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Swamp and time bomb

Posted November. 25, 2016 15:24,   

Updated November. 28, 2016 10:45

한국어

The influence-peddling scandal over Choi Soon-sil, a longtime confidante of President Park Geun-hye, which gripped the entire nation by anger and outrage, is shaping up to be concluded with presidential impeachment. The three major opposition parties in Korea agreed to the method, and the non-pro-Park factions within the ruling Saenuri Party, including former party chairman Kim Moon-sung, have signed their names for the impeachment motion. It is projected that the impeachment procedures will start as early as next week.

The legal actions taken for President Park’s impeachment bear two implications. First, even the president is no exception for impeachment or trials if he or she makes grave mistakes. Second, a president also has the right to a fair trial like ordinary citizens. The spokesperson of the presidential office inveighed against the findings of the prosecution’s investigation, likening the results to “a house of cards based on unilateral accusations,” and calling them “unfair and against political neutrality.” President Park will be given a chance to make her case in the Constitutional Court.

An impeachment trial in the Constitutional Court can run for a maximum 180 days, but the citizens want it to be concluded more quickly. In the case of Roh Moo-hyun, the first South Korean president to be subjected to impeachment on March 12, 2014, the trial in the Constitutional Court was finished in about two months on May 14. Given such a precedent, it is imperative that the ruling be rendered by the Constitutional Court as soon as possible.

Now it is time for us to wait for the final ruling while containing the spread of chaos in state affairs. To that end, we will need to refrain from staging further protests after safely conducting the fifth candlelight vigil over the upcoming weekend. A continuous attempt to affect the impeachment process through candlelight vigils may be deemed unconstitutional in and of itself. Any candidates running for presidency or lawmakers taking to the streets in the future will face a stern judgment from voters. In Brazil, Dilma Rousseff left her position as president in late August this year, nine months after the impeachment motion was filed. In the process, the country managed to hold the Olympics quite successfully. Koreans also need to show the world how mature we are and recover our reputation as a nation.

While the entire nation is bogged down in a swamp that is called Choi Soon-sil, state affairs are breaking down from foreign diplomacy to domestic affairs. The most urgent of all must be North Korea’s nuclear program. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump left many Koreans uneasy with his confusing remarks on the North Korean nuclear program. Fortunately, Michael Flynn, who has been tapped as the national security advisor in the upcoming Trump administration, said that the U.S. will further strengthen Korea-U.S. alliance and handle North Korea’s nuclear program as a priority agenda.

A number of experts in the U.S., however, argue that their immediate goal should be freezing North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. And they propose suspending the joint military drills between the U.S. and South Korea and signing a peace treaty with the North as “realistic solutions.” Their proposals are based on the perception that once the U.S. guarantees national security for North Korea, the issue at hand will be resolved because their purpose of developing nuclear weapons is to address the anxiety stemming from national security. However, such a line of thoughts effectively acknowledges Pyongyang’s rationale that the North developed its nuclear program in order to protect themselves from the threat of U.S. forces. It is also in the same vein with the argument of pro-North Korean figures such as the late President Roh Moo-hyun, who claimed that the purpose of North Korea’s nuclear program is self-defense.

We need to remind ourselves clearly that North Korea has been defeated to the South in the competition of their economic systems, and the North’s nuclear program is an ambitious attempt to make up for their military inferiority accordingly resulting from lack of economic power. Perhaps, it is a matter of time before North Korea, a regime that is seeking to drive out U.S. forces out of the peninsula and unify the two Koreas in a Vietnamese style, should emerge as a nuclear state like Pakistan under the patronage of China. Should that happen, an ironical structure of military disparity will unfold on the Korean Peninsula, where South Korea, which has always been obedient to the NPT regime, will directly face the threat of nuclear weapons under its allies’ nuclear umbrella. After being hamstrung by China’s unwillingness to cooperate for two months, the UN Security Council is likely to come up with sanctions sometime next week on the fifth nuclear test conducted by North Korea in September.

We should remember that while the country is consumed by the chaotic scandal surrounding the president’s confidante, North Korea’s nuclear program is ticking like a time bomb.

Si-Uk Nam, Guest Editorial Writer and Professor of  Sejong University