Hey, Maybe Keeping the Unification Ministry Won’t Be So Bad, After All

“The June 15 Joint Declaration by the two Koreas is only North Korea’s operational document against the South.” “The sunshine policy of engaging North Korea must be reexamined from the ground up.” These are but a few of the remarks made by Lee’s nominee for the unification portfolio. Nam Joo-hong, a politics professor, has steadfastly said North Korea could — or should, one might suspect — crumble anytime under the economic and political problems. Called a “Korean neocon,” he would easily put John Bolton, the former U.S. envoy to the United Nations, to shame. (Korea Times)

Somewhere in Washington DC, Joshua is smiling. Not to mention John Bolton.

Want more reason to smile? You know things are looking good when left-wing civic groups and progressive media are apoplectic. Said the Hankyoreh:

Looking at what Nam Joo-hong, the Kyonggi University professor who has been chosen to head the Unification Ministry, has said about North Korea until now, you can see how wrong the new government is about the issue of relations with North Korea. When President-elect Lee Myung-bak appoints a scholar so ultra-right that it would have had a hard time putting him to use even in the Cold War era, it’s enough to make you wonder whether the motive is to heighten tensions. There has never been anything like this in the history of the Unification Ministry.

An intra-Korean relations expert who requested anonymity told the Segye Ilbo that Nam was selected to show the government’s basic position that “now, we will say what we have to say to the North.”

And what they have to say, clearly, is “fuck you.”

OK, perhaps we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

Firstly, we don’t even know if the Unification Ministry will be around for Nam to lead, although currently, it looks like the ministry will survive.

Secondly, is Nam really that hardline? Actually, yes. The good professor is known as a security expert, so he’s likely to view the North and intra-Korean relations through the prism of national security. And as you can see from the comments quoted above, he’s been a constant critic of the Sunshine Policy, and is a pessimist about the six-party talks. During a symposium in December 2006, he said, “The North Korean leadership will not give up its nuclear card until the regime and system collapses… We must prepare for the six-party talks to fail and completely reconsider the policy of engagement with North Korea from the starting point.”

He’s not an optimist about peaceful reunification, either — in 2006, he wrote a book entitled, “There is No Reunification,” although he explained today that meant, “There will be no ‘quick reunification.’” I don’t know — I didn’t read it. Still, it’s kind of amusing that a guy who penned such a title would now become unification minister. He has, however, talked (and written) quite a bit about the need to prepare for North Korea collapsing.

Oh, and don’t get him started about minjok gongjo (national cooperation/solidarity)

Anyway, if you read Korean, he used to pen a column to the Moonie rag Segye Ilbo — this one gives you a pretty good idea of how he looks at the world.

Still, it’s important to realize that he’s working for a “pragmatic conservative.” Talking with Yonhap News today, he was on his best behavior. He said he would be faithful to President Lee’s “denuclearization, openness and raising North Korea’s per capita income to US$3,000″ roadmap, and that his basic position was to play give and take with the North. He said he wouldn’t budge an inch from Lee’s policy of pragmatism with the North.

Whether he said that with his fingers crossed behind his back, I don’t know.

He said it was wrong to label him with the ideological term “neocon,” saying one needed to find a balance between theory and practice and idealism and reality (quite funny, actually, if you read his Segye Ilbo stuff). He also said he’d never criticized the “spirit” of the Sunshine Policy; he criticized the methodology of the Sunshine Policy in that you have to do your best to protect the national interest. He added that he did not oppose the Kumgang Mountains tourism project and Kaesong Industrial Complex in their entirety, but rather believed that the South needed to say what it had to say to Pyongyang while giving aid, and that it mustn’t make the first move while the nuclear issue remains unresolved.

Which, as you read above, he doesn’t believe will be resolved.

I don’t know what to make of his appointment, really. Maybe he really will take a pragmatic line once he becomes minister. Or maybe he’s Lee’s way of telling off the National Assembly (“You wanted to keep the Unification Ministry? Well, now you got ‘There is No Unification Man’ as Unification Minister. Enjoy.”). Maybe he’s Lee’s way of putting the fear of God into Pyongyang. Or maybe — and ever since election night, I’ve had the feeling this might be the case — Lee is not nearly as “pragmatic” on North Korea as advertised during the campaign. We were expecting Sunshine Light, but we might end up with John Bolton’s Wet Dream.

If Seoul really is preparing to put the screws on the North, things with the US might get interesting. It’s already been noted in the local press that Lee has stacked his cabinet with miguk-tong, or US experts. But as the Creation Korea Party — fairly reasonable human beings, IMHO — pointed out in a statement today, a guy like Nam might not jive even with the Bush Administration, which has long since dumped its neocons in favor of more pragmatic figures. The discord might grow even louder if the Democrats take the White House in 2008.

We still have to see how things shake down, but we may be living in interesting times.

NOTE: Another motivation in naming Nam to the post might have been to quiet criticism that Lee wasn’t giving top spots to Jeolla-do natives. Nam — his right-wing politics not withstanding — is from Suncheon, Jeollanam-do, although he’s was raised and schooled in Seoul.