[A-List] South Korea: the blowback continues

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

South Korea charts a perilous course
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Financial Times: December 20 2002

Roh Moo-hyun's narrow victory in South Korea's presidential elections on
Thursday may have been the result polls had predicted but it will prove a
shock nonetheless. In theory, his victory represents political continuity.
In practice it is likely to mean radical change in a volatile region.

Mr Roh breaks the mould of traditional politics in Seoul. A human rights
lawyer from a poor, farming family, he never went to university. What is
more, he has never visited the US, South Korea's principal ally and
protector. He appears proud of both these accomplishments.

If the Bush administration is worried, so it should be. Though now shifting
towards the centre, Mr Roh is clearly a populist and a nationalist. The man
who will shortly steer Asia's third largest economy mistrusts big business
and favours redistribution of wealth. Kim Dae-jung, his predecessor, rightly
reined in the overweening chaebol - conglomerates - whose debt-fuelled
empire-building precipitated 1997's near sovereign default. But, crucially,
his motive was not populist envy but market liberalism. Mr Kim wanted more
and better capitalism, not less. That is far from clear in the case of Mr
Roh.

Mr Kim also understood globalisation. During his five years in power, South
Korea received more inward investment than during its entire previous
history. It is doubtful Mr Roh will be as welcoming.

And then there is North Korea. Mr Roh professes continuity in the form of
support for Mr Kim's "sunshine" policy of engaging Pyongyang. Yet, here too,
there are vital differences. One has to do with timing. Five years ago,
being nice to Kim Jong-il, North Korea's leader, had never been tried. The
Dear Leader's response was to start a covert nuclear programme. As a result,
most people would now conclude that the sunshine policy has failed. Yet Mr
Roh seems to want more of the same, come what may. Not only that, he hints
that the present impasse is Washington's fault as much as Pyongyang's.

It can be argued that the Bush administration has been unhelpful on the
North Korea question - even though its reactions since the nuclear
revelation have been remarkably restrained. But any implication of
equivalence of responsibility between George W. Bush and Kim Jong-il is
grotesque and, if truly believed, suggests a warped world view indeed. It
also guarantees that the US-South Korea alliance, already under strain, will
become even more tense.

It is not all bad. Mr Roh's victory shows a weakening of regional
animosities that have poisoned Seoul's politics in the past. Yet it has
replaced them with a generation gap. Those under 40 voted for Mr Roh, while
the over-50s supported Lee Hoi-chang, the conservative opposition candidate,
who also lost by a whisker in 1997.

Thursday's election result is a triumph for what South Koreans call the 386
generation: in their 30s, at college in the 1980s, born in the 1960s. Their
efforts in 1987 toppled the military dictators who had ruled Seoul since
1961. Yet the ideology that drove their struggle saw liberal democracy mixed
with less wholesome elements of populism and nationalism. Many view the
entire old order - chaebol, dictators, the US alliance, even back to
Japanese colonial rule pre-1945 - as a single, noxious whole that must be
purged. All this is also blamed for splitting the nation, so North Korea
must be embraced.

Today, this sense of grudge is unhelpful, even perilous. It is to be hoped
office will distance Roh Moo-hyun further from these roots. If not, we are
in for interesting times.

The writer is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea
at Leeds University