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Ban Ki-moon’s passion

Posted February. 03, 2017 07:11,   

Updated February. 03, 2017 07:19

한국어

In his book “Two Treatises of Government,” British philosopher John Locke divided the function of a state into legislative, executive and federative powers. His idea is unique in that it lacks judicial power from the three powers and instead has federative power, which is the authority over a war and alliance, in order words, over diplomacy. He must have separately classified diplomacy because diplomacy matters. Cardinal Richelieu of France, Klemens von Metternich of Austria and Otto von Bismarck of Prussia have been recognized as both the best politicians and diplomats.

In Korea, president is supposed to be the best diplomat, which doesn’t necessarily mean that the best diplomat should be the president. Henry Kissinger is called an eternal diplomat. He had never entered politics but he wouldn’t be believed to have been a capable politician if he had done so. He is said to have read the book of Guiguzi all the time. His two students, Su Qin and Zhang Yi, had showed wonderful diplomacy of vertical alliance clique and horizontal one, both of whom used to be diplomatic schemers for a ruler.

Former UN chief Ban Ki-moon is a typical diplomat. Having passed the Foreign Service Examination, he had served in public office before he became the Minister of Foreign Affairs and UN Secretary General. While former diplomats have usually been appointed as foreign minister in Korea, not a few advanced countries in the West have named next-highest politicians after president and prime minister as foreign minister. The reason is that diplomatic expertise is one of the critical requirements for politics. Still, diplomatic expertise is not the only requirement to be a good politician.

“Politics must not be exclusive. It should be open to every single nation,” Ban said the day after he dropped out of the presidential race. As the first Korean who used to be a diplomat and ran for the presidency, he expressed what he had felt during his trial to be the president. It seems that he put it in a right way. “Politics is a process of drilling a small hole in a strong board with passion (Leidenschaft),” Max Weber, German sociologist and philosopher, said. The German word “Leidenschaft” includes “Leiden” whose meaning is pain. Given this, Ban may have expected no pain in the process to become the president. He may have dreamed of sitting in a flower-decorated palanquin without any pain but given up the dream in great haste when the palanquin met the first rainstorm. This should be the lesson learnt for Hwang Kyo-ahn, Prime Minister and current Acting President of Korea.