Too early to pop the champagne

There is no time to lower our guard for national interests, even for a moment. Shouldn’t we be at least different from a century ago?

CHUN SU-JINThe author is the head of the Today-People News team at the JoongAng Ilbo. At the French Foreign Ministry building in Paris on April 18, the hallway leading to the main building after passing through the security checkpoint was lined with frames containing scenes from the war in Ukraine. A woman was going to work without knowing when the shells would fall. A girl holding her father’s hand was calm and sad.

The photos advocated that protecting the peaceful lives of the people was the hidden role of diplomacy. It is meaningful how the French Foreign Ministry — which is not a party directly involved in the war — hung these frames in the hallway where every visitor would pass. The photos seemed to reflect the ambition of France to lead global diplomacy instead of following the U.S. and China.

The French Foreign Ministry invited journalists from major media outlets from India, Japan and Australia, as well as South Korea. Senior and working-level officials of the ministry and the French president’s office, and related scholars explained France’s Indo-Pacific policy in fluent English. They were curious about how Korea’s Indo-Pacific policy was formed and what the budget was.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Korea-U.S. and Korea-Japan summits were meaningful. But the celebration stopped there. Just because U.S. President Joe Biden heard Yoon singing “American Pie” and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida finished two plates of Korean beef bulgogi, complicated international issues surrounding the Korean Peninsula are not unraveled.

We should not be satisfied with just taking the first step to untie the knot. Diplomacy for South Korea’s own national interests, not for North Korea’s, is just beginning. The chessboard of international politics is hardly in Korea’s favor. In a way, a diplomatic slugfest as turbulent as the end of the Joseon Dynasty, if not more, will be played.

I recently visited the Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan. The seeds that separated the fate of Japan and Joseon grew there. It is the place where the so-called Choshu Five — five people from Choshu, including Ito Hirofumi, the first prime minister of Japan — stowed away to learn the Western culture and lay the foundation for Japan’s economic and industrial development.

In Korea, the prefecture is known as the site evoking anti-Japanese sentiment because it was home to Yoshida Shoin, the spiritual teacher of the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who championed Japan’s conquering of Joseon.

But there is certainly something to look back on for our own national interests. Watanabe, a guide I met there, said, “The Choshu Five were full of dreams to build a new country by absorbing Western culture day and night.” The misjudgment of Joseon, which locked the door of diplomacy and chose the dead end of a closed country, came to my mind.

Northeast Asia is seething. I welcome the return of practical diplomacy by the Yoon administration. But self-praise is not allowed. To join the breathtaking global diplomacy, we need to be more sensitive. There is no time to lower our guard for national interests, even for a moment. Shouldn’t we be at least different from a century ago?