When did pining for the collapse of a genocidal tyranny become a bad thing?

Somewhere in Washington, Joshua is no longer smiling. Nam Joo-Hong, the nominee to be Unification Minister whom I had called “my kind of guy,” has withdrawn from consideration after becoming a lightning rod for those on the left who lost the election by a landslide.

Nam Joo-hong, the unification minister-designate, and Park Eun-kyung, the environment minister-designate, stepped down as they were grilled by opposition parties over their accumulation of wealth and alleged misconduct. Nam does not qualify for the unification portfolio because of his hard-line stance toward North Korea, United Democratic Party lawmakers charged. Lawmakers also noted that Nam’s daughter is a U.S. citizen and his son has U.S. permanent residency and can be exempted from the military draft. His wife renounced her American residency last month. [Joongang Ilbo]

The opposition also tagged Nam as a real estate speculator, but Nam’s ideological beliefs appear to have been the main factor in doing in his nomination. I can imagine no better illustration that Lee’s election won’t solve the unbridgeable differences between South Korea’s values and our own than the fact that wishing for liberation — for an end to atrocities, famine, plague, and democide — have been excluded from polite society. Are American soldiers in South Korea to hold up the KOSPI, then?

This is especially disappointing because whoever runs Unification will be a subordinate of the Foreign Minister. Organizationally, that makes sense, but the nominee for Foreign Minister, who comes from the inner circle of the Roh Administration, is a dreary choice. That means that Nam may well have ended up being a Korean Jay Lefkowitz anyway — someone who said a lot of great things that bore little relationship to his government’s policies. No doubt, President Lee wants to project a moderate image in advance of next April’s parliamentary elections, where Lee already has enough trouble within his own party.

I’m not completely giving up on Lee yet, but I’m anxiously awaiting some clarification on just what Park Jin‘s role will be.