hankyoreh

The Trust-building Process for the Korean peninsula, the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative, and the Eurasia Initiative - these are South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s three major policies for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Of the three, she seems to attach the most importance to the Eurasian Initiative. Since she first mentioned the Eurasia Initiative during the Eurasia Conference held in Seoul on Oct. 18, 2013, Park has frequently brought up the topic in meetings with foreign leaders.

“North Korea is the missing link that keeps Europe and Asia from becoming one,” Park said during the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Milan on Oct. 17. During her speech, she argued that creating a rail link that would enable direct travel and expand the movement of goods from Busan on the southern coast of the Korean peninsula to Europe would benefit the countries of Asia and Europe.

The Eurasia Initiative would be good news for everyone involved if it could only be realized. Anyone who has taken a look at the plan would agree with that.

The issue, of course, is that to make the journey by land from Busan to Europe requires passing through North Korea. In that sense, even if the countries of Eurasia are enthusiastically in favor of the plan, it is merely a pipe dream until North Korea gets on board.

Regardless, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the leaders of the 51 countries that attended ASEM expressed their wholehearted approval of the Eurasia Initiative. To be sure, there‘s nothing wrong with these leaders expressing their approval, but what sort of national leader or diplomat would take issue with remarks made by a country’s leader at an official event?

Complimenting someone to their face is referred as “diplomatic praise.” Among each other, diplomats swap diplomatic praise without taking it too seriously. So if they do that among themselves, should they really be reporting and promoting diplomatic praise about the president’s remarks as if it were some outstanding diplomatic feat that they had achieved? Self-indulgent public relations is usually seen in developing countries that are culturally undeveloped.

Given the nature and priority of the work at hand, Park ought to be working to gain North Korea’s approval, but she is not even taking rudimentary steps in this direction. Instead, she is asking other countries to provide their support and cooperation for her plan.

Does Park perhaps believe that, once she gains international support, a little nudge will be enough to persuade North Korea to participate as well? Just as a two-story house can‘t be built without a first story, progress cannot be made on the Eurasia Initiative without North Korea’s approval and participation.

Despite this, President Park is surrounded by staff who give her briefings - and praise her - as if her plans were feasible. This is harmful, not only to Korea, but also to Park herself.

Han Feizi, a political theorist at the end of the Warring States period in China, warned that it is dangerous both for the prince and for the state if the prince only listens to his close aides without listening to other people, as if he were stuck inside a pot. The fact that this advice was given 2,200 years ago is no reason for us to ignore it today.

The Eurasia Initiative is based on connecting the railroads and operating rail service between North and South Korea. But it was former President Kim Dae-jung who referred to the inter-Korean railroad as the starting point of the “steel silk road.” Construction on the connecting lines started on Sep. 18, 2000, with the Seoul-Shinuiju line completed on June 14, 2003, and the East Sea line finished on Dec. 31, 2005. Test service of inter-Korean trains also began on May 17, 2007, but the Lee Myung-bak administration shut it down.

This is why Park doesn’t need to connect the railroad lines to move ahead with the Eurasia Initiative. The test run has already been done. The day Park makes up her mind to resume the rail service, she can move forward with the Eurasia Initiative.

Calling for the support of foreign countries for the Eurasia Initiative and ignoring North Korea is putting the cart before the horse. The diplomatic priorities have also been mixed up for the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative. If Park’s talk of the Eurasia Initiative and the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative comes from the heart and is not mere rhetoric, then she ought to start with repairing inter-Korean relations through the Trust-building Process for the Korean Peninsula, which was one of her presidential campaign pledges.

If Park instructs the Ministry of Unification on Nov. 2 to reject North Korea‘s plea to resolve the problem of the propaganda balloons launched by refugee groups on the grounds that this is a “precondition” for dialogue, she may well end her term in office without accomplishing anything in the area of unification. If she doesn’t want that to happen, she must take steps to create a mood to return to the table. After all, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and a two-story house cannot be built without a first story.

By Jeong Se-hyun, president of Wonkwang University and former Minister of Unification

The views presented in this column are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.
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