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Prof. Yoon Young-kwan, who served as the first foreign minister of the current administration, said in a lecture to a Korean Federation of Teachers¡¯ Associations affiliate on Monday, "Despite becoming the 10th largest economy in the world, the consciousness of South Korea remains in turn-of-the-19th-century resistant nationalism and passive concepts of independence, desperate to get out from under the influence of the Great Powers. We have to pursue positive independence taking advantage of our relations with these powers to achieve our national interests." Yoon cited the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl as representing a spirit of genuine independence when he achieved German unification through close diplomatic ties with the U.S. Germany achieved unification by overcoming fears of a united Germany in neighboring countries or former enemies like France, the Soviet Union, Britain and Poland through cooperation with Washington.
Japan, in its bid to merge militarily with the U.S., is trying to cement its security amid the changing Northeast Asian landscape by breaking the pacifist blocks to rearmament of its postwar constitution. It is hard to look down on the world's no. 2 and no. 3 economies for selling out their independence when they strengthen cooperation with the U.S. for their own national interest. Yet that is what our leadership and its activist henchmen do by embracing, at the dawn of the 21st century, the outmoded perception that independence means freeing ourselves from the clutches of big powers.
"Can we entrust China with the rehabilitation of the North Korean economy when it suffers from capital shortage itself, and sideline the U.S., whose economic power is six times China¡¯s?¡± Yoon asked. ¡°I don't know if the attempt to free ourselves from the U.S. keeps the urgent needs of North Koreans in mind.¡± He said Seoul¡¯s North Korea policy ¡°must be in line with international currents. Otherwise, both South and North Korea may get lost and become orphans in the international community."
Yoon made the remarks in a roundabout way, perhaps because he served in the administration, but the two Koreas in fact have already got lost and become international orphans. Those who have personally dealt with the international community like Yoon know that the only way for the North to survive is to discard its own antiquated Juche or self-reliance ideology, as well as its nuclear weapons and missiles, and join the world order.
It is the South¡¯s responsibility to guide the North out on that path. Only when we fulfill that responsibility can we save our Northern brothers and sisters from being trafficked as day workers or prostitutes abroad. It is the pitiful reality of the Korean Peninsula that the South is tasked with that mission but nonetheless alienated from international currents, stuck in the drying channel of 19th century power politics.
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