OP-ED: Seoul Should Move Before It Gets Too Late (Korean Times)

To sum up, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's pickup of new cabinet secretaries was a bipartisan embrace of rivals based on pragmatism.

This comes in stark contrast not just to Obama's predecessor but to his Korean counterpart, who clings to people from the same region, school and church while refusing to promote figures of rival factions within his own party to any posts of significance.

Obama's selection of key cabinet posts reflects his awareness that unusual situations require unusual countermeasures. There was a similar example in Korean politics, too. In 1997 when the nation faced an unprecedented financial crisis, the then President-elect Kim Dae-jung filled two key economic posts ― finance minister and corporate restructuring chief ― with figures he had not known personally, at the recommendation of a coalition partner: Korea was then able to get out of the crisis in a most swift and exemplary way.

President Lee Myung-bak has long posed himself as a pragmatic leader, while stressing this is an ``unheard-of'' crisis needing ``unheard-of remedies.'' Still, he is sticking to a finance minister increasingly shunned even within the governing camp for failing to earn the trust of markets. What Lee preached for a year as only an empty slogan, Obama practiced in just one month after his election.

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