Roh Moo-hyun and the elections in Korea: a narrative

I.

On 19 December there will be presidential elections in South Korea. The president is elected by simple majority and serves one five-year term only. Since he totally controls the executive branch of government, it is the single most important position in South Korea’s political system.

The two main contenders are Roh Moo-hyun of the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), the party of Nobel Laureate and President Kim Dae-jung, and Lee Hoi-chang of the Grand National Party (GNP) which, although it holds the parliamentary majority, is still considered the opposition, since the President appoints both Prime Minister and cabinet. All polls indicate a contest that is still too close to call.

Drawing a picture of the past in the present – an old man paints in the grounds of Gyeongbokgung Palace.All photographs by Michael Rebehn

Sounds simple? It is anything but.

Two aspects of this election deserve particular attention. One is local: Thanks to Roh Moo-hyun, in many ways a most unlikely candidate, South Korea is becoming more open and more democratic. The other dimension may one day touch the lives of those who don’t know Korea’s location on a world map: escalating hostilities. The recent US standoff with North Korea regarding nuclear arms and weapons shipments raises fears that a major conflict in north-east Asia might be on the horizon. On how to deal with the North and with Washington, the two candidates hold sharply differing views….

II.There are, of course, clear ideological differences between the two major parties in Korea. The Grand National Party lives up to its name, while the Millennium Democratic Party is much more liberal in general. The MDP, founded by President Kim Dae-jung, wants to continue its “sunshine-policy” towards North Korea, including economic support for North Korea while the two states, technically still at war with each other, try to reach agreement through dialogue. The GNP’s stance is much more cautious and in line with traditional containment policies. Since the 1997 crisis, the government has tried to force the big conglomerates, the chaebol, to concentrate on their core business, attempting to lessen the chaebol’s enormous influence on politics and society in general. The opposition is seen as much more sympathetic to the wishes of business circles.

The past catches up- bell tower of Chogyesa temple in Seoul

But a wise man once said that all politics are local. He may well have been Korean. For the main difference between the two parties is a geographic one. The GNP hails from the Kyeongsang-Provinces in the south-east, while the home base of the MDP is in the Cholla-Provinces in the south-west of the country.

In the last elections for parliament the GNP took all but one seat in Kyeongsang, and the MDP took all the seats in Cholla. Since the Kyeongsang-provinces include Korea’s second and third largest cities Busan (3.5m) and Deagu (2.5m), this regional alignment adds up to 30 seats to the advantage of the GNP in a 273-seat parliament. So elections in South Korea are usually decided in Seoul (11m) and the surrounding Kyonggi-Province, where the voters tend to vote on personality and issues, rather than regional loyalties.

What makes this election so intriguing is the fact that this race seems to break with the old regional alignments. The personalities and ideologies of the two main candidates offer a real choice, thanks largely to Roh Moo-hyun.

III.

Roh Moo-hyun

Had you stopped people in the street in December 2001 to ask who Roh Moo-hyun was, you would have been greeted with a blank stare and a surprised “Roh who?”. In the old world of South Korean politics, where all-powerful party bosses controlled the selection of candidates, Roh was not a force to be reckoned with: sometime legislator, former junior minister in an unimportant department, a staunch supporter of President Kim, but born in the wrong place. Roh Moo-hyun, a member of the MDP, was born and raised in Busan!

Reflections on the cave’s wall – a mirrored department store in Seoul

Roh’s life-story is actually quite inspiring in a rags-to-riches way. Born into a very poor family, he never got to university, but still passed the bar exam to work as a human rights lawyer during the period of military rule. Then he became involved in the democracy movement. When South Korea returned to civilian rule in 1987 he followed his mentor, Kim Young-sam, who led the democracy movement in Busan, into parliament.

After seven years of struggle against dictatorship, the presidential elections of 1987 brought a return to democracy and a democratically elected president. Unfortunately, regional suspicion and mistrust between Kyeongsang and Cholla led to a standoff between Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, who could not agree on a single candidate. In the end General Chun Doo-hwan’s hand-picked successor, General Roh Tae-woo, won the election with not much more than a third of the vote.

Later, Kim Young-sam merged his party with the party of General Roh Tae-woo to found the modern GNP, winning the presidency in the election of 1992. Almost all of his followers joined the newly created party - an uneasy alliance of old guard politicians backed by the military and younger democratic politicians who had only recently stopped fighting them. Since all of the military rulers came from the Kyeongsang-Provinces, regional loyalties proved more important than ideological differences.

Amongst the few MPs who refused to forgive and forget was Roh Moo-hyun. Breaking away from his old mentor, he joined the party of Kim Dae-jung. This made him quite an oddity - a Kyeongsang-man in a Cholla-party. And it cost him his seat at the next parliamentary election. Not that there is anything uncommon about switching parties in South Korean politics: 25% of all MPs did it between 1996 and 2000, and this session promises to break all previous records. But switching out of integrity, not to further one’s career or keep one’s seat, and with the almost certain prospect of losing one’s seat - that was and is quite remarkable.

IV.

Future prospects for the MDP didn’t look too bright at the beginning of this year. A string of corruption scandals had tainted the Kim presidency, while the GNP enjoyed solid leads in opinion polls and runaway victories in by-elections. In this situation, President Kim, who narrowly escaped both assassination and execution under military rule, and who has survived many a political crisis, running unsuccessfully in four elections before finally becoming president, came up with a new idea: primaries.

There have never been American-style primaries in South Korea; the whole idea sounded absurd in a system where the parties were tightly controlled by one person and personal loyalty was the trait most cherished in a young and aspiring politician.

But in the spring of 2002, South Korea enjoyed a new spectacle: the birth of democracy out of sheer desperation. To the grand surprise of the Grand National Party and most pundits, the primaries were a roaring success. For weeks, candidates toured the provinces, held speeches, gave interviews on TV and in general attracted all the attention that had been focused on the struggling economy, housing speculation or corruption. As President Kim, the embodiment of old-style politics, had quite correctly assessed, the public hungered for open debate, for choice, for a new beginning.

Surprisingly, those party members and citizens who were called upon to choose a candidate chose a dark horse. They chose the candidate that no one expected to succeed, the Busan-man in a Cholla-party, Roh Moo-hyun.

The money is on the dark horse – race on Jeju island

Roh took public opinion by storm. After a few weeks he was leading Lee Hoi-chang of the GNP, who had been a supreme court judge under the same military rulers that Roh fought against as a lawyer, by as much as 20%.

Then came the summer of discontent for President Kim. V.

With Roh leading the polls, the GNP was frantically searching for a handle to pull him down. They held their own primaries, resulting in an 85% victory for Lee Hoi-chang, which drew little interest. The best that their muck-raking could come up with was that his father-in-law was briefly imprisoned for alleged communist sympathies, forty years ago. Roh proved to be unusually squeaky clean: no luck there. Since Lee’s sons somehow avoided the mandatory military service because they were allegedly underweight, and the ownership of Lee’s luxury residence was murky, Roh looked the better man…

Then the president’s sons got arrested.

In 1997, President Kim Young-sam’s term had ended in obloquy when his son was arrested for corruption. President Kim Dae-jung has three sons, two of which were now arrested in the early summer of 2002 on corruption charges. The third could claim immunity as a member of parliament. This is a society where contacts between business and politics are very close, and invitations and gifts are part of the culture. The line separating innocent from criminal activity is a little less clear than in older democracies with more established rules. But the president’s sons went way too far. And paid the price.

It was the MDP and Roh who paid the highest price for the Kim family’s avarice. Roh’s close relationship with the president brought his popularity ratings down. As soon as his lead in the polls disappeared, erstwhile opponents he had defeated in the primaries demanded that Roh should step down. When he refused, some MPs jumped ship to join the GDP or another small opposition party, the United Liberal Democrats (ULD), the most conservative party in parliament.

Roh stood firm: but the defections mounted and his candidacy seemed doomed. Then along came the soccer World Cup.

VI.

Korean football after the world cup - Samsung Suwon beats Pohang Steelers 2:1 at home

South Korea took great pride in the fact that they were co-hosts of the football world cup. Baseball is still the most popular sport in Korea, but six consecutive trips to the World Cup are proof of the Red Devils’ status as the number one team in Asia.

The chairman of the Korean Football Association, Chung Mong-joon, is one of the sons of the founder of the Hyundai Group, which controls between 15% and 25% of everything in the country. Hailed for bringing the World Cup to South Korea, his popularity rose with every surprising victory of a team that made it to the semi-finals.

Amidst the ugly revelations about corruption in high places, these victories gave the nation reason to cheer. With national pride propelling Chung’s popularity to dizzying heights, as autumn approached, Chung declared his candidacy for the presidency.

Chung is not a newcomer to politics. His seat in Ulsan, a city that his company practically owns, is the only seat from the Kyongsang-provinces not held by the GNP. Often criticised by civic organisations for his prolonged business absences from parliament, his family background nevertheless makes him a very influential politician indeed. As soon as he declared his intention to run, MPs of both big parties bolted to his new formation, National Alliance 21. Out of the blue, there were three candidates.

VII.

Initially, Chung soared to the top of the opinion polls. But as time and more TV-debates passed by, his vague and often uninformed answers began to hurt his candidacy. (When attacked for his business background, he would point to Julius Caesar as another successful businessman who later became a successful politician).

Taming the Dragon - Guardian of the Gate at Bulguksa temple, Gyeongju

By mid November, while his ratings never exceeded 42%, Lee Hoi-chang was comfortably ahead of the two other candidates. The situation seemed a replay of 1987 or 1997, when two candidates cancelled each other out, handing victory to a third who did not have an overall majority. Much to their credit, Chung and Roh both decided not to repeat history, and to field only one candidate.

Since Roh is one of the strongest critics of the big conglomerates ever to run for South Korean president while Chung is one of the heirs to its largest business, there were great differences in thought. Chung’s political views are habitually much closer to those of Lee than to those of Roh. But again, desperation has paved the way for democratic compromise.

Both agreed that a television debate and subsequent polling should decide whose chances were better to defeat the GNP. To everyone’s surprise, and despite being certified dead many times since the summer, Roh, the more experienced politician and better speaker, prevailed.

Recent polls show Roh leading Lee by a razor-thin margin. From now until 19December, there are no more published polls. This will make the home strait every bit as exciting as the race has been so far.

VIII.

One incident that might shape the outcome of the election sounded trivial enough when it was first reported. A US vehicle on a training exercise ran over and killed two Korean schoolgirls on a country road. Tragic accident? Maybe, but thanks to the American military justice system we will never know. Even though there were some contradictory eyewitness accounts and material evidence that the vehicle might have gone backwards and rolled over the bodies twice, the US army, which currently has 37,000 personnel on the peninsula, refused to cooperate with the Korean authorities. They insisted on their right to try their own, clearing the two accused soldiers within days: Not guilty, no more questions, no comment.

US telling South Korea how it is… Soldiers at Panmunjeom in the Demilitarized Zone

This behaviour has brought anti-American feelings to an all time high. Catholic priests are on hunger strike to protest the verdict, the Buddhist clergy protested in unison, university students stage daily demonstrations and even the usually US-friendly government of President Kim now demands changes to the Status of Forces agreement (SOFA).

Last weekend, a few hundred thousand people gathered in fifty cities across the nation, to hold candle-light vigils. These protests have, in spite of a six-month late and very casual apology from President Bush, increased in numbers in recent days. The most interesting fact about these demonstrations is that participation is not confined to the usual suspects, i.e. radical student organisations who take every opportunity to protest the presence of US soldiers in Korea. Now, there are housewives, university professors, bank clerks and schoolchildren to be seen at the vigils. Opposition to American conduct or even the American presence is clearly moving from the fringes of society to the very centre.

IX.

Nothing is more hateful to Koreans as a people than subjection to colonial status. The Japanese Occupation from 1910 until 1945 was the single most important event in Korea’s history. Korean culture is at least a few thousand years old and – as a bridge between China and Japan - has from time to time introduced new technologies and art forms to the island across the sea. Consequently, the numerous atrocities committed against the Korean people are still very much alive in their hearts and minds today.

While the American army played an acknowledged part in defeating Hitler, and turning the tide of the Korean war of 1950-53, unfortunately, the reputation of US forces stationed overseas is poor. Murder and rape receive unusually lenient sentencing; there is the issue of polluting the environment; illegal construction work on military bases; the refusal to relocate bases from land that is vital for urban development in the centre of Seoul; the forced purchase of old, unwanted American F-15s. Even unpaid parking tickets reinforce the notion prevalent amongst many younger South Koreans, that the American army is indeed an occupation army, regarding South Korea as its colony.

It is a suspicion that has been greatly reinforced by the current Washington administration. Without consultation, George W. Bush decided to include North Korea in his Axis of Evil speech, in the process effectively derailing many of President Kim’s considerable efforts to engage the North in dialogue and reach some sort of peaceful agreement. Fears that once they have done with Iraq, the US might unilaterally attack North Korea and destroy much of the peninsula in the process, have led some South Koreans to embrace the idea of nuclear weapons in the North. They reckon that America will indeed only attack weak countries with no means of self-defence, and that a nuclear bomb threatening 37,000 Americans might actually preserve the peace.

The brother on the other side – North Korean soldier at Panmunjeom in the Demilitarized Zone

For now this is only the position of a small minority. But it is indicative of the way that distrust in the US administration is becoming an important factor in South Korean politics – a factor that favours Roh, who is much more critical towards Washington than Lee. Most South Koreans would like a chance to decide the future of their country themselves, and the way in which Bush is steering towards war against Iraq, with or without the evidence, is not reassuring.

In this election, generational differences seem finally to have replaced the usual regional differences as the most important factor. Older Koreans tend to remember the Korean war and the US role in it. They are therefore less inclined to take a stand against Washington. Younger Koreans, on the other hand, want Korea and the US to be on an equal footing, and react strongly against any kind of colonial behaviour. Opinion polls show that Lee is the most popular candidate with those over 50, while Roh holds a big lead amongst South Koreans under 30.

The fact that this election may be decided by issues like the sunshine-policy and the country’s relationship with America, rather than domestic or even regional issues, shows that South Korea is entering a transition period in which the country will have to reassess its international position. A new generation is beginning to make its presence felt.

X.

In recent days in particular, Korean-American relations have emerged as a factor that may swing the election. With the mounting protests, Lee, who is still trailing, began to demand even more radical changes to the SOFA. This sharp reversal of his former position failed to improve his standing, since polls suggest most people dismissed it as insincere. A meeting between Lee and the US ambassador, staged to show the former’s influence, only reinforced the impression among many younger South Koreans that Lee is Washington’s favourite, a turn-off which the use of hip-hop music in TV-ads for the 67-year-old did nothing to dispel.

But the renewed focus on North Korea has allowed Lee to get back into character. The recent discovery of missiles being shipped from North Korea to Yemen, as well as Pyongyang’s threat to reopen nuclear reactors that were sealed under the 1994 accord with the US, are now being used as a rallying point for conservatives: a scare tactic for undecided voters.

Why now? When the Spanish navy – in a clear violation of international law - stopped and searched a North Korean vessel to find Scud-missiles bound for Yemen, many Koreans asked this question. Selling missiles with conventional warheads to a country not under UN embargo is legal. It is no news that North Korea raises much-needed cash this way. Could this be American meddling - one week before the elections in Korea? The fact that many people believe such rumours shows how the reputation of the US has slipped.

The South Korean perspective on the nuclear reactors is again quite different from the American one. The Bush administration had – as usual – not listened when Seoul strongly advised Washington not to cut oil shipments to the North, which would give Pyongyang a credible excuse for reactivating them. These heightened tensions are nonetheless unsettling for a society still hoping to achieve some kind of peaceful settlement with their brethren in the North.

Ironically, while Washington is doing everything in its power to get a candidate elected that is critical towards the US, Pyongyang is doing everything in its power to help a candidate that is critical towards North Korea… Meanwhile, if the election results confirm Roh’s popularity, President Kim and his sunshine-policy will have succeeded not only in their dealings with the North, but also in their attempt to change Korean society.

XI.

So Korea will elect a new president on 19 December. But instead of the normal electoral challenge to the MDP candidate to make up in Seoul for what he will automatically lose in the South, the city of Busan and the surrounding South Kyeongsang province have become an electoral battleground. For the first time in decades it is not possible to predict which candidate will win which province. Thanks to Roh, Korean politics seems about to enter a new era.

Primaries and open hearings are two major steps towards a new openness and accountability in South Korean politics. Two favoured candidates for Prime Minister bit the dust this summer when their dirty financial linen was washed all over the TV screens of a disgusted nation. Meanwhile, a Kyeongsan-man on a Cholla ticket has done more to break the stranglehold of regional favouritism on politics than all the empty rhetoric of preceding decades. This time there will be no favourite-son factor.

As for the decision South Korean voters will have to make on 19 December - their choice is clear cut: open debate or old regional politics, continuing economic reforms or a return to the pre-1997 status quo, dialogue with the North or a return to a more cautious and hostile stance in close cooperation with the Bush administration. The first two will determine the direction of South Korean society: the last may lead to war.

A balancing act – Rope dancer at Korean Folk Village near Suwon

In a final irony, it is quite possible that George W. Bush will help to elect a third government highly critical of US policy, as he has already done in Germany and Brazil. There might be some good in the current US administration after all, insofar as it helps South Korean politics overcome its traditional alignments, forcing its candidates to raise their heads above the parapet. It seems that the most unilateral, imperialistic and in many ways undemocratic US government in decades paradoxically helps to promote democracy and openness, in far-off places.