Lee's diplomatic feats overshadowed by icy inter-Korean ties

(Editor's note: The following is one of three items to be moved Monday on one year
anniversary of President Lee Myung-bak's inauguration)
By Lee Chi-dong
SEOUL, Feb. 23 (Yonhap) -- After one year in office, President Lee Myung-bak's
conservative government takes great pride in Seoul's strengthened alliance with
Washington, but such progress is attenuated by dismal inter-Korean relations,
partly attributable to Lee's hardline policy on Pyongyang.

Lee's office, Cheong Wa Dae, recently issued a long list of foreign policy feats
achieved by the CEO-turned-president during his first year in office, highlighting
the unforeseen challenges it had faced at home and abroad.
The president has laid the groundwork for Seoul's stronger ties with the four
major regional powers -- the U.S., China, Japan, and Russia -- while improving its
global standing as shown in its leading role in the G-20 financial summit,
according to his office.
To name some of Lee's notable accomplishments, Cheong Wa Dae cited currency swap
deals South Korea has signed with the U.S., its membership into the U.S. visa
waiver program, and additional negotiations on Seoul's imports of American beef.
All this, it said, would not have been possible without the restoration of mutual
trust and respect between the two allies, it said.
Experts say the Lee administration should have done more to improve ties with
Pyongyang as well.
"Importantly, he has succeeded in one of his major priorities, which was to
strengthen relations with Washington, which had frayed in recent years," Evans
Revere, a former senior U.S. diplomat, said during his trip here last week. "He
is also off to a very good start with the new (Barack) Obama administration."
Revere, who now serves as president of the Korea Society, said the biggest
setback in Lee's foreign policy was the revival of tensions with Pyongyang,
coupled with the ongoing stalemate in the denuclearization process.
"The drying up of South-North cooperation has reduced the South???s leverage
vis-a-vis the North, and Pyongyang has responded to this by seeking to go around
Seoul and improve relations directly with Washington," he said.
Lee has pursued a "paradigm change" in South Korea's policy on Pyongyang and
Washington, rolling back the "kidgloves" approach his two liberal predecessors
took toward the communist North. He cut off what he described as unconditional
aid of rice and fertilizer to the North.
Former President Roh Moo-hyun, inheriting his predecessor Kim Dae-jung's
"sunshine policy" of engaging Pyongyang, focused on improving inter-Korean ties
and bringing lasting peace to the region in the belief that it will help persuade
the North to abandon its nuclear program. The Roh administration was often at
odds with the U.S. which had strong doubts about Pyongyang's intentions to
denuclearize itself.
In a policy U-turn, Lee put his top priority on bolstering the Seoul-Washington
alliance and pressed the North to prove by deed its will to give up its nuclear
weapons before seeking to expand inter-Korean economic cooperation and other
exchanges.
In his inauguration speech on Feb. 25 last year, Lee declared that he will push
his North Korea policy "with the yardstick of pragmatism, not that of ideology."
He also announced a blueprint in which he said South Korea will help the North
triple its per capita income to US$3,000 by the next decade if Pyongyang throws
away its nuclear weapons program.
Ironically, that policy backfired, as North Korea dismissed it as an
anti-unification ploy. North Korea instead pressed Lee to honor two inter-Korean
summit agreements in 2000 and 2007 that critics argue would cost South Korea
billions of dollars in investment.
"I was deeply impressed by his inauguration speech, particularly by what he said
about North Korea. After hearing President Lee???s speech, I expected a new and
more positive era in North-South relations to unfold. So far that has not been
the case," former U.S. ambassador to Seoul Donald Gregg said.
Inter-Korean tensions have further escalated especially after a South Korean
housewife was shot to death by a North Korean coast guard last summer while
traveling to Mount Kumgang, once a symbol of the two Korea's rapprochement. The
tourism project has since been suspended.
Now, North Korea is reportedly preparing for a ballistic missile launch. In a
recent series of statements, the North unilaterally nullified all reconciliation
agreements with the South and even warned of armed border clashes.
Lee's office insists that inter-Korean relations are only in a "transition
period," but many analysts advise him to change course and engage the communist
country.
"The Lee Myung-bak administration misunderstands that the inter-Korean relations
will get better if South Korea-U.S. ties improve," Yonsei University professor
Moon Chung-in, former foreign policy adviser to Roh, said. "On the contrary,
worsening inter-Korean relations have a negative impact on the South Korea-U.S.
ties as well as on the economy and the unity of the South Korean people."
Ko Yu-hwan, professor of Dongguk University, also expressed disappointment with
Seoul's "denuclearization first" policy.
"If the Lee Myung-bak government is truly a pragmatism-oriented administration,
it should first promise to implement the June 15 and Oct. 4 summit accords rather
than saying waiting can be a strategy," he said.
But Korea University professor Kim Sung-han, a sitting member of the presidential
foreign policy advisory group, said North Korea is to blame for the current
impasse.
"North Korea is only looking at the U.S.," he said. "I think it's better (for the
Lee administration) to wait prudently than to make irreversible mistakes."
lcd@yna.co.kr
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