Too Little, Too Late

There may be no better way to defeat a radical movement than to let it win an election. The radical is an inherently emotional creation, one ill suited to the objective analysis of facts that effective government requires. If democratic institutions can survive their tenure of office, they generally discredit themselves in short order. I can’t imagine a better illustration of this principle than watching a South Korean government with a 14% approval rating meekly promoting a military alliance and a Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Watch this video. It plays like a eulogy.

HT: GI Korea.

After years of trading in and capitalizing on the hatred of America, what accomplishment of substance have the ex-radicals produced? Korea’s “assertive” new foreign policy has earned no respect from its neighbors, including the North Korean regime that ignored its pleas and flung missiles toward Japan, Russia, and Hawaii. There has been no reduction of military tensions, no disarmament, no reforms, no more summits, no improvements in human rights, and certainly no alteration in the status of the two barren rocks on which the preponderance of its diplomatic capital was squandered, and which one suspects would be forgotten if one of Kim Jong Il’s errant missiles obliterated them both.

South Korea’s future is now appreciably less secure from the predation of neighbors. Its plan to build an independent defense pursues a worthy goal, but is being executed incompetently because of suigenerous political forces, and wil thus fail to protect the republic despite its astronomical cost. South Korea’s alliance with the United States is dissolving, with the United States now openly threatening to withdraw its air force (and it would never leave its ground forces without air cover). The U.S. is forming a separate command designed mainly to provide air and naval support, another idea that was long overdue.

Despite all of this sacrifice to the mob’s demands, the government finds itself in violent combat against this most radical, pro-North Korean segment of its own political base, disarmed of the confident and objective use of measured force to restore law and order. The U.S. Army’s effort to restructure (read: reduce) its forces is flagging because Korean government lacks the spine to support it adequately. The government’s half-hearted promotion of the FTA has been vetoed by thugs in the streets, and as a consequence, there won’t be an FTA.

As anticipated, members of the Korean Alliance Against the Korea-U.S. FTA wielded 3-meter bamboo sticks against police and broke police car windows with iron pipes. They threw broken paving blocks at the police and mobilized fire and sand as protest tools.

They broke out of the area where they were supposed to have staged their demonstration, occupied roads and even blocked the Gwanghwamun intersection, where the law bans demonstrators from congregating.

And as previously noted:

A Swiss man and two friends were set upon by a mob of angry protestors who apparently mistook them for Americans on Wednesday. The group of 10, who were taking part in a Gwangwhamun rally to protest against an FTA between Korea and the U.S., approached the man and his friends shouting abuse in Korean, most of which he could not understand.

When the demands of the mob conflict with the interests of the nation, its leaders confront a choice: appease the mob, or lead the nation toward security and prosperity. One of those choices always requires betraying the other.