She says she's willing to try
There was no 'Rock the Vote'
among liberal voters in last Wednesday's national elections despite the fact
that many felt severely betrayed by the sitting Lee Myung-bak government, which
analysts will probably rank the worst in South Korean history, particularly in
terms of inter-Korean relations.
South Korean voters handed
victory to Park Geun-hye, 60, of the ruling Saenuri Party, the daughter of the
onetime strongman Park Chung-hee, making South Korea once again the land of the
conservative by giving power again to the party that has governed the country
for the last five years. (A South Korean president is limited to a single
five-year term by the Constitution.)
Dubbed the 'Queen of Elections,'
Park staked her presidential candidacy on distancing herself from the Lee
government, whose overall popularity hovered around 20 percent because of
failures in government policy and corruption scandals, although she herself explicitly
declined to repudiate the government's overall policy.
To this end, the five-term former
lawmaker fished for right-leaning voters by strategically pandering to the
slogan "Let's Live the Good Life," --a reminder that her father once
mobilized the 'New Village Movement' in the 1970s. One of the major issues in
this election was the chaebol, the industrial behemoths that have grown far too
big to fail, and whose business strategies far too often appeared to supersede
government policy itself. They were built into corporate giants they are during
her father's 17-year reign. By identifying obliquely with his policies, she
scuttled the liberal majority's plan to challenge them. The voters declined to
change the economy radically in tough times.
Beyond that, the election of Ms.
Park as South Korea's first woman president is as dramatic as her own family
history. Her mother, Yook Young-soo, was shot to death in an earlier
assassination attempt on her father on August 15, 1974. The major
general-turned-president Park was later assassinated over the dinner table by
his intelligence chief in 1979. Park Chung-hee symbolized the country's rapid
economic development--the so-called "Miracle on the Han River" during
his autocratic rule in the wake of a bloodless military coup.
Throughout the campaign, the
President-elect hinted that she intends to govern South Korea in the same
spirit that marked the miracle long ago. That gesture of an economy policy
based on welfare set the tone for Ms. Park.
The President-elect also has an
astonishing talent for simplifying complicated issues accurately, which she
likely learned--along with how to interpret and manipulate the political
connotations of every issue--from her father, although her opponents claim that
she argued pointlessly or vaguely with the moderator and her rival during
debate over the critical issues. As a pillar of export-oriented modernity, Park
Chung-hee was once lionized as the archetype of a modernizing political
leadership in military-authoritarian states. At home, he continues to rank
first in popularity among the country's elders, stirring nostalgia as a popular
old record does--a corollary to people's frustration and anger at the outgoing
government, which eventually worsened atmosphere in an ideologically and
economically polarized nation.
Research suggests that young
voters in their 20s and 30s have unconscious biases that sometimes lead to
generational divides over national security. We have come to expect that every
five years, especially among liberal and left-leaning poll strategists, the
youth vote determines the future of South Korea. That expectation was reversed
this time because of their elder's strong preference for Ms. Park. It was the
majority of conservative voters who spoke up this time to decide the election.
North Korea's Unha (Galaxy)-3
launch on December 12 was in no way a hot-button issue. It convinced numerous
voters on the right to believe that more sanctions should be imposed upon North
Korea, whose actions provided fodder for Park's staunch supporters, many of
whom experienced the tragedy of the 1950-53 Korean War, or their immediate
families did.
While left-leaning pundits are
fond of arguing that a woman president would be a non-starter as long as the
North Korean regime continues to threaten national security, moderates voters
in the male-dominated country discarded the old thinking. The uncertainty of
the Kim Jong-un regime in Pyongyang helped make many South Koreans anxious to
respond to the imperatives of the fraught inter-Korean relationship. There is a
widespread conviction that South Korea's national security leadership has been
far too amateurish in recent years, as evidenced by the sinking of the South
Korean corvette Cheonan with the loss of 46 lives, the shelling on Yeonpyeong
islands and the Lee administration's miscalculated predictions of the North's
latest rocket launch.
So far, there have been
expectations that the pro-America president-elect may seek to engage North
Korea while taking a firmer stand against that nation's increasingly assertive
claims its nuclear weapons program. After the victory, Park appeared to move
quickly to improve ties with North Korea, which has been using its old tactic
tongmibongnam, meaning opening the door to the Americans while shutting it to
the South Koreans with a view to driving a wedge between Seoul and Washington.
Park has said she would meet with
Kim Jong-un when she takes in office. In contrast to the Lee government's
approaches to the North, that it would improve relations in exchange for
Pyongyang' promise to dismantle its nuclear facilities, Park's message may
underscore a change in the inter-Korean relationship, appealing to many
moderates as a demonstration of her open-mindedness.
The question now is whether the
President-elect will seek to engage North Korea economically more than the
current government, which drove relations between the two Koreans to their
lowest point over recent history. It is in our interests for North Korea to be
more stable. Well-focused, long-term assistance in which we are literally a
genuine partner could help the hopeless regime achieve goals such as liaison
offices in Pyongyang and Seoul leading to a full diplomatic relationship with
South Korea and possibly, the U.S. as well as economic incentives. For an inter-Korean
dialogue to have any chance of success, the president-elect ought to move
quickly to make it clear to the Kim regime that giving up on the nuclear
weapons program could lead it to a safer and positive future. One hope is that
the president-elect is able to overcome the division of ideology deeply
embedded within the two Koreas in the name of her "grand national
integration" strategy.
Lee Byong-Chul
Business & Investment Opportunities
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