Caution: Bumpy times for the
Koreas By Aidan Foster-Carter
The year 2008 promises to be a year of
change and uncertainty on the Korean Peninsula.
When Lee Myung-bak of the conservative
Grand National Party (GNP) was elected as South
Korea's next president by a landslide on December
19, it marked a decade of center-left rule in
Seoul. A former mayor of Seoul, aged 66, Lee
begins his five-year term on February 25.
Or at least he is due to. An unprecedented
special counsel is
probing financial allegations
from Lee's past. He will probably survive this,
since to indict him now could cause turmoil. But
his foes will keep digging for old sleaze, which
may weaken his mandate for change.
Hence
the GNP might not after all win separate
parliamentary elections, due on April 9. Lee
Hoi-chang, an ex-premier who polled 15% as an
independent in December, is founding a new
right-wing party. This may rob the GNP of the
majority Lee Myung-bak needs for his program.
Lee's ambitious pledges include 7% gross
domestic product growth (now cut to a more
realistic 6%), and a vast new canal network.
Critics fear the latter will be a white elephant
and ecological disaster.
Lee's appeal was
his promise to fix the economy: in fact not in bad
shape by Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development norms - it is the world's 12th largest
- with growth close to 5% and record exports. But
graduate unemployment and (till recently) soaring
real estate prices have created a sense of unease.
A decade ago, it was Lee's party which
brought Seoul close to sovereign default in the
1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Veteran dissident
Kim Dae-jung, elected president at his fourth try,
resisted populism to open and restructure the
economy - which bounced back. He also won the
Nobel peace prize in 2000 for the first-ever
inter-Korean summit meeting.
DJ's
successor Roh Moo-hyun continued the Sunshine
policy of outreach to North Korea. But at home he
was weak and combative, seeming keener to promote
equality than growth.
Hence the appeal of
Lee MB. Nicknamed "bulldozer" from his career as a
chief executive at Hyundai, one of the biggest
conglomerates (chaebol), Lee won plaudits
as a can-do mayor of Seoul. Yet amid global
economic uncertainty, his many promises if not
delivered could rebound.
His plans to
deregulate the chaebol are controversial.
Korea's engines they may be; but the largest,
Samsung, is being probed for alleged large-scale
bribery and other malfeasance. To ease the few
curbs on them may boost growth, but will not
improve corporate governance.
Abroad, Lee
will mend fences with the US. President George W
Bush and Roh were not soulmates, though Roh sent
(non-combat) troops to Iraq to win breathing space
for the Sunshine policy.
Yet in 2007 Bush
dropped his "axis of evil" rhetoric to belatedly
start engaging Pyongyang, bringing new life to
six-party nuclear talks (both Koreas, the US,
China, Japan and Russia).
Surprisingly Roh
also backed a free-trade agreement with the US,
signed last year. Lee supports this too, but
protectionist lawmakers in both countries may
refuse to ratify it.
How Lee will handle
North Korea is unclear yet. He threatens to review
a flurry of inter-Korean agreements inked in Roh's
final months. But many of these are sensible
business deals, not the one-sided largesse of the
past. These should be acceptable to the pragmatic
Lee - no cold warrior, unlike his old-guard
namesake Lee HC.
However, Lee says he will
make Sunshine conditional on nuclear compliance.
That could be a problem. After a year of
unprecedented progress, including closure of its
plutonium-producing Yongbyon site, North Korea has
reverted to type and is now dragging its feet.
By end-2007 Yongbyon was meant to be
disabled (put beyond use), and Pyongyang was to
declare all its nuclear facilities. But disabling
has slowed, and nothing has been declared.
The latter means hard choices for the
North's leader, Kim Jong-il. The US needs not only
a full inventory of his nuclear arsenal, but also
credible accounts of two related concerns: a
suspected separate program based on highly
enriched uranium, and alleged nuclear
proliferation to Syria. Pyongyang as usual denies
it all, but has a lot of explaining to do.
The fear is that Kim, or his tough
generals, are not yet ready to follow Libya in
truly giving up their weapons of mass destruction.
A militant, secretive paranoid state with no other
assets (like oil) to parlay, North Korea does not
do disclosure - much less surrender.
So
Kim may play for time, in hopes - surely vain - of
a better deal from Bush's successor. But elsewhere
time is not on his side, as he refuses to adapt to
an age of globalization.
North Korea's
economy, wizened and desperate like its people,
urgently needs reform. Yet the regime is trying to
rein in markets. This year could see malnutrition
tip into famine, like a decade ago when a million
people perished. Seoul's and other aid is thus
sorely needed.
Kim turns 66 on February
16. He had heart surgery last year, but has named
no heir. Yet successions are the Achilles' heel of
dictatorships. His own - thanks to his father,
North Korea's founding self-styled "great leader"
Kim Il-sung - took over 20 years of careful
preparation.
If quasi-monarchy continues,
a tangled lovelife leaves at least three young and
untried sons - by two mothers, neither his wife
and both now dead - vying for the "Dear Leader's"
crown.
Should anything befall Kim Jong-il,
all bets for North Korea are off. The Korean
People's Army may well step in, but the risk of
chaos - with loose nukes - would be acute.
Long-suppressed struggles for power and about
policy (hawks vs reformers) could explode.
All his neighbors pray that Kim Jong-il
will finally and fully embrace peace and reform in
2008, so his fierce mangy little dinosaur of a
state can evolve into a more normal mammal.
Yet on past form the Dear Leader may
continue to dither and feint. If so, no one will
attack a nuclear North Korea - but Seoul and even
Beijing will tire of propping up such a nuisance.
North Korea has defied the pundits by not
collapsing, outliving communisms elsewhere. It may
cling grimly on for a while yet, but not
indefinitely. Its interlocutors are right to seek
a soft landing - but prudence demands they also
brace themselves in case of a bumpier ride.
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary
senior research fellow in sociology and modern
Korea at Leeds University, United Kingdom. Now a
freelance writer, consultant and speaker on Korea
for policy, business and academic audiences, he
has followed events on the peninsula for four
decades.
This article was
commissioned for Global Perspectives,
International Affairs Forum (www.IA-Forum.org),
published by the Center for International
Relations, Arlington VA. Used by kind permission
of CIR.
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