Asia Times: Memo to Kim Jong-pil: kindly leave the stage


	August 25, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Memo to Kim Jong-pil: kindly leave the stage
By Aidan Foster-Carter

One of the well-known weaknesses of dictatorships is political succession. Having grabbed power, the dictator is often only dislodged by death: whether natural, or induced. Modern Korean history contains a striking case of each kind of exit. In North Korea, Kim Il-sung held power for almost half a century, from 1945 up until his heart attack seven summers ago when he was 82. His son Kim Jong-il, 60 next year, shows every sign of hoping to doing the same.

But in South Korea, Park Chung-hee's hopes of going on for ever - he'd already nobbled the constitution to allow this - ended starkly in October 1979 when the head of his own CIA shot him across the dinner table. (Who can you trust, eh?)

In democracies, by contrast, not only do elections give someone else a chance, but the rules usually set a limit to how long a leader can serve. This allows for a circulation of elites and change of generations - in theory. In practice, the urge to keep going is strong. Winston Churchill was still prime minister in his 80s because no one dared tell Britain's wartime hero and savior that he was past it.

In South Korea too, old men don't seem to know when it's time to go. Syngman Rhee, the ROK's first president, also clung on into his 80s (he was 73 when he began) until a student revolution overthrew him. Here, the Confucian legacy further reinforces an elderly chap's inclinations to self-importance.

Trouble is, sometimes he's right. In 1993, having lost his third bid for the presidency, South Korea's best known opposition politician finally threw in the towel and announced his retirement. At 68 he'd had a good innings, and if the supreme prize had eluded him - well, that's life. A year later he changed his mind, to the dismay of many. Scraping home in 1997 at the fourth attempt, Kim Dae-jung showed true leadership both in handling the economic crisis and reaching out to North Korea. He knew his country needed him, and history will surely judge him right (that's he's a lame duck now is another matter).

Usually, however, such delusions of grandeur are just that: delusions. Such, I fear, must be the verdict on another elderly Kim: DJ's sometime ally, Kim Jong-pil. JP, according to the Seoul press, seriously fancies himself as a contender in next year's presidential elections (in which Kim Dae-jung cannot run again; the constitution forbids a second term, although moves are afoot to alter this). Talk of merging DJ's Millennium Democratic Party with its two small coalition partners, one of which Kim Jong-pil leads, is seen by JP's supporters as a platform to get their man into the Blue House at long last.

Well, it's a free country. But as John McEnroe would say: You cannot be serious. For one thing, Kim Jong-pil is 75. If elected, he would be 82 by the end of his term. Ah, but consider his experience. JP has been around forever, starting when it very much wasn't a free country - thanks to him. A colonel and kinsman of Park Chung-hee, Kim Jong-pil was Park's right-hand man in his 1961 putsch: Korea's first military coup since 1392, and as such deeply offensive to Confucians as well as democrats.

His first act was to found the KCIA, which for a quarter of a century terrorized South Koreans, killing and torturing at will. The KCIA thought nothing of kidnapping an opposition leader from a hotel room in Tokyo to kill him at sea, as with Kim Dae-jung in 1973 (a US plane buzzed the boat and saved him). In 1972, when Park tore up what was left of democracy - DJ had nearly won an election the year before - and imposed his Yushin constitution, Kim Jong-pil was the premier who implemented this rod of iron. The one positive thing he did, although much criticized, was to restore relations with Japan in 1965.

Park's death put his protege out in the cold, but not for long. Backed by his home area - Chungchong, south of Seoul - JP bounced back as (would you believe) a champion of democracy, supporting a shift to Cabinet rule from the strongly presidential system he had helped build. Adept as a fixer between old guard politicians and democrats, in 1987 he ran for president. Ex-general Roh Tae-woo won with 8.3 million votes. The democrats Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, neither of whom would withdraw for the other, each picked up over 6 million. Kim Jong-pil trailed a poor fourth with 1.8 million, or just 8 percent.

But JP doesn't give up. First he allied with Kim Young-sam, helping him become president in 1993. (The third Kim is another lingerer: now a loose cannon on the right, YS still loathes DJ and threatens mayhem if Kim Jong-il - as opposed to Jong-pil - ever visits Seoul.) Then, in a startling maneuver in 1997, JP joined forces with the man he once tried to kill - and delivered the Chungchong vote to Kim Dae-jung. DJ made him prime minister again (that was the deal), but wasn't having rule by Cabinet.

So in last year's assembly elections, JP's United Liberal Democrats ran separately - and got hammered, even in Chungchong - losing two-thirds of their seats. A novel factor was civic groups posting Internet blacklists of old-guard politicians whom they deemed unfit for office. Guess who was high on the list. All in all, you'd think that by now the penny would have dropped. Over 40 years, Kim Jong-pil has had a full enough political career, but Korea now needs fresh blood. Time to go, old chap. Call it a day.

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