Show firmness on security, but start building trust
With nearly one month in office, President Park Geun-hye appears to be far from a “prepared” leader. The President’s personnel appointment in particular was little short of disastrous, as six of her nominees have either bowed out or failed to pass confirmation hearing. Nor have voters seen yet the substance of “Geunhye-nomics,” Park’s economic policy aimed at both growth and better redistribution.
A silver lining in the dark cloud of Park’s first-month performance was her handling of inter-Korean affairs.
“We simply can’t go on with the North’s nuclear weapons constantly on our minds,” Park said last week, in a succinct summing-up of South Korea’s resolve not to tolerate Pyongyang’s playing with atomic fire. On Sunday, Seoul and Washington agreed to jointly hit back at North Korea military provocations, even limited ones such as those in the West Sea three years ago.
These are not just necessary but vital precautionary steps to keep the hawks on the other half of this divided peninsula from staging reckless military adventures.
Two days earlier, on the other hand, the Park administration also allowed the Eugene Bell Foundation to send 678 million won ($600,000) worth of tuberculosis medicine to North Korea, in the first such approval of humanitarian aid to the impoverished state since Park took office.
The amount involved was rather insignificant, but the decision was not an easy one, considering the current tension surrounding the Koreas, especially Pyongyang’s increasingly frantic anti-Seoul propaganda. The Ministry of Unification hinted at additional permission for aid projects by private groups, taking the effects of such assistance and transparency in distribution into account. We hope this is the beginning, though small, of Park’s moves toward the process of building trust between the Koreas.
North Korea should respond in kind. Pyongyang’s young new leader has disappointed all peace-loving people in the world by going further in his nuclear brinkmanship even than his father and grandfather. Kim Jong-un must realize the meaning of the U.N.’s decision last week to create a commission to look into allegations of human rights violations in his isolated regime, including food deprivation, labor camps for political prisoners and torture. Whatever Kim might say about external threats, a country and a leader that cannot protect its own people’s basic rights can have no excuses.
Kim must not mistake Seoul’s olive branch as a sign of weakness or yielding to its threats. Only the stronger side of the two warring parties can make concessions.
President Park is advised to continue her two-track policy toward the reclusive regime. Most of her predecessors made clear their zero-tolerance stance on the North’s nuclear programs, but the key lies in ‘how.’ It has become apparent sanctions and isolations alone can’t solve the problem. The hawks’ eye-for-an-eye tactics is irresponsible at best and calamitous at worst, considering accidental brushfires can escalate into a full-scale clash. Hard-liners in both Koreas will not be able to avoid responsibility to history for any further large-scale military conflict on this peninsula.
Both conservatives and liberals in the South need to form a consensus at least in inter-Korean issues. And President Park should stand at its vanguard.
This is The Korea Times editorial for Tuesday, March 26, 2013.
