In the KT, the Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner discusses South Korea’s “high-rish gambit” with the upcoming intra-Koean summit. It’s a good piece, so read it on your own. Here’s just a sample:
The Bush administration should counsel Roh that unilateral, uncoordinated diplomacy benefits Pyongyang to the detriment of the international community and risks straining Seoul’s bilateral relationship with Washington.
South Korea informed the U.S. only a few hours prior to the announcement, signaling that Seoul is freelancing on peninsular issues and not coordinating with its key ally.
South Korean officials had assured Washington that its engagement efforts would remain “one step behind the six-party talks process,” but they now appear to be many steps ahead. U.S. officials have privately commented that restraining Seoul from getting too far ahead of its allies is a concern and a challenge.
President Roh’s typically high-stakes political maneuver appears to be designed towards securing a personal legacy and altering South Korea’s political landscape, which currently favors the conservative opposition’s presidential candidate.
One might argue, of course, that South Korea has no reason to coordinate its North Korea diplomacy with Washington as long as Washington continues to provide security guarantees even as Seoul undercuts US policy in the region. It might also be argued that Washington’s security guarantees are the very thing enabling this sort of diplomacy on the Roh administration’s part — if doing things uri minjok-kkiri and sucking up to Pyongyang works, great, but if it fails, Uncle Sam will be there to bail us out, no matter how much we shit on him in the process. Not exactly the sort of environment conducive to the development of a responsible foreign policy.
3 Comments
I hope Roh goes to the summit promising the fat dwarf the moon. Then when he gets back and tells everyone about the great success of the summit, the local conservative papers and foreign countries can pile on telling him what a moron he is for being such a butt-kisser. Somewhat like what happened after the ‘money for missionaries’ scenario where foreign governments lambasted the Korean government for sucking up to terrorists. Let Roh go ahead and do what he does best-putting his foot in his mouth and demonstrating to all his utter incompetence. What a legacy this schmuck is going to have.
Roh’s hasn’t had a responsible foreign policy since day one, and to be frank I expect him to act the way he has been acting up to the last day of his presidency. Besides, he has the legacy mentality that afflicts Koreans in higher positions in that he wants to have a huge legacy no matter what and people that are afflicted with that mentality will do irrational things and let the others clean up the mess.
Pity the next president, who definetely has his work cut out for him.
Here’s a very delicious news regarding the upcoming summit. An ex-government official in Russia claims that Putin, Roh and Kim Jong-Il are secretly pushing for a joint Nobel Peace Prize.
LOL.