Why it matters: Pyongyang answered President Lee’s UN overture with empty seats, and a blast from a suspected North Korean mine drowned it out at home. Getting tough could win him the center, as it did Park Geun-hye in 2015, but Mr Lee is too weak to try — and South Koreans stopped singing the unification song long ago.
I Can’t Hear Your Serenade Over the Sound of Exploding Mines
Minjoo has been lowering the bar for Pyongyang to resume the inter-Korean dialogue that has been frozen since the 2019 North Korea–US summit in Hanoi fell apart. Pyongyang has had little reason to return since then, and even less now that the new geopolitical fault line has handed it a breakthrough with Russia.
The race to the bottom continued in President Lee’s UN General Assembly speech. Now Seoul barely demands anything of substance: just let me talk to you — like a dork who keeps asking a cute barista out, sure that persistence will pay off, while she weighs calling the police.
The serenade fell on deaf ears: North Korean diplomats, who sat through Donald Trump’s speech, left their seats empty for Mr Lee’s. They had also reportedly asked the UN for new seats.
Mr Lee’s conciliatory message turned sour in the South even before he delivered the speech. Explosions in the DMZ on September 21 wounded three soldiers who were clearing a route for a UN Command survey of ground the military suspected North Korea had mined.
But the military reportedly put off the site investigation until after the Chuseok holiday, despite the UN Command’s request for an immediate one, and brought it forward only under public pressure.
Han Dong-hoon, who has risen to the top of the polls after leading the charge against the justice minister nominee, seized another moment to cement his position as the right’s leading alternative, even on national security. He argues that someone high in the administration — and he even suggests Mr Lee himself — must have ordered the investigation postponed.
On Monday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the blasts were highly likely caused by North Korean mines.
Mr Lee has said nothing about the incident beyond wishing the wounded a speedy recovery. Quite a contrast with his earlier boast about Cambodian scammers, in which he warned that anyone who dares to target Koreans will be ruined.
The Park Playbook
There’s a way for Mr Lee to reverse this: do what Park Geun-hye did in 2015. Her administration helped extract Pyongyang’s “regret” with a stern response that included resuming loudspeaker broadcasts. Her approval rating also rose from 34% to 49%, overtaking her disapproval rating for the first time in nine months.
Defying your core supporters is often the best way to win over moderates. Just as redistribution works best under conservative governments, a hard line on Pyongyang would work wonders for progressive ones, which are habitually criticized for being too soft on the North.
But Mr Lee can’t do that. Defying his base takes a confidence he cannot afford while his own party pushes back. Plus, Pyongyang holds a key witness to the illegal cash transfer to North Korea: the North Korean agent who allegedly received part of the money. Mr Lee is indicted in that case; his trial is suspended while he is in office.
A Song Nobody Sings
The next generation of Minjoo progressives should prepare a different North Korea playbook. The days when almost everyone in the country believed in unification are long gone. A decade ago, I wrote about how some of early K-pop’s masterpieces, Seo Taiji and Boys’ “Dreaming of Balhae” among them, were about unification rather than love. That vein has long since run dry. The latest annual survey of public attitudes to unification, released on Monday by Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies, found (my translation):
Amid ongoing tensions between the two Koreas following North Korea’s constitutional codification of its “hostile two-state” policy, negative perceptions regarding the necessity and feasibility of unification have reached their highest levels since the survey began. At the same time, the public favored peaceful coexistence over unification as the primary goal of policy toward North Korea, while supporting “pragmatic cooperation” as a means to manage confrontation.
People would still cheer the optics. But former President Moon Jae-in squandered the last chances for an agreement between Pyongyang and Washington, and the price tag of another try would be unaffordable.