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Prof. Han Sung-joo of Korea University, who was the current administration¡¯s first ambassador to Washington, has ascribed cracks in the Korea-U.S. alliance to "loudhailer diplomacy, a diplomatic taboo." Han denounced the president for calling ¡°reasonable¡± North Korea's assertion that its needs nuclear arms and missiles as a deterrent, and slammed the unification minister¡¯s claim that the U.S.' North Korea policy ¡°failed the most¡± when North Korea fired its missiles last month. "The U.S. pretended not to hear and smiled, but the barrage of barbed remarks built up," the former ambassador said.
Meanwhile, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation in the Clinton administration, Robert J. Einhorn, said President Roh Moo-hyun and his aides seem to be volunteering for the role of Pyongyang¡¯s senior defender, making it hard for those Americans who regard South Korea as a close ally to understand the country.
The biggest cause of this new rip in the Seoul-Washington alliance¡¯s fraying fabric is not the anti-American movement that sprang to life when two schoolgirls died under the wheels of a U.S. armored vehicle. The biggest cause is not flaws in the U.S. response to the missile tests, it is senior Korean government figures. They have hurt the alliance with their vituperations over the past three-and-a-half years to the point where it may become impossible to mend fully. The chief offender in swapping polite diplomatic language for barroom talk is the president, who clamored for "independence" saying, "What's wrong with being anti-American?" and, "We should get red in the face¡± with anger at the U.S. if necessary.
One result of this careless talk about independence is a defense outlay of W621 trillion ($1=W953) which the people will have to pay for with their hard-earned money by 2020, to replace within five years the stone-age equipment we have now and to plug the gap if U.S. troops are withdrawn from the country.
No less chimerical than this independence the government blathers on about is its vision of Korea as a ¡°balancer¡± between the U.S. and China. "If Korea uses China as something of a counterweight toward the U.S. or confronts Japan in alliance with China, one of two things will happen," Han says. "If things go well, we'll be used by China, and if things go badly, we will be overrun by China." Beijing and Tokyo will laugh at a Korea cut loose from its moorings in the U.S alliance and toss it about at will. That is the simple lesson of Northeast Asian history.
Harming our national interest by alienating our allies with pointless remarks is not independence. If Korea truly wants independence, it needs people with the good sense of former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, who overcame resistance to his country¡¯s unification from its neighbors by borrowing the strength of the U.S.
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