Diplomacy swayed by domestic politics

Lee Jong-sup, Korea’s ambassador to Australia, returned home Thursday to “attend a meeting over defense cooperation.” He made the decision exactly 11 days after his departure for Canberra amid controversy over his alleged exercise of pressure over an investigation into the suspicious death of a Marine on a rescue mission last year. Neither the government, which hurriedly let Lee, a suspect, leave Korea, nor the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials, which protracted its probe of Lee, can avoid responsibility. The episode revealed the bare face of our diplomacy subjugated to domestic politics.

In another strange development, it was People Power Party (PPP) interim leader Han Dong-hoon — not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of National Defense or the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy — that first announced the return of the ambassador. Thirty minutes after Han’s announcement, the Foreign Ministry hastily issued a press release confirming his arrival. Has an interim leader of a governing party ever served as the mouthpiece of the government like this? The episode suggests diplomacy is being exploited for domestic politics.

The Foreign Ministry said Lee returned home to participate in a defense meeting. But no urgent issues have broken out over the past 11 days since Lee’s departure. If there really was an urgent issue to deal with, Lee could leave the country after attending the defense meeting on March 25. Korean envoys participated in the past two defense meetings via video conference. A defense meeting of six ambassadors in Seoul is unprecedented.

That’s not all. A meeting of all Korean ambassadors in foreign countries was already scheduled for April 22. The defense meeting on Monday was most likely intended to save Lee from his judicial risks. Some embassies even got the information about Monday’s defense meeting from news reports, not from the Foreign Ministry. If the government really had to bring him in, he could quietly return on his own, instead of using five other ambassadors as sidekicks.

This kind of abnormality is not new. On Feb. 14, President Yoon Suk Yeol abruptly canceled his state visit to Germany for unspecified reasons, just four days before his scheduled departure. The decision was probably made due to the need to mitigate deepening public sentiment against the first lady’s suspicious reception of a luxury handbag from a pastor. If diplomacy is exploited by domestic politics, that constitutes diplomatic discourtesy.

Lee said he would not resign as ambassador. But if diplomacy is not to be disgraced by domestic politics, he or the government must make a decision before it’s too late.