A wake-up call for President Roh

Shim Jae Hoon, The Korea Herald, Asia News Network, Seoul

It's high time President Roh Moo-hyun reconsidered his North Korean policy. He must build a broader base of domestic consensus for it just when international alarm over the North's nuclear arms program is growing. There is no room for partisan bickering. He can start by sketching out a new policy based on a more realistic perception of the nuclear threat.

An essential element of this approach ought to be a show of genuine bipartisanship. When he came to office six months ago, he pledged better policy coordination with the opposition Grand National Party. That made sense, for not only is it the principal national opposition group, it also happens to control a solid majority in the single-chamber parliament. Roh's thin electoral victory makes this collaboration even more mandatory.

Today, however, South Korea remains acutely divided along ideological fault lines so deep that our last Independence Day ceremony on Aug. 15 was observed separately by conservative hardliners blasting the North Korean leadership and liberal, pro- unification group calling for reconciliation with the North.

It was reminiscent of the political chaos just before the Korean War in 1950, when Stalinists in the North miscalculated and concluded that Seoul's division was an invitation to invade.

We risk repeating this danger unless the Roh government collects itself and stands firm. This week, North and South Koreans exchanged blows over Pyongyang's deplorable human rights record in the middle of the Universiade sports festival in Daegu. The city authorities outraged the nation by apologizing to the North, even though it was the North Koreans who resorted to violence first.

Our position on the North's nuclear weapons under discussion in Beijing is no less questionable: Seoul alone seems hesitant to condemn the North's dangerous proliferation game. In President Roh's view, the U.S. should offer the North's regime a written survival guarantee in exchange for a dubious promise that it will refreeze its nuclear program. We stand on the side of China and Russia at the talks, not with our allies -- the U.S. and Japan.

Roh must focus on two areas to end this anomaly. Politically, he must make his North Korean policy completely transparent and overboard by reopening the parliamentary probe into the US$400 million paid to the North as the price for former president Kim Dae-jung's summit with Kim Jong-il.

Most of Kim Dae-jung's chief policymakers are now in prison awaiting trial for arranging the illegal payoff that is indirectly linked to Hyundai Asan Corp. chairman Chung Mong-hun's death early this month.

President Roh should launch an independent, bipartisan policy oversight group to keep an eye on how contacts with the Pyongyang regime are progressing. Also, it should focus on removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons or chemical and biological warfare agents now stockpiled in large quantities. This means that Seoul consistently demands a reduction of military tension as the price that the North must pay for improved political relations.

In economic relations, he must leave it to the private sector to decide whether or not to invest in the North. The government must play a limited, umpire's role, ensuring that investments are safe and that a level playing field guarantees fair competition. It should stop trying to tell small business companies when and how much to invest in the Gaeseong Industrial Park that the ill- starred Hyundai Asan Corp. is now constructing.

In fact, the Roh government would not hesitate to use taxpayers money to compensate for business losses in the North, which is against the public interest.

Roh's popularity has understandably tanked in the last six months because he has neglected his domestic agenda in favor of a misguided North Korea policy. According to a recent Chosun Ilbo- Korea Gallup polls, critics of his North Korean initiatives outnumber supporters by 41.8 percent to 29.7 percent. An overwhelming 48.1 percent of respondents surveyed said he should concentrate on fixing the economy as opposed to just 9.1 percent who want him to focus on improving relations with the North.

It's clearly a wake-up call for Roh. He doesn't have much time to play Hamlet on the North Korean issue.

The writer is a former correspondent and bureau chief in Seoul, Taipei and Jakarta for the Far Eastern Economic Review.