South Korea has a new president. Mr. Lee Myung Bak has vowed to take the same "bulldozing" approach to running his country as he did when he was the head of a construction company and the mayor of Seoul. His first priority is economic revival, but he also hopes to forge new relationships with his neighbors, North Korea and Japan, as well as the United States, an ally across the Pacific.

As he assumes office as South Korea's 10th president, the real question, however, is whether Mr. Lee is the master of his own destiny. As a developed economy, South Korea may not be able to relive the go-go years that South Koreans yearn to repeat. And North Korea's supreme leader Mr. Kim Jong Il may prefer a different North-South relationship. In fact, the one certainty is that Mr. Kim will do his best to derail Mr. Lee's bold plans and try to force the new president to abandon his harder-line policies toward the North and embrace those of his predecessors.

Mr. Lee won election by pledging to achieve annual growth of 7 percent, to double South Korea's per capita income to $40,000 over a decade, and to vault South Korea into the world's top seven economies. Even though South Korea enjoyed 4.5 percent growth throughout his predecessor Roh Moo Hyun's tenure, most Koreans were not satisfied and felt the economy underperformed. In his inauguration speech Monday in Seoul, Mr. Lee promised to do that by eliminating or reforming unnecessary regulations, privatizing jobs and lowering taxes; during his campaign he proposed to stimulate investment through housing loans and the construction of a "Great Waterway" that cuts across the Korean Peninsula.