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[Manner of Speaking]

Allies abandon president over free trade with U.S.

Suddenly, Roh and the right agree on something


April 17, 2006 �� President Roh Moo-hyun is besieged by the controversy over a free trade agreement with the United States. Up against a March 2007 deadline, Mr. Roh is facing huge resistance to the negotiations from civic groups that once formed the base of his support.


On Saturday, central Seoul saw 8,000 people protest against the talks with the United States. Progressive civic groups, liberal-minded lawyers, far-left Democratic Labor Party members and a sprinkling of movie stars denounced President Roh for promoting the negotiations and for dancing to the United States' pipe. The group, calling itself a "pan-national group to stop the FTA," said Saturday's rally would not be its last. And in opposition to the anti-FTA campaigners, a group of right-wingers gathered for a pro-FTA rally and denounced their opponents.


The catalyst for the explosion against the free trade talks appears to have been a former Blue House economic aide, Jung Tae-in. He had long served as an economic adviser to Mr. Roh, but has parted company with him on this issue. In a recent interview with a left-wing Internet news outlet, he said, "It's no use making peace with a scoundrel," he said, referring to the United States. "What awaits us in the end is a fatal blow to ourselves, leading only to our downfall." In a bitter, pejorative tone, Mr. Jung also denounced the push for free-trade talks as the "result of President Roh's haste to have a quick, visible achievement near the end of his presidential term." Mr. Jung claimed that core figures in the finance ministry and other FTA-related offices have blinded the president and are pushing him into what he calls disadvantageous negotiations.


In the interviews, Mr. Jung also took issue with the concept of "strategic flexibility" for U.S. troops based in Korea, which stirred up a controversy over South Korea-U.S. relations even before the FTA debate came to life. In January, Seoul agreed to the repeated calls of the United States to be allowed to use its forces here in other regional trouble spots, an agreement that dismayed Mr. Roh's liberal constituency. In his interview, Mr. Jung said, "With the agreement on the strategic flexibility, this government voluntarily deserted its "balancer" role."


He described strategic flexibility as the "U.S. desire to move its troops based in Korea if there is a flare-up between China and Taiwan." Mr. Jung continued, "Several decades from now, China will be much stronger than the United States. But we have broken the balance between the two powerful nations when we could have taken the ��balancer' role." The Roh administration, which first said it wanted to promote Korea's self-reliance and independence, later said it wanted to position itself as a balancing force in the Asian region, presumably between the United States and North Korea in the first instance.


Not surprisingly, Mr. Jung's open break with his mentor stirred up a storm, giving an impetus to the anti-FTA forces unhappy with Mr. Roh's move away from his platform of "self-reliance as regards the United States." The presidential spokesman, Kim Man-soo, tried to ignore the controversy. "I consider that Mr. Jung went a bit too far in his expressions. But I do not feel the need to give an official reaction," he said.


Mr. Jung's interviews mirror the core of the frustration of the pro-Roh forces. When elected, Mr. Roh was the first South Korean president who had never visited the United States and one who distanced himself from the conventional pro-American stance of earlier administrations. A reform-minded, liberal leader with a theme of "self-reliance," that stance has long been the base of his support by liberals despite criticism from conservatives and pro-American Koreans.


But that stance has appeared rather muted in the latter part of his term, with FTAs, strategic flexibility and the reduction of Korea's barriers to Hollywood movies coming to the fore. Many of his more liberal supporters see the change as a surrender to the United States; they feel frustrated and betrayed by those who thought he reflected their nationalistic views.


Aware of that criticism, Mr. Roh stressed last month that his administration is "neither leftist nor neo-liberalist," but takes a pragmatic view of the good of the nation. Mr. Roh also rejected a "leftist" brand on his administration in this year's New Year address, where he spoke of the free-trade pact with the United States as a "pending issue that cannot be delayed further."


Last Saturday's indignant rally was a chance for anti-FTA forces to speak out. Protesters marched with pickets saying, "Imported rice and mad cows are flooding in," "We cannot lose our right to survive" and "Let's keep our own culture." The leader of the prominent civic group People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, Kim Ki-sik, denounced the president for "recklessly" promoting the free trade talks. "President Roh appears to be following the course of former President Kim Young-sam, who brought on an economic crisis after pursuing open-door policies," he said. A farm group member cried out, "President Roh is only trying to cringe before the United States." A noted movie actor, Jeong Jin-young, said, "FTA doesn't mean ��Free Trade Agreement.' It means ��Forced Trade Attack.'"


Some conservative newspapers, which generally have had rough relations with the Roh administration, have written columns and editorials in defense of the free trade talks, asking the president not to be swayed by the anti-trade protesters.


He appears to be heeding that advice. On Friday, while visiting a college campus, Mr. Roh said, "I am aware that there are many voices of concern about the free trade talks with the United States. But the issue is what kind of an agreement we pursue." Mr. Roh has described the free trade pact with the United States as one of the two most important agenda items in his remaining two years. Describing it as the "great goal of my administration," Mr. Roh has stressed several times that South Korea took the initiative in the negotiations, ready and confident to make a pact as a chance to make a "breakthrough for the Korean economy."


Many government offices have echoed that call, saying that South Korea is ready for the talks, but not persuasively enough to quiet the concerns. Backing up the president, the senior presidential secretary for public information, Lee Baek-man, wrote an online essay on Thursday in which he said, "Only when we confirm our competitive power in the United States can we keep our standing in the worldwide market." He described the free trade pact as a "strategy to improve the South Korean economy from developing from the present to an advanced level."


Amid the commotion at home, Korean negotiators left for another preliminary round of negotiations in Washington D.C. that will begin today.


by Chun Su-jin <[email protected]>

[Manner of Speaking]

Although I am in favor of free(er) trade on principle -- particularly free(er) trade for developing nations to export products more freely to the developed world -- sounds to me like in the Korean case, somebody is botching the job.

[On the other hand]

[Ya-ta Boy]

Frogs in a well, croaking.

[Manner of Speaking]

Yeah but it sounds like it's being botched, politically.

[cwemory]

If I remember correctly, Roh's push for a FTA with the U.S. was his idea of pragmatism. His thought was that since Korea is in the process of signing a FTA with Mexico and Canada, and Mexico and Canada have a FTA with the U.S., then it was only a matter of time before a U.S-Korea FTA was made. He thought that if he made it now, under his terms, it would be more advantageous to Korea then if they waited and made it under the U.S.'s terms.