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South Korea’s always volatile politics have suddenly had a significant temperature change adding one more headache to President Bush’s already fevered geopolitical brow.
President Kim Dae Jung has resigned from the Millenium Democratic Party he created for this presidency. This is a tactic to improve the chances in the December elections of Roh Moo-Hyun – and Kim’s hand-chosen successor – against the favored Lee Hoi Chang who is considered more in harmony with the Bush view of North Korea.
Kim hadn’t much choice. An avalanche of corruption charges has descended on his government, and more importantly on, his immediate family. The nephew of his wife, Lee Hee-ho, and several associates of her sons were arrested for bribery. Kwon Roh-Kap, a close associate, was just jailed on for receiving bribes from a jailed businessman. Korean media speculate Kim's second son, Kim Hong-Up, has taken bribes from constructions firms, that his third son, Kim Hong-Gul, in the U.S. as an academic researcher, is a sports betting operator. And prosecutors indicted Choi Kyu-Sun, a friend of Kim's third son, for receiving $829,000 for helping a company win state construction contracts.
Still, none of this could be of the importance to Kim as his “Sunshine Policy” – the effort by making major concessions to defuse the longtime crisis on the Peninsula and effect some kind of working relationship with North Korea. The Bush Administration, reversing the policies of President Clinton, has been extremely critical of Kim’s program, joined in Seoul where conservatives question Kim’s strategy as naïve.
No one denounced the “Sunshine Policy” more than Lee Hoi Chang, until recently considered favorite to replace Kim. Lee ran a very close race with Kim six years ago. Lee earlier this year was in Washington where he was treated like a chief of government. But pollsters in Seoul are now saying the race is too close to call. Roh is considered a much more charismatic figure compared to Lee’s stolid if respected image.
Underlying the contest are fundamental differences beginning to dominate the South Korean scene. Younger voters have no memory of the bitter Korean War when great Korean and American sacrifices saved the South from being overrun in the Cold War. A recent Korean visitor from America found anti-Americanism, pro-Communist South Koreans China, anti-anti-Communist sentiments burgeoning among younger voters. Significant revisionist history among the intellectuals and academics questions Seoul’s whole Cold War position and the stalwart leader of the Republic in its first years, Synghman Rhee. Rhee, an authoritarian figure whose regime collapsed in a student revolution in the mid-50s, is seen by the most criticial historians, as pivotal. He helped keep Korean resistance to the half-century Japanese Occupation alive during his long exile in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Pyongyang continues to play a cat and mouse game with both Washington and Seoul. Bush’s denunciation of North Korea in his famous [and infamous in Europe and its targets] as an “axis of evil” seemed to have the desired effect. Despite a bitter propaganda line, Pyongyang was apparently going forward with new talks with Washington on outstanding issues. Again, the North Koreans do not have much choice, since their food and energy shortages – which have killed hundreds of thousands – continue in a permanent economic crisis, a bankrupt regime living off sales of hi-tech missiles and remittances from the Korean disaspora, especially in Japan., and food shipments from the U.S., Japan, and South Korea.
Famous for their erratic behavior, Pyongyang has just called off economic talks with the South, charging that Seoul’s effort to help repair dams in the North, which threaten both countries, was insulting. A U.S. representative is slated to arrive in Pyongyang momentarily to begin U.S.-North Korean bilateral on issues under the Clinton agreements. Most observers believed that Pyongyang would at least be rhetorically accommodating to Kim’s lame-duck administration in the South, if for no other reason than to enhance the election prospects for Roh. Roh continues to endorse Kim’s Sunshine Policy and promises to continue it. But there is a suspicion that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il may be having difficulties balancing the elements of the regime. Not the least of these is placating his million-man military who absorb the bulk of the country’s resources and who look on any liberalization – through contact with Seoul and the U.S. and Japan – as threatening.
Suspicions that the North Koreans have continued to advance a weapons of mass destruction program – including nuclear, biological, and chemical – has to be a high priority Washington hypothesis. Meanwhile, Pyongyang continues to export missiles to Iran and other pariah states [as well as Egypt] and are said to be close to development of a new generation of longer range missiles with better guidance systems which could reach parts of the U.S.. Despite the lack of media attention, Pyongyang must remain a major concern for Bush’s worldwide war on terrorism. And it is increasingly complicated by the political ferment in the South.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@directvinternet.com ),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.