hankyoreh

Looking at what Nam Joo-hong, the Kyonggi University professor who has been chosen to head the Unification Ministry, has said about North Korea until now, you can see how wrong the new government is about the issue of relations with North Korea. When President-elect Lee Myung-bak appoints a scholar so ultra-right that it would have had a hard time putting him to use even in the Cold War era, it’s enough to make you wonder whether the motive is to heighten tensions. There has never been anything like this in the history of the Unification Ministry.

Nam is your typical member of the “school of collapse.” He has consistently claimed that there are signs that a sudden situation could arise in the North, saying that it has problems in five major areas, including food, energy and succession. Immediately after the February 13 agreement was made, he said that the crisis management ability of the leadership in Pyongyang was reaching a breaking point. Naturally this leads to the position that Seoul should participate in the Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI, and put pressure on Pyongyang in the form of economic sanctions. His thinking is the same as that of the neocons who led the North Korea policy of the Bush administration before it turned out to be a failure.

Nam sees the solution to the North Korean nuclear issue to be regime change, instead of multilateral dialogue like the six-party talks. His reason is that it is too late for the North to give up its nuclear cards, so it is inevitable that the issue becomes a prolonged one. He reduces the February 13 agreement to a political deal between Pyongyang and Washington to earn time. Put simply, he thinks the collapse of the system in North Korea is what has to happen for the nuclear issue to be resolved. He cites a stronger U.S.-Korea alliance as the only alternative, so as to be prepared for such a sudden change of events.

Similarly, Nam argues that developing inter-Korean relations is something that should happen only after the nuclear issue is out of the way. This is the same as saying that relations can improve if the North collapses. He does not even hesitate to say that the June 15 summit declaration is a “North Korean document used for controlling the South” and that the engagement policy needs to be completely reconsidered. It is easy to see what will happen to inter-Korean relations, difficult as it has been to make them what they are today, if someone such as this becomes the minister of unification.

Even before settling on Nam, President-elect Lee was being criticized for only looking after the alliance with the United States while neglecting inter-Korean relations and the question of the Korean Peninsula. Having a “minister of obstruction of unification” like Nam be around in such a situation will cause Lee’s administration to be criticized for having an anti-reunification stance. Neglecting to work for peace and reunification goes against the constitution and smothers the Korean people’s desire for unification. We hope to see the new administration get started on the right foot. As the saying goes, “Choosing the right people is everything” (insaga mansa).


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