Moon shines in South Korea

South Koreans have elected a left-leaning liberal - Moon Jae-in - as their president, lending credence to the age-old adage 'Cometh the man, cometh the hour'. Following the impeachment and sentencing of his predecessor Park Geun-hye, South Korea was nearly rudderless - a disorder all the more complicated by the rising tensions in the region following the arrival of an American armada to isolate North Korea with a view to reining in its nuclear weapons programme. On the domestic level, things were increasingly problematic. There was rising socio-economic inequality - thanks to the emergence of powerful family-owned conglomerates, locally called Chaebols - and rapidly growing youth unemployment. Given his resolute determination to make a clean break from policies and programmes of his scandal-hit predecessor, he is likely to fulfil pledges that he made during his election campaign. But where he is likely to run into trouble and confront rejection, according to The Korean Herald, is to address the divide between the pro-Park and anti-Park groups resulting from Park's impeachment. "The new president's most urgent job is to address this divide, which (other) presidential candidates had also exploited to garner voter support," it says. Then there is also the question about the quality and quantity of support in the National Assembly where none of the five parties enjoys majority. Since he is in office right from the day of his election - unlike his predecessors who got the two-month preparatory leave - he faces the challenge of appointing his own administration. But in real terms, these are not much an obstruction on his way to turn the page to a new and happier chapter of South Koreans' lives by putting the decades-old conservative governance that people have rejected to rest. There are huge reserves of competent and experienced people he can choose from. Since President Moon is for a new approach to both foreign and domestic policies, there would be a clear departure from those that were pursued by his predecessors. He had told a cheering crowd that the net result of the election is victory of the people who wanted to create "a country of justice ... where rules and common sense prevail."
So given weeks-long anti-Park demonstrations in Seoul and other cities that culminated in her impeachment there is every hope that President Moon would succeed in implementing his domestic agenda. But where he is likely to face some formidable challenges and great unknowns is the template of South Korea's foreign policy, which to any independent analyst is nothing more than the second fiddle to the United States. He is likely to moderate it because President Moon, a refugee from North Korea, knows the psychological mindset of leadership in Pyongyang better than many others in Seoul. If that makes him soft on Pyongyang, some say yes. He is willing to visit North Korea and is for resumption of inter-Korean projects that were shut down by his predecessors. Though he isn't opposed to the presence of some 30,000 American troops on the South Korean soil, he is not supportive of recent deployment by the US of its anti-missile defence system. Now the question is: will he ever fit into Washington's strategy in the Korean Peninsula, especially as a largely unpredictable President Trump is to call the shots. Even when President Trump wants to be invited by that "smart cookie" - that's how he defines the North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un. But the question is, was America anytime ready to accept North Korea as nuclear-weapon state against whom President Trump issued "military action is an option" warning? Equally critical for President Moon is Seoul's relationship with Beijing, which is its largest trading partner, but rejects existence of American anti-missile defence system, THAAD, in its neighbourhood. Of course, President Moon is not indifferent to the Chinese concerns over this deployment. In his oath-taking speech, he said he would immediately begin to defuse security tensions on the Korean peninsula and negotiate with Washington and Beijing without any loss of time. Last but not least, if Moon's election is a game-changer in South Korea's domestic political context, it also has the desired potential to pull the world back from the brink of a nuclear holocaust.