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“To Meet Without Principle”

By Michael Goldfarb
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Reuters reports:

New South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who has pledged a tougher policy in dealing with North Korea, rebuffed his communist neighbor’s offer to meet in January, a news report said on Wednesday. The proposal was made through South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) “for responsible officials from the two sides to meet,” the conservative Dong-a Ilbo newspaper quoted an unnamed government official as saying. “But President Lee demanded clarification on the purpose of such a meeting, and the North subsequently suspended attempts to make contact,” the official said…. Spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said the president felt: “it was not appropriate to meet without principle or with no results expected.”

The last South Korean administration had relatively warm relations with their counterparts in the North–not that face-to-face meetings and unconditional aid ever prompted any real change in the behavior of the Kim Family Regime. Of course, meeting without principle and with no results expected would seem to be the guiding principle of Obama’s proposed foreign policy–we should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate, right? Wouldn’t it be great if someone from the press actually asked Obama about this. Does he believe the South Koreans fear to negotiate? Would he meet with Kim Jong-Il regardless of whether or not the South Korean president does? That’s what his website says. Update: These are the people Obama would meet without precondition, and who the New York Philharmonic recently serenaded:

North Korea publicly executed 15 people who attempted to flee the country or helped others escape, a warning aimed at stemming the growing flow of refugees to China, an aid group said Wednesday.

Of those 15 people, 13 were women.

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