Page 2 of
5 PART 10: The changing South Korean
position By Henry C K Liu
the US, his desire to keep open
lines of communication with Pyongyang does not
mean he condones the North's nuclear strategy as
it is perceived by the US.
"Regardless of
what defensive strategy North Korea embraces, the
series of nuclear measures taken by it is not
desirable for peace and stability in Northeast
Asia, including the Korean Peninsula," Roh said.
"It will not promote stability and prosperity for
North Korea. North Korea must withdraw its recent nuclear
measures and restore the
relevant facilities and equipment to their
original state."
Left unspoken publicly is
a private call for the US to avoid pushing North
Korea down a path of no return.
Despite
popular support for his conciliatory North Korea
policy, Roh was dealt a sharp political setback
last May 31 in local elections on account of
domestic and economic issues. In both the mayoral
and local-council elections, Roh's Uri Party
received only 30% of the votes cast, winning none
of the mayoral seats except one in North Jolla
province. The ruling Uri Party lost every other
race - six parliamentary, seven mayoral and
gubernatorial, and 31 local legislative, including
in Roh's home town - and failed to regain its
majority in the National Assembly. Uri Party
chairman Chung Dong-young resigned over the dismal
election results, and although he was immediately
replaced by Health and Welfare Minister Kim
Geun-tae, there was serious danger that the ruling
party itself could break up to leave Roh without
political support in his final, lame-duck year of
office.
Uri
Party members were shaken by the sudden
resignation of party chairman Chung, a potential
presidential candidate. In his resignation speech,
Chung said: "[We] must accept the people's
punishment of our party in a prudent and humble
manner ... we have failed to win public approval
of our policies." The party received another shock
as former prime minister Goh Geon, a highly
popular public figure, announced he was recruiting
pragmatic reformers to create a new bipartisan
group, intended to be the driving force behind
Goh's planned bid for this year's presidential
election. Ironically, just before the May 31
elections, Uri Party elders had attempted to bring
Goh into the party, but a sizable number of party
members rushed to join Goh's new group.
A history of disunity The Uri Party
was largely the creation of a factional row inside
the MDP when Roh, after his surprise election
victory in 2002 as a liberal, refused to
accommodate the conservative wing and resigned
from the MDP on September 29, 2003. Roh's
supporters in the MDP formed the Uri Party, later
officially recognized by the president as the new
ruling party. The remnant MDP factions then joined
forces with the opposition conservative Grand
National Party (GNP) in a controversial move to
impeach the liberal president in March 2004 on
trumped-up charges of campaign illegality,
corruption and incompetence in dealing with
economic affairs.
The most serious charge
was the alleged violation of the constitutional
requirement of "political neutrality" on the part
of public servants, including the head of state,
committed by Roh when he openly appealed to the
nation to support the Uri Party during a televised
news conference with reporters on February 24,
2004. The impeachment was passed by the National
Assembly on March 12 but overturned by the
Constitutional Court on May 14, 2004.
Despite early successes in the polls, the
Uri Party in its short history has been plagued by
disunity within its own ranks, going through 14
party chairmen in the past three years. The last
party chairman to resign was Chung, who was the
most charismatic and popular figure in the party
and its prime candidate for next December's
election. With the Uri Party dissolved and many of
its members flocking to Goh's new group, the
lame-duck president is left with very little
support in the National Assembly.
In South
Korean politics, presidents traditionally serve
out their final year in office without introducing
new policy initiatives. Former presidents Kim
Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam both made very few
policy changes in their final year. Reformers
argue that a lame-duck administration in power for
a whole year could negatively impact the economy
and national interest in a time of rapid changes
in the region and around the world.
Two
mainstream faction leaders of the governing Uri
Party last December 27 voiced their support for
moves to dissolve the party and create a new
political group to win back public confidence
ahead of the December 2007 presidential election.
In a meeting in Seoul, the party's incumbent
chairman, Kim Geun-tae, and his predecessor Chung
Dong-young agreed to join forces to create a new
party that unites all "pro-democracy reformists
and future-oriented forces".
The agreement
accelerated the breakup of the Uri Party, which
saw its approval rating hit a record low of less
than 15%, making US President George W Bush's
dismal 28% approval rating on January 22 look like
a winner. Followers of Roh opposed the move to
create a new party. The latest opinion surveys
showed Uri presidential hopefuls Kim and Chung
lagging far behind probable candidates of the main
opposition GNP, former Seoul mayor Lee Myung-bak
and former GNP chairwoman Park Geun-hye, by up to
30 percentage points.
Hostility toward the
North, artificially inflamed by US Cold War
manipulation, is a mismatch with deep-rooted
Korean nationalism, as highlighted by the May 2002
visit to North Korea by Park Geun-hye, daughter of
the late president Park Chung-hee.
The
Park Geun-hye challenge Less than two years
after her dramatic visit to North Korea, Park was
on March 23, 2004, elected chairwoman of the GNP,
the conservative opposition to the liberal Roh
government. Under her leadership, the GNP won
local elections against the Uri Party, which had
increased spending on social services for
low-income Koreans and adopted conciliatory
policies toward North Korea while moving away from
Cold War military alliances with the US and Japan.
After the controversial GNP bid to impeach
Roh, Park led the GNP in the April 15, 2004,
legislative elections to win 121 seats in the
National Assembly, against the ruling Uri Party,
which won 152 seats from a total of 299 to
maintain a slim majority. But four months later,
on August 19, the Uri Party suffered an
embarrassing setback when party chairman Shin
Ginam had to resign after revelations by a
national investigation that his father had worked
for the Japanese military police during the
Japanese occupation in the first half of the 20th
century. The GNP then
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