hankyoreh

One item on the agenda that appears without fail on the main floor of the National Assembly towards the end of each of the last few years has been bills to extend the time Korean troops are in Iraq. Around October, the president “informs” the country that they will be there longer, and then the National Assembly procrastinates until right before the year is out before building it up with a bunch of other bills and suddenly voting to approve all of them at the same time. This year the government is going so far as to renege on its promise that the mission would be over by now. It has no regard for what the Korean people think.

At this point it feels futile to argue about what’s wrong with having troops in Iraq. Government officials say that the significance of keeping them there is that it maintains ties with a certain number of allies to the United States there. In other words, it is about helping the United States save face, since most countries have withdrawn or are withdrawing their troops. What have we gained from this? Nothing at all. All we have is the vague hope that it will help in resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis. If Korea needs to keep soldiers in Iraq because of the U.S.-Korea alliance, that does not explain why other American allies are withdrawing theirs. And as seen in the recent threat by the Iraqi government to cut off oil from Korean companies, the claim that staying longer in Iraq will mean greater business opportunities there is also false.

In the meantime, Korea has lost much while in Iraq. We have already lost public favor in the Middle East. Big incidents like the kidnapping of Koreans in Afghanistan and the killing of Kim Seon-il in Iraq all have something to do with the sending of Korean troops to the region. The Middle East is a strategic region from where most of Korea’s oil comes. It is a major loss to the national interest to be giving Korea and Koreans a bad image. A reputation as “the country that participated in the United States’ illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq until the very end” will of course hurt what Korean diplomacy has to work with in the area. Korea may be the world’s 13th largest economy, but when it comes to international politics we are going to remain small.

Why is it that our country is unable to engage in a foreign policy that is honorable and oriented towards the future - and instead sticks with a dated and distorted framework? It is self-contemptuous to think that you have no choice. Instead, the right way to think about the situation would be to believe that withdrawing Korean troops from Iraq could change bad American Iraq policy. It is time for the National Assembly to decide. Members of the United New Democratic Party and Democratic Labor Party need to maintain their previous line and oppose an extension, and members of the Grand National Party, for their part, need to demonstrate the kind of responsibility becoming of a new kind of conservatism.



Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]