moon as foreign minister thanks to his Oct. 18 comment that the United States has fought more wars in its history than any other nation.

A U.S. official said that when Rice met with Ban in Seoul on Oct. 19, she asked her Korean counterpart for an explanation of Song’s statement. Ban avoided answering, saying he would find out what it was exactly that Song said.

The official said that within the White House National Security Council, the White House, State Department and Pentagon all reacted sensitively to the perceived slight, having demanded, among other things, an explanation from the Korean embassy in Washington.

Song sparked controversy again during a parliamentary audit of the Foreign Ministry on Friday when he suggested that the United States was prepared to use force against the North (actually, the comment, basically, that if diplomatic efforts fail, we’d have to wait and see what Washington does, was undiplomatic given repeated U.S. assurances that it has no intention of attacking the North—something even Song later recognized—but probably not all that far removed from the truth. At any rate, if the Seoul Shinmun report is accurate, Song had a very long day yesterday, with one GNP lawmaker even suggesting that rather than be made foreign minister, Song should be sent to some embassy overseas where he’d presumably do less harm).

Yonsei University professor Kim U-sang told the Dong-A that the U.S. expressions of discontent could be minimized if Seoul adopted new policies toward the North, including Seoul’s formal participation in the PSI. However, if Roh keeps the same cast of characters but only switches around their seats, it’s unlikely that we’ll see any changes in policy.

Likewise, many are saying that regardless of who makes up Cheong Wa Dae’s new foreign policy team, Seoul’s policies of engaging the North and “independent diplomacy” vis-a-vis the United States won’t likely change, meaning Seoul-Washington cooperation is unlikely to make any recovery.