hankyoreh

President Park Geun-hye

Trouble on all fronts. Crisis. And at the heart of it, the very personal feelings of President Park Geun-hye. The crisis has only deepened as the spite of a president driven by self-centered thinking and anger management issues is projected deep into the way the country is being run. The basic principle of statecraft is to keep things calm within when there’s trouble outside, and keep things quiet outside when it’s tumultuous within. What we’re seeing now is chaos both inside and out. Outside, the Kim Jong-un regime in Pyongyang is stirring things up with nuclear and missile provocations; at home, the South Korean public is in an uproar over the ruling Saenuri Party‘s ruthless purge of who aren’t loyal to Park ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections.

The big problem is that a lot of the crisis is being stirred and blown up by the president’s untamed sense of spite. Kim Jong-in, leader of the opposition Minjoo Party of Korea, criticized Park‘s spotty understanding of economics and policy failures in a recent Kwanhun Club debate, warning that the country was on the brink of economic catastrophe. My concern is that the country is facing ruin because of the undisciplined leadership of a president driven by spite.

At first glance, the one responsible for eliminating disloyal members like Yoo Seong-min, Chin Young, and Lee Jae-oh would appear to be Lee Hahn-koo, head of the Saenuri Party’s nomination management committee. Few would fail to see, however, that the president in the one pulling the strings, while Lee is the “enforcer” charged with carrying out her bidding. It‘s the perfect example of one of the 36 strategies in China’s traditional art of war, “killing with a borrowed knife.”

No one would be all that shocked at the knife-borrowing if there were some legitimate reason or logic behind it, some procedure everyone could understand. How is it that criticizing the emptiness of the “social services without tax hikes,” opposing linkage between the national pension and basic pension, and expressing critical views within the party comes to be seen as “against” the party identity, harmful to the dignity of National Assembly members, a good reason for ruling people out of nominations when they would be standing for re-election in safe regions? If Yoo Seong-min was the chief target in the nomination massacre, would it have been all that shameful to publicly ask him to leave the party and avoid the unpleasantness of chucking him out? All of this shows how the Park administration operates not according to principles of democracy, but on its leader’s spite. Essentially, the difference from the Kim Jong-un regime’s purge shows is one only of degree of retaliation.

Time and again, we‘ve seen policies deeply imbued with the president’s own powerful emotions in response to the North‘s nuclear and missile provocations. Beijing’s tepid stance on pressure tactics earned it an open slap about how “real partners help you when you are having difficulties.” The administration has rushed ahead rashly with a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system deployment that is certain to trigger a strategic battle amongst the US, China, and Russia, and the decision was made to abruptly close down the last bastion of inter-Korean cooperation at the Kaesong Industrial Complex. All of this may be good for showing how steaming mad the leader is, but they’re hardly the kind of rational policies that will go over on an international stage where other parties are involved and legal force is hard to invoke. It’s supposed to recall another of the 36 strategies - to “loot a burning house,” or move in force when the opportunity arises. For that to work, we would have to be capable of seizing the initiative in the situation.

Despite the United Nations adopting a resolution for heavy sanctions, however, we’re already seeing a subtle difference between South Korea’s goals and other countries’ aims in enforcing them. Seoul is holding out for a collapse of the Pyongyang regime, Beijing is emphasizing a parallel process of sanctions enforcement and movement toward a peace agreement, and Washington is focused on bringing about denuclearization talks. Beijing and Moscow are also united in public opposition to THAAD deployment. The Kaesong shutdown and Seoul’s additional independent sanctions have put paid to the Park administration‘s three original foreign policy and national security frameworks: the Trust-Building Process, the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative, and the Eurasia Initiative.

When you offer this kind of indiscriminate barrage of emotionally driven policies, you end up paying the price. President Park says she can’t sleep at night out of concern for the country. The people, for their part, are scared stiff of their president. An explosion is just a matter of time.

By Oh Tai-kyu, editorial writer

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