Korea's Roh: The outsider is back
in By David Scofield
It has been
two months and two days since South Korean President Roh
Moo-hyun, the ultimate outsider who crashed the rusted
gates of power, a poor farm boy who became a labor
lawyer fighting for the disadvantaged, was impeached and
ousted from office by the old guard in the National
Assembly. On Friday, the Constitutional Court dismissed
the impeachment and reinstated Roh as a president who
has sought to distance himself from heavy-handed US
influence and maintain a policy of tolerance and
neighborliness toward North Korea.
The majority
of the nine judges voted to reinstate Roh who was
impeached on March 12, but the actual vote and minority
dissenting opinions have not been disclosed. It is not
known whether they will be formally released in Seoul's
still nascent, often opaque democracy.
The
decision was widely expected, since virtually no one,
including the architects of the original impeachment
motion, believed the court would uphold the vote. The
grounds for the impeachment seemed weak and politically
motivated to many Koreans long accustomed to extravagant
levels of incompetence and corruption in nation's
highest offices - in comparison, Roh's transgressions
pale.
The impeachment was predicated on three
charges:
Receiving illegal campaign funds. (Prosecutors have
uncovered evidence of far greater fund irregularities
among members of the conservative Grand National Party,
or GNP, principal architects of the impeachment, and
that Roh personally received monies has not been
substantiated by the public prosecutors office.)
Illegal electioneering (more specifically his
declaration in response to a reporter's question that he
wanted "... to do everything within the law to support
the OOP", the party with which he is allied but which he
has not officially joined.)
Incompetence (arguably the strongest charge
considering Roh himself has publicly declared that he
was not sure he was up to the job, but self-criticism
and effacement do not, it seems, an impeachment make).
It took court president Yoon Young-chul less
than 10 minutes to refute each of the three charges
categorically in a prepared decision.
The
decision was not unanimous, however, with an unspecified
minority holding dissenting opinions. The court has not
released these minority opinions, a move incongruent
with the transparency marked by this constitutional
milestone. South Korea, its democracy still evolving,
has for the first time since first democratic elections
in 1987 had its president removed from office through a
process that most of the electorate felt displayed the
arrogance and high-handedness of the political elite.
But South Korea's constitution proved strong and
legitimate: the army was not called out and the country
did not descend into chaos.
Pro-impeachment
politicians now backtrack But almost immediately
after the impeachment was publicly overruled, some
outraged voters did protest - peacefully.
Pro-impeachment politicians, sensing the sea change in
favor of Roh and keenly aware that their own reelection
bids four weeks thence looked doubtful, began to talk
about reversing the impeachment vote. Such a move, if
successful, would have deeply perverted the
post-political constitutional process that has been,
outwardly at least, relatively free of political
influence.
The National Assembly elections on
April 15 - widely seen as a referendum on Roh and on his
impeachment - gave Roh and his favored Our Open Party
(OOP) a legislative majority. Immediately afterward,
Chung Dong-young, the leader of the OOP, began openly
discussing how to reverse the impeachment vote,
effectively removing the matter from those
constitutionally mandated to rule on its validity.
Fortunately, the leader of the major conservative
opposition GNP, Park Gun-hye, rejected the proposal - a
win for the constitution and due process in South Korea.
But the decision of the Constitutional Court not
to release the minority opinions is troubling,
especially after the much-publicized OOP comments that
releasing all the opinions would undermine national
unity. Through the questionable impeachment on dubious
grounds, South Korea took a step away from "rule by law"
and more firmly embraced "rule of law", a rare
example of law trumping politics in Korea. The decision
to exclude dissenting opinion, a political decision
thinly veiled by tired declarations of national unity,
stands in contrast to the success of the process - the
ultimate reinstatement based on evaluating the
questionable, politically motivated charges and
evidence. In the end, political agendas threaten to
distort the transparency and validity of the system.
Long work agenda awaits With the
president reinstalled, South Korea's democracy has
weathered its most serious challenge ever - but
reinstatement is just the first hurdle for this
administration. Labor strife continues to dog the
government and the nation, as the OOP looks increasingly
trapped by its own everything-for-everyone rhetoric: it
promises to ensure wage growth and job security and to
extend further rights for the nation's unionists, while
also speaking pro-business rhetoric, including increased
labor flexibility, to the nation's business lobby. And
it talks tough on Japan and increasing independence from
Washington. Roh's reinstatement and his firm control of
over the assembly will have no doubt caught the
attention of the Americans as their troop presence (they
currently maintain about 37,000 troops throughout South
Korea) encourages increasing animosity from the Korean
people, but has become a convenient political tool for a
country that still hasn't reconciled independent defense
and its North Korea rapprochement issues.
The
reality is that South Korea needs to establish
stability, predictability and transparency in its
political/economic and business systems, sentiments
echoed in this week's 14th Asian Corporate Conference in
Seoul, and not simply institute more stopgap measures
designed to tide the country over while the nation waits
anxiously for the next crisis. The leadership needs to
act decisively, and with an OOP majority in the National
Assembly there is no reason well-designed progressive
policies cannot be enacted. No reason, except the
nation's perennially risk-averse elected officials.
It's the economy's shrinking growth potential,
and not fears of political instability, that is having
the most profound effects on stability in the country.
This is evidenced by the radical fluctuations in the
Korean bourse, sent spiraling downward this week on news
that China, South Korea's key export destination and
target for US$2.5 billion in Korean investment last
year, will tighten its monetary policy in the hopes of
gradually deflating the bubble that is the Chinese
economy. The less than 4 percent drop that initially
followed the impeachment was mild in comparison.
With domestic consumption in South Korea still
hampered by massive levels of household debt, China has
been the nation's sole engine of growth. China's growth,
which absorbed 50 percent more Korean exports last year
than the previous year, kept South Korea out of
recession. With that engine slowing, there is little
indication where the next growth engine will come from.
Cho Yoon-je, the president's adviser for
economic affairs, has been emphatically repeating Roh's
commitments to economic reforms, reforms that have come
much slower than the promises that came flooding forth
in the months and now years since the country came a
hair's breadth from sovereign default in late 1997. In
meetings in the southern island of Jeju, Cho recently
declared that the government would "make all-out efforts
to make the market more open, fair and transparent".
Corporate corruption alive and
well But ironically on March 12, the same day Roh
was impeached, shareholders of SK Corp - including
government-controlled banks and the National Pension
Corp - voted to retain Chey Tae-won as the head of the
nation's largest oil refiner. Chey was convicted last
spring of embezzling and defrauding the company of more
than $1.5 billion. James Fitter, president of Sovereign
Asset Management, the largest single shareholder of SK
Corp stock and a strong proponent of massive management
restructuring at SK, maintains as much as $3.7 billion
was "lost" through SK Networks while Chey, the son of
SK's founder, was at the helm. Chey has been sentenced
to jail but released on bond as he awaits an appeal of
the conviction.
Unlike other industrialists in
the US and Europe who are serving jail sentences, Chey
is not only free on bail, but back running the company
he was convicted of defrauding. It's hard to see how
offering tacit government support to an individual
convicted of embezzling and defrauding billions to
retain control over the de facto holding company of a
multibillion-dollar firm is consistent with the
"transparent accounting standards as well as stronger
action against misreporting, embellishments of reports
and misconduct by managers" that Cho Yoon-je asserts now
typify South Korea's financial institutions and
companies.
With an absolute majority in the
National Assembly, President Roh now has the political
clout he has long declared crucial to legislating reform
in South Korea: politically, socially and economically.
But his actions will have to match his rhetoric more
closely if the economy and the country are to move away
from erratic, poorly implemented policies, opaque
decision-making, and tacit support for nativistic
business practices - and move toward stability, balanced
growth and development throughout the nation.
David
Scofield, former lecturer at the Graduate Institute
of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, is currently
conducting post-graduate research at the School of East
Asian Studies, University of Sheffield.
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