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President Park Geun-hye gives her New Year’s address

South Korean President Park Geun-hye delivered her New Year address, and her US counterpart Barack Obama gave his State of the Union just an hour apart on Jan. 13. There was no intention to have their schedules overlap so closely, but the fact that they gave major speeches at nearly the same time drew close attention here and abroad. In particular, people had been hoping for them to use their first public addresses since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un carried out a fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 to state official positions as leaders of two of the countries most closely impacted by it. But Obama made no mention at all of North Korea’s nuclear program, while Park failed to offer anything new in the way of solutions. In terms of looking for answers on the issue, both addresses were a disappointment.

Obama’s failure to even mention North Korea’s testing of what it claims to have been a hydrogen bomb suggests he doesn’t plan to change anything about Washington’s current policy of so-called “strategic patience.” It’s also being speculated that the US plans to use the North Korean nuclear issue as an excuse to beef up its current coordination with South Korea and Japan to keep China in check with the deployment of additional strategic assets on the peninsula and other shows of force. With Washington and Beijing showing more disagreement over the solution to the problem than after the third nuclear test in 2013, we should be objectively assessing whether the US’s priorities are less about fixing the situation than on keeping China under control.

Park, for her part, communicated a historically heightened sense of alarm over the test, which she called a “huge provocation against South Korea’s security, a severe threat to the survival and future of our nation, and an unacceptable challenge that threatens peace and security not just in Northeast Asia but around the world.” What she did not do was offer a proactive solution from the country where the North Korean nuclear threat weighs heaviest. For all her talk about pursuing the “strongest-yet resolution for North Korea sanctions, including measures to bring about a change in Pyongyang’s attitude,” the only message she offered with regard to China, which arguably holds the key to the whole thing, was one of abstract hopes and “trust that it will play the necessary role” as South Korea’s “greatest partner.” She indicated plans to carry on with retaliatory measures such as loudspeaker broadcasts, which have already triggered concerns from the UK and China, and made questionable calls for urgently enacting terrorism prevention legislation as a response to the nuclear test.

Now is a time when the countries most affected by the North Korean nuclear program should be figuring out what priorities are most worthy of their efforts. President Park’s address failed to inspire that kind of faith.

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