Rule for Lee, not for thee
On paper, South Korea is a model of democracy.
Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader who died last month at age 47, once expressed his hope that Russia could become a democratic country like it.
However, whereas in Russia it is opposition forces that offer the promise of democratic change, these days in South Korea it is the opposition party, the Democratic Party of Korea, that is becoming more authoritarian. As evidence, examine the party’s nomination process for April’s general elections.
Rep. Lee Jae-myung, the DPK’s leader, has taken advantage of the nomination process to fill the party with acolytes.
Some say that Lee is leading the DPK to self-destruction, but it would be more accurate to say that he is reconstructing the DPK into a new entity composed entirely of individuals who offer him complete loyalty. This goal seems more important to Lee than whether the DPK keeps or loses its majority in the National Assembly.
In his New Year’s greeting posted on YouTube, Lee stated that the elections will be a critical turning point that will determine the fate of the country and the lives of its citizens.
He emphasized that his party is committed to reviving the livelihood of the people, the economy and democracy.
Yet these noble words, when uttered by Lee, fall flat. Is it because the disposition of the “political man,” as identified by the political scientist Harold Lasswell, to transform private motives into public objectives and rationalize private ambitions under the guise of public interest is so starkly evident in the politician named Lee Jae-myung?
Many who have observed Lee over time are acquainted with the divergence between his words and actions.
He is a political “heretic” who has defied the basic grammar of politics that has been generally accepted in South Korea’s democratic era. He ran for a parliamentary seat just three months after losing the presidential election.
Usually, South Korean politicians who lose the presidential race take time for reflection, step down from leadership roles or even announce retirement from politics. Kim Daejung went abroad to the U.K., and Moon Jae-in even refrained from criticizing then-President Park Geun-hye for a time.
In contrast, after his defeat, Lee immediately ran for a National Assembly seat in a by-election, winning a position much less significant than the presidency. And he did so by running in a safe district rather than in the region where he had primarily been active as a politician.
Perhaps in desperation, Lee felt that he needed to secure the immunity from arrest that is afforded by a parliamentary seat, as he has faced multiple investigations and trials due to allegations of corruption.
But his unorthodox moves did not end there.
Despite losing the presidential race, which would ordinarily lead to a politician’s resignation, he ran for the party’s leadership and was elected with an overwhelming 78 percent of the vote. And as party leader, through this year’s general election nomination process, he is turning the DPK into the party of Lee Jaemyung.
Many of the politicians who have failed to receive nominations in this corrupted process, which could mean an end to their political careers, are now fiercely resisting and attacking Lee. But were they previously unaware of the type of person Lee has always been?
Since South Korea’s democratization in 1987, it is not an exaggeration to say that its political parties, regardless of being in opposition or power, have merely been strategic offices created for elevating charismatic leaders to the office of president.
The backwardness of party politics in South Korea has been structural and fundamental. Political parties that attempt to absorb conflicts and clashes of interests within society into an institutional framework and implement values through actual policy proposals have historically found it difficult to succeed in South Korea. And sadly, even professor Im Hyug-baeg, a leading political scientist who has pointed out these problems of party politics and the obstacles they present to the consolidation of democracy in South Korea, is ironically now faithfully playing the role of lackey for Lee as the chief of the party’s nomination committee.
However, on deeper reflection, the reason Lee has been able to transform the DPK into his own private party stems from the structural contradictions within the so-called democratic forces of South Korea, as represented by the DPK.
The mainstay of this group consists of politicians who were active in the student movements of the 1980s and have interpreted the issues of South Korean democracy in an extremely polarized manner. They view themselves as the genuine force for democracy, while the current ruling party is seen as the anti-democratic force, heirs of the Chun Doo-hwan military dictatorship.
Within this simplistic Manichean framework, Lee, a demagogic politician, has managed to establish himself as a would-be defender of the democratic forces symbolized by the Democratic Party, the precedent of the DPK, vociferously championing abstract democratic ideals. Based on his extreme self-serving tendencies, he was able to ascend from the (failed) presidential candidacy of the DPK to its current leadership position.
For Lee, who was not part of the 1980s student activist movement, the candidate nomination process for April’s parliamentary elections presented an ideal opportunity to eliminate those within the DPK who did have that background and could thus present a future threat to him. He did not miss the chance.
Ultimately, it is the undemocratic structure of South Korean political parties, which allows for centralized control over local constituencies, and the DPK’s tendency to ignore the serious moral failings of those politicians who nevertheless have a good chance of becoming president, that have enabled the rise of a political heretic like Lee Jae-myung.
It is truly curious what the late President Kim Dae-jung, the spiritual pillar of the Democratic Party, would say if he could see the unfair and unjust scenes unfolding today.