Moon’s Putin mystery
President mistakes wishful thinking for diplomacy
Belated as it may be, we want to raise an issue over President Moon Jae-in’s recent brush with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During their Sept. 6 summit in Vladivostok, Moon called on Putin to cut off oil supplies to North Korea to force it to stop its nuclear and missile programs. Putin rejected Moon’s request flat-out, arguing that it would hurt ordinary North Korean people. It was nothing short of a diplomatic body blow to the President, a former human rights lawyer.
Two days earlier, Moon called up Putin to ask for an oil cutoff to Pyongyang and deportation of North Korean workers in Russia, a key source of cash to the destitute nation. The Kremlin said that the situation on the Korean Peninsula should be settled by diplomacy. In what could be interpreted as a deliberate snub, the Russian vice foreign minister warned against “hasty behavior” that could lead to a military conflict.
Moon’s act is beneath his position as head of state and doesn’t conform to diplomatic protocol.
However eager he may have been, the President should have acted prudently because he represents the nation and its people, and damage to his prestige is equal to that of the nation. Being rejected twice in as many days and openly by the leader of another country should be taken with a great deal of gravity. It is only assumed that Moon thinks his wonder-working charm of informality can automatically apply on the international stage and in diplomacy with big powers past and present.
If so, the President is mistaken. Diplomacy is based on a strict set of give and take for the blind pursuit of competing national interests. Asking for a favor repeatedly won’t bring forth the desired results but will only cause scorn on the receiving end of the request.
Moon is a domestically-oriented politician-turned president so he can be weak with protocols and skills of diplomacy, therefore the blame for his amateurish show of over-eagerness should fall on professional diplomats. Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and her ministry should have prepared Moon better and saved this embarrassment for her boss as well as the nation.
The appointment of a translatorturned diplomat triggered concern that she might end up only to grace the male-dominated inaugural Cabinet rather than become a real power to bring balance to Moon’s ideologically-influenced foreign affairs agenda. The President’s mishandling of Putin indicates those concerns remain valid.
Finally, one mystery remains about the President. Moon has acted with the zeal of a born-again Christian in his pursuit of sanctions against the North, although he has established himself as a successor of the inter-Korean reconciliation or “sunshine policy” led by his liberal predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. He owes the nation an explanation as to whether he is adjusting himself to a given turn of the North Korean situation or forsaken his political credo altogether.