Pampering or disciplining?

If Park Geun-hye and Moon Jae-in appear hard to distinguish over their domestic policy, North Korea’s rocket launch should be something to separate one from the other and help voters determine who they will vote for.

There is no general standard by which one candidate is better than the other.

The decision is up to each and every voter but here are a couple of criteria people should consider before making their mind up ahead of the Dec. 19 election day.

The first is “Are you ready to turn the other cheek?”

Pyongyang had acted as if there were some problems that prevented it from launching the rocket as scheduled.

Then, without further notice, it launched the Unha-3 and declared a satellite had been successfully deployed.  Unha means galaxy in Korean.

Park, the candidate of the conservative Saenuri Party, roundly condemned the Stalinist nation, while Moon of the main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP) contender followed suit but with a small caveat. Moon’s camp jabbed the government for its intelligence failure to detect the launch earlier.

Park is from the party that pushes for reciprocity in dealing with the North.

North Korea went ahead with a rocket launch, Wednesday, despite international pressure not to do so. Its daring act came at a delicate time, just ahead of South Korea’s Dec. 19 presidential election. Candidates Park Geun-hyu and Moon Jae-in were engaged in rainy day campaigning Friday, while debris from the first stage of the North’s rocket has been retrieved and put on display. (Photo : Yonhap)

However, she is more willing to engage than the incumbent President Lee Myung-bak, who is criticized for a lack of imagination in his North Korea policy.

Her father, Park Chung-hee, the authoritarian president, ruled during a tense period in relations with the North in the 1960s and 1970s but continued a selective engagement with Pyongyang.

In contrast, Moon is the son of the Sunshine Policy of engaging the North at whatever cost. The pro-engagement policy was initiated by the late President Kim Dae-jung.

Kim’s successor Roh Moo-hyun, another liberal head of state, tried to distance himself from the policy of engaging North Korea but embraced it with open arms later, to the point of holding a second inter-Korean summit.

Moon served as Roh’s chief of staff.

The North defied an international plea in launching its rocket, the technology of which can be applied for the development of an intercontinental missile. Will you pamper the North for its wanton behavior or want to teach it a lesson once and for all? It is you that should decide. <The Korea Times/Oh Young-jin>