The Death of Alliance, Part IV
On her return from an eight-day trip to the United States, Park Geun-hye, chairwoman of Grand National Party, told reporters yesterday that relations between South Korea and the United States are far worse than Koreans imagine they are. “I met various politicians,” said Ms. Park. “If the mistrust that prevails among the politicians spreads to the general public of the United States, bilateral ties between the two countries will face greater problems.”Ms. Park had a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to discuss the North Korean nuclear crisis, among other issues. She said a lack of cooperation between South Korea and the United States was the chief reason for the current stalemate in trying to end Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons efforts.
Park may be an unprincipled opportunist, but she can see what’s before her eyes. The fact that there’s an election coming up is probably a factor, too. Via the Joongang Ilbo.
MORE: Even the new South Korean ambassador, Hong Seok-Hyun, is despairing about how Congress views South Korea these days:
President Roh Moo-hyun hand-picked Hong as ambassador to Washington to change the “old” U.S. understanding of Korea and the North Korean nuclear dispute. Hong said when he arrived in Washington “the mood wasn’t right” to start doing so. But he added he would try to persuade Americans to push both the U.S.-Korea alliance and intra-Korean reconciliation when he had the chance.
Hong turned heads, and then caused then to lower and slowly rotate from side to side, when he said, in reference to North Korea, that “the finest horse trainers use only lump sugar, while the worst use only the whip,” and that we should approach the North’s nuclear coming-out day with “a warm heart.” Not long afterward, he had a rough meet-and-greet day at the Capitol building, followed closely by some deliciously blunt comments from the congressional leadership regarding the state of U.S.-ROK relations. You could have foreseen that out by reading this post last May (where I also predicted that Korean troops won’t go to Iraq–OK, so I’m not Miss Cleo, but I wasn’t that far off, either).
Park’s call for the United States to make yet more concessions to the North doesn’t seem to have helped matters. If Congress sees things as I see them, it just creates the appearance that effective diplomacy and support for human rights have no constituency in South Korea.
Hong said Park’s call for the U.S. to make North Korea “a bold offer” and deploy a special envoy to the North to resolve the dispute seemed to have left U.S. figures baffled at how little the North Korea policies of South Korea’s opposition party differ from those of the government. But he added Park’s comments highlighted the importance of bipartisan diplomacy.
At a time like this, that only fuels calls to disengage from South Korea.