The President’s Time - Lee Myung-bak’s Memoir

Overall Assessment

By and large, this is a book that runs on the premise that the moment Lee Myung-bak spoke up, the whole world bowed its head. Compared to the memoirs of Bernanke and Geithner, the content lacks depth and is fragmentary and one-dimensional. It does not even so much as mention the failures of the Lee Myung-bak administration. For a man who took such pride in how diligently he worked during his presidency, he seems not to have put much effort into this memoir.

The Great Recession and the Eurozone Crisis

Korea weathered the Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis well. This much is true. It was probably the Lee Myung-bak administration’s greatest achievement. Although Korea was not a party to the Great Recession or the Eurozone crisis, as a major export nation it had no choice but to absorb the full brunt of the damage. In the end, the crises were calmed by the forceful response of the countries directly involved, but it is regrettable that he, as the supreme commander of Korea’s executive branch, does not cover that response process in detail. The anguish of coordinating financial, fiscal, and monetary policy was hardly a state secret, so he could well have written about it in detail. He describes the currency swap with a bit of emphasis, as if the Korean government had led it, but in reality Korea merely accepted what the United States spoon-fed it; the claim that Korea led the effort is absurd. Of course, knowing how to eat well when you are being spoon-fed is also a kind of skill. The detail that the administration filled the gap in crisis-era fiscal policy with the Four Major Rivers Restoration construction budget is also disappointing. For a self-proclaimed “economic president” to recall his response to the financial crisis so feebly is tantamount to committing a crime against history.

Lee Myung-bak the Man

His obsession with national prestige, with moral justification, and with rigid adherence to principle is astonishing. Two-thirds of the book deals with his decisions as the chief of diplomacy. The image of President Lee Myung-bak that emerges in this part is as follows.

• Asserting arguments of moral justification in summits with the leaders of the United States, Japan, and China
• Holding firmly and hawkishly to matters of principle in inter-Korean relations
• Worrying about national prestige even while handling intensely pragmatic negotiations such as FTAs

Judging from the claims in this book, the leaders of various countries seem to have been quite well acquainted with Lee Myung-bak’s career. And yet a man like that put forward arguments of moral justification of the sort a Joseon-era Confucian scholar-official might have made. He even appears to have offered advice—grounded in such moral justification—that the other party had not even asked for. What were the leaders of those countries thinking to themselves as they listened? Or rather, did President Lee Myung-bak really put forth such arguments of moral justification at all? There is no way to know from the memoir alone.

Lee Myung-bak was expected to be more pragmatic than anyone else in the world, and it was precisely that expectation that allowed him to become president. He is a fairly complicated man.

The World Order

Still, looking back, the era of the Lee Myung-bak administration was a good time for the world order. The United States was a party to the Great Recession, but it was recovering the fastest. China’s Hu Jintao was in the midst of “hiding one’s strength and biding one’s time.” American military power had begun to turn toward China, but it had not escalated into conflict. Medvedev’s Russia, puppet of Putin though it may have been, was at peace. In Japan, the first change of government took place. In just fifteen years, the world is moving toward a bloc economy amid US-China conflict and a tariff war. When I recall that the very pragmatic argument Lee Myung-bak put to Obama during the Korea-US FTA negotiations was precisely that “more exchange makes for a more stable world,” I worry about the direction the world is heading.

A Hidden Disgrace

The Lee Myung-bak administration was the period in my life when I paid the most attention to Korean politics. At the time, I once said this to my friend Song Ji-wan: “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if they later made a drama out of the MB administration? It’s already this funny as it is.” It was because of the administration’s various blunders, absurd responses, and gaffes. But there are no such amusing stories in his memoir.

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