Hayoungseon: "Difficult to Give Passing Grade to Moon Administration's Diplomacy... 'Quad' Judgment Was Late"

Hayoungseon, Chairman of the East Asia Research Institute. / Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Ji-eun] Ha Young-sun, chairman of the East Asia Institute and a senior figure in the field of diplomatic security, said it is "difficult to give a passing grade" to the Moon Jae-in administration's foreign policy over the past four years.

In a recent interview with Asia Economy's regular contributor Professor Hwang Jae-ho of the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies' International Studies Department and this newspaper's reporter, Chairman Ha evaluated that "the administration failed to properly anticipate the 21st-century transformation of US-China relations and is trying to solve international political issues overly focused on resolving inter-Korean matters."

He said it is difficult to give a passing grade not only to the current government but also to past administrations' perspectives on the world order. Chairman Ha described the process of global order restructuring as "reconstruction." He explained that the order established by the US after the world wars is now facing challenges from China, entering a phase of reconstruction.

However, his diagnosis is that South Korea is not conducting any "pre-feasibility studies" to join this reconstruction process. Chairman Ha pointed out, "The question of whether South Korea will participate in the US-led Quad or Quad Plus has passed the time for providing an answer, yet it remains unresolved," and added, "Conversely, issues such as peace and unification on the Korean Peninsula, including North Korea's denuclearization, are not even prepared for discussion, but there is impatience to try to solve them prematurely."

He views this as a limitation of the so-called "586 generation" (people in their 50s, university entrants in the 1980s, born in the 1960s), who have become the center of Korean politics. Chairman Ha diagnosed, "This generation, which experienced a condensed transformation of modern Korean history in the 1980s, inevitably struggles to address 21st-century issues with a 20th-century mindset," and said, "With such a limited perspective, efforts to solve inter-Korean issues from a simplistic post-Cold War viewpoint, and attempts to resolve domestic political power polarization dichotomously, it is difficult to establish a survival and prosperity strategy for the Korean Peninsula in the 21st century."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.