Todd Bishop
On January 25, South Korea will also usher in the Lunar New Year. Although near the festival, South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s life is not good.
On January 20, Wen Zaiyin’s government was reported to be preparing a plan to open South Korean citizens to travel to North Korea via a “third country”. The report immediately triggered a war of words among the US and South Korean governments.
U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Harry Binkley Harris, responded immediately that the plan had to be consulted with the United States. Subsequently, Qingwatai publicly attacked Harris, and his speech was “very inappropriate”. In response to this situation, many Korean media have pointed out that South Korea-US relations “have fallen into a cold front.”
Zi Wen Zaiyin shook hands with Kim Jong Un ’s younger sister Kim and Zheng Bingbing at the opening ceremony of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in early 2018, met twice with Kim Jong Un in Panmunjom, and then traveled to Pyongyang in September. Moment “, but since 2019, it must be said that” open high and go low. “
Moon Jae-in’s government has played a key role in easing the situation on the Korean Peninsula. At a time when the United States and North Korea are struggling to ride a tiger, and they urgently need to break the game, Wen Zaiyin just provides the two sides with a step. The “middleman” pioneeringly tried to resolve the nuclear issue of the DPRK through diplomacy and politics, which required courage and conviction of.
It is also undeniable that South Korea does not have autonomy in terms of the power structure of the peninsula. Not only has North Korea not regarded South Korea as an independent party, but after the U.S.-DPRK summit meeting, Wen Zai-yin has worked hard to coordinate the U.S. and North Korean leaders’ meetings. This is based on Kim Jong-un’s internal propaganda needs, and it is also relevant to the fact that South Korea really can only play the role of “taking steps” in the US-DPRK negotiations, and that’s it.
Later, the Hanoi summit in Vietnam ended without results. Although the US-DPRK relationship ushered in a critical turning point, it once again ushered in a period of stalemate. The United Nations sanctions on the DPRK still existed, which allowed Wen Zaiyin’s “New North Policy” to fall on paper. .
Strictly speaking, the original “New North Policy” was incompatible with the US-ROK alliance relationship. The structural changes of the peninsula that were rare in 2018 have still not allowed Wen Zaiyin to stay on the stage of “Korean nuclear diplomacy” for a long time. central.
At the same time, in the face of the United States, Wen Zaiyin still lacked capital. During the 2018 UN General Assembly meeting, Wen Zaiyin signed a new version of the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement with US President Donald Trump. The original attempt to exchange for the US trust was counterproductive. Not only does the exploration of railway lines between North Korea and South Korea require the approval of the United States, the United States has also modified the consultation mechanism for defense funding between the United States and South Korea, requiring the South Korean side to pay 5 times the current cost of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea in 2020, which has triggered large-scale South Korea Popular demonstrations.
It is unknown whether such demonstrations will be fermented. After all, for Wen Zaiyin’s government, opposition conservatives have been watching.
In September 2019, Wen Zaiyin appointed his confidant, Cao Guo, the former chief secretary of civil affairs of the former Presidential Palace, who has always been a high-profile critic of the nobles, as the Minister of Law. However, considering the scandals surrounding Mrs. Cao and her daughter, Cao Guo also suffered Become the object of concentrated public opinion attack. On October 3, hundreds of thousands of people protested in the Gwanghwamun and Jongno areas of Seoul. Later, the South Korean prosecutor rarely “bypassed” Wen Zaiyin and raided Cao Guo’s private home. His behavior was obviously Xiangzhuang Wujian, which was intended for Peigong. According to “Korea Economy”, the “Cao State Incident” transcended duel in South Korea’s political circle and triggered extreme social divisions.
There are political enemies above and people’s grievances below. Originally, North Korea ’s nuclear diplomacy was used to leverage the peninsula pattern to expand South Korea ’s diplomatic and economic space. Wen Zaiyin ’s idea has a lot of imagination, but nowadays, it faces the international political reality of the US and North Korea issues, and Moon Jae-in is really weak and weak due to the deep-rooted conservative opposition forces in South Korea.
What’s more, in the global trade war represented by China and the United States in the past two years, South Korea, which is highly dependent on foreign trade, is still one of the countries most affected. South Korea ’s exports in June 2019 fell by 13.5% year-on-year, the seventh consecutive month of decline, the largest decline since the beginning of 2016. In July 2019, the South Korean government expects that exports will shrink by 5% that year, and the annual GDP growth rate is expected to be reduced to 2.4% to 2.5%.
As for the political crisis between South Korea and Japan due to the “forced labor storm”, the Japanese semiconductor industry has also taken a “precision attack” on South Korea. Although the electronics industry is a strong industry in South Korea, it faces No fight back.
The transmission effects of these events have already entered Korean society.
To make matters worse, South Korea ’s national lifeline is largely controlled by several major families, such as Samsung and Lotte. Capital chase and family interests take precedence over national and national interests. The families of wealthy wealthy are often wanton. There is much dissatisfaction, but it cannot change the current situation. Today’s incompetent Wen Zaiyin does not have the hard power to challenge this force, and it has become the target of various chaebol attacks.
Wen Zaiyin is like dancing in shackles now. He has no time to make a good layout and has no strength to challenge “impossible”.
From the point of “knowing that you can’t do it,” Wen Zaiyin is a very strong person, but his end may be doomed. In the midst of it, either he lost his character, or he missed a strategic node, or he or she was too difficult, and it was just a challenge that was too difficult to solve.
But what can we say now? Wen Zaiyin is a good person, but it is too difficult!
