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A SENSE OF ASIA

New S. Korean president turns anti-U.S. worldview to political advantage


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By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Sol W. Sanders

December 24, 2002

The most difficult part of WashingtonÕs effort to curb North Korean nuclear blackmail and missiles proliferation to rogue states will be working with South KoreaÕs President-elect Roh Moo-hyun.

Roh, 66, nevertheless personifies the generational gap that dominated the recent South Korean elections. Exit polls showed young voters overwhelmed their more conservative elders; 59 percent of voters in their 20s and 30s voted for Roh compared with 38 percent in their 50s and 60s. They typify the Miracle on the Han that has turned South Korea into a modern country in a few decades, a major world trader, an industrial power, poised at the cutting edge of new technologies. [RohÕs team effectively used KoreaÕs Internet, the largest per capita broadband-based system in the world, to get the youth turnout.]

The impoverished, rural, agrarian Korea that came out of the brutal Japanese Occupation is not a memory ø but a ÒcauseÓ which the young donÕt drop. The Korean War is not seen as American sacrifices to defend an independent Korea but U.S. imperialism. Syngman Rhee, who single-handedly kept the idea of an independent Korea alive through a long and bitter exile, is now considered a reactionary who opposed reunification [never mind that it would have been on Communist terms].

Perhaps the worst of RohÕs worldview is that he has bragged about the fact that he has not traveled abroad, most of all, never visited the U.S., unheard of among Korean politicians and those large numbers of Koreans who have relatives in the huge U.S. disapora. He gets full marks for having pulled himself up by his bootstraps, becoming an important human rights lawyer bearding the former military governments.

[Unlike most Korean politicians, he does not have a university education.] But, like his predecessors, he seems unlikely to try to build on the executive system that he inherits ønor to undertake the decentralization of SeoulÕs Òimperial presidencyÓ. Although he won under the patronage of President Kim Dae Jung and KimÕs Millennium Party, he has weak party affiliations. So Seoul is likely to be limping along under a rank amateur as the skillful North Korean propaganda machine plays it like a gayageum.

It isnÕt as though Roh doesnÕt have problems beyond his promise to continue KimÕs failed ÒSunshine PolicyÓ which was to have bought the North Koreans off. At the heart of the discontent with old attitudes and policies ø including the long-standing alliance with the U.S. ø is the Korean economy. Kim followed the dictates of the Korean economic experts and the international lending community after the 1997 East Asia economic crisis and moved swiftly to make reforms to Òthe Japan modelÓ which had been so successful in Korea. But the reforms have slowed as they produced some painful short-term consequences.

Domestic demand, which has led the economyÕs growth since last year, is faltering. Efforts to boost exports on which the Korean boom has been based are running up against enormous competition, now including China.

Critical to the economy has been its relatively open door to foreign investors, in taking over bankrupt Korean enterprises and infusing new capital, technology and managerial talent. If Roh is to have his wish, the Korean economy must grow at a rate of 7 percent a year for the next 10 years. This wonÕt happen without increased foreign investment. If Roh persists in his xenophobia, expressed so often during the campaign, foreign investors are going to shrink from the difficult task of driving a bargain with Korean capital.

RohÕs electoral success with the young is based on a problem that he says he will solve during his five-year term when he turns Korean into a Òmiddle-classÓ country. One in every four between 15 and 29 are now unemployed, with the educated increasingly having difficulties. The growing youth unemployment results from the prolonged economic downturn and the failure of the educational system to meet corporate demands for specialized skills ø ironically harking back to old-fashioned Korean Confucianism. [Some companies are refusing masterÕs and Ph.D. degree holders.] At the same time, industries involving the ÒThree-DÕsÓ (difficult, dirty and dangerous) jobs have a labor shortage.

Ironically, RohÕs foreign policy advisers appear to be more worried about the possibility of a North Korean collapse and a resultant drain on the South Korean economy than the threat of nuclear holocaust. They ascribe PyongyangÕs tactics to a strategy to bring the U.S. [and Japan] back into negotiations ø and they want to continue to feed the tiger with aid as Pyongyang diverts resources to their military, a strategy that has already cost two million lives with famine continuing.

When Roh comes to Washington in the new year to consult with President Bush, there will be a Pacific-like gulf separating their approaches to the PeninsulaÕs problems.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net), 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.

December 24, 2002

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