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Korea needs statesman like Helmut Schmidt of Germany

Posted November. 12, 2015 10:45,   

한국어

Helmut Schmidt, former chancellor of Germany, has died at 96 on Tuesday. He is a politician with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), a moderate leftist party, but is respected by different political factions, because he remained as a pragmatist to the end despite his grand vision. Even former Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik (East politics) might have collapsed amid controversy if Schmidt did not become Brandt’s successor. Schmidt severed ties with irresponsible environmentalists within the party, and supported construction of nuclear power plants. He also publicly opposed excessive expansion of labor unions’ rights. More than anything, his uncompromising measures that he displayed to counter terror attacks by Baader-Meinhof gang of West Germany, and terror attacks by a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist group called "Black September" instilled trust in SPD even in conservative people in West Germany, who had distrusted Brandt.

Because he was said to know how to conduct work, Schmidt would be called "macher (meaning "producer" in English)." He continued Brandt’s Ostpolitik, but was highly wary of national security. When the former Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles in East Europe, he allowed the U.S. to deploy mid-range nuclear missiles in West Germany despite violent opposition in and outside his country. Schmidt formulated the image of SPD, one that halted serving as host for fundamentalist forces, and did not cause concern over national security. Environmentalists defected from the party by forming the Green Party to protest him, but he did not care. Schmidt inherited from Willy Brandt a Germany economy in a recessionary phase after the end of expansion that was called "Miracle of the Rhine River" after the Second World War. However, recognizing that the only way for the German economy to survive and thrive was export, he curbed protectionism, and sought stability in exchange rates through cooperation with European countries, to eventually overcome the crisis.

The successive governments of SPD from Brandt to Schmidt are often compared with the administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea. Kim’s sunshine policy of engaging North Korea may have failed to blossom and ended up in failure, probably because Kim had as the successor a more fundamental ideologist like Roh, rather than pragmatist like Schmidt. The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, which is spearheaded by pro-Roh forces, formed election alliances up until the last general elections with the Unified Progressive Party, and served as host for pro-North Korean forces. Foreign and national security policy that stems from sloppy view of national security failed to win trust, while economic policy that only added to the burden on welfare without providing vision for economic growth is worrisome.

In the early days of the Schmidt administration, which succeeded former Chancellor Brandt whose chief of staff stepped down due to his role as a spy for East Germany, was facing challenge by forces that supported "democratization" and were enthusiastic about resistant culture, and East Germany further fueled such confusion. Schmidt was able to correct laws and social order that had been loosened during the Brandt era from the perspective of responsivity and ethics as proposed by Germany sociologist Max Weber, and ultimately pursue the path of unification and democratization that had been opened up by ideologist Brandt. Why the opposition parties in Korea do not have a wise statesman like Schmidt?