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South Korean President Moon Jae-in pays respects to the remains of Hong Beom-do, a Korean independence fighter, at Seoul Air Base in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, on Sunday. (pool photo)

The remains of Hong Beom-do, a hero in the war for independence from Japan, were recently repatriated on Sunday, South Korea’s National Liberation Day holiday.

On July 2, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) changed South Korea’s status from “developing country” to “developed country.” On June 11 to 13, the South Korean president was invited to attend the G7 summit for the first time ever.

These three recent developments, each taking place roughly a month apart, encourage us to look back on the superlative achievements realized by this newly independent Northeast Asian nation over the 76 years since its liberation.

Hong’s hometown was Pyongyang. He was also a leader of socialist independence forces and joined the Soviet Communist Party in 1927.

In early 1922, he met with Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as the Korea Revolutionary Army commander. Lenin presented him with a gold coin and a pistol engraved with Hong’s initials and his own.

On Wednesday, Hong’s remains are to be laid to rest not in North Korea, but in South Korea’s Daejeon National Cemetery. It’s yet another symbolic episode showing that the regime competition between South and North is effectively over.

North Korea opposed the repatriation of Hong’s remains to the South, arguing that it would be more appropriate to bury him in his hometown. It’s not clear, however, whether North Korea would have truly wanted to repatriate the remains of an independence fighter like Hong who was affiliated with an overseas faction — given the way Pyongyang forced out its own Soviet, Yan’an, and Workers’ Party of South Korea factions to establish a system of unrivaled leadership under Kim Il-sung.

But beyond whatever Pyongyang may or may not have really wanted, the key thing here is the enormous change that has taken place in the South. It shows that the base of national “legitimacy” has been defined deeply and broadly enough to include even socialists as subjects of solemn remembrance.

South Korea’s rise to the official status of “developed country” is a reflection of what has come to be known as the “Miracle on the Han.” Of all the developing countries, South Korea is the only one that has been upgraded to developed country status since UNCTAD was founded in 1964. It’s a historic achievement.

The G7 invitation shows that South Korea’s diplomatic stature has risen along with its economy. South Korea has taken on the role of a bridge connecting continental and maritime, developing and developed.

In the heated rivalry between the US and China, South Korea has emerged as a country with a strategic value that neither of those superpowers can deny. It’s difficult to be pushed into making choices, but we also have the power to create our own room to maneuver. It’s just something that certain people pretend not to recognize because they are fixated on a “caught in the middle” complex.

The term used to describe South Korea’s higher national prestige and authority is “middle power.” It means we are not quite at the level of a major power, but we have national strength that ranks toward the upper part of the middle tier.

There’s also a distinction drawn between the liberal middle powers that generally tend to share the US’ global approach, such as Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands and the emerging middle powers that are seeking to become regional powerhouses, such as Turkey, Brazil, and South Africa. South Korea is seen as falling on the liberal side.

But the “middle power” label falls about 2 percent short when it comes to showing both South Korea’s national strength and a national strategy suited to that.

South Korea is an economic and military power that ranked 10th in the world last year both for gross domestic product and for defense spending. It’s also been experiencing impressive growth with the soft power of its “Korean Wave,” including the musical genre of K-pop.

If we take both these hard and soft power elements together, it seems like a more appropriate way to describe South Korea’s stature would be “strong middle power” — a term used by the Roh Moo-hyun administration to refer either to a middle power that is particularly strong or a strong country of moderate scale.

This seems all the more true when we take into account the geopolitics of East Asia, where the world’s major powers are colliding. If we want to set the right target and direction for our national strategy to survive and thrive as a proverbial dolphin in a battle between whales, then we need to clearly establish our identity not just as a “middle power,” but as a “strong nation.”

In his book “Northeast Asian Geopolitics and South Korean Diplomatic Strategy: The ‘Strong Middle Power’ and ‘Hub State’ Identity,” Jun Bong-geun writes, “One of the characteristics of the ‘strong middle power’ is the way that it defines its own national interests and pursues an independent foreign affairs and national security strategy rather than fully depending on major powers for its security.”

At least on the surface, Roh’s dream of South Korea becoming a strong middle power has been achieved. But the goal of the strong middle power vision is not actually the growth of national strength per se, with economic prosperity and a powerful military.

The real goal is to use that strength to achieve peace and shared prosperity.

The Moon Jae-in administration continues to refer to its approach as “middle power diplomacy,” but it has unquestionably carried on the direction of a “strong middle power” strategy. It has produced breakthroughs in terms of peace, and it hasn’t committed the misstep of getting dragged into the turbulence of the US-China rivalry.

But it also hasn’t yet produced results. The return of wartime operational control to South Korea, which would serve as a physical cornerstone for the strong middle power identity, looks very likely to remain unfinished.

Hopefully, the next administration here can truly complete this dream of becoming a strong middle power.

By Son Won-je, editorial writer

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