Unfriendly neighbours and people power

South Koreans prefer celebrating the ouster of their ex-president to worrying about Pyongyang’s warlike antics.

WHAT a difference a year makes. Last December, when friends were told I was off to Busan, South Korea, they asked in jest if I was taking the train, in reference to the hit Korean zombie movie.

Last month, I was scheduled to visit Seoul for work. But instead of jokes, family and friends asked rather anxiously if it was safe to visit a country that seemed to be tottering on the edge of war.

My Korean hosts assured me it was perfectly safe to visit and, sure enough, my last eight days in Seoul have been just fine.

South Koreans have carried on their lives as normal, immune to the nasty exchange of barbs between North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and United States President Donald Trump.

And if they are fazed by their neighbour’s accelerated nuclear and missile programme which saw 22 bombs set off in 15 tests since February, they aren’t showing it.

All the South Koreans I have spoken to merely shrug off the rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

But then again, this is a nation whose citizens have lived with the threat of war for almost 65 years.

This was brought home to me when I visited the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) on Sunday.

Dubbed the most dangerous border in the world, this narrow strip of land that divides what was once a united nation is the outcome of the Korean War of 1950-1953.

As our tour guide Ron Han told us, the hostilities might have ended with the signing of an armistice agreement, but not the war.

Since then, both nations treat each other with great suspicion and train their citizens to be war-ready with mandatory military service for men in South Korea and both genders in North Korea.

Both sides try to out-propaganda each other with the North building fake villages on their side of the DMZ to show a happy, prosperous face and the South blaring K-pop music over loudspeakers to tease their austere neighbours.

And it appears Pyongyang is still set on invasion with its obsession with digging tunnels into South Korea.

One of the highlights of visiting the DMZ was the opportunity to see one of the tunnels.

This was the Third Tunnel of Infiltration that was discovered in 1978. According to the information board at the site, the tunnel is 1,635m long, 1,200m to the north from the military demarcation line and 435m to the south.

It is actually mind-boggling that tunnels like this can be a weapon of war, a means to send thousands of troops pouring out of the ground to invade another nation.

It seems so old-fashioned, but apparently that is what North Korean supreme leader Jong-un is building, along with his missile capability.

North Korea’s tunnel efforts are not new and reportedly peaked in the 1980s.

So far, only four tunnels have been discovered, the first in 1974 and the last in 1990.

It is only of late that this part of east Asia has drawn so much world attention, all thanks to Jong-un’s missile ambitions and the bizarre murder of his half-brother Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia in February.

But to ordinary South Koreans, the antics of their northern neighbour are nothing new.

More important to them are their new president Moon Jae-in and his government.

Saturday marked the first anni- versary of the “Candle Movement” that brought down the previous president, Park Geun-hye.

A rally was held at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, which was the main site of the demonstrations that went on for six months, beginning Oct 29, last year.

According to the Korea Herald, an estimated 17 million people joined 23 rallies in major cities.

The protests led to parliament impeaching Park on Dec 9, her final expulsion by the Constitutional Court on March 13 and the election of liberal human rights lawyer Moon on May 9.

Park was removed over alleged abuse of power and colluding with her friend Choi Soon-sil to coerce bribes from Korean conglomerates called chaebols.

The Candle Movement proved to Koreans that people power can bring about change through peaceful demonstrations.

But despite their confidence and hope in Moon, they are not about to let him forget his election promises to them.

Hence, the rally was not just a celebration of the removal of a disgraced president but a reminder to the new leader to eradicate “deep-rooted evils” in Korean politics and society.

These include action against corporate crimes involving chaebols, better labour rights and reforms of the election and political systems, conglomerate-dominated economy and state-controlled media, said the Korea Herald report.

What the South Koreans achieved gives hope to those who are thoroughly disillusioned with institutionalised corruption and the widespread abuse of the electoral process in so-called democratic nations.

So just as I was exhilarated to witness one of the candle rallies in Busan in December, I was delighted to see people power again in Gwanghwamun Square on Saturday night.

I arrived late and caught only the tail end but saw enough to convince me that if there is a will, there really is a way for the people to decide on the kind of leadership they want for the people and by the people.