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White House spokesman Tony Snow said Tuesday that President George W. Bush contacted some dozen heads of state on North Korea¡¯s rumored imminent launch of a ballistic missile. Surely the United States needs the closest cooperation from South Korea, but Bush did not talk to our president. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice substituted their talk with a conversation with Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.
The Korean and American presidents had their last telephone conversation on Sept. 20 last year, the day after the six-nation talks on North Korea¡¯s nuclear program produced a statement of principle. The period since saw a number of major issues other than the missile question arise between our two countries, including Pyongyang's dollar counterfeiting, an accord on strategic flexibility for the U.S. Forces Korea, the relocation of U.S. military bases to Pyongtaek and negotiations on a bilateral free trade agreement. But the two presidents have had nothing to say to each other.
It is perhaps not so surprising. Bush wouldn't have anything to say on the missile issue, since the South Korean government has reportedly concluded that what the North is preparing to fire is more likely to be a satellite. When the U.S. president ruled out a compromise on Pyonyang's counterfeiting of U.S. dollars, President Roh Moo-hyun said, "If the U.S. attempts to resolve the issue by pressuring North Korea in a manner wishing to see the regime collapse, conflicts will arise between South Korea and the U.S." While the U.S. president invited North Korean defectors, describing one such encounter as the most moving of his tenure, the South Korean chief executive has not met a single one of the over 8,000 North Korean refugees living in the South.
Those differences have most likely cost South Korea its hotline to the White House and have driven it into isolation in the international community. Japan has aligned itself with the U.S. ever more closely as South Korea drifted away. The new overtures this government has made toward China have produced no echoes. This administration also tried to open a line to the North in an attempt to ease its isolation with its "one nation" rhetoric. "There are things that I can¡¯t readily do because of our relationship with our neighbors including the U.S.,¡± the president has said. ¡°But if former president Kim Dae-jung opens the way (though his visit to the North), I may be able to do them indirectly.¡± But North Korea has stopped a visit the president begged for by offering "unconditional aid to the North." It is a sad president who is unable even to visit the North ¡°indirectly.¡±
Why does South Korea find itself isolated in the international community and its communication channels with the North blocked at the same time? This administration¡¯s slogans, from "independent alliance diplomacy" -- somehow seeking both independence and alliance -- to calling for Korea to play the role of a balancer between the U.S. and China while firmly cementing its cooperation with Washington, via a "cooperative but independent national defense," offering cooperation while leading the alliance, have claimed a high price -- an independent defense outlay running to hundreds of trillions of won.
Such slogans from the administration originate in an unusual mindset that reads the world not as it is but as it wants it to be. While every other country on earth lives in the orbit of world powers, our government insists that all other countries should circle around South Korea. Geocentrist leaders who persist that the sun circles the Earth are driving the satellite called South Korea on a collision course. And the people will have to live with this government in fear and trembling for another year and a half.
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