Although it was not originally planned that way, President Lee Myung-bak’s official state visit to Washington is about to coincide with the vote on the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement bill in U.S. Congress. It may also be said that the congressional process for the ratification of the bilateral FTA more than four years after its signing was accelerated by the schedule of the presidential visit.
In fact, we could see few serious issues pending between the two countries that required the Korean president to make the long travel to the U.S. other than the need to demonstrate the firmness of their alliance before other regional players, namely North Korea, China, Japan and Russia. President Barack Obama, who has often expressed his admiration for South Korea as a global success story, particularly for its educational zeal, must have wanted to give President Lee a priority treatment by inviting him to make a state visit after the leaders of India, Mexico, China and Germany.
The two presidents will have more than 10 hours of dialogue and Obama is expected to accompany Lee on his visit to Detroit, the center of the U.S. auto industry. Through the get-together, the two leaders will try to exhibit their countries’ readiness to compete and cooperate to tide over the global economic difficulties while they jointly meet security threats in Northeast Asia, topped by North Korea’s nuclear armament.
It is most likely that President Lee will devote much of his address to a joint session of Congress to thanking U.S. lawmakers for their handling of the FTA bill and present his vision of mutual prosperity assured by the prospect of free trade of goods and services. Yet, the Korean president needs also to illustrate the challenges Korea faces as an open, smaller economy in the recurring financial turbulences of the 21st century and call for common efforts to overcome them.
His voice may be thinned a little if the president thinks of the difficulties awaiting the government and its party as they try to get the parliamentary ratification of the KORUS FTA. Yet, the U.S. initiative will give them new justification as well as determination to seek an end to the protracted controversy over the trade pact. As always, the president will be even busier after returning to the Blue House.
