Uniting S. Koreans daunting job
SEOUL, South Korea, May 10, (AP): New South Korean leaders are used to governing from the shambles of their predecessors’ failed presidencies, given the country’s long history of disgraced ex-leaders.
No recent president-elect, however, has faced wreckage quite like this.
Moon Jae-in, the liberal former human rights lawyer who took up presidential duties after being declared winner of Tuesday’s special election, must lead a country still deeply divided between conservative and liberal — even as he navigates the political mess left by ousted president Park Geun-hye, the imprisoned daughter of a dictator who once jailed Moon for leading student protests.
The historical, political and personal baggage Moon inherits only adds to what’s already one of Asia’s toughest jobs. At home, Moon is expected to tackle festering social, political and economic anger. Then there’s the existential threat that looms across the border with the world’s most belligerent nucleararmed dictatorship.
The scale of the flame-out by Park, and its implications for how Moon does his job, is hard to overstate.
In just six months, Park went from the country’s most powerful person to languishing in a jail cell as she awaits a corruption trial. Her fall ends a political dynasty founded by her late father, the dictator Park Chung-hee, whose economic policies helped lift South Korea from poverty even as he abused dissidents and trampled the constitution.
Her disgraceful exit does not eliminate the chasm between conservatives and liberals here. That divide has been around since the Korean Peninsula was separated into a USbacked south and Soviet-backed north at the end of World War II, and only widened during her presidency. It may have grown further during the scramble by wounded conservatives to salvage some sort of political direction after her fall.
Moon’s North Korea policy, which will likely mark a big break from Park, risks alienating conservatives yet more.
Moon can point to the failure on North Korea of the last decade of hard-line conservative leadership, including Park’s truncated rule. There have been threats of war, bloodshed and a growing North Korean arsenal of nuclear-armed missiles.
This won’t help Moon with conservatives, many of whom look with shock at his proposals for a softer approach, including possible direct talks with dictator Kim Jong Un, and the possible return of massive interKorean projects. This was all tried during a decade of earlier liberal rule, part of which was overseen by Moon’s mentor, late President Roh Moo-hyun. None of it, many conservatives say, did much to check North Korea’s arsenal or its bellicosity toward Seoul.
At home, fury over economic injustice, and especially the sense that big businesses have conspired with the government to fix the rules in a way that bars many regular South Koreans from prospering, drove the huge protests that felled Park.