Moon needs pragmatic approach in North Korea

Democratic Party’s candidate Moon Jae-in has been declared the winner in South Korean presidential election. With 100% of the votes counted, Moon won with 41.08%, according to the country’s National Election Commission. As many as 13,423,800 voters chose Moon Jae-in as their preference for president.
Moon, a liberal, was sworn in as South Korea’s new president on Wednesday and pledged to push for peace with North Korea and tackle Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs and get tough on South Korea’s biggest companies and family-run conglomerates known as chaebols. The victory of Moon, a 64-year-old former human rights lawyer, comes after about a decade of conservative rule ended with South Korea’s biggest street protests since the 1980s and an acceleration of North Korea’s nuclear program.
Moon pledged to unify the nation and dedicated his victory to people who did their utmost to make a country for justice, unity, principles and common sense. He promised that he would be the president for everyone and would serve even those who didn’t support him. The influence-peddling scandal that rocked South Korea and led to the impeachment of president Park Guen-hye dealt a heavy blow to the country’s economy. Asia’s fourth-largest economy already is facing questions about its ability to maintain economic growth and forecast to expand this year at the slowest pace since 2012.
Moon must take measures to address the growing unemployment that’s been hampering an export-driven recovery. And so Moon’s order to administration staff to convene a meeting to discuss the establishment and operation of a job-creation committee is step in right direction. Anything and everything must be done to stimulate the economy to create jobs. But Moon faces challenges to achieve his goals at home and abroad. Since he lacks majority in the National Assembly, Moon will have to take on board the support of other parties to move ahead with policies for economic reform.
In what can be understood as the huge overhaul of Seoul’s North policy, Moon has nominated two liberal veterans with ties to the “Sunshine Policy” of engagement with North Korea for the posts of prime minister and spy chief. Suh Hoon, a career spy agency official, is the head of the National Intelligence Service and Lee Nak-yon is to serve as prime minister. Simmering tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program is an immediate test for Moon, who favours talks with Pyongyang. He has reiterated his campaign pledge to visit North Korea under the right conditions, mirroring US President Donald Trump’s recent comment that he’d be open to meeting dictator Kim Jong un. Moon also said he’d visit US, China and Japan to help broker a breakthrough.
Moon needs to tread carefully and take pragmatic approach in dealing with North Korea. He will have to assess whether North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is receptive to his overtures or not. The pariah country has changed substantially in the past nine years and refused dialogue with South Korea. Kim’s regime hasn’t shown any intention to abandon his nuclear program. And if Kim shuns Moon’s offer of an olive branch, it would put him in a bad spot.