New South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office Monday with a promise to boost prosperity not only in his own country but in North Korea as well, provided that the communist state abandons its nuclear weapons. "Economic revival is our most urgent task," Lee said in his inaugural speech after taking the oath of office as South Korea's first conservative president in a decade.
| North Korea's idea of "refunification" involves taking over South Korea. Presumably the North is far enough beyond being able to do that to remove the effective threat to SKor, barring use of nuclear weapons which it doesn't look like they have the capability to actually build. |
South Koreans gave the former high-profile construction executive -- nicknamed "The Bulldozer" for his can-do image -- a landslide victory in December's election on his pledge to revitalize the economy and take a less conciliatory approach to nuclear-armed North Korea. "We must move from the age of ideology into the age of pragmatism," Lee told some 60,000 people who gathered for his inauguration, taking a swipe at the past 10 years of liberal rule during which he said "we found ourselves faltering and confused."
| Kimmie's going to kick it from natural causes eventually, unless he's assisted from the gene pool. Either way, the North finds itself now on about the same economic level as Zim-bob-weh. Having seen the problems West Germany had swallowing the much more economically advanced (than North Korea) East Germany, the SKors have to come to the conclusion that the only way they're going to return the former industrialized North to functionality will be to run it as a colony for 20 or 30 years. |
Bursts of applause from the audience often interrupted Lee's address in front of the dome-roofed National Assembly building on a cold, overcast day. The ceremony included a military parade, a 21-gun salute and a choir singing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda were among dignitaries at the ceremony. |