Monthly Archive for September, 2009

The big news in South Korea right now, although it’s get­ting sur­pris­ingly lit­tle press, is that there was a flash flood on Sun­day that killed six peo­ple in the north­ern part of the coun­try.  The peo­ple who were killed had been camp­ing and were caught com­pletely off-guard by the sud­den surge in water level in the Imjin River.  It was under­stand­able that they would be sur­prised because there hadn’t been a lot of rain lately in that region, and there was no rea­son to believe that there had been a lot of rain on the other side of the bor­der where the flood waters came from.

Things in South Korea always get more inter­est­ing when it involves their only land bor­der.  There are a num­ber of dams on the North Korea side, and it quickly became clear that either there was some dam­age and the water was released acci­den­tally, or that this was all part of some orches­trated plot.  If it is a mali­cious inci­dent, it comes at a time that is con­fus­ing most inter­na­tional observers.  The North Korean regime recently made head­lines inter­na­tion­ally for releas­ing two US jour­nal­ists who had ille­gally crossed the bor­der from China.  Per­haps less note­wor­thy inter­na­tion­ally but still impor­tant in South Korea was the release of a fac­tory worker who had been held there for a num­ber of months, as well as a group of fish­er­men who were taken into cus­tody after their boat crossed into North Korean waters.  As fall is approach­ing, so too are the newly arranged reunions between fam­i­lies in the South and their rel­a­tives in the North that have been sep­a­rated since the war ended over fifty years ago.

So with all that good­will dis­played so recently, why would this gov­ern­ment turn around then and respond with this kind of aggres­sive action?  None of the Eng­lish lan­guage news sources I’ve read have made this con­nec­tion, but I think I’ve fig­ured it out.  I think there is also another man who knows exactly why this has hap­pened, and that man is likely the busiest man in the coun­try for­mu­lat­ing a response, and that’s because it was directly squarely at him.

Lee Myung-Bak, the pres­i­dent of South Korea, has faced a fair bit of crit­i­cism dur­ing his short time in office, and every now and then he shuf­fles his cab­i­net, seem­ingly to dis­tract everyone’s atten­tion away from him­self.  In that light, it was hardly news when he announced that he was replac­ing six cab­i­net min­is­ters and the prime min­is­ter.   One of the newly appointed cab­i­net mem­bers is Kim Tae-young, the new Min­is­ter of Defence. He is known for his ‘hawk­ish rhetoric’ toward the North.  He has said things in the past along the lines that the South was ready to attack the North in respond to any kind of nuclear attack, and that the South sim­ply can­not allow the North to act aggres­sively as they have in the past.  Cer­tainly Kim Jong-Il has noticed his appoint­ment and his­tory has proven that he likes to demon­strate his opin­ion about things and I’m guess­ing the dear leader is wait­ing to see what kind of ‘hawk­ish rhetoric’ the new min­is­ter of defense will roll out.

When I saw the news­pa­per arti­cle about the cab­i­net shuf­fle, I thought the defence min­is­ter looked vaguely famil­iar for some rea­son, then I sud­denly remem­bered that I had actu­ally met him before.  It’s really an unlikely story, but it’s all true.  I was dri­ving with some friends to attend a meet­ing of peace minded Chris­tians within a cer­tain part of South Korea.  We were plan­ning to stop briefly to pick up the pas­tor of “Peace Church” and then con­tinue on our jour­ney.  Then, as we neared the church, which also dou­bles as a seniors home, we found out that a four-star gen­eral was com­ing for a short visit and we would be delayed a bit.  I guess when you are among the 12 most pow­er­ful mil­i­tary men in the coun­try, peo­ple make room for you in their sched­ules.  We arrived at the church before the gen­eral, where we greeted the seniors and sang a few songs with them.  Many of the res­i­dents were expe­ri­enc­ing some level of demen­tia, and most received almost no vis­i­tors.  The pas­tor told us that the church can­not talk about peace if it is not pre­pared to help peo­ple like this, who would oth­er­wise be abandoned.

I asked those around me why the gen­eral was vis­it­ing.  Was he inquir­ing about the polit­i­cal inten­tions of a church with peace in it’s name?  Was he vis­it­ing a res­i­dent who was related to him?  I received no clear answers until he arrived with his entourage.  He had a dri­ver, who stayed with the expen­sive car while some of us kicked a soc­cer ball around on the front yard.  He had a few men who car­ried clip­boards and brief­cases and stayed close behind him con­stantly.  The answer came to me how­ever when I saw the final young man in cam­ou­flage step out of the car with a fancy look­ing camera.

It was clear to me that a man only vis­its a nurs­ing home with a pho­tog­ra­pher in tow unless you want to use those pho­tos to fur­ther your career.  “He’s try­ing to get in to pol­i­tics,” I told my wife.  “We’ll hear his name again.”  These pre­dic­tions I make are gen­er­ally untrue, but this was has come true in short order.

Gen­eral Kim Tae-young has said that the South can­not allow the North to con­tinue mak­ing aggres­sive actions toward the South.  Now he is finally in a posi­tion to do some­thing about it, but every­one, includ­ing Kim Jong-Il, knows that the dynam­ics of the sit­u­a­tion dic­tate that he will allow the North to con­tinue their aggres­sive actions.  While that Gen­eral is now a super pow­er­ful man within the gov­ern­ment, that pas­tor con­tin­ues to spend his efforts main­tain­ing a small church in the moun­tains and car­ing for peo­ple who have long since for­got­ten the names of the fam­ily mem­bers who have long since for­got­ten them.  I think the lat­ter is accom­plish­ing more for the good of the country.