Asia's new scion leaders inherit their nations' pressing problems
Katharine Moon says northeast Asia's four new leaders share more than political pedigree and a conservative outlook - Park, Abe, Xi and Kim face daunting economic and foreign policy challenges
Plenty of tensions divide northeast Asia: island disputes involving Japan, Korea and China; military tensions between the two Koreas, between China and Japan, and of course, the perennial China-Taiwan face-off as status quo.
But the individuals who ascended to power in late 2012 - China's Xi Jinping, Japan's Shinzo Abe and South Korea's Park Geun-hye - have much in common. This is also true for North Korea's Kim Jong-un, who ascended to power a year ago.
All four leaders are princelings (or "princess-ling" in Park's case), the children of powerful fathers who had been part of the ruling establishments of their countries. They are conservatives in political outlook, placing priority on social order and military strength. They are pedigreed nationalists by upbringing and ideological orientation. And their most pressing challenges are domestic, particularly the economy. Yet, foreign policy will test and tax them as they try to focus on domestic matters of political consolidation and change.
On December 19, Park was elected to power in South Korea. Her father Park Chung-hee, who ruled with an iron fist for 18 years, created the famed Korean economic "miracle" when he was in power. Koreans refer to her pejoratively as the "princess" or "ice princess", and even those in her inner circle have complained about her high-handed manners and haughty treatment of those around her.
Park is no democrat by upbringing, having made the presidential Blue House her home with the hundreds of guards, servants, and underlings to tend to the First Family's needs and desires. At the time, most South Koreans were working hard to dig their way out of poverty and still struggling to overcome the destruction of war. But Park was sheltered from deprivation and travails - until both her parents were assassinated, leaving her an orphan in her late 20s.
She is the newest member of an elite club of dynastic rule in East Asia, represented particularly by Abe, Japan's prime minister, the son of a former foreign minister, Shintaro Abe, and the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, a leader in the imperial army who worked closely with General Hideki Tojo during the second world war and later became prime minister.
Like Abe, Xi Jinping, who was named the new "paramount leader" of China in November, hails from a leading military and political family. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was part of the top caste of revolutionary leaders as guerilla fighters during the Chinese civil war and one of the founders and builders of the People's Republic. In the late 1980s, the elder Xi became an instrumental figure in promoting market reforms in southern China.