How the Mighty Have Fallen

According to an editorial in the Hankyoreh, when South Korean President Lee Myoung-bak visited the US last month, he "relied heavily on a U.S. speechwriting firm for the text of his major speeches and statements ... The Korean Embassy in the United States reportedly paid $46,500 (around 51 million won) to the Washington-based company West Wing Writers, primarily for draft writing and revisions on three texts: speeches to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a joint speech to Congress, and a statement at the White House."

The editorial goes on to scold Lee for not expressing his "own diplomatic philosophy and values" in his American speeches, because "the president should represent the country’s interests on major issues in bilateral relations with the country in question." Given Lee's record, one could argue that he represents American interests in Korea and so his choice of speechwriters was fully appropriate: "Recently, the Korean Embassy in the United States paid a U.S. company to lobby for a quick passage of the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) in Congress." But what made me giggle was the idea of South Korea outsourcing its presidential speechwriting to the US, shipping Korean jobs to American political maquiladoras. Of course Lee probably didn't save money on the deal, but it's the principle of the thing.

Look to the Future, Don't Dwell on the Past

This morning, while I was getting ready to leave for Gumi, my host's TV set was on, tuned to the news. Although my Korean is rudimentary to the point of nonexistence, I could tell just by the sound that something was up, so I looked at the screen. It was President Lee Myung-bak, solemnly intoning something or other. For a while I was nervous that he might be announcing a declaration of war against the North, but my host's wife, who was watching and listening, didn't seem perturbed, so I figured it wasn't too big a deal, and left for the bus station.

Now I've had a chance to find out what was going on. As I prophesied here a couple of weeks ago, the ruling party did badly in the recent local elections -- spectacularly badly, in fact. So President Lee was making an apology to the nation and promising to be better in the future. He said he will accept the results of the election -- which is big of him, don't you think? He will reshuffle his cabinet. (Again.) He promised to give up the Sejong City boondoggle (which was originally a pet project of his disgraced but martyred predecessor Noh Mu-hyun) and let the legislature dispose of it. There were hints that he would abandon his big Four Rivers restoration project, which is opposed by many if not most Koreans. Do I believe him? Nope. Nor do many Koreans.

The Hankyoreh reports that Lee's tax cuts benefited only the top twenty percent of Korean households. (No wonder he got along so well with George W. Bush.) And it's an interesting coincidence that Lee and his administration trumpeted the sinking of the Korean ship Cheonan in the run-up to the elections: the accusations against North Korea were first publicized on the day the election campaign began. Oh, and the Korea Times, striking another blow for journalistic integrity, reports (in a story the required the efforts of two staff reporters) that sales of condoms increased dramatically on the night Korea defeated Greece at the World Cup.

Come Over and Help Us

I imagine there must be one or two people out there wondering why I haven't been posting about Korean politics this time around, especially with the growing tensions over the sinking of a South Korean ship, blamed by South Korea and the US on North Korea. I haven't been following events closely enough, to tell you the truth.

I have seen a lot of clips of Secretary of State Clinton grandstanding on Korean TV in the past few days, announcing that an independent inquiry had established North Korean guilt, which to me is as good as a confirmation of the North's innocence. Korean friends and some articles I've looked at in the Hankyoreh inform me that there is room for doubt. One friend told me today that it's normal around election time for the ruling party to stir up anxiety about North Korean aggression. Similar incidents have been happening ever since the Korean War ended in truce in 1953, but more people died (about 46) when the Cheonan sank, and it providentially occurred close to the elections, which made it useful for exploitation. On the other hand, the Lee administration's shutdown of economic activity with the North is hurting businesses in the South:

Businesses commissioned for inter-Korean processing and trade were up in arms Tuesday following President Lee Myung-bak’s announcement of plans to halt inter-Korean trade in response to the sinking of the Cheonan. The companies charged that the government’s measures “are killing South Korean businesses, not North Korea.” With the government’s focus lying solely on punishing North Korea, the abrupt announcement gave no time for small and mid-sized companies to prepare a retreat, and despite what is effectively a compulsory measure, almost no government compensation plan has been put in place. ...

For the most part, the companies commissioned to do processing plan their production six to seven months in advance, so a lot of the raw materials are already in North Korea," said an official who attended the Unification Ministry’s talk Tuesday. "If the goods that are currently being produced, or even those that are already finished, cannot go in, then it tarnishes the image not only of the businesses, but also of the company, since they are unable to deliver to the foreign contracting company, and of the state."

I suspect that measures like this may hurt the ruling party at the polls next week.

I've also learned from the Hankyoreh that President Lee Myung-bak and "a number of cabinet members" did not complete their compulsory military service. That surprised me, because not completing one's service is supposed to be a serious disability for men in South Korea. But evidently it hasn't stood in Lee's way. On the other hand, his record may partially explain his desire to appear tough toward Japan and North Korea; we have such men in US public life too, known as "war wimps" and "chicken hawks."

I was sitting on a bench in COEX Mall yesterday, writing in my notebook, when a Korean man about my age, dressed in suit and tie, noticed me and stopped to chat. "Is that English?" he asked about my writing. I admitted that it was.

After asking me the usual biographical questions -- where was I from, what brought me to Korea, what did I do back home in America -- he asked what I thought about the sinking of the Cheonan. Didn't I think that America would help Korea, as Mrs. Clinton had promised? I made a face, and told him I wouldn't rely too much on American promises. What, he asked, is she a liar? She is, I told him, and so is Obama: think of what they have said about Iran and numerous other countries. Besides, didn't he remember that in the Korean Civil War, the US had promised to help the South if the North attacked -- yet when that attack happened, there was no help until the South was almost entirely conquered?

He conceded that unhappily, but then he brightened and declared that there was nothing to worry about, because the North is very weak. There is no danger that they could do much damage to the South. I thought about that for a moment, then asked him why, if the North is so harmless, President Lee and the Americans are saying that the North is a deadly threat? That took him aback too. We chatted for a few moments more, and then we shook hands and he went on his way.

Myself, I don't believe that North Korea is as weak as this man claimed; that was just normal nationalistic boasting on his part. I believe that they could do a lot of damage in the South before they were stopped. It chills me to think of what war would do to the beautiful country I'm visiting, and to its people. Interestingly, it's China that is pressing for caution and patience now -- they don't want war on the Korean peninsula either, so close to their own borders. It's easy for the Americans to say "Let's you and him fight" -- the fight would take place far away from us.

P.S. From the Hankyoreh:

In a survey conducted Saturday by Research Plus at the behest of the Hankyoreh, 59.9 percent of those surveyed say they do not trust the military’s statements issued on the findings of its investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan. Only 34.9 percent say that they trust the military officials. Some 57.9 percent also said that the ruling government has not responded effectively to the stinking of the Cheonan, while only 34.3 percent said they think the government has carried out an effective response.

I'd call that a healthy attitude. We could do with more of it in the US.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch ...

... we have this reminder that President Lee Myung-bak knows all about rioting in the streets and undermining the lawful government:

The Hankyoreh reports.

DP Lawmaker Song Young-kil reveals a picture that shows then Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak holding up a candle at a demonstration held in 2005. The demonstration was held in protest of then President Roh Moo-hyun’s education policies.

This confirms my skepticism about Jon Huer's claim of a fascist-like atmosphere under Noh that threatened chaos and repression, one step away from an anti-democratic abandonment of social order and discipline. If Lee had been photographed at a rally supporting Noh's educational policies, it would be different, but consider that we see here the Mayor of Seoul participating in a peaceful candlelight vigil against Noh's policies. Were he and his fellow agents of Kim Jong-il harassed by water cannons, beaten with clubs, sprayed with tear gas, knocked down by police shields? It doesn't appear so. If anyone seems to be trying to stir up a chaotic eruption, a mad stampede of overwrought rhetoric, it's Jon Huer and the other Lee Myung-bak supporters who panicked at the sight of schoolgirls and young families with candles. (Yeah, but how do you know those candles weren't loaded? Huh?) Maybe he'd be happier in a country like this one, which does a better job of policing social order and discipline.

Memorial Day

I was just walking out of Incheon Airport last night, following my hosts to their car, when one of them asked me if I'd heard the big news story. "Noh Mu-hyeon committed suicide today," he told me.

Things had unfolded in an amazingly short time. Early Saturday morning, the former president of South Korea had gone hiking near his home -- climbing up mountains is a popular pastime of the elderly here -- and then thrown himself off a cliff. He must have done it virtually in front of the bodyguard who was with him. At 9:30 a.m. he was pronounced dead at the hospital, and within a few hours the country was in mourning. It was reported that he'd left what amounted to a suicide note on his computer at home. In the early evening his coffin was brought back home and carried to the Town Hall by aides and family members. (Photo above from the Hankyoreh.)

Rather than quote the obituaries I've seen online, let me quote this article by the historian Bruce Cumings, which appeared in The Nation in 2003:

In December [2002] the South Korean people broke decisively with the existing political system, and the elites within it who date back to the Korean War, by electing Roh Moo Hyun. Roh is a lawyer who came up the hard way: Born into a dirt-poor family that could not afford college, he schooled himself in the law and passed Korea's notoriously difficult bar exam on his first try. In the 1980s, during the Reagan-supported dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan, Roh defended many human rights and labor activists at the risk of his own career and life. Amazingly, for presumably anti-Communist South Korea, his wife comes from a family that was blacklisted for decades: Her father was a member of the South Korean Labor Party in the late 1940s, a Communist party outlawed by the US Military Government that ruled the South then; he was arrested for allegedly collaborating with the North during the Korean War, and died in jail. Roh's sharpest break with the past, though, is his constituency. His election was boosted mightily by a burgeoning movement among younger Koreans against the seemingly endless American military presence in the South, conducted in successive, truly massive and dignified candlelight processions along the grand boulevard in front of the US Embassy in Seoul. Routinely labeled "anti-American" by the media, these demonstrations were in fact anti-Bush--like so many others.

After he left office in 2007 charges of corruption were leveled against Noh, primarily involving large sums of money allegedly given to family members and to Noh himself. This prosecution was what evidently led to his suicide. It's hard to sort it out: I'm inclined to suspect a political element in the investigation, as are many Koreans, since the Korean Right like its American counterpart is big on getting back at political opponents. It doesn't diminish my suspicions to learn that the prosecution will be dropped in the wake of his death. I have the impression that despite the accusations of arrogance and self-righteousness that have been thrown at him, Noh quickly realized that he wasn't a very good president. His only real political experience was a brief term as Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries under his predecessor Kim Dae-jung. According to a rather blatantly biased Wikipedia article on Noh, his biggest success in office was a "free trade agreement" with the US, a move that wasn't going to meet with much opposition from either the local Right or the US itself -- his main political antagonists -- and was almost calculated to offend his core constituency, since South Korea has had hard experience with "free trade" in the past dozen years.

Now it looks as though his death may galvanize opposition to Lee Myeong-bak's administration, despite the predictable calls for reconciliation. Lee has been trying to stifle dissent of any kind at least since last summer's candlelight vigils, which nearly brought down his government. It hasn't been as easy as he must have hoped -- the courts just threw out arrest warrant requests for some labor leaders he wanted put away, for example -- but while his opponents have the numbers, Lee has the guns. (And like our own President Obama, Lee wants to focus on the future, not on the dead past.)

Last night in Seoul, "mourners clashed with police who seized their makeshift tents and cordoned off the memorial altar with buses to prevent them from holding rallies," as the Korea Herald reported it. (Photo above is from the Hankyoreh.) Of course any assembly of people the government doesn't like is now illegal, but it's hard to suppress public mourning for a dead recent president. Lee, and Korea, may face a long, sad, painful summer.