South Korea straddles the politics of change

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- South Korea's last presidential election, in December, 2002, took place against a backdrop of escalating tension on the Korean peninsula over North Korea's nuclear program and the Bush administration's refusal to negotiate with Pyongyang.

In Seoul, anti-American demonstrators crowded the streets. The long-standing U.S.-South Korea security relationship, underpinned by the presence of 37,000 American troops in the country, was in trouble.

The man who won the election, former dissident Roh Moo-hyun, campaigned on a pledge not to "kowtow" to the Americans.

Five years later, the election of conservative Lee Myung-bak as South Korea's president underscores how dramatically the political and diplomatic landscape has changed.

Lee, a one-time chief executive of the conglomerate Hyundai Construction and a former mayor of Seoul, built his campaign around economic issues.

After years of anemic growth under the left-leaning Roh, Lee promised to jump-start the economy by cutting taxes, slashing red tape and easing restrictions on foreign investment. To a population worried about unemployment, housing prices and economic stagnation, Lee's background as a CEO and his reputation as a "can-do" mayor contributed to his landslide victory.

Security, the North Korea question and relations with the United States, long hot-button issues, hardly figured in the election -- a reflection of the fact that most South Koreans no longer see North Korea as a threat.

Instead, years of engagement with Pyongyang have produced a sea-change in South Korean attitudes, with the North Koreans viewed as little more than impoverished wayward cousins who need a helping hand.

Such sentiments are now so widely shared in South Korea that even Lee's conservative Grand National Party (GNP) has embraced the concept of engagement and the thinking behind it -- that the Korea cannot afford a North Korean collapse, and the country's best interests are served by assisting in a gradual transformation in the North through accelerated economic and other contacts.

But some important aspects of South Korea's approach to the North are likely to change in a Lee administration. To many South Koreans, President Roh Moo-hyun's policies, had begun to seem like a one-way street -- pouring aid and investment into the North while getting little in return.

While Lee Myung-bak has reiterated his commitment to continued engagement, he has also promised to push for much greater reciprocity, conditioning further assistance to the North on progress toward denuclearization and on movement toward genuine economic reform. As a first step, Lee has pledged to review all of Roh's projects with the North to determine which ones should continue.

Roh's embrace of the North, coupled with the tough U.S. line toward Pyongyang, led to serious strains between Washington and Seoul for much of the past five years.

The Bush administration's shift to a less confrontational policy and progress at the six-party talks in Beijing on ending Pyongyang's nuclear program in the past year, have helped to ease tensions.

But the mutual distrust, suspicion, ill-will and genuine policy differences during Roh Moo-hyun's tenure have taken a toll on the alliance. President-elect Lee has made clear that revitalizing the alliance will be a key priority. For their part, U.S. officials makes little secret of their belief that managing the relationship will be much easier after Lee takes office.

The key challenge for both sides will be to redefine the U.S.-South Korea alliance to reflect an environment in which the threat from the North appears to be receding amid continuing movement by Pyongyang toward shutting down in nuclear program.

"The new South Korean government and the Bush administration need to start articulating a vision -- why do we have an alliance," said one senior Pentagon official. "If it isn't about stopping the North Koreans at the border, what is it? If we don't get out there and articulate it, there will be a greater erosion of public support in both countries."

At the same time, Lee has indicated he also wants to mend fences with Japan. During Roh Moo-hyun's tenure, relations between Seoul and Tokyo deteriorated sharply -- the product of visits by then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasakuni shrine honoring Japan's World War II dead, including several war criminals. For Koreans, victims of a half-century of brutal Japanese colonial rule, the visits were especially offensive.

The two sides also sparred over control of a set disputed islets in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), and, to bolster his own nationalist agenda, Roh Moo-hyun played up anti-Japanese sentiments at home. But Japan's new Prime Minister, the pragmatic Yasuo Fukuda, had signaled an interest in improving ties, a desire Lee Myung-bak appears to share.

As Lee prepares to assume the presidency in February, however, his future remains clouded by accusations of scandal. Although cleared by prosecutors of charges of involvement in a stock manipulation case, the claims surfaced again just before the election, leading to the appointment of a special prosecutor and the possibility that South Korea's president-elect could become the target of criminal charges even before taking office. That could throw South Korean politics into turmoil.

But for a population fed up with the record of President Roh over the last five years -- and who voted in large numbers to give Lee the job -- the allegations seemed to make little difference. E-mail to a friend

Mike Chinoy, formerly CNN's Senior Asia Correspondent, is the Edgerton Fellow in Korean Security at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles

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