[The Editors' Verdict] Where Is the Korean Ship Headed?

원본보기 아이콘

The year 2020, the Year of the Gengzi (庚子), has dawned. Perhaps because 2019 marked the 100th anniversary of the March 1st Movement and the establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, a wave of nationalism swept across the Korean Peninsula and its surroundings. North Korea likely self-assessed that it had laid the foundation for the autonomy of the Korean Peninsula and the Korean people by entering the stage of completing its own nuclear armament. Japan, which ushered in the Reiwa (令和) era, strengthened its alliance with the United States under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who ranked among the longest-serving prime ministers in history. China amended its constitution to establish Xi Jinping’s permanent leadership system.

What evaluation should the Republic of Korea make? According to the current government’s five-year foreign policy plan, the core goal is to become a “proud nation leading international cooperation.” So far, the government has presented a blueprint to form a Northeast Asia Plus responsibility community and pursue an independent diplomacy path free from the four major powers surrounding the Korean Peninsula. The year 2019 was the year for the full-scale implementation of this plan.

Which country in the world would refuse “proud and leading” diplomacy if it were possible? The problem is that the diplomacy was only proud and leading in appearance, but there was no policy achievement to boast about. The original goal of “developing a future-oriented mature cooperative partnership with Japan by separating historical issues such as the comfort women issue from practical cooperation” was realized in the exact opposite way. Since it was not acknowledged that Japan’s trade retaliation was not caused by historical issues but was a retaliatory response to the South Korean Supreme Court’s ruling (direct compensation by Japanese companies to forced laborers), the Korea-Japan relationship could not develop into a “future-oriented partnership.” In reality, the Korea-Japan relationship was driven into a historical war by Moon Jae-in’s Japan-bashing diplomacy, but ironically, Korea kept demanding Japan to separate historical and trade issues, which did not gain international support. The Korea-Japan relationship regressed into the most immature and past-oriented competitive relationship since the normalization of diplomatic relations.

The goal of “achieving prosperity on the Korean Peninsula by pursuing North Korean denuclearization through proactive and proud cooperative diplomacy” was completely forgotten. To take the initiative in North Korea denuclearization policy, it is necessary to use sanctions and cooperation measures effectively and in balance, but the current government consistently requested only the easing of UN Security Council sanctions and the resumption of inter-Korean economic cooperation, losing trust from Western countries and becoming an object of ridicule from North Korea. The rupture in the Korea-US alliance over the termination and reversal of the Korea-Japan military information protection agreement (GSOMIA), and the practical collapse of the Korea-US-Japan trilateral cooperation, have defined Korea’s diplomacy as having nowhere to go. There was even a situation where Korea could not “proudly” protest after Chinese and Russian military aircraft repeatedly violated Korea’s Air Defense Identification Zone.

Nor did the government succeed in uniting the people to achieve domestic policy success. Although it is impossible to fully repair a ship floating on water, the government took the reckless step of remodeling the Korean ship all at once. It pushed forward a full-scale remodeling without achieving any proper results in income-led growth, corporate governance reform, nuclear phase-out, abolition of specialized high schools, tax-driven welfare, prosecution reform, and high-intensity real estate policies. It is like a ship being tossed about in a sea of turmoil comparable to the late Joseon period, with intact parts removed for repair now submerged in seawater. Passengers and crew members who raise questions or oppose these moves feel threatened with being cast into the sea as “deep-rooted evils.”

What is worrisome is the prospect that this kind of voyage will continue in 2020. There is no way to soothe more than half of the passengers who are filled with dissatisfaction and fear that the Korean ship might sink on its own, like the Sewol ferry, an experience never before encountered. On the Korean ship, which has already lost its unity and self-purification functions, it seems that only a life-or-death confrontation to change the captain awaits the fateful day.

Choi Wonmok, Professor, Ewha Womans University Law School

© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.