[LA Times] U.S. Policy Is Stuck in the Past
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- 2004-04-26 12:59
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As South Koreans Look Ahead, U.S. Policy Is Stuck in the Past
By Frank Gibney (LA Times)
The cumulative indignation of a young, affluent and self-confident generation of South Koreans toward the leadership of their elitist elders has reshuffled the country's National Assembly and opened up the possibility of dramatic political change.
A month ago, conservative opposition politicians in the National Assembly forced through a lopsided vote to impeach President Roh Moo Hyun after Roh's minority party members walked out in protest. The pretext for impeachment was a minor infraction of electoral rules. The real reason was the deep-seated ill feeling among old-line establishment politicians toward the fumbling (if worthy) efforts of Roh at political and economic reform. Although Roh has served barely a year of his five-year term, impeaching him looked to the Grand National Party like a sure-fire way to regain political power.
It backfired spectacularly.
Huge demonstrations protesting the impeachment preceded this month's parliamentary elections that made Roh's Uri Party the first freely elected government-majority party since the dictatorship of President Park Chung Hee; its representation in the Assembly skyrocketed from 49 to 152 seats. Accenting the election's general liberal trend was the arrival on the scene of the new socialist Democratic Labor Party. The voting also produced dramatic gender and generational change: 39 women won seats, more than the double the number four years ago, and 129 of those elected are in their 30s or 40s.
The Koreans' struggle for representative democracy has been intense and concentrated. Little more than two decades separate the Republic of Korea from the start of the iron rule of dictator President Chung Doo Hwan and the huge middle-class demonstrations that brought him down in 1987. Even after democratization, however, corrupt practices continued. The arrogant behavior of highly placed bureaucrats and incumbent politicians reflected a crusty Confucian ethic that too readily translated loyalty into subservience.
While their parents and grandparents were content to perpetuate the political establishment, young Koreans questioned and argued. With only the dimmest recollection of the Korean War, they doubted their elders' horror stories of the totalitarian North, instead trusting in former President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" of eventual unification of North and South. Similarly, the young increasingly challenged their parents' support, dating from the Korean War, for a U.S. military presence. To them, the U.S. 8th Army was less liberator than foreign occupier. As upsetting to their parents is the fact that the invader China, now South Korea's principal trading partner, is regarded as new and exciting, one reason why Chinese is preferred to English by many foreign-language students.
Roh is this younger generation's favorite politician, though he is no wide-eyed revolutionary. What the young find attractive about him is that he wants South Korea to be an independent international player rather than a U.S. client state.
The Bush administration, for all its rhetoric about freedom and democracy, seems spectacularly unprepared to adjust to the changes rippling through free and democratic South Korea. Early on, the president insisted that North Korea was a dangerous security threat, but despite Pyongyang's offers to negotiate a nuclear stand-down in return for aid and alternate fuel supplies, Bush's neoconservative advisors successfully urged that there be no negotiations until the North dismantled its nuclear program. When the administration, in a surprising burst of multilateralism, pushed for six-power talks, brokered by Beijing, to secure an agreement with North Korea exchanging economic help for a suspension of its weapons program, U.S. negotiators offered neither agreement nor alternatives for two years. As the Oriental Economist Report put it, the conference amounted to little more than "confusion, vacillation, indecision and delay."
Meanwhile, the North Koreans, with only the nuclear card to play, have continued their program and may soon be counted as a nuclear power. Yet survival — and thus a deal — still seems uppermost in North Korean officials' minds. During the most recent six-power conference, according to the Oriental Economist Report, the chief North Korean negotiator asked his U.S. counterpart two questions: Would President Bush put in writing that the U.S. would not invade the North? And if North Korea were to dismantle its nuclear program in a verifiable way, what would the U.S. do in return? The American, lacking instructions from Washington, could answer neither.
Vice President Dick Cheney's visits to China, Japan and South Korea did nothing to bring real negotiations closer. "Time," he Delphically told a Shanghai audience, "is not necessarily on our side." He should know. But for all the dangers that a nuclear-armed North Korea would pose — to the South and the rest of us — the Bushites keep stalling, possibly in the vain hope that the Chinese will negotiate for them.
The South Koreans continue to urge hard-liners on both sides to start talking, and the outcome of the National Assembly elections greatly strengthens their voice. The North Koreans, furthermore, have lately seemed increasingly eager for real negotiations. For all their bluster, Kim Jong Il's bureaucrats, their brutalized population still suffering from famine, appear ready to disarm for some kind of quid for their quo. Two weeks ago, in an informal meeting with Americans in California, the North's ambassador to the United Nations referred to what he saw as the confusing American attitude. Alluding to the nine months of secret negotiations with Libya that led to that country's abandonment of its nuclear-weapons program, he suggested that nine months of similar talks with his government could produce something far better.
Last week, as young Koreans continued to criticize U.S. policy on the Internet, Kim took his private train to Beijing, where he pledged to be patient and flexible in the six-party talks. Roh, emboldened by his party's huge success, was no doubt prepared to move on his desire for further talks with the North, pending the Constitutional Court's probable disapproval of his hasty impeachment. But with all this going on, the Bush administration's hard-line approach seems to be pushing it further away from the action.
"한국은 앞을 보는데 미국은 과거 고착"
4.15 총선으로 한국 정치판도가 진보로 선회하고 김정일 북한 국방위원장이 최근 베이징을 방문해 향후 6자회담 적극 참여를 언급하는 등 한반도 기류가 급변하고 있지만 미국의 정책은 과거에 고착해 있다는 지적이 나왔다.
캘리포니아주 퍼모나대 프랭크 기브니 교수(정치학)는 25일 로스앤젤레스 타임스에 기고한 '한국은 앞을 바라보는데 미국 정책은 과거에 고착' 제하의 글에서 이같이 말했다.
퍼모나대 태평양연구소(PBI) 소장으로 한반도 문제 전문가인 기브니 교수는 이날 LA 타임스 오피니언 섹션에서 (정치) 엘리트 원로들에 대해 젊고 거침없으며 자신에 찬 세대의 분노가 누적돼 최근 노무현 대통령에 대한 탄핵 결정 이후 의회를 재편하고 극적인 정치적 변동 가능성을 열어 놓았다고 말했다.
총선은 열린우리당의 의석을 종전 49석에서 152석으로 대폭 늘려 박정희 전 대통령 독재 이후 최초로 선거에 의한 정부-여당 구도를 만들었으며 총체적인 진보 추세의 특징은 새로운 사회주의(정당인) 민주노동당의 등장, 여성의원 39명 등원과 129명 당선자의 연령층이 30-40대에 이르는 등 성별ㆍ세대별 변화이라고 기브니 교수는 덧붙였다.
한국에서는 중국의 비중이 커져 (한국전쟁 당시) 침략자로 보는 시각에서 지금은 주요 교역상대가 됐으며 중국어는 외국어를 배우는 많은 학생들에게 영어에 앞서 더 인기가 있다고 전했다.
기브니 교수는 노 대통령의 경우 그가 전혀 깜짝 놀랄 만한 혁명적 시각을 갖고 있지 않는데도 젊은 세대에게 인기있는 정치인이라고 지적하면서 "젊은이들이 그에게 호감을 갖는 것은 노 대통령이 한국이 미국의 종속국(client state) 그 이상의독립적인 국제사회 일원(international player)이길 바라고 있기 때문"이라고 지적했다.
기브니 교수는 이같은 미국 정부의 방침에 최근 딕 체니 부통령까지 최근 중국방문에서 "시간이 반드시 우리 편에 있는 것은 아니다"고 말했다고 전하면서 지금 "한국인들은 한국과 미국 양측의 강경파에게 대화 착수를 촉구하고있으며 총선 결과는 그들의 목소리에 훨씬 더 힘을 실어줬다"고 강조했다.
[연합뉴스]
Frank Gibney, president of the Pacific Basin Institute, is professor of politics at Pomona College and the author of "The Pacific Century" and other books on Asia and foreign policy.
President of the Pacific Basin Institute and Professor of Politics
B.A., Yale University; graduate study, Columbia University
Expertise Areas:
Korea; Pacific Basin; Japan; Japanese politics; World War II, Asian Theater; Asian Media
With Pomona Since: 1994
Research Interests:
Pacific Basin; Japan; Japanese Politics; World War II, Asiam Theater; Korea; Asian Media
Selected Publications:
Editor, Unlocking the Bureaucrat's Kingdom (The Brookings Institution, 1998)
Editor, Kanryotachi no Taikoku (The Bureaucrats' Country) (1996)
Editor, Senso: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War (M.E. Sharpe, 1995)
Editor, The Batlle for Okinawa, with Col. Hiromichi Yahara (John Wiley & Sons, 1995)
Producer, The Pacific Century, 10-hour PBS television series, 1992; The Pacific Century (accompanying book, Charles Scribner's Sons, Kodansha, 1992)
Korea's Quiet Revolution (Walker & Company, 1992)
Japan, the Fragile Superpower (Norton, 1975; Tuttle, 3rd ed., 1996); as well as numerous articles and opinion pieces
Awards and Honors:
The Order of the Sacred Treasure, Second Class, from Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, 1979
The Order of The Rising Sun, Third Class, from the Japanese government, for his work in cultural affairs, 1976
Member, Britannica Board of Editors; Vice Chairman since 1980
Vice-chairman of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, 1984-90, and concurrently, vice-chairman of the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Exchange (CULCON)
Founding member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation
Modified: 10/2/03
