| |
South Korea joins the 'axis of
independence'
By John Feffer
(Republished with permission from Foreign
Policy In Focus)
Roh Moo-hyun, the incoming
South Korean president, is part of a trend that raises
the hackles of the administration of US President George
W Bush. The United States now has another outspoken and
uncowed "ally". Roh joins an axis of independence that
includes France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard
Schroeder. With friends like these, the Bush team
laments, who needs an axis of evil? What's bad for Bush,
however, is a boon for the rest of the world and
particularly for the Korean Peninsula. Roh Moo-hyun is
the world's best hope for avoiding war in East Asia.
Roh Moo-hyun is a true outsider, a lawyer who
never went to college or law school and passed the
fiendishly difficult bar exam through his own efforts.
He defended students and labor leaders, the key
organizers of South Korea's democratization movement,
and went on to serve in the legislature. Considerably
younger than outgoing president Kim Dae-jung, Roh is a
spokesman for the influential generation that graduated
from college in the 1980s and is fed up with the Cold
War that lingers on the peninsula.
Many Koreans
hope that Roh's independence will enable him to sweep
away South Korea's endemic corruption and put economic
reform on a more solid foundation. The big corporations
have already shown signs of early capitulation by
dropping their opposition to class-action suits in the
financial world - a much-needed step in the direction of
greater transparency.
But it is foreign policy
where Roh will make his mark. The new president is even
more committed than the previous administration to a
policy of engaging North Korea. He favors moving forward
with North-South reconciliation even before the current
nuclear crisis is resolved.
Roh's inauguration
on Tuesday came at a crucial time. The Bush
administration has so far refused to negotiate with
Pyongyang and has developed military plans to accomplish
the regime change that malign neglect has so far failed
to accomplish. Though it still adheres marginally to a
peace constitution, Japan has announced that it too
would launch a preemptive attack if it thought North
Korea were about to strike first. And North Korea,
apparently moving forward with its nuclear program, has
made repeated threats of its own, including withdrawal
from the 1953 Armistice agreement that ended the Korean
War.
Trigger fingers are getting itchy in East
Asia, and only Roh Moo-hyun clings tenaciously to an
olive branch. A US "military strike against North Korea
is an extremely serious matter that could lead to a war
on the peninsula", he has said. "So I oppose even a
review of such a possibility." Roh knows that war would
bring untold death and destruction to South Korea. And
North Korea's collapse would burden his country with
refugees and economic and political challenges that
dwarf what West Germany faced more than a decade ago.
US war plans have traditionally relied on South
Korea to provide military support and to establish
political control in the event of a North Korean
collapse. As such, Roh's pacifist tendencies put more
than a speed bump between the United States and
full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula.
But
that's not all. Roh wants Uncle Sam to stop treating his
country like an untrustworthy teenager. The Status of
Forces Agreement between the two countries (which
establishes the conditions for US military presence in
South Korea) is woefully lopsided when compared with
similar US agreements with other countries such as
Germany. In the recent demonstrations around the
accidental killing of two Korean schoolgirls by US
soldiers, tens of thousands of South Koreans gave vent
to years of pent-up frustration and anger.
Neither Roh, nor the majority of the
demonstrators in South Korea, are anti-American. They,
like anti-war protesters in New York and London, oppose
specific US policies. They are part of a worldwide
reaction to the unilateralism of the Bush
administration. If the current administration continues
along its current path, the axis of independence may
expand to include all US allies.
Roh is no
stranger to uphill battles. He pulled off a stunning
upset victory in the December elections. Now, facing
even longer odds in the international arena, he is
simultaneously trying to establish peace with North
Korea and negotiate a more just relationship with the
United States. Kim Dae-jung's Nobel Peace Prize is a
tough act to follow. If Roh pulls off these two
foreign-policy feats, he will set the stage for a more
profound prize: a peaceful, unified Korea.
John Feffer
is the author of Shock Waves:
Eastern Europe After the Revolutions and the editor
of the forthcoming Power Trip: US Foreign Policy
After September 11 (Seven Stories, 2003). He has
recently returned from three years based in Tokyo
working on East Asian issues. Feffer is also an advisory
committee member of Foreign
Policy in Focus
, a joint program of the Interhemispheric
Resource Center and the Institute for Policy
Studies. This
article is republished with permission.
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
