Moon Jong-in, the Foreign Ministry’s ambassador on international security and former head of the presidential committee on the Northeast Asian Cooperation Initiative, on Thursday told a seminar, "Our diplomatic relations with the four regional powers are in a serious state. We agonize whether that is the result of a post-Cold War structural problem or of our insufficient diplomatic capability. I think both are the reason." He said although Korea has done everything the U.S. wanted, critical opinion exists “because President Roh Moo-hyun and U.S. President George W. Bush have different views about North Korea." Moon, currently ambassador for international and security affairs, added. "Japan attempts to confront China by boosting its military strength with U.S. backing, and it's a problem for us how to deal with it." Approaches to the Chinese leadership are "getting more difficult by the day" and "no substantial progress has been made with Russia," he said. In essence, a core member of this administration feels our relations with any one of the four powers are going badly. Given that the country is sandwiched between the four powers and that its diplomacy toward them is virtually all there is, our foreign policy must really be in trouble.

This administration presented an ambitious “vision” of slipping away from the existing system of cooperation between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo and playing the role of a “balancer” between the oceanic powers U.S. and Japan and the continental powers China and Russia. As a result of enforcing that vision, the administration has racked up the "considerable achievement" (the president’s words) of alienating us from our long-term friends the U.S. and Japan.

Gen. Garry Trexler, the commander of the U.S. Seventh Air Force, on Thursday told a meeting if the lack of a bomber range here is not resolved within 30 days, the U.S. Air Force may have to be re-deployed outside Korea. Former commander of the U.S. Forces Korea Gen. John Tilelli told a group of Grand National Party lawmakers visiting the U.S., the U.S. government wishes to help South Korea by sending reinforcements in an emergency, but that could change depending on Congress and public opinion there. Though government officials have boasted that even if Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command is dismantled, the USFK will remain and hundreds of thousands of American troops will rush to Korea and shed their blood for us if there is a war, voices in the U.S. are already saying different.

No one disputes that our relations with Japan have also deteriorated to the worst they have been in decades. If our relations with China and Russia had conspicuously improved at the same time, it would have balanced the books somewhat. But they haven’t. The president, at the Seoul-Beijing summit in November, said, "South Korea-China relations are so good that no explanation is needed." But it is said that high-level contacts between the two countries are getting rarer than hen’s teeth with the passage of time. And when was the last time we heard news that our relations with Russia have made any leaps?

Our diplomatic prowess used to derive from a system of cooperation with the U.S. and Japan. Since we unraveled it ourselves, it is natural for China and Russia to pay less attention to their relations with Korea. Our government alone seems to have been unaware of this simple principle. As a consequence, the diplomacy ledger of our country is in the red with all four powers.