Obama's inauguration poses chances, challenges for S. Korea-U.S. ties

(Editor's Note: Yonhap News Agency files today a series of specials looking ahead to
major issues of 2009)
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (Yonhap) -- The advent of the Barack Obama administration in
January poses both opportunities and challenges for South Korea as the
president-elect seeks stronger ties with South Korea, but opposes a bilateral
free trade deal and seeks more direct engagement with North Korea.

Obama's Democratic Party in its most recent party platform singled out South
Korea, along with Japan and Australia, as allies with which the U.S. should
"maintain strong relationships" while proposing the establishment of a standing
regional security organization in Asia "that goes beyond bilateral agreements,
occasional summits and ad hoc diplomatic arrangements."
The stronger ties and a regional security mechanism chime with the aspirations of
South Korea's Lee Myung-bak administration, which has been seeking the evolution
of six-party nuclear talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions into a
permanent regional security mechanism that resembles the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The Obama administration is also likely to raise North Korea's human rights issue
more directly than the outgoing Bush administration, which has faced criticism
that it bypassed the humanitarian issue during its second term in order not to
divert attention from the difficult multilateral nuclear talks.
"We will stand up for oppressed people from Cuba to North Korea and from Burma to
Zimbabwe and Sudan," the platform said. "American leadership on human rights is
essential to making the world safer, more just and more humane. Such leadership
must begin with steps to undo the damage of the Bush years."
That also resonates with the Lee government's policy, in which South Korea for
the first time sponsored a United Nations resolution to call for improvement in
North Korea's human rights record. Lee's liberal predecessors had abstained from
doing so as not to damage fragile ties with North Korea.
Concerns, however, have risen over Obama's likely proactive approach to North
Korea colliding with the position of the hardline Lee government, which has
pledged not to seek inter-Korean reconciliation unless the North abandons its
nuclear weapons programs.
Lee's policy has led to a chill in ties with the North, with the impoverished
communist state threatening to cut off all inter-Korean ties and ousting all
South Korean officials and most South Korean staffs from the joint industrial
complex and a tourist resort in the North.
At issue is how Lee and Obama will be able to coordinate their North Korea policies.
Lee's liberal predecessors, Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Dae-jung, had maintained awkward
relationships with Bush who designated North Korea as part of an axis of evil.
The underlying tone was often that Washington sought regime change in Pyongyang.
Former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Alexander Vershbow, recently said Bush and
Roh had a lengthy, heated one-hour debate on sanctioning North Korea in a 2005
summit meeting which he described as "one of the worst summits."
Evans Revere, president of the Korea Society, stressed the need for the sides to
understand "the evolving nature of this partnership" that is "more balanced" and
"certainly more multidimensional."
"There remains some anxiety over how the incoming U.S. and the still relatively
new South Korean administration will manage a variety of delicate issues, from
bilateral trade to a nuclear North Korea," he said.
The inauguration of pro-U.S. conservative Lee earlier this year was warmly
received by like-minded Bush who invited Lee to a Camp David summit in April, a
venue Bush uses selectively for hosting other world leaders he has close working
relationships with.
Criticizing Bush for having refused for years to engage Pyongyang and allowing
North Korea to produce "eight nuclear warheads," Obama has said he reserves "the
right as president of the United States to meet with anybody at a time and place
of my choosing if I think it's going to keep America safe."
Lee in November supported Obama's idea, saying "It would be better for
President-elect Obama to meet with Chairman Kim Jong-il personally if it is
helpful to North Korea's abandonment of its nuclear weapons."
The South Korean president dismissed concerns of a possible chasm with Obama,
saying "We have a perfect relationship with the U.S."
Obama's aides and optimists hope that Lee will eventually join Obama in engaging
North Korea, saying no one will be able to communicate with North Korea through
pressure and threats to which the reclusive communist state has become well
accustomed over the past decades.
"Years of experience in dealing with North Korea have at least provided valuable
lessons," Revere said. "Confrontational rhetoric, empty threats, insults directed
at North Korea's leadership, regime change rhetoric, refusal to engage in
dialogue, all have been shown to be ineffective, or worse."
On the pending bilateral Free Trade Agreement, Obama opposes it as it stands,
citing an imbalance in automobile trade.
South Korean diplomats as well as some Obama camp people, however, say that Obama
has stopped short of favoring renegotiation of the bilateral FTA, although he
dismissed it as "badly flawed."
They say that Obama's opposition has been more of a campaign strategy to woo
votes from trade unions, his main political supporters, in an election year, and
hope that Obama will easily win support from the Democratic-controlled Congress.
Frank Jannuzi, a key aide to Obama, has said the president-elect opposes the
Korea FTA "as it is drafted," but added Obama's opposition is "not forever" and
that "as president, he will do the things necessary to see its ratification is
possible."
Revere echoed Jannuzi's theme, saying, "Despite anxiety in Seoul over whether a
democratic American president will be cool to trade, at the end of the day, the
U.S. is likely to do the right thing with the KORUS FTA."
"A reassertion of our quest for more, freer, and fairer trade is a much more
likely outcome of what I hope will be a very serious policy review of pending
FTAs," he said.
Another challenge is tripartite cooperation between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.
"To harmonize our approaches and maximize our leverage vis-a-vis Pyongyang, the
next U.S. administration must make bilateral and trilateral policy coordination a
major priority," Revere said.
The Bush administration has often been thwarted by a contentious history dispute
between its two major allies in Northeast Asia who need to put up a joint front
on North Korea's nuclear moves and other security issues.
South Korea has been reluctant to consider greater security cooperation with
Japan due to senior Japanese officials and politicians who have periodically
tried to whitewash past militarism in school textbooks. Japan also claims
sovereignty over the South Korean islets of Dokdo to the outrage of South Koreans
who harbor bitter memories of Japanese colonial rule.
By far the most important thing in relations between Seoul and Washington in the
coming years, however, should be enhancing bilateral cooperation.
Park Sun-won, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, notes what he called
the "strengthened alliance" between South Korea and the U.S. under the awkward
relationship between the ideologically different presidents.
"In office together from 2003 until 2008, Presidents Bush and Roh shared no
common ground in their world views," said Park who served as a presidential
secretary for national security for Roh.
"However, the ROK-U.S. alliance was strengthened because the U.S. administration
very much wanted the Roh government's support for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and for South Korea to take responsibility for its own defense by
increasing defense expenditure," he said.
"Close consultation and cooperation, which do not occur naturally and will
require effort on both sides, are the keys to successful alliance management
during this transition."
hdh@yna.co.kr
(END)