Both South Korea and North Korea have been striving to be recognized as players on the global stage for many years. North Korea has been doing it by building nuclear weapons and missiles to get the world’s attention with threats. South Korea is currently doing it by welcoming international citizens to PyeongChang for the Olympics.

While the North rejects internationalism -- even dictator Kim Jong-un does not travel abroad -- the South has come to see the benefits of embracing it. This embrace began when the Kim Young-sam administration implemented its Segyehwa, or globalization, policy in the early 1990s. 

It recognized that South Korea’s continued development depended on moving away from long extolled, hermetic values of what it meant to be Korean. This included the proud ideological notion, which foreigners often heard back then, that “we are a pure-blooded people.” Since then the country has adroitly adopted global technology and is still clumsily adopting international values and mindsets.

Nowhere has this clumsiness been more evident than in the recent moves of the President Moon Jae-in administration on the eve of another South Korean coming out party. 

The administration has threatened to shut down the bitcoin market, devaluing the huge investments of Korean citizens in this international currency. It banned the teaching of English in pre-schools and the early years of elementary school before rescinding the ban against citizen backlash. And this clumsiness is most evident in the supposed detente with the North.

Due to the North’s anti-internationalism, the Moon administration’s sudden embrace of their long-lost brethren puts its administration in their camp. The choice of the word brethren is appropriate when considering who the Moon administration is embracing. It is not the long-suffering North Korean people, but a male-privileged family of pudgy dictators named Kim who pluck attractive high school girls for their “pleasure teams.”

In accordance with this old tradition of male privilege (an old saying goes that men are the sky while women are the earth), the largely male Moon administration singled out the South Korean women’s hockey team to enact its embrace. Without consulting this team, which includes many ethnic Korean internationals contracted to gain citizenship by playing for South Korea, the Moon administration unilaterally decided to integrate the South and North teams to now play under a Korean unification flag. 

The government didn’t even bother to inform Canadian coach Sarah Murray of its decision. According to the Korea Times, she found out from her national staff and NBC and CBC reporters from North America. Murray said, “I think there is damage to our players. … It’s hard because the players have earned their spots and they think they deserve to go to the Olympics.” Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon added insult to injury in excusing the move by saying that the South Korean women’s team didn’t have a chance to medal anyway.

Internationally tone deaf in the time of the #MeToo movement, the Moon administration sacrificed the individual rights of these capable women for Korean harmony. This is ironic because the Moon administration swept into power on a campaign of fairness for all. Realizing the gaffe after the fact, Moon apparently rushed to the team’s training facility to give the old time worn national excuse to please understand our special situation.

What the Moon team fails to fully realize is that Koreans have embraced international values of equal human rights and opportunities and do not understand this special situation that the Moon administration has created with a Kim regime they dislike. 

A recent SBS poll found 72 percent of Koreans opposing the formation of a unified women’s hockey team and 82 percent of those in their 20s and 30s. This latter population doesn’t think it is fair that men must sacrifice two years of their lives to go to the military to defend against Kim’s ominous regime. They also believe that high unemployment rates and lack of job opportunities are unfair. Why should the government suddenly put Kim Jong-un before them?

Sure, we are all relieved that tensions have momentarily eased with this rapprochement. It would be wonderful if Korea democratically reunified to overcome the old historical division by imperial powers in the wake of World War II. There may even be some Koreans who take comfort in North Korean representative Ri Sun-gwon’s words that the missiles are pointed at the US and not South Korea.

But South Korea has played this game with the play-for-blood Kims before and lost badly. The country’s need for close alliance with the US for defense has been felt acutely over the past year. Moon even credited Trump’s hard line with bringing Kim’s New Year’s call for talks, after ignoring Moon’s overtures till then. Doesn’t Moon’s embrace of the Kim regime just play into Kim’s hand of buying time to become even more menacing?

One must also ask why the Moon administration has gone so far as to questionably violate international sanctions in its grand offers to pay for the lodging of North Korean athletes, representatives, and cheerleaders. After all it was these sanctions that likely brought about Kim’s conciliatory New Year’s speech to South Korea in the first place. But the administration doesn’t want this to be questioned. 

The newspaper Hankyoreh reported Baik Tae-hyun of the Ministry of Unification as saying, “The government’s basic position is that no questions from the US and international community over the potential violation of sanctions against the North should be allowed to arise in connection with North Korea’s participation in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics and Paralympics.” Perhaps this is why Hong Joon-pyo, the leader of South Korea’s main opposition party, said, “We are turning the PyeongChang Olympics that we’ve got into the Pyongyang Olympics.” Pyongyang is of course, the North Korean capital.

In its old dream of peace and a unified Korea, the Moon administration is sacrificing Korean internationalism for a traditional parochialism that many are not buying. Moon is failing to fully grasp how being Korean now includes being a world citizen and that this conflicts with the traditional Korean racial, or ethnic ideology (minjok jueui) that is operating in his current moves.

Contrary to what Moon thinks, it is hard to envision threatened US citizens as being moved by the South and unqualified North Korean athletes walking under the same banner. 

It has been done before while North Korea built arms to protect the Kims and threaten others, most notably South Koreans. Considering these dynamics on the world stage, Moon’s recent moves could win the 2018 gold in anti-internationalism. Moon and his administration would be wise to see its citizenry as not just Korean, but as global citizens in a truly international embrace.


By Keenan Fagan

Keenan Fagan is a professor at Dongguk University who has lived in South Korea for nearly 20 years. -- Ed.