President Park Geun-hye starts her tenure in one of the harshest security environments in decades. This is due in considerable part to her predecessor, who reversed the inter-Korean relationship from relative amity to absolute hostility in just five years with his clueless, hard-line policies.
Now it is up to the nation’s first female commander-in-chief to turn this around, yet again. The only consolation for Park is she begins from where it is hard to go down much lower.
North Korea Saturday warned the top American military commander here that if the United States pressed ahead with joint military exercises with South Korea scheduled to begin early next month, it would set off a war in which American forces would “meet a miserable destruction.”
Neither the annual war game of allies nor Pyongyang’s hysterical reaction to this is new. This time around, however, they are coming against the backdrop of heightened tension in the wake of the communist regime’s successful rocket launch and nuclear test. And the consequent tightening of sanctions by the international community is certain to push up the possibility of conflict to another level in the months to come.
Some predict Pyongyang will soon make another provocation in the form of an additional satellite launch, detonation of an atomic device, or limited attacks in part to “test” the new government in Seoul.
President Park was right in this regard by vowing to “sever the vicious circle of provocations with resolute retribution” when she visited the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command, last week. There can be no denying Park’s avowed principle that firm security should be the foundation of everything her government does.
We hope the new President will go one step further from there to push ahead with her campaign pledge of trust-based inter-Korean policy despite, or because of, harsh exchanges of rhetoric between the two capitals, whose relationship may not get better before it gets worse for the time being.
North Korea for its part must realize that any reckless attempts to put the new South Korean government to a test will backfire in a self-destructive way.
Victor Cha, a former policy advisor to ex-U.S. President George W. Bush, predicts the overall policy direction on North Korea among the U.S., Japan and South Korea will be “hers (Park’s) to decide.” Whether Park wants to contain or engage Pyongyang, Washington will go along with her, Cha told the Associated Press.
The Barack Obama administration has done so over the past four years, but has seen inter-Korean ties fall to a nadir. Park should make far better use of the U.S. policy in the next four years.
This is The Korea Times editorial for Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013.
