President Park Geun-hye usually gets a higher score card on foreign policy, including dealings with North Korea, than on domestic affairs.

Recently, however, a series of faux pas committed by Park’s aides is cutting into her foreign policy achievements -- if any.

The first controversy surrounds the acquisition of next-generation stealth jet fighters from the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin. Korean officials had said that they would be able to obtain key technologies as part of the deal, and would use them to develop Korean-made jet fighters.

As it turned out, the officials had known that there was little possibility of the U.S. government allowing such a technology transfer. More embarrassing is that officials kept Park in the dark for five months after the U.S. government made the final decision.

Park, who visited Washington last week for talks with U.S. President Barack Obama, brought Defense Minister Han Min-koo to take on the issue, but he failed to reverse the U.S. position.

Following the mounting public outcry, Park sacked her chief aide on foreign affairs and security, Ju Chul-ki. But the president retained most of the remaining senior security staff -- like Kim Kwan-jin, the head of the Blue House security office, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and Defense Minister Han.

But public skepticism persists over her foreign policy and security team, as they continue to make a mess of their work. One vivid example involves, again, Minister Han, who stirred a controversy after talks with his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani in Seoul earlier this week.

The focus of the talks was on Japan’s new security laws that expanded the overseas activities of its forces and its implication on the Korean Peninsula.
What we heard from Han’s spokesman is that the two ministers agreed that in case of a contingency, Japanese forces will not set their feet on the peninsula without request and consent from the Seoul government.

But there is something -- very important -- we did not hear from the Korean officials: Nakatani told Han that “there is a view that South Korea’s effective control is limited to the southern half of the peninsula.” In other words, the Japanese minister was indicating that South Korea should not interfere with Japan’s action if it involves the North Korean territory.

What’s outrageous is that only after Japanese media reported Nakatani’s remarks did Han’s aides acknowledge what had happened in the Seoul talks. It makes one speechless that Han, instead of taking issue with the Japanese position, suggested to not make the matter public.

If Han came under fire for failing to tackle a sensitive security issue in a proper way and worse yet, went on to hide it, Foreign Minister Yun touched off a controversy through an apparent slip of tongue.

Touching on the U.S.-China conflict over the South China Sea territorial disputes in a forum, Yun inadvertently said -- his aides said he misread a prepared statement -- that Obama mentioned the South China Sea in his talks with Park last week.

Obama said in a news conference with Park that he expects South Korea to “speak up” when China violates international laws and norms and this raised speculation that Obama asked Park to side with the U.S. in the South China Sea issue. But Korean officials insisted that Obama did not raise the issue during talks with Park. Given the sensitivity of the issue, Yun cannot avoid criticism for generating such a controversy.

The Park administration faces strong foreign policy challenges -- closest ones being the Korea-China-Japan summit and Park’s one-on-one meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe -- the first in more than three years. We only hope that there will be no more boneheaded plays by senior officials.