Worldwide Web WorldTribune.com

  breaking... 


Tuesday, January 29, 2008       Free Headline Alerts

South Korea's richest man visits Bush bearing an olive branch

By Donald Kirk

WASHINGTON — The United States and South Korea are preparing to reboot their longstanding alliance — disrupted by ten years of leftist governments in Seoul — with the inauguration of president-elect Lee Myung-Bak on Feb. 25.

Chung Mong-Joon briefly considered running for president in 2002.     BBC
Just as U.S. defense planners were getting used to the idea of downsizing the military relationship and broadening South Korean responsibilities, Lee and his advisers want to undo what they see as the damage done by President Kim Dae-Jung and his successor, the outgoing Roh Moo-Hyun.

Lee signaled the shift in strategy and outlook by sending a most unusual emissary to Washington last week to open a new chapter in U.S.-Korean relations. The visitor was Chung Mong-Joon, whose 11 percent stake in Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world's largest producer of commercial ships, has made him probably South Korea's richest man.

Also In This Edition

Chung, representing the Hyundai industrial enclave of Ulsan for years in the Korean National Assembly, was in Washington ostensibly to lay the groundwork for the first summit in March between Lee and President George W Bush, but the visit had much broader implications as evident in a handwritten note from Lee to Bush in which Lee expressed the wish to bolster the alliance.

Chung, after presenting the note, spent 20 minutes chatting with Bush during which Bush invited Lee to call on him in March for a meeting that is likely to be considerably more than just a polite welcoming handshake. Chung in turn asked if Bush could swing over to Seoul to see Lee during the Group of Eight summit of leading economic powers in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.

As the socially most adept of the five surviving sons of the founder of the Hyundai empire, Chung Ju-Yung, Chung Mong-Joon may have been too polite to get down to details of the U.S.-Korean relationship.

His visit, however, indicates the desire in Washington and Seoul to overcome differences that have strained relations between the U.S. and South Korea in recent years. Chung elaborated somewhat after seeing the deputy secretary of state, John Negroponte, whose record from his early days as a political secretary in the old U.S. Embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) to U.S. ambassador to Iraq to overall chief of intelligence in the White House has been that of a hardline pragmatist. There had, Chung remarked, been "unnecessary misunderstandings" of late due to lack of "prior consultation".

The real question for both the U.S. and South Korea remains how tough to get with North Korea while the North shows no sign of itemizing its nuclear inventory, as promised in six-nation talks, and refuses to acknowledge the existence of a program for developing warheads with highly enriched uranium.

Holder of a doctorate in international economics from Johns Hopkins University, Chung himself has appeared somewhat uncertain as to his real diplomatic orientation. A political independent in Korea's fractious National Assembly, he was briefly a candidate for nomination for president in 2002, then threw his support to Roh Moo-Hyun, only to withdraw it before Roh's election. Though not a hardliner, Chung evinced little interest in Roh's eagerness to extend aid and other concessions to the North in exchange for words on paper.

It's unlikely that either Bush or Chung would have criticized Roh's policies in their meeting, but the subtext had to have emerged in Chung's conversation with U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, in whose office Bush showed up for the carefully staged "drop-by" encounter with Chung. Just as important, Chung also saw Vice President Dick Cheney, whose tough outlook on North Korea has been largely muted while the U.S. pursues reconciliation.

The avowal on all sides of the need to "strengthen the alliance" assumes special significance in view of problems ever since Kim Dae-jung called on Bush at the White House at the outset of Bush's first term as president seven years ago.

It was during that infamous encounter that Bush expressed "skepticism" about the possibilities of verifying any agreement with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il.

Much criticized for appearing to alienate an ally, Bush eventually shifted gears, approving moves toward reconciliation in six-party talks under which North Korea agreed finally to abandon its nuclear program in return for vast quantities of aid. At the same time, South Korean leaders showed increasing reluctance to cooperate militarily with the U.S. even as Donald Rumsfeld, then U.S. defense secretary, came out with plans for substantially decreasing the U.S. military role.

South Korean conservatives, led by Lee, now want to return to the status quo ante — that is, the previous relationship of close cooperation, and Chung is believed to have gotten into more details when he called on U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

One especially sensitive issue focuses on revision of the plan under which South Korea is to assume command of all allied forces in the event of a second Korean war. Roh's closest advisers made this transfer of command a priority, decrying the longstanding agreement for the U.S. to take charge in time of war as an insult to national sovereignty, an assault on independence. They were in close alliance with South Korean leftists demanding nothing less than the complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops and abrogation of the U.S.-Korea alliance.

The conservative Lee is asking to postpone the transfer of war-time command, just as he wants to put off Roh's plan for reducing the number of South Korean troops, at 650,000 or so far fewer than North Korea's 1.1 million-man military establishment.

The U.S., downsizing its own troop levels in South Korea from 37,000 several years ago to 29,000, on the way to a bare minimum of 20,000, agreed after much debate to transfer war-time command by 2012. In fact, having accepted the need to go along with the outlook of the Roh administration, U.S. planners wanted the transfer to happen by 2010. Korean defense officials, overwhelmed by the intricacies of the transition, said they needed more time.

Chung acknowledged during his visit the difficulties of canceling a plan that took much time to develop. Nonetheless, he also warned against sending "the wrong message" to North Korea by doing away with a command structure in effect ever since the Korean War.

If a second Korean war were to break out, the U.S. would have to take charge of a vast infusion of air and naval power and bring in much new armor and artillery. South Korea, however, would supply most of the ground forces, at least initially. Lee, in his initial meetings with Bush, hopes to restore rapport that's been lost — and that Korean military planners will be sorely needed if the six-party process finally breaks down regardless of who's actually in command.



About Us     l    Contact Us     l    Geostrategy-Direct.com     l    East-Asia-Intel.com
Copyright © 2008    East West Services, Inc.    All rights reserved.