SPEAKING FREELY South Korea's retrograde
politics By Won Joon Choe
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
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Politics
in Korea's last monarchy, the Chosun dynasty
(1392-1910), was a vicious "winner-take-all" affair. The
losers faced confiscation of their property, exile, and
often execution. In a Confucian culture that elevated
the rule of men over the rule of law, everything was
permissible for those in power. Further, the sins of the
fathers were not only visited on the children but on the
grandchildren as well, as three generations of family
members were enslaved or exterminated. Unfortunately, in
spite of the glib rhetoric about South Korea's "vibrant
democracy" in the Western media, South Korean politics
today resemble the politics of the Chosun dynasty.
Two of the biggest news stories emerging from
South Korea this year highlight the country's retrograde
politics: the impeachment and acquittal of the nation's
leftist president Roh Moo-hyun, and the Roh
administration's current proposal to establish a truth
commission to unearth pro-Japanese collaborators during
Japanese colonial rule.
Yet many Western
observers have misinterpreted the meaning of these
events. Lacking a firm grasp of the historical and
cultural context within which these events transpired -
and sometimes even ignorant of the basic facts about
these events - Western observers have crowed that the
impeachment and its aftermath signal the ascension of
the rule of law in South Korea and exulted that the
proposed truth commission heralds a new era of openness.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The two
events taken together, viewed in their proper context,
teach a sobering lesson about the difficulties inherent
in establishing a genuine liberal democracy atop an
authoritarian and communal political culture, a lesson
that those intoxicated with "regime change" elsewhere
should heed.
Let us begin with the Roh
impeachment. Western observers were spellbound by the
fact that South Korea's president had actually faced
"legal" removal from office, a prospect unimaginable in
the days of military dictatorship. They have also argued
that the fact that all parties agreed to abide by the
judiciary's decision to acquit Roh must be seen as a
demonstration of the strength of the rule of law in
South Korea. Gerald Curtis, a Japan specialist at
Columbia University, epitomized this mistaken view for
The Japan Times. For him, "political issues, no matter
how controversial or serious, are dealt with according
to legal rules" in South Korea. If things were only so
simple.
First, procedurally there was no "legal"
basis for impeachment. Most Western media misreported
that Roh was impeached for a "minor" violation of the
election law, and that a memorandum from the National
Election Commission specified this violation. According
to this reading, the charges may be trivial, but a
violation of the law nonetheless occurred. Yet, as
anyone who can read Korean can recognize, the
controversial memorandum explicitly stated that Roh had
not violated the law.
Rather than over zealously
carrying out the letter of the law, the
opposition-dominated parliament had simply attempted to
eliminate a weak, unpopular president
unconstitutionally. The parliament's abuse of power
evokes not the rule of law but "legalism", a Chinese
doctrine that views the law as a malleable tool by which
the powerful would control the powerless.
Second, while Roh was correctly acquitted, it is
farcical to claim that the Constitutional Court's
decision was an outcome of legal reasoning. Emboldened
by its stunning victory in the April parliamentary
election that followed the impeachment, Roh's Uri Party
put enormous pressure on the court for a speedy trial
and the issuance of the "correct" outcome. As a result,
speculation has been rampant that the majority of the
court's judges, who are not appointed for life, simply
went along with the Uri Party's wishes for fear of
political reprisals. The laconic nature of the majority
opinion, and the court's refusal to name the dissenting
judges or publish dissenting opinions, fuel this
speculation.
Now consider Roh's crusade to
ferret out Japanese collaborators. In theory, rectifying
past wrongs may be cathartic and enable a nation to move
forward. But Roh had no such noble intentions. The
probe's chief aim is to destroy the political career of
Park Gun-hye, the daughter of the controversial military
dictator Park Chung-hee and an opposition politician who
is already touted as a favorite for the next
presidential election. Given Miss Park's current
popularity, Roh had chosen an oblique path of attack
that politicians in the Chosun dynasty used so
ubiquitously: if the main target is untouchable, go
after the family members and hope that you can reel in
the main target by association.
Again, the facts
speak volumes. The initial law passed last March only
called for a probe of those who held the rank of
lieutenant-colonel in the Japanese military among the
military collaborators. Then Miss Park took over the
opposition Grand National Party and miraculously revived
the party's sagging fortunes.
So what does Roh
do? He proposes a revision whereby all who were officers
in the Japanese military will be scrutinized. And
(surprise!) Park Chung-hee happened to have been a
junior officer, lower than a lieutenant-colonel, in the
Japanese Imperial Army. He may as well have called the
revision the Park Chung-Hee (or Park Gun-hye) Amendment.
The problem with the proposed revision is that -
to the chagrin of the hyper-nationalistic Koreans -
there were a lot of people during the colonial era who
fit the new definition of "collaborators". One local
columnist speculated that more than half of the
parliamentarians may have family members who were
collaborators. A genuine, comprehensive review of all
those collaborators may be catastrophic for the South
Korean psyche and fracture the body politic as well. So
most expect that the probe will focus on Park Chung-hee,
which suits the agenda of Roh and the Uri Party fine.
The persistence of the past and the absence of a
genuine liberal political culture in South Korea are
deeply troubling. South Korea has a robust economy with
a large, well-educated middle class. Its popular culture
is inundated with Americana. And if liberalization in
such a country is only skin-deep, then one must ask:
What hope is there for nations such as Iraq?
Won Joon Choe has been working as a
corporate attorney in New York.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have their
say. Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
