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South Korea's
balancer
By Emanuel
Pastreich
(Republished with permission from
Japan Focus)
South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun is
unusual as a politician in the media age, both in
embracing the potential of the Internet and
refusing to pander to the sound bite. He spends
hours online each week promoting his vision of
e-government. The website of the Cheong Wa Dae
(Blue House) presidential residence, the Korean
equivalent of the White House, features a picture
of Roh typing away furiously at his laptop. Roh,
who has authored a biography of Abraham Lincoln
and on whom he models himself, like his American
hero crafts speeches of great intellectual
complexity. He also sees himself as the leader of
a nation divided between the North and South, and
fragmented within. He works on the assumption that
concepts and ideals can transform a society.
He has worked closely with North Korea on
a variety of economic and social initiatives and
does not see the North as a threat. He strives for
a diplomatic solution to North Korea's nuclear
programs, which are the subject of a fourth round
of six-party talks in Beijing now in a three-week
recess.
Repeatedly he has demonstrated
that he is perfectly willing to accept blame, even
risk his tenure in office, in the effort to
implement his policies. Since his rise from
relative obscurity to win in the presidential
election on December 19, 2002, Roh has encountered
unprecedented resistance within Korea from
entrenched factions that see his attempts to
transform the Korean government as a threat,
direct or indirect. He has stepped on many toes in
his pursuit of an ideal of a new Korea. Although
his selflessness has earned the respect of many,
he has often failed to speak in a language that is
easily grasped by corporate figures, bureaucrats
and local politicians accustomed to a far more
venal political tradition.
The culture of
intimidation and corruption that dominated the
authoritarian Fifth Republic (1980-1988) has not
disappeared from Korea. President Kim Young-sam
continued many of the incestuous relations between
government and business of his predecessors, even
as he moved toward the rule of law.
President Kim Dae-jung made great strides
to open Korean society, but could only do so by
making full use of the authority and gravitas of
the presidential office in much the manner to
which Koreans had grown accustomed during the
1970s and 1980s. By contrast, Roh has gone further
in making himself accessible. He expects
government officials to be motivated by devotion
to an ideal of what a Korean can be, rather than
by personal benefit. Such a vision is as
refreshing as it is unfamiliar for many Koreans.
Roh's problems, including the 2004
impeachment attempt against him by the
conservative Grand National Party and some members
of the Millennium Democratic Party (under whose
banner he was first elected) are the product,
above all, of the growing fragmentation of South
Korean society. Korean politics had long been
dominated by regional power bases such as
Gyeongsang-do in the southeast and Jolla-do in the
southwest. Those bases remain, but economic,
social and cultural issues have also become major
factors, as demonstrated in Roh's election. Two
major groups have emerged in Korean society, each
with a radically different concept of domestic and
international issues; each relies on different
media sources for information. A serious breakdown
in consensus within South Korea as a whole has
made even simple tasks of administration complex
for Roh.
First, there are the conservative
forces that look at the US-Republic of Korea
alliance as the bedrock of foreign policy,
concentrate on economic to the neglect of social
issues, and rely on such sources as the
conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo for their
information about the world. This newspaper has
been unrelentingly critical of Roh from the day he
took office.
The second group consists
largely of younger voters known commonly as the
3-8-6 (sam-pal-yuk) generation. The three refers
to the fact that these voters are in their 30s
(although now many are entering their 40s). The
eight indicates that they entered college during
the 1980s and experienced repression first-hand
under the government of Chun Doo-hwan. As students
they longed for a democratic system and were
willing to work hard for it. Many of this
generation were involved in the student protests
that turned universities into tear-gas testing
grounds. Finally, the six indicates that they were
born in the 1960s and grew up during Korea's age
of rapid industrial development.
These
progressives are committed to social and political
issues. The 3-8-6 generation is best represented
by the Nosamo group (The Organization that Loves
Roh Moo-hyun). This informal association of
loyalists employed the Internet in an innovative
manner to put him in office. They did so in spite
of the overwhelming prophesies of doom produced by
the conservative press that had most Americans -
and many Koreans - believing that Roh did not have
a chance. This group is highly critical of United
States policy and imaginative in envisioning
Korea's role in the world. Representing a broad
spectrum of views, often crossing regional
loyalties, they depend on such progressive online
publications as Pressian and Oh My News for
information and have embraced an interactive
culture of instant messaging and video for both
social and political action. The rate at which
they disseminate information has transformed
Korean society.
In addition, there are a
significant number of citizens who are deeply
alienated from government and see little prospect
of change or progress from either side of the
political spectrum. There has been a discernable
increase in antipathy towards politics after the
remarkable optimism surrounding the World Cup
(June, 2002) and Roh's election just a few months
later.
Roh's rise from
obscurity
Born after World War II, Roh is
the first president of Korea who has only
childhood memories of the Korean War. He is also
the first who did not pursue the standard path to
higher education. Even the most progressive voices
in Korea working with labor and social issues
generally come from established families of
considerable privilege.
He was born to a
poor farming family in the village of Gimhae
nestled on Bonghwa Mountain in Gyeongsang-namdo.
The year was 1946. His parents had little money
but devoted great effort to assure their
children's education. In his autobiography, Roh
speaks of how his mother's support and constant
encouragement pushed him forward. He attributes
his ability to avoid the general pessimism of
youngsters in his hometown to her inspiration. He
resembles a traditional Confucian scholar in
attributing his achievements to strict moral
standards upheld by his mother. His refusal to "be
blown by the winds", as he writes, explains
something of his later conflicts.
Roh
graduated from Busan Commercial High School in
1966, one of the few that offered a scholarship
for students without means. After fulfilling three
years of military service, he married his
childhood sweetheart, Kwon Yang-suk, and went to
work. His first job at a company making fishnets
paid so little that he could not even pay for food
and rent. He decided to fulfill his childhood
dream and study for the bar exam. With only a
high-school diploma, he first had to pass a
qualifying exam before he could even begin his
studies. Finally he passed the bar exam on his
fourth attempt in 1975. In a political world
weighted down with recipients of doctorates, Roh
is an odd bird.
Roh then completed a
two-year program at the Judicial Research and
Training Institute before serving as a district
court judge in Daejeon in 1977. The fulfillment of
his dream ironically forced Roh to confront the
gap between his ideals of public service and
success and, by contrast, the reality of
government service during the 1970s under the
authoritarian government of president Park Chung
Hee. Roh resigned after only seven months and
established his own law office.
The
following year, 1979, Park was assassinated by the
director of the Korean Central Intelligence
Agency. General Chun Doo-hwan then seized the
presidency. Chun's brutal suppression of a
pro-democracy demonstration in the city of Gwangju
and his systematic attempt to eliminate all
elements critical of his administration from
universities and newspapers, made Park, by
comparison, seem like a moderate. When one lawyer
found himself in trouble with the authorities
because of political affiliations, Roh stepped in
to handle the controversial case. As an unknown
with no political affiliation, he seemed the
perfect choice to handle the matter with
discretion. The year was 1981.
Roh's legal
defense of the students accused in the "Burim
Incident" would transform him. Burim was the name
of a student book club that the government had
shut down, charging the students with studying
illegal leftist theories. When he met young men
who had been tortured, heard their stories and saw
their injuries, Roh thought of his own son and
wondered whether he might also suffer the same
fate. His meetings with the distressed mothers of
children who had disappeared brought home to him
the full severity of repression in Korea, and led
him to political engagement.
Human rights
issues became primary for Roh. His passionate and
eloquent defense of democracy, and his support for
the nascent labor movement during the most
repressive period of contemporary Korean history,
increased his visibility. He took an interest in
ecological issues as the director of the Research
Center for Environmental Pollution in Busan in
1984. He was a leader in the "June Struggle" of
1987, a nation-wide battle for a constitutional
revision to allow direct presidential elections.
He rose to national prominence when the
government, yielding to the massive
demonstrations, promised open presidential
elections.
His life changed again when he
was arrested in connection with the funeral for
Lee Seok-gyu, a worker at the Daewoo shipbuilding
factory who was killed by a tear-gas canister
thrown by the police during a strike. Roh had
represented the union in wage- and
compensation-settlement negotiations, but his
support for Lee led to charges of "third-party
intervention" and "disrupting a funeral". His
right to practice law was suspended.
He
decided to run for the National Assembly from the
eastern district of Busan in 1988 as a member of
the Reunification Democratic Party (RDP), the
opposition party headed by Kim Young-sam. He
defeated a ruling party candidate with strong
financial backing and entered the National
Assembly where he distinguished himself on the
labor committee as an outspoken defender of
workers' rights. Roh led the questioning of top
officials from the Chun administration on
corruption charges during the Fifth Republic as a
member of the Special Committee Investigating
Political Corruption. While others did not dare to
confront Chung Ju-yung, the founder of Hyundai, or
Chang Se-dong, the former intelligence chief, Roh
was eloquent and forthright in his questioning.
Roh led the opposition to the merger of
the ruling party with two opposition parties to
form the Democratic Liberal Party in 1990. Openly
critical of the attempt by former opposition
leader Kim Young-sam to obtain the presidency
through compromise with the powers that had led
Korea through an era of repression, Roh called for
a reform party that did not make such fundamental
compromises to obtain power. When the Democratic
Liberal Party, having come to power, forced
through a telecommunications bill that ignored the
concerns of citizens, he resigned his seat in the
National Assembly and returned to organizing
citizens. Although this commitment to principle
kept him in the political margins during the early
90s, it earned Roh a loyal base of supporters.
Roh played the role of a balancer within
the opposition during the period from 1991 until
Kim Dae-jung's election in 1997. He led
negotiations between smaller opposition parties
aimed at creating the unity necessary to influence
national policy. This period included multiple
unsuccessful runs for local and national office
(in 1992, 1995, 1996, 1999, and 2000) and even an
initial foray as a presidential candidate of the
National Congress for New Politics (NCNP). But
those failures enhanced his credibility among
supporters because he appeared to be the only
politician who would not compromise on the basic
issues that motivated activists and progressive
voters: transparency in government, government
accountability to the citizen, participatory
structures for government administration and
efforts to rectify unfair distribution of
resources by region and by social class. Moreover,
he had spent his career demanding the truth from
those in power. He struck a chord with those who
wished to tear down the walls of secrecy
surrounding events during the Japanese colonial
period, the Korean War and the military
governments.
He put together in two phases
a network that would elect him as president: the
first during his work outside of the political
world in the 1980s and then in his efforts in the
1990s to pull together various opposition parties
as a viable alternative. These two different
groups provided the legal and academic connections
that made him a national figure. The prominent
religious leaders and lawyers who formed the
opposition in Busan continued to support him
through each election bid. The environmental
protection movement, in which Roh was active from
1984, also proved loyal to him. His commitment to
recycling, energy conservation, and public
transportation can be traced back to this period.
The political culture in South Korea is
distinctive in the degree to which poets and
novelists play a role; intellectuals such as Rim
Jeongnam, husband of the poet Gang Eungyo, and the
novelist Kim Jeonghan gave him crucial support.
The bottled-up enthusiasm and frustration of this
3-8-6 generation eventually propelled Roh forward
onto the national stage.
Roh worked hard
on the 1997 presidential campaign of Kim Dae-jung,
the former prisoner of conscience and human rights
advocate. Kim's victory was in part a response to
the perceived failure of Korea's institutions to
safeguard the common good during the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis. Roh's skill at
unifying the progressive factions and balancing
their needs aided in that success.
Kim
brought with him to the presidency a flood of
enthusiastic minds from the opposition ardent to
remake Korea as an advanced democracy, Roh among
them. Roh was appointed as minister of maritime
affairs and fisheries. This first opportunity to
work in a national government allowed him to
experiment concretely with ministerial
administration. He imported his trademark approach
of non-hierarchical governance and horizontal
interaction developed during democracy movement
work. Although he had battled the government for
decades, he felt, like a good Confucian, that
government was ultimately capable of addressing
the inequalities of society. He met constantly
with fishermen, business interests, and ordinary
citizens and civil servants of all levels in his
attempts to resolve problems. He also implemented
on a small scale his ideas concerning
"knowledge-based management".
Roh's
victory in 2003
When Roh was elected
president by a clear majority on December 19,
2002, it seemed nothing short of miraculous. After
all, his most prominent supporter Chung Mong-joon,
son of the founder of the Hyundai conglomerate,
had deserted Roh at the last moment. A variety of
unusual and unprecedented approaches made this
result possible.
President Kim Dae-jung
had been elected on a platform of financial reform
motivated by the humiliation and instability
brought about by the 1997 IMF crisis. Although Kim
did achieve a number of economic reforms, many
Koreans longed for more comprehensive reform,
particularly after a series of scandals associated
with Kim's administration raised doubts as to how
substantial reform was. Although Kim offered hope
of a Korea that looked to the future regarding
reunification, he retained much of the political
apparatus associated by progressive voters with
the corrupt patronage systems and unswerving
political allegiances that had dominated Korea
since the 1940s, and in some respects, since the
1920s. The self-made Roh projected an
anti-establishment image, even while running as
the candidate of the party in power.
Roh
was under attack for being unqualified from the
start of the campaign. Although politically active
since 1988, his only direct experience in the
central government was the seven months he had
served as minister of maritime affairs and
fisheries. His opponent in the primaries said:
"The Cheong Wa Dae presidential residence is not a
training ground for presidents." His opponent in
the national election, Lee Hoi-chang, was a member
of the establishment who had served in numerous
high positions before becoming prime minister.
Roh countered these attacks in an essay on
his achievements as minister that was posted on
his web page. He gave concrete examples of how he
served as a leader and resolved conflicts between
groups. He introduced plans to reinvigorate the
Korean government and empower ordinary public
officials while lashing out at bureaucrats who
idle away their time at predictable routine
meetings while clinging to their authority.
While he clearly lacked experience with
diplomacy, defense or economics, he projected to
some the decisiveness and vision to be president.
His opponent Lee was the obvious favorite, but a
financial scandal and the revelation that his son
had avoided the military draft through nefarious
means unexpectedly turned the race into a dead
heat. Roh successfully portrayed himself as the
common man, a bright new face who stood up to
established power. Most importantly, those
immediately loyal to Roh from his previous
campaigns for democracy and human rights put a
degree of effort into the campaign that could not
be matched by Lee's supporters. Young people
worked around the clock, providing quick responses
to the Lee team's actions that were disseminated
through the Internet to great effect.
Roh's hopes for a new role for Korea had
particular appeal in the country at a time when
hundreds of thousands of Koreans gathered across
the nation to protest the acquittal by a US
military court of two soldiers whose armored
vehicle had accidentally killed two young girls
the previous June. The tragedy drew attention to
the fact that the Status of Forces Agreement for
the American military denies Korea courts
jurisdiction, which is not the case in Japan and
Germany. The successful joint sponsorship of the
World Cup, in which Korea reached out to Japan,
its rival and former colonial master, in a mature
manner appropriate to an advanced nation, inspired
new confidence. In the wake of this success, the
legal handling of the accident involving US troops
reminded Koreans that they did not yet enjoy the
privileges appropriate to their emergence as a
responsible democracy and economic power. The
lasting inequalities in the military and
diplomatic relations between Korea and the United
States prompted many Koreans to favor the
candidate who offered a more independent and
assertive Korea.
Although the election was
widely viewed as a confrontation between
conservatives and progressives, there is much to
suggest that policy differences, rather than
overarching ideology, determined the outcome.
Roh's passion for justice was based more on a
Confucian sense of fairness, and he declined to
embrace leftist doctrines even as he worked with
members of the left. He spoke during the campaign
of institutional change without ideological
coloration and was therefore able to avoid
attempts to paint him into a corner. The
difference in class origins between Lee, a man
from an extremely privileged family, and Roh, a
self-made man who modeled himself on Lincoln, was
obvious to voters.
Roh as
president
Roh has sought since he became
president to project an image that combines
authority, determination and humility. Yet a
certain youthful vitality, even impishness, still
shines through. At the same time, he shows great
respect to others at staff meetings, especially
women, whose cause he has championed as no one in
Korean government before.
The Internet has
allowed Roh to interact directly with officials at
all levels of government, without any
intermediary. He spends hours every evening in
debates with officials at all levels of
government, to a degree unprecedented in Korean
history. He seeks to bring the citizen into
politics and positions himself as the advocate of
the common man. His decision to prohibit private
conferences with individuals displays high
integrity even as it challenges patterns of
influence and patronage that have long dominated
Korean politics. He stated that he will meet with
no one, even concerning matters of national
security, without another person present. Meant as
an affirmation of probity, as was the case in his
encouragement of officials at all levels to confer
directly with the president, his policies violated
accepted practice and the chain of command.
Roh has pioneered e-government as a means
both of streamlining and democratizing government.
He has put his "Government for Citizens" policy
(known as "G4C") to work by making the Internet as
a means of communication available to all
citizens, or "netizens", as a Korean buzzword has
it. One finds open access to networked computers
throughout Korea. With some 31 million people (70%
of the population) using the Internet regularly,
Korea is challenging hierarchies of power within
government and society. This is the cause of much
of both the optimism and the conflict found in
Korea today.
Those who are accustomed to
the oratory of American politicians are certainly
in for a surprise if they hear one of Roh's
speeches. First, he conducts himself with great
confidence while maintaining an understated
appearance. His voice is level and his speech is
driven by a logical argument that connects
concepts with concrete issues. More importantly,
whereas many politicians assume that a general
audience cannot understand complex ideas and so
fill their speeches with sound bites, Roh explains
complex issues regardless of his audience. He
assumes that there is no concept, or
contradiction, too complex for the average
listener to follow. Perhaps this approach stems
from the fact that Roh is self-taught.
He
sees his speeches as a critical part of his
policy. His writings are so literary that they are
a pleasure to read, and often verge on the
spiritual as they grapple with institutional
issues. His speeches call to mind those of
Lincoln, a leader fully capable of compromise, but
who saw his calling as something greater than the
interests that elected him. It is not that Roh is
inattentive to the interest groups that elected
him, but he takes a remarkably broad view of his
office and has not shown any grudges or resentment
against his opponents.
In a word, Roh hews
to the Confucian idea that principles can
transform a nation. He has written about what he
calls "beautiful principles" and embraced a
profound esthetic of governance. Much like the
great King Sejong who embraced both institutional
reform and technological innovation at the height
of Korean power in the 15th century, Roh meets
regularly with scholars and experts to seek advice
on affairs of state. Unlike many other world
leaders, he spends relatively little time
cultivating relations with special interest
groups. In fact, although many complain about his
policies, Korea has clearly become a far more open
and mature society precisely during Roh's tenure.
Overall, Roh is a moderate in his
policies. His independence makes him quite
distinctive. His decision to send troops to Iraq,
for example, went against the wishes of many of
his strongest supporters. He did so because he
judged that the long-term interests of Korea were
best served through a strong commitment to the
United States. Although he clings to his ideals of
good governance, he refuses to take an ideological
stance. Roh's class background gave him a certain
distance from the ideological battles of students
during the democracy movement. He was not caught
up in Marxism and class theories, even as he was
keenly conscious of political struggle and the
plight of the oppressed. He has stated explicitly
that he does not support socialism: "Because the
legal system I studied, from constitutional law to
civil law, was all based on a relativistic
philosophical basis, I never felt that socialism
could present a viable alternative."
Many
educated Koreans were highly critical of Roh from
the beginning because of his lack of an elite
background. He had never been to the United States
before inauguration, whereas many high officials
had studied there. Roh overcame some of those
disadvantages through remarkable conviction and
tenacity. He appeals to a constituency that views
high government officials as the servants of
reactionary social forces, charged with
restricting access to benefits for ordinary
citizens. Roh offers a vision of a progressive and
modern Korea in which the rule of law would be
fundamental and meritocracy would thrive. His
conception of a "people's victory" and of an
economic boom as part of economic and
technological integration with the rest of
Northeast Asia express the hope that Korea could
become a leader and determine its own future.
Participatory democracy is taken seriously
under Roh: both in the sense of the relationship
between citizens and the state and the
relationship between low-ranking civil servants
and the administration. Yet Roh's promise to
reduce alienation and inequality within society
and address the concentration of wealth has proved
more elusive. To a degree, the disappointment felt
by some Koreans with the Roh administration stems
from the remarkable ambition of his goals. Thus
far, his numerous proposals for improving the lot
of the working poor and investing in rural areas
have been effectively blocked.
Roh strives
to maintain a balance between, on the one hand,
the social and cultural needs of average citizens
and, on the other, the demands of businesses
competing in a globalized economy, a balance
between the concentration of wealth and education
in the capital of Seoul and the concrete needs for
development of farming and fishing villages like
the one where Roh grew up. In short, Roh's
commitment to a "diffusion of power" was bound to
create opposition. He worked to decentralize
government, in part by continuing the plan to
transfer many agencies to Daejeon and a general
shift of authority away from the capital. These
policies clashed with a 400-year history of
concentration of government, business,
intellectual capital and culture in Seoul.
His vision of "balanced development"
assumes that government can play an expanded role
in education, culture, welfare, the environment,
and the elimination of discrimination. Roh has
committed himself to undoing a legacy of
distortion and unfairness and increasing
competitive skills through education, increasing
opportunities for women in the workplace and
constructing a safety net for citizens through
enhanced social services and reduction of social
inequality.
A striking television
advertisement from Roh's campaign features his
wife Kwon Yang-suk visiting the mentally ill. She
enters a grimy building and shakes hands with the
residents wearing pajamas. The ad struck a chord
among progressive voters, drawing attention to
Roh's commitment to the less fortunate. The use of
captions for the hearing impaired in television
broadcasts has exploded during Roh's term. The
handicapped appear regularly on national news, and
the emphasis on labor in the media is also
unprecedented in Korea.
There is deep
disappointment on the part of some who had the
highest expectations for a thorough transformation
of Korean society after Roh's election. The
involvement of some of those around Roh in
corruption related to Korea Railroad's investment
in an oil project on Russia's Sakhalin Island led
some to wonder whether the money politics of
earlier regimes had changed at all. The
neo-liberal premises of the February 2004 free
trade agreement with Chile disappointed many of
the farmers and labor activists who had worked so
hard for Roh. Similar discussions concerning FTA
agreements with Japan and the United States clash
with the hopes of Roh supporters who would prefer
to see the administration focus on social issues.
In addition, Roh's vision of South Korea as a
business hub for Northeast Asia has resulted in
efforts to eliminate barriers to foreign
investment in Korea in the face of protests by
farmers, small business owners and activists who
were his supporters. Korea’s role as a balancer in
a world dominated by global capital has trumped
the role of the government as a defender of the
individual citizen. Like former US president
Clinton and current Japanese Prime Minister
Koizumi before him, Roh is increasingly drawn
under the influence of international markets.
He has been plagued by the difficulty of
winning support from the establishment in general
and the bureaucracy in particular. This situation
is, in part, a product of his aggressiveness in
tackling such sensitive topics as collaboration
under Japanese occupation and the nature of
authoritarian rule under the Park Chung Hee and
Chun Doo-hwan regimes. For example, on April 3,
1948, South Korean forces massacred more than
20,000 residents of Jeju Island in response to an
uprising by communist insurgents. No official
acknowledgement of the massacre was made for
decades. On October 31, 2003, Roh visited Jeju and
announced: "As the head of state, I sincerely
apologize for the wrongdoings of the past state
authority." It was an official statement by an
incumbent. This was just the beginning of Roh's
campaign for truth.
The search for truth
extended to the bitterly contested and deeply
painful colonial period. Collaboration, as in any
colonial society, ran deep, especially among the
elite. Hence the tremendous controversy evoked by
the commission established with the support of Roh
for investigation of collaborators during the
colonial period. This Collaboration Truth
Commission, made up of lawyers and academics
appointed by Roh, plans to begin investigations
soon. While holding out the promise of a
resolution to long-standing resentments within
Korean society, the commission stirs fears that
such investigations will be abused for political
purposes.
Nor is the search for truth
limited to the colonial period. Recent revelations
concerning the possible involvement of President
Park Chung Hee in the assassination of Kim
Hyung-wook, former director of the KCIA in 1977,
and the incessant investigations of corruption in
government and business are emblematic of a new
political culture and help to explain the
hostility Roh provokes among many sectors of the
elite. Equally important, Roh's moves towards
rapprochement with North Korea, including
high-level military talks and offers of economic
assistance, his agenda to expand social services,
and his independence from the Bush administration
on a range of issues including the question of
North Korea and the nature of US troop deployments
in South Korea, all provoked his opponents to
attack.
The hostility between Roh
supporters and the older establishment came to a
head in the impeachment proceedings brought
against him by the opposition party and members of
his own party in 2004. The political and economic
establishment united against him, bringing charges
that he had violated the constitutional obligation
of "political neutrality" by openly appealing to
the nation to support the Uri Party during a
televised news interview. His maverick proposal to
hold a national referendum as a confidence vote to
decide whether he should stay in office was
similarly branded unconstitutional. Finally
corruption cases involving his close aides and
claims of administrative incompetence were raised.
While these issues were debated, Roh's supporters
held massive candlelight vigils for him in the
streets of Seoul. The Constitutional Court struck
down the impeachment, declaring that charges of
incompetence and mismanagement were irrelevant and
Roh's call for support for the Uri Party not grave
enough to warrant impeachment.
The
impeachment proceedings backfired when many
Koreans, offended by the attempt to use extreme
constitutional means to unseat a properly elected
president, poured out to vote. The previously
obscure Uri Party won control of the National
Assembly for the first time in the April 15, 2004
elections. The generational split in this election
was clearer than it had been in previous election.
On one side were young voters in their 20s and 30s
who imagined a new and open Korean society without
the lingering the ghosts of the past. On the other
were the survivors of the Korean War who looked at
Roh's policies as nothing less than class warfare
against the establishment that had built
contemporary Korea.
Roh's vision of a
dynamic Korea
Roh has promoted Korea as a
business hub for Northeast Asia, a role that
should be understood in light of his vision of a
future for the region similar to the economic and
systemic integration of the European Union. He has
walked a fine line between the recognition of
Korea's increasing economic, financial and
technological integration with China - South
Korea's trade with China exceeded trade with the
United States in 2003 and educational and cultural
ties have similarly flourished - and a desire to
maintain good political and business ties with the
United States and the rest of the world.
Repeatedly, South Korean non-government
organizations (NGOs), universities, and government
agencies have taken the lead in discussing
cooperation in Northeast Asia. Roh has moved away
from his own wariness about the influence of
foreign capital in Korea, in part because he has
come to recognize how such business serves to
promote his vision of Asian integration.
He delivered his most striking
articulation of Korea's future role in a speech on
March 22 that announced "Korea will play the role
of a balancer, not only on the Korean peninsula,
but throughout Northeast Asia." The positive
potential of this new vision of Korea working to
resolve the conflicts between China, Japan, Russia
and other nations while maintaining a military
alliance with the United States was quickly
drowned out by negative responses in the United
States and Japan. The fear was that Korea was
distancing itself from the American security
umbrella in the Pacific and moving closer to
China. Also, uncertainty was created by the
possibility that Korea intended to play a
competing role as a regional leader. The last
Korean to articulate a vision of Korea as a
balancer in East Asia was Sin Sukju in the 15th
century. In the centuries since, Korea found
itself subject to the impositions of the great
powers, notably China, Japan, and the United
States, at times with tragic consequences.
Yet overall the vision of South Korea as
"balancer" and the aspiration for a more assertive
Korean role in international affairs appeal across
party lines. Many recognize the validity of a
bridge-building role for Korea at a time when
economic integration with China and Japan present
great challenges. Globalization has now decisively
brought to an end Korea's proverbial status as the
"hermit kingdom" of Asia. As one among many signs
of the changes underway, the Korea Tourism
Association now offers a service through which any
foreigner can call a toll-free number and be
immediately connected with an interpreter who will
supply free of charge simultaneous translation
from Korean into Japanese, French, Italian,
German, Arabic, Turkish, Thai, Chinese, Spanish,
Russian, Portuguese, Polish, Swedish, Vietnamese
and English. This service is not merely a matter
of catching up with the advanced nations: the
variety of languages available shows a global
perspective not found in comparable services
available in other countries.
This effort
at international cosmopolitanism must be
contrasted with the intense emotional response to
the tangled web of history and territory that
infects South Korea’s relationship with China and
Japan. China recently published history textbooks
that claim the Goguryo Dynasty (37 BC-668 AD) was
in fact a "Chinese" empire. As the territory of
Goguryo included all of North Korea, in addition
to all of Manchuria, this passage in the proposed
history books set off a storm of protests. Similar
protests were launched when Japan claimed the
rocky islets between the two countries known as
Dokdo (Takeshima in Japanese) as Japanese
territory. Those islets have been controlled by
Korea since the end of World War II. Yet anger at
the violation of Korea’s historical legacy
displayed in the protests over the territorial and
historical disputes has not prevented Koreans from
organizing, along with Chinese and Japanese,
numerous conferences on the shared history of East
Asia, nor have they inhibited continued economic
and financial inter-penetration among these
nations.
Improved relations with North
Korea
The lynchpin of Roh's vision of
Korea's future role in Northeast Asia is North
Korea. Integration and normalization with North
Korea and resolution of the crisis caused by North
Korea's development of nuclear weapons capability
are the foundations for a more assertive and
constructive role for Korea throughout Asia, and
the easing of an explosive situation that divides
Northeast Asia. Although South Korean military
spending has increased and Roh has made pointed
criticisms of North Korea on occasion, he has been
unflagging in his devotion to peaceful resolution
of the conflict. The Roh administration has
increased support for the economic development
zone in Gaeseong. The hosting of a fashion show
with a top South Korean model there to promote
investment in North Korea in June is illustrative
of the change in North-South relations. KT Corp,
the largest telecommunications firm in South
Korea, similarly started fixed-line telephone
service linking the Gaeseong industrial complex
with North Korea in May and is expanding them to
other regions.
Such efforts to assert a
South Korean plan have bogged down repeatedly
under virulent attacks from the American right.
Much of the effort expended on the part of the Roh
administration has consisted of putting out fires
rather than promoting the Korean vision. Finding a
nuanced analysis of Roh's domestic and
international policies in the American press is a
challenge. Typical of the assaults is the article
by Daniel Kennelly published in The American
Enterprise Magazine entitled "Time for an Amicable
Divorce with South Korea". Kennelly writes, "The
current government in Seoul is the most
anti-American in the short history of the Republic
of Korea. It is a left-wing administration that
has fanned public sentiment against US troops."
Roh's administration has been consistently
portrayed as an unreliable ally that undermines
American security concerns. The commitment of
South Korea to the invasion of Iraq, made in the
face of popular opinion, has received minimal
recognition from the Bush administration.
His administration has conducted talks
with North Korea concerning fishing rights,
communication liberalization and the opening up of
roads and railroad tracks, while also organizing
occasional gatherings of students and citizens
from the North and South. The number of families
reunited - if only for brief meetings - now
numbers in the thousands. Images of North Korea
and interviews with North Koreans are now common
on South Korean television where they had been
banned just a few years ago.
While showing
strong commitment to the six-party (United States,
Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and North Korea)
talks aimed at arriving at a diplomatic solution
to the problem posed by the North's nuclear
weapons program, the Roh administration has
neither designated North Korea as an immediate
threat nor hinted at "other options" should North
Korea fail to return to the negotiating table.
Roh's basic assumption is that creating an
environment of trust is critical in the long run.
He has repeatedly presented the North Korea
nuclear problem as a matter of resolving
differences between the United States and North
Korea in ways that both would ultimately favor.
Roh has never suggested that North Korea
is either an implacable adversary or a nation on
the edge of total collapse. Rather he sees
reunification as a goal that can only be achieved
through progress toward a unified Asian community
akin to that of Europe. Finally, he follows Kim
Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy", assuming that
economic sanctions will not lead North Korea to
halt the development of nuclear weapons. All of
these approaches, embraced by many South Koreans,
have met with great skepticism, even hostility,
from the Bush administration.
Roh
grapples with Japan
Like Kim Dae-jung, Roh
entered office with the intention of improving
relations with Japan as part of an overarching
strategic vision of Korea at the center of an
economically and culturally integrated Northeast
Asia. In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of
the normalization of diplomatic relations between
South Korea and Japan, both governments declared
the year 2005 as Korea-Japan Friendship Year. The
cultures of both countries are mutually accessible
today, as never before. Korean soap operas and pop
singers find an enthusiastic reception in Japan,
while Japanese anime, manga, video games and
novels enjoy a wide audience in Korea. With major
investments in each other's economies growing,
negotiations on a free trade agreement have been
taken up in earnest.
The popular Korean
journal Sin dong-a featured an article in the
February edition by a Japanese reporter describing
the unprecedented interest in Korea on the part of
Japanese and the profound implications of the
Korean cultural boom in Japan.
Imagine
everyone's surprise when, on February 23 - just
two months into the Korea-Japan Friendship Year -
Tokyo's ambassador to the Republic of Korea,
Takano Toshiyuki, described the Korean islets
known as Dokdo in the following manner at a news
conference: "Takeshima (the Japanese name for the
islets) is historically and legally Japanese
territory." Coming at such an inopportune moment
and followed by the dispatch of a Japanese patrol
boat and helicopter to the waters near Dokdo,
Koreans viewed these actions as a serious
provocation by a nation with a long history of
military expansion directed at Korea. Combined
with efforts, which received international
attention at the time, to remove all references to
Japanese crimes during World War II from
elementary school textbooks, these acts were
perceived as pure aggression by most Koreans. As
Roh wrote in a letter he posted on the Cheong Wa
Dae website: "Such an action is no less than an
attempt to legitimize past Japanese aggression and
deny Korean independence since the Second World
War."
The emotional response within Korea
included individuals cutting off their fingers and
setting themselves afire in protest at massive
rallies held in front of the Japanese embassy in
Seoul. Roh responded with a "Message to the People
Concerning Korea-Japan Relations" on March 23 that
laid out a stern response to the Japanese act. He
announced the launching of a "diplomatic war" and
criticized the failure of previous Korean
administrations to respond forcefully to Japan. He
promised a firm diplomatic response. But Roh also
exhorted his countrymen to avoid hostility towards
the Japanese as a people.
Foreign minister
Ban Ki-moon announced Seoul's opposition to
Japan's bid for permanent membership in the United
Nations Security Council. Yet at the same time
that Roh launched this firm diplomatic response,
he refused to postpone the scheduled summit
meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi
Junichiro or to break off the extensive economic
and social ties binding the two countries
together. Further, he chose to criticize Japan
indirectly by visiting Germany and praising its
efforts to promote European integration. There was
no mistaking the meaning of his unconditional
support for German membership in the Security
Council.
Conclusion
The speed
with which Roh has implemented reforms and
innovations has been both exhilarating and
destabilizing. Many who oppose Roh and support the
conservative opposition, do so in the hope that
Korea once again will become predictable and
comprehensible. Yet the changes taking place in
Korea are not entirely of Roh's making. He is
trying, at times desperately, to do what the
protagonist of Chaucer's Knight's Tale did:
"Make virtue of necessity." Globalization is the
hidden hand that drives social and economic
change. Roh tries to give that transformation a
spin of altruism. There is also an immense gap
between the thoughtful words that Roh types at his
computer late at night and what they come to mean
when unleashed on the world. The ultimate
competition for meaning is not entirely in Roh's
hands, after all. For example, "balancer" is the
English translation of the Korean term
gyunhyeongja presented by the South Korean
government. Yet "balancer" in English has
connotations that are the very opposite of Roh's
intention. In the geopolitical terms employed by
American academics, "balancer" refers to the
attempt of lesser powers to form alliances to
counterbalance American global influence.
Cooperation between China, India and Russia, for
example, is interpreted as an attempt at
"balancing". Roh meant the term to refer to the
Confucian task of mediation and resolution of
conflict. Because Korea has such deep commitments
to the United States, China and Japan, he
reasoned, it can serve as an ombudsman of sorts.
This possible meaning was completely lost on
Americans who saw the term as implying increased
distance.
Roh continues to face resistance
from every side. While maintaining troops in Iraq
in the face of bitter opposition from his core
supporters, he has also opened new dialogs with
North Korea in the face of adamant conservative
criticism, and he declared at the World Newspaper
Congress in Seoul that "certain newspapers with a
special interest or a certain ideology should not
dominate the press market" at a time when media
criticism seriously threatened his political
future. His conception of balance consists of an
unending battle against the conflicting forces
that try to claim center stage in Korean society.
The role of balancer is ultimately that of a
warrior.
Emanuel Pastreich is a
visiting scholar at the Center for East Asian
Studies, University of Pennsylvania and a Japan
Focus associate. He wrote this article for Japan
Focus.
(Republished with permission
from Japan Focus) |
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