Change in foreign policy The Korea Herald Asia News Network Seoul

Throughout the presidential campaign, Roh Moo-hyun projected his image as a liberal politician determined to engage Pyongyang for peace and ratchet up self-assertion in foreign policy, as well as to change politics as usual and embrace the middle and lower classes. During the final days of campaigning, he focused on pitting his "war or peace" slogan against his conservative rival's "stability or instability" catchphrase.

Little wonder President-elect Roh has placed the issue of establishing a peace regime for the Korean Peninsula on top of his policy goals when prioritizing his pre-election promises as a first step toward keeping them for his constituencies -- liberals, those in their 20s and 30s, people of ordinary means and the underprivileged.

Barring an armed conflict between North Korea and the United States over Pyongyang's nuclear program, inter-Korean relations should remain peaceful during the next five years of the Roh administration. The president-elect has already promised to build on the achievements of his predecessor, outgoing President Kim Dae-jung, who has succeeded in breaking the Cold War mode of inter-Korean relations with his "sunshine policy" of engagement.

With North Korea threatening to develop nuclear weapons, however, it will be all the more difficult for President-elect Roh to establish a peace system, which would include replacement of the Armistice Agreement that ended the three-year Korean War in 1953. Instead, he has to first guard against a U.S. preemptive strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities, which could easily escalate into an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula, though Washington denies it is considering military action.

One of the first jobs he will have to do when he takes office on Feb. 25 will be to help put an end to the protracted face-off between Pyongyang and Washington. Mediation between the two hostile parties will demand deft skills in diplomacy that the outspoken Roh, who said during his campaign that he would not visit Washington "only to be photographed," has yet to display.

Roh may find himself handicapped in developing close relations with the Bush administration for two reasons.

For one, Roh was not the favorite of the Republicans in the United States. Though it vowed to remain neutral in the Korean presidential election, it was no secret that the Bush administration felt more comfortable with the conservative candidate, Lee Hoi-chang, who preferred sticks to carrots in handling North Korea.

In addition, Roh apparently ruffled the feathers of the hawks in the Bush administration when he recently endorsed President Kim in opposing the idea of blockading North Korea, in what was called a "tailored containment" policy, as a means of deterring its nuclear weapons development. In the face of opposition from China and Russia as well as South Korea, the Bush administration dropped the idea, saying it was not an official policy.

Another reason cited for Roh's potential friction with the Bush administration is that he is determined to demand greater equality in bilateral relations.

Few Koreans would doubt that the United States is and will remain South Korea's most important ally. But given Roh's desire for economic integration in Northeast Asia, the relative importance of such neighbors as China and Russia as well as Japan will rise in South Korea's foreign policy in the years ahead.

It is too early to predict how Roh will seek to achieve his foreign policy goals, both political and economic, as he has not yet started to fill cabinet posts. But what is certain at the moment is that a change in foreign policy is coming under his leadership.