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President Roh Moo-hyun published a "letter to the people" on Wednesday on the Cheong Wa Dae website saying his government can "no longer sit idle" in response to a series of recent Japanese provocations over Korea's Dokdo Islets and the whitewashing of past wrongs in a history textbook. "Whatever difficulties may arise, we shall neither retreat nor fudge," he vowed.
Most people agree with the president. In the face of Japan's provocations of the past, our previous administrations have always promised a firm response only to do nothing when it came to the crunch. It is therefore in some ways refreshing to hear the president say he will "root out" such misbehavior.
But it is not wise for the chief executive to throw himself into the front line in a diplomatic issue and irrevocably nail down the position of the South Korean government. On Tuesday, Roh suggested the possibility of breaking away from our alliances with the United States and Japan. On March 8, he came out against recasting the United States Forces Korea (USFK) as a rapid deployment force in Northeast Asia.
Differences in views and conflicts between countries should not be thus aired in public. If it becomes inevitable, they are taken up among working-level officials. This is diplomacy 101. It is impossible to get your way completely in international relations, and that being so the head of state could find himself forced to retract his remarks at some point, which will only hurt the country's prestige.
If the president finds himself at the heart of an aggravated diplomatic dispute with an ally, in particular, it will be difficult to patch things up later. Who can forget former president Kim Young-sam saying "We'll cure Japan of its habit," and the dark shadows that cast over Seoul-Tokyo relations - to the point where it was cited as a cause of the 1997-98 financial crisis.
Another question is whether there was consultation before the president threw himself into the arena, with the Cheong Wa Dae foreign affairs and security team, the National Security Council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Suppose the president wrote his letter on a sensitive pending issue based on nothing but what went through his mind at the time: that would be highly problematic.
It would be equally problematic, for that matter, if there was consultation and nobody objected. If, God forbid, the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asia director should comment on the presidential remarks, what would become of the national prestige of the Republic of Korea?
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