FM Cho says S. Korea's global strategic value remains intact under acting presidency
South Korea's strategic value in the international community remains unchanged even under the current acting presidency amid ongoing political uncertainties sparked by President Yoon Suk Yeol's impeachment, Foreign Minister Cho tae-yul said.
Cho made the remarks in an interview with Yonhap News Agency in Johannesburg on Saturday after attending a gathering of foreign ministers of the Group of 20 nations there.
"South Korea has sufficient strategic value in the international community, and this remains unchanged even under the acting presidency," Cho said, noting he met with a number of US lawmakers tasked with foreign affairs during his visit to Munich earlier this month.
They included Sen. James Risch (R-ID), head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), ranking member of the committee, and Brian Mast (R-FL), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, according to Cho. The meetings were said to have been held at the request of the US side.
"(I) visited Germany to attend a South Korea-US foreign ministerial meeting and a South Korea-US-Japan foreign ministerial meeting but achieved results beyond expectations," he said.
Meanwhile, Cho stressed the importance of South Korea strengthening ties with other middle power countries, citing growing global uncertainties following the launch of the second Donald Trump administration.
"We must now expand our sights beyond the four powers near the Korean Peninsula (the United States, China, Japan and Russia), the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations," Cho said, referring to the Netherlands, Australia and Canada as what he called middle power countries.
During the two-day G20 foreign ministerial gathering in Johannesburg that began Thursday, Cho held talks with his counterparts from Australia, Britain, Spain, the European Union, the Netherlands, Algeria and South Africa.
On Thursday, he also held joint talks with his counterparts from Australia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey, countries that are part of the so-called MIKTA group created in 2013 to enhance cooperation on issues of common interest. (Yonhap)
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- Korea Herald
[Wang Son-taek] Keys to success for the Lee administration
President Lee Jae-myung, who took office on June 4, has been busy. He is working to resolve the six-month national crisis that left the country without a president because of the martial law declaration by former President Yoon Suk Yeol. It is also urgent for Lee to appoint high-ranking officials to help him run the government over the next five years. Though he is very busy right now, he might hope to see his administration succeed -- in other words, to reestablish governance. Since the democratization of the Republic of Korea in 1987, there have only been two successful cases where the government has been wholly rebuilt -- specifically, the elections in 1992 and 2002. However, it is necessary to put aside the 1992 election of President Kim Young-sam, given that it resulted from a political trick -- the merger of three major parties. On the other hand, the election of President Roh Moo-hyun in 2002 can be evaluated entirely as the result of public judgment. 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In the 2000s, he raised national topics such as national unity, informatization and technology, inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation. What might be the zeitgeist President Lee is facing? The first priority is overcoming insurrection. Efforts should be made to heal the psychological wounds of the people, shocked by the insurrection, by establishing institutional arrangements to prevent it from occurring again. The second most important task is to proceed with national reconstruction, which Korea must elevate to the next level by reforming and improving policies the state completely reversed during the three years of the Yoon Suk Yeol government. To this end, we propose a new Korean-style national development model and a national reconstruction campaign. To upgrade our democracy, it is necessary to introduce additional systems that guarantee popular sovereignty and to march with the people toward a future in which national integration can take place naturally. In terms of the economy, we need a national campaign to become a creativity-oriented society in which diversity, inclusiveness and tolerance are respected and where people can try again after failure. It is true that governments other than the Kim Dae-jung administration acknowledged the spirit of the times. The problem is that their actions went in different or opposite directions. The second task in succeeding as a government is effective communication. President Kim Dae-jung's communication method was surprisingly simple. First, to understand what policies the people wanted, he referred to opinions expressed in newspapers and broadcasts as much as possible. The next step was to candidly explain to the public the background of his policies and seek support. Even if a policy did not get 100 percent support, a candid explanation helped lessen the degree of rejection by the people. While pursuing his policies as the next step, Kim admitted to errors when things went wrong and sought understanding by explaining what happened. Listening to public opinion, explaining policies in advance and elucidating policy failures were key elements of Kim Dae-jung's successful communication. Although these elements seem simple, they are not easy to implement. If officials in charge of state affairs neglect the people and focus only on the struggle for power, they will not achieve public acceptance because frank communication would mean political defeat. Ironically, this is a key factor that led to the success of the Kim Dae-jung administration and the failure of other governments. The last of the three successful elements of the Kim Dae-jung government is that it made every effort to unify the people. National unity is also easy to talk about but challenging to achieve. This is because "the people" are ultimately the voters who support a leader in today's situation of severe political polarization. In a sense, voters who do not support the winner of an election might not count as citizens. Kim never discriminated against the people who did not support him, which was one of the great secrets to his success. For President Lee Jae-myung, achieving national unity will be more difficult than it was for President Kim because political polarization has become so extreme. Nevertheless, if President Lee repeatedly reaches out to and embraces the conservatives who oppose, fear and despise him, antipathy toward him will undoubtedly lessen. Then, the energy he would have spent attacking the opposition can be put into developing the policies that the majority of people want. In that scenario, there would be no reason for him not to succeed. The Lee Jae-myung administration has a much greater chance of success than its predecessors. 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Korea Herald
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[Editorial] No retaliation in probes
Special counsels should be neutral figures to avoid suspicions of revenge, oppression Three bills mandating special counsel probes into allegations involving the administration of former President Yoon Suk Yeol were enacted Tuesday following approval at a Cabinet meeting. One of the bills requires special counsels to investigate insurrection and treason charges related to Yoon's failed declaration of martial law. The second bill calls for a probe into allegations against Yoon's wife, Kim Keon Hee. She allegedly accepted luxury goods as bribes, manipulated stock prices and intervened illegally in the People Power Party's nomination of candidates for the National Assembly. The third bill deals with the death of a Marine who drowned while searching for missing flood victims and the presidential office's alleged pressure on officials investigating his death. The bills mark the first legislation for President Lee Jae-myung since taking office last week. Their passage through the Assembly was led by the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. Simultaneous special counsels investigating three cases against key figures from the previous administration and possibly lawmakers from the People Power Party are unprecedented. In light of the seriousness of the allegations, the truth needs to be uncovered. But the investigations should be impartial and transparent. If not, they are likely to be caught up in suspicions of political retaliation. Investigations of the allegations in question are either completed or ongoing. They were conducted separately by the prosecution, the police and the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials. The government and the ruling party say the legislation was intended to increase the efficiency of the investigations by integrating the separate probes and revealing the overall truth in all three cases, but there is concern about the scale of the investigation and how special counsels are appointed. As many as 120 prosecutors will be assigned to three special counsel teams. This figure is more than half of the number of prosecutors at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, the nation's largest. Hundreds of investigation officers and assistants will also join. Allocating so many resources to the special counsel probes could set back investigations into other cases affecting the lives of ordinary people. Among other provisions, the bills give only the Democratic Party and the minor opposition Rebuilding Korea Party, which almost always stands by the now-ruling party, the exclusive right to recommend special counsels in the three cases. It is hard to dispel worries about the political neutrality of their investigations. The appointment of special counsels is a supplementary system designed to keep those in power from pushing biased investigations. It should be used in exceptional circumstances and only as necessary. But the Democratic Party unilaterally passed bills that expand the scope of special counsel probes and grant nominating authority exclusively to certain parties. It is true that suspicions about the previous administration still need to be addressed, and some investigations have been criticized as insufficient. But in a situation where Lee and the Democratic Party are now in power, it is questionable whether special counsels are even necessary to investigate the previous administration instead of using the existing judicial system. It is difficult to erase suspicions of political motivations. The opposition People Power Party has condemned the bills, arguing that the special counsels' "triple investigations" are political revenge. If the investigations were used as a lever of power for political suppression, as the People Power Party worries, it would be a grave threat to democracy. The special counsel investigations should not split the nation into "us versus them," either. People experienced deep division during the Moon Jae-in administration due to its drive to eliminate "the evils of the past," which led to claims of a political vendetta. Lee vowed to base his government on "integration." If so, the special counsel probes should serve as a just means of revealing the truth and ultimately restoring the rule of law, not a means for retaliation and oppression. That begins with appointing special counsels who are politically unbiased and widely respected.
Korea Herald
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South Korea's stock market surpassed the 2,900-point mark for the first time in over three years Wednesday, extending its winning streak to a sixth day, thanks to continued foreign inflow and progress in trade talks between the world's two biggest economies. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index added 35.19 points, or 1.23 percent, to close at 2,907.04, marking the highest level since January 14, 2022, when the index closed at 2,921.92. Trade volume was heavy at 383.5 million shares worth 12.3 trillion won ($9 billion), with winners outnumbering losers 600 to 281. Foreign investors continued their purchases of local shares for a sixth consecutive session. "The Kospi breached the 2,900-point mark on upbeat momentum created by favorable US-China trade negotiations and foreign investors' continued purchase of big-cap shares," Lee Jae-won, an analyst at Shinhan Securities, said. High-level officials from Washington and Beijing held trade talks in London for two days through Tuesday, where they agreed on a framework to carry out measures to resolve their trade disputes on rare earths and technology. Kim Jae-seung, an analyst at Hyundai Motor Securities, said expectations on the Lee Jae-myung government's policy to boost the local stock market also improved market sentiment. Lee, who took office last week, has pledged to usher in the 5,000-point era and get rid of the so-called Korea discount, which refers to investors' tendency undervalue South Korean assets due to geopolitical risks or other issues. Overnight, Wall Street also closed higher, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 0.25 percent, the S&P 500 adding 0.55 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite gaining 0.63 percent. In Seoul, tech behemoth Samsung Electronics increased 1.18 percent to 59,900 won, and its chipmaking rival SK hynix jumped 4.12 percent to 240,000 won. Top automaker Hyundai Motor climbed 2.03 percent to 201,000 won, while its sister Kia advanced 2.54 percent to 96,900 won. Hyundai Motor's auto-parts making affiliate, Hyundai Mobis, soared 4.91 percent to 288,500 won. Major nuclear power plant manufacturer Doosan Enerbility also surged 6.46 percent to 51,100 won, and Kakao, the operator of the country's dominant mobile messenger, went up 2.8 percent to 51,400 won. On the other hand, some of the big-cap defense and shipbuilding shares lost ground as investors sought to gain profit following their rally the previous day. Defense giant Hanwha Aerospace lost 3.31 percent to 905,000 won, and leading shipbuilder HD Hyundai Heavy dropped 2.11 percent to 418,000 won. Major financial firms also went down, with KB Financial dipping 3.34 percent to 107,200 won and Shinhan Financial losing 1.81 percent to 59,800 won. The local currency was trading at 1,375.0 won against the greenback at 3:30 p.m., down 10.7 won from the previous session. (Yonhap)
