South Korean crisis is the last thing the West needs

Those who follow developments on the Korean peninsula and that part of Asia will know that the crisis that erupted in the middle of Europe’s Tuesday afternoon did not come out of nowhere.

- MARY DEJEVSKY

It was a slowburn consequence of the South Korean elections in April that produced a parliament in opposition to the president, then in power for two and a half years, effectively stymying the intentions of both parties.

At the micro level, there was a clutch of scandals relating to the president’s wife that were already weakening her husband’s position. Then, at the macro level, South Korea’s position beside an unpredictable North Korea apparently cosying up to Russia. Add these two elements together and it is possible to see, in retrospect, that the components of an emergency were already in place.

For most of the world, though – its Western parts, in particular – this was indeed a crisis that came out of nowhere for the simple reason that South Korea was seen as an admirably still point in both a difficult region and a frantically turning world. With shooting conflicts showing little sign of ending in Ukraine and the Middle East, the new rebel advance in Syria, and the continuing horrors of Sudan’s civil war, there was plenty more for the world to worry about than any gathering political tensions inside South Korea.

Its democracy has been both functional and stable since the 1980s. It was living peaceably beside the erratic and sometimes panic-stricken North, not allowing itself to be provoked. The Korean Demilitarised Zone separating the two – which could be one of the highest points of tension in the world – is, give or take a very few isolated incidents, a bizarre haven of calm.