Results of South Korea’s nostalgia for dictatorship
SOUTH Korean democracy is facing what may be the political scandal of the century. Over the past several weeks, it has been revealed that President Park Geun-hye, the head of state for the 11th-largest economy in the world, was essentially being controlled by Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of a cult leader who claimed to speak with the soul of Park’s dead mother. The extent of Choi’s control was staggering.
According to the latest claims, Choi pushed the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism to pressure Cho Yang-ho, the CEO of the Hanjin Group, into resigning from his post as the chairman of the Pyeongchang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Cho had refused to pay into the “K-Sports Foundation” operated by Choi and lost his post as a result. Choi reportedly gave direct orders during cabinet meetings by relaying her demands to a presidential aide.
Park’s numbers took a nose dive. In a poll released on November 4, Park’s approval rating sank to incredible 5 percent, the lowest mark in the history of Korean democracy. (The lowest level for her predecessor, Lee Myungbak, who was hardly beloved, was 21 percent.) In a poll from November 1, an astounding 67.3 percent of the respondents said Park should resign. Across Korea there are nightly protests drawing hundreds of thousands of people.
So why was Park elected in the first place? Hardly anyone could claim that Park was the most qualified person for the job. It was no secret that during her political career, Park was not the sharpest tool in the shed. To be fair, there were some moments when Park dem- onstrated real leadership as a politician. In 2004, for example, Park led her party to an unlikely victory in the National Assembly election at the height of then-president Roh Moohyun’s popularity.
But as a presidential candidate, Park appeared simple-minded, tongue-tied, and prone to gaffes. She was notorious for speaking in short, childish sentences, compulsively relying on her pocket notebook to a point that critics dubbed her the “Notebook Princess”. She was judged to have lost against opposition candidate Moon Jae-in in all three presidential debates.
Even Park’s association with the Choi family was a known issue – at least among the cognoscenti – when she was running for president. Park Geunhye’s relationship with Choi Soon-sil’s father, Choi Tae-min, was an issue when she ran a failed campaign for president in 2007 and again when she prevailed in 2012. Park’s mother was assassinated in 1974, and her father in 1979, when she was just 17, leaving Choi Tae-min, the head of a shamanistic cult with Christian trappings, as one of the few stable adults in her life. The relationship was so well-known that the then-US ambassador to Korea specifically commented on it in 2007, in a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks: “Rumours are rife that the late pastor had complete control over Park’s body and soul during her formative years and that his children accumulated enormous wealth as a result.” No matter – Park would go on to win the hard-fought presidential election, winning 51.6 percent of the votes.
She won because she had a unique selling point – her family. Even her most ardent fans would admit that nearly all of her appeal was based on nostalgia for her father, Park Chunghee, who ruled the country with an iron fist from 1961 to 1979 while murdering dissidents. When Park Geunhye’s victory became clear in the 2012 election, her supporters celebrated in the streets while holding up pictures of Park Chung-hee. But why would South Koreans, rightfully proud of their peaceful shift from authoritarianism to democracy in 1987, vote for a leader whose main appeal was being the daughter of a dictator?
To be sure, not all South Koreans yearned for the days of dictatorship. Since 1987, commitment to democracy has been the main dividing line in the landscape of Korean politics. Those who had struggled to democratise Korea became liberals and progressives, while those who had shrugged their shoulders and profited throughout the authoritarian era became conservatives. Prior to Park and Lee Myung-bak, South Korea had a decade of liberal presidents, with Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. (In South Korea, the president serves a single five-year term.)
But for conservatives, the appeal of the authoritarian era has remained strong. Older Koreans still remember the days when most people were starving. They remember, too, that the authoritarian rule of Park Chung-hee brought exponential economic growth, which delivered the country from hunger. In the minds of the older generation, the elder Park’s authoritarianism also brought a sense of order and national unity against North Korea – an important consideration for the generation that experienced the ruinous Korean War. For prosperity and security, Korean conservatives were willing to sacrifice democracy.
In this political landscape, Park Geun-hye offered something that no one else could: the most direct link to the authoritarian era. In the soft economy following the 2008 global financial crisis, the majority of the Korean people counted on Park to deliver the same results as her father once did. Knowing this, Korea’s conservative leaders propped her up as their champion, looking away from her gaffes and strange associations. Of course, the promised economic miracle did not happen. Park Chung-hee’s rule came at the tail end of Asia’s first great postwar boom, while the younger Park’s world is trudging through the Great Stagnation. As a result, Park Geunhye’s numbers suffered – but not by much. Park could always rely on her “concrete floor” of approval rating, made up of around 30 percent of Koreans who remembered her father’s days fondly and were willing forgive her mismanagement of the country.
Park had plenty of authoritarian touches of her own, from banning an opposition political party for supposed ties with North Korea to deporting Korean-American activists. But her connection to the era of dictatorship that had elevated her finally led to her downfall. With “Choi-gate”, even the concrete floor gave way. With the scandal, the truth about Korea’s authoritarianism was laid bare. There is no magic in authoritarian rule, only the nauseating privatisation of increasingly arbitrary power. Park was not a great stateswoman unconstrained from the burdensome strictures of democracy, but a pathetic figure doling out her presidential power to a psychic in exchange for emotional comfort. Like the Koreans who voted her in, the orphaned Park was selling away her authority in exchange for a false consolation from the past.