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2 The hard part starts for Seoul's
new man By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - The election of a pragmatic
conservative with a long track record of having
his way in business and politics to a five-year
term as president of South Korea ushers in a
period of dynamic transition - and unavoidable
conflict with the activists who've been setting
the policy agenda for the past decade.
Just as Kim Dae-jung's election in 1997
came at the height of the economic crisis and
portended a period of change, so does that of
Lee
Myung-bak who appears likely to bring about an
equally dramatic swing in governance and outlook.
The 66-year-old Lee, whose victory
Wednesday fell on his birthday, is hardly going to
strip away many of the reforms initiated under Kim
and his successor, Roh Moo-hyun. But he clearly
has an agenda that he and his top advisers deem
necessary to vault the economy to the next level
of global competitiveness and also to deal
effectively with North Korea and the nuclear issue
North Korea was by no means the critical
factor in an election in which Lee picked up 48.7%
of the vote, but it could well reach that level if
he makes good on his theory about how to deal with
North Korea's human rights record.
Lee did
not seem at all worried that the mere mention of
"human rights" is enough to send the North Korean
propaganda machine into a rhetorical paroxysm and
prompt North Korean negotiators to stomp out of
reconciliation meetings, much less to get North
Korea to completely abandon its nuclear weapons
program.
In almost patronizing tones, on
the morning after his triumph, Lee reminisced for
a moment on the constructive impact of criticism
of South Korea's human rights record under the
military leaders who ruled the country until mass
protests forced adoption of the "democracy
constitution", and presidential elections every
five years beginning in 1987 with a constitutional
mandate of a single term.
Never mind that
the winner of that first election was a general,
Roh Tae-woo, later to be convicted along with his
dictator-predecessor, friend and ally, the
incompetent General Chun Doo-hwan, of massive
corruption and responsibility for the bloody
repression of the Kwangju revolt in 1980. General
Roh won the 1987 election only after the two
leading anti-government critics, Kim Young-sam and
Kim Dae-jung, failed to agree on a single
candidate. The winners ever since have been
civilians, "YS" in 1992, "DJ" in 1997 and Roh
Moo-hyun in 2002, all of whom ran on strong
records of fighting rights abuses in South Korea
Since criticism from abroad had been so
effective in encouraging human rights in the
South, Lee recently reasoned, "criticism that
comes with affection can help make North Korean
society healthy". No longer, he said, would the
South Korean government remain silent, as it was
first under Kim Dae-jung and then under Roh
Moo-hyun, about human rights abuses in the North.
"I will make a change from the previous
administration that completely refrained from
criticizing North Korea and pandered to it in a
one-sided way," said Lee.
That remark
suggested that South Korea would not only raise
the topic in inter-Korean talks, but would also
reverse its policy of abstaining from UN
resolutions condemning North Korea's human rights
record, most recently one by the UN General
Assembly that North Korea's media has been loudly
excoriating. It's even conceivable that South
Korean negotiators could raise the issue in
six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons,
though Lee seemed more preoccupied with verifying
the North's claims about disabling its nuclear
complex and moving from there to complete
dismantlement of the program.
Lee has
promised to try to "persuade North Korea that the
abandonment of its nuclear program will bring
greater benefits for maintaining its regime and
for the North Korea", but those words were almost
ritualistic. What really counts is his reminder
that "for North Korea to give up its nuclear
weapons is to ensure its development" - a turn of
phrase that means he will not want to make good on
enormous giveaways to North Korea unless North
Korea has indeed contributed to the
"denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
The question, of course, is whether Lee
will follow through on this policy when he gets a
dose of North Korea's response. The North, once
accustomed to criticizing him but now largely
silent, can signal its annoyance by the usual
tactics of canceling meetings, cutting off visits,
and perhaps slowing down the disablement of the
nuclear complex at Yongbyon - even though US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and nuclear
envoy Christopher Hill both like to say that
process is "on track".
Lee is expected to
follow through on the commitment of the outgoing
Roh Moo-hyun government at least in giving
humanitarian aid to North Korea, but, he may delay
it if he's not convinced the North has at least
disabled the nuclear complex at Yongbyon. And he's
not expected to be interested in any further
commitments unless North Korea produces a complete
list of its nuclear inventory, including whatever
it has done to develop warheads made with highly
enriched uranium and to export nuclear technology
elsewhere, notably Iran and Syria.
Before
getting around to that stage, however, Lee must
first overcome severe opposition from the
left-of-center United New Democratic Party, whose
pro-government candidate, Chung Dong-young, came
in a distant second on Wednesday with just more
than 25% of the votes.
Diehard members of
the party are still hoping to embarrass if not
crucify Lee's presidency by a special
investigation into his link to the BBK investment
fund whose main partner is in jail here awaiting
trial on charges of manipulating stocks and
embezzling
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