Democratic Party Win Good for Korea?

If the U.S. Democratic Party wins in the November 7 midterm elections as expected, what impact would it bring to U.S. policy on the Korean peninsula?

It is now widely believed that Democrats will gain the majority control in the House and also extend their power in the Senate, though being a majority would be a bit hard.

This means that the Republicans’ control in both of the chambers, which has continued for 12 years since 1994, will end.

An official of U.S. congress said on October 28, “I heard that Korea expects that Democrats’ winning of the election would do good for the Korean government on a number of issues, but it is Korea’s misunderstanding.”

At a closer look, candidates for major committees that will have a big impact on the policy toward Korean peninsula shows by no means favorable conditions for the Korean peninsula.

Trade policy-

Washington sources pointed out that Korea should particularly keep an eye on Democrat representative Sander Levin (Michigan). This is because if the Democrats become a majority in the House, Levin looks almost certain to become a chairman of a subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee. If Korea and U.S. sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the agreement must pass this subcommittee.

However, Sander Levin, a younger brother of Senator Carl Levin, a ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Service Committee chairman, has a critical view of the Korean auto industry and FTA, while strongly supporting the unions of U.S. automakers. In addition, there are many other Democrats who are critical of a Korea-U.S. FTA.

Policy on North Korea-

Once the House becomes Democrat-controlled, Tom Lantos (California) is very likely to become chairman of the International Relations Committee. Lantos, born in Hungary and a Holocaust survivor in Nazi-run Hungary, is highly critical of North Korea’s human rights conditions. Lantos is on a familiar terms with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is a former provost of Stanford University located in his constituency.

In the Senate, Joseph Biden (Delaware) will have greater influence.

As a leading member of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the five-term senator served as a chairman of Foreign Relations Committee when the Senate was Democrat-controlled and is now ranking Democrat on the committee.

So far, Democrat politicians have criticized Bush administration’s policy toward North Korea and urged the government to have bilateral talks with the North. However, it is widely predicted that “Democrats will show a prudent attitude in national security issues in order to win the 2008 presidential election,” as was suggested by Foreign Policy, a diplomacy magazine.

It is expected that representatives such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida) and Ed Royce (California) and Senator Sam Brownback (Kansas), that have handled Korean peninsula issues, will be re-elected without much difficulty.

Representative Ros-Lehtinen, challenging for a ninth term, is expected to replace Henry Hyde as a Foreign Relations Committee chairman if the Republic Party keeps its majority in the House and be a ranking member of Foreign Relations Committee when the Republics lose its control.

Royce, chairman of a sub committee on counterterrorism of House Foreign Relations Committee, recently demonstrated his hard-line stance on the North at a meeting with U.S. press and Dong-A Ilbo.

Senator Brownback, an evangelical Christian, is an architect of the passage of North Korean Human Rights Act and is now pushing forward with a project called “Helsinki Process” aimed at improving human rights in North Korea.

Meanwhile, a chairman of House Foreign Relations Committee and a 16-term politician from Illinois and is familiar to Koreans, Republican Hyde will retire from politics due to spinal cord disease. A Democrat representative Lane Evans, who acted for Korea in many ways including the resolution holding Japan accountable for sexual enslavement of women during its colonial occupation of Asia in the past, will also withdraw from politics due to Parkinson’s disease.

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