This is how South Korean diplomats talk about each other:

A former high-ranking official jokingly said South Korea’s diplomats may look like they have been playing the piano for decades but they can’t manage a song as simple as ‘Chopsticks.’ South Korean diplomacy resembles a small and decrepit station in a remote village where trains no longer stop. In short, the isolation strategy is tantamount to diplomatic failure, even if officials of the Lee regime might not like to hear that.

Please tell us your honest opinion! Asia Sentinel’s Lee Byong-Chul also has equal disdain for the Lee Myung-bak administration and the UN Security Council. “South Korea’s diplomacy, obsessed as it is with Cold War mentality, is unlikely to pass muster at the Council’s cattle show.” But, as the prospect of a deft Chinese-led dismissal of the Cheonan issue is certain, Lee blames the Lee administration for its diplomatic ineptitude, limp jokes at G-20 meetings in Toronto included.

Lee’s ideology seems to be harder-bitten than that of his generals. While some people think the Lee government is coming across as weak and indecisive, others point out that partisan people at the ideological extreme ends of the right and the left seriously ossified the inter-Korean relationship. Unlike optimistic conservatives who think there is always an unsustainable feel about the Kim regime, large numbers of moderates estimate that Seoul at the UN is essentially powerless. There are three reasons.

First, the Lee government made the mistake of hurriedly bringing the Cheonan case to the Security Council without considering concrete prior diplomatic means to attempt to persuade China and Russia, the North’s patrons, to adopt tougher penalties than erstwhile sanctions. Given that South Korea’s diplomacy largely gravitates toward its relationship with the US, China’s and Russia’s reactions are no surprise.

Second, the validity of the report on the sinking is being challenged from within South Korea itself. The opposition and liberal civic groups are driving the Lee government into a corner by charging that the report has many flaws. Liberal civic groups, both at home and abroad, sent independent letters to the UN. The dispute raises questions over whether the conclusion of the findings was the best weapon. Political opponents assert that the Lee government should have dismissed the arguments by ideological rivals. They find the right-wing government too loose to reinforce its claims on the issue and unable to calmly analyze all the available evidence and intelligence.

These liberal pundits view the report as a kind of travesty but their sureness irritates people on the street. Their ingrained skepticism is thus treated as self-righteous, blurring the boundaries between inescapable facts based on science and second-guessing based on rumor. The Lee government regards the critics as steeped in a ‘Blame South Korea First’ flower-child culture.

Third, neither the South Korean Defense Minister nor the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff– both are from the Army, virtually monopolizing the whole military debate — was aware of what had happened to the Cheonan for almost 30 minutes. The Lee government’s performance in handling the case has been hamstrung by the military’s continuing reversal of various announcements. Like the broken warship, the military was, too, torn away at the time. The military authorities’ subsequently zigzagged briefings became fodder for both political opponents at home and pro-North Korea countries abroad.

International communications satellites (INTELSATs) closely monitor signals to North Korea from a large American listening post at Osan Air Base in South Korea. It is safe to say that the United States might have strongly hinted or explained to China what its national security agency civilians and numerous US Army, Navy and Air Force military signals intelligence (Sigint) specialists had collected and identified. There is no clear picture of what role Kim Jong-il himself played in the attack, though.

So apparently South Korea has little choice but to drop its warlike mode of diplomacy. The government had a diplomatic position on what the inter-Korean relationship would look like in the wake of the Cheonan sinking, but so did every cabdriver in Seoul, with about the same effect. If Lee and his aides are puzzled by the motivations behind the attack, then the logical response is to increase the collection of intelligence, recruit more spies, educate them about the details of espionage tradecraft and add to the volume of information they have about the North.

I find the third point most damning for Seoul’s international reputation. Pyongyang as usual provided some comic relief, accusing the G-8 summit of a “sinister political purpose“. On the second point, the Hani punts a particularly rotten example of scientific criticism of the official Cheonan report. I’ve not read any confirmation of Lee’s supposition, that the US shared intelligence information with China, to embarrass Seoul. So, right now, it seems Seoul is scoring goals for the other team exactly at the time when everyone is ready to listen, and no one else is being particularly credible.

Filed under: IGOs, Korea, Maritime, Military Tagged: cheonan, china, dprk, g-20, hu jintao, lee myung bak, north korea, prc, rok, Russia, South Korea, unsc