President Park’s visit to Africa during G7 meeting

President Park’s visit to Africa during G7 meeting. May. 13, 2016 07:44. by 한기흥기자 eligius@donga.com.

No one can deny that U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to the Hiroshima Peace Park in Japan is victory for Japan’s diplomatic efforts. At the same time, Obama’s visit to Hiroshima demonstrated limitations of Korean diplomacy. The Korean Foreign Affairs Ministry only issued a brief statement on Wednesday, suggesting that the visit reflects President Barack Obama’s belief in the plan to pursue peace and security through a ‘world free of nuclear weapons. The ministry said, “Korea and the U.S. have maintained close communications in connection with President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima,” but it reportedly hasn't requested Washington for Obama’s visit to the memorial tower for ethnic Korean victims, which is about 200 meters from the Japanese memorial tower. This situation makes us question "what communications" it has maintained.

The main purpose of Obama’s visit to Japan is to attend the G7 summit, which will take place for two days from May 26. Topping the agenda at the meeting will be North Korean nuclear weapons, as well as global economic crisis and concerted response to terrorism. President Park was not invited even as "observer" to the summit meeting, despite the fact South Korea is directly exposed to the North Korean nukes. This can be compared with the situation in 2008 when the G8 summit took place in Japan. Back then, President Lee Myung-bak attended the event at Tokyo’s invitation, and held Korea-U.S. summit and Korea-Russia summit.

Japanese media reported that Japan wished to invite President Park to the G7 summit, but her visit to Tokyo could not be made due to conflicting schedule on the Korean side. The Korean presidential office and the foreign affairs ministry, however, said that Japan had never officially sought to invite or invited the Korean president. This would be just an excuse, and the presidential office apparently did not want to see President Park attend someone else’s party. South Korea and Japan concluded their talks over Korean comfort women in December last year, but bilateral relations have not improved enough to enable President Park to visit Japan.

From May 25 to June 4, President Park will pay state visits to Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and France. Given the vision of Africa policy dubbed "Korean Aid," which Park will present is merely Korean volunteer groups, we wonder whether it was too difficult for the South Korean government to coordinate the schedule for her Africa visit. If Seoul mobilized all-out diplomatic endeavors to have President Obama visit Korea and hold hands of aged comfort women, before his visit to Japan, it would have eased the Korean public’s concern about intimate Washington-Tokyo ties. It is lamentable to witness incompetent diplomacy of superficiality by the Korean diplomatic authority, which should pursue diplomacy of national interest.