ENTER THE CRUSADER
Prosecutor-turned-president Yoon Suk-yeol vows to shake up South Korea. By Steven Borowiec in Gwangju
Many South Koreans have low expectations for their incoming president, Yoon Suk-yeol, but they hope he can find ways to deal with economic woes and unify an increasingly divided country.
In the southwestern city of Gwangju, some residents are waiting to see if he can follow up on campaign talk and help the city get something it lacks.
In a combative speech at an open-air market in February, Yoon said the lack of a major shopping mall in the city of 1.4 million symbolised the overreach and incompetence of the left-leaning administration of President Moon Jae-in.
Yoon, 61, a political novice representing the conservative People Power Party, claimed the ruling Democratic Party had worked on behalf of a group of local merchants to bar construction of a large mall in South Korea’s sixth-biggest city.
“The people want it, so how can politicians block a shopping mall from coming here? They can’t do that,” Yoon asserted, his voice rising with indignation.
Of course, a mall for Gwangju won’t be on Yoon’s immediate to-do list when he starts his five-year term tomorrow. Still, his Gwangju speech is notable, as it reflects the new leader’s combative character. Framing himself as a crusader for justice fits a pattern seen in his childhood and in his career as a prosecutor.
He enters office without a strong mandate. He won the March 9 election over ruling party candidate Lee Jae-myung by less than 1 percentage point, the narrowest margin in South Korea’s democratic history. In left-leaning Gwangju, where conservative candidates traditionally fare poorly, Yoon won only 12% of the vote.
Moon, who took office in 2017, leaves with a mixed slate of accomplishments and disappointments. He used aggressive fiscal spending to keep the economy growing throughout the pandemic. However, he faced widespread criticism for misguided housing policies that have been blamed for massive increases in real estate prices.
Yoon will seek to heal a country beset by a growing gap between ordinary people and a well-connected elite, and where increasing frustration among young people is playing out in gender conflict that he stands accused of stoking during his campaign.
Expectations are low. A poll released in early April by Gallup Korea found only 55% of respondents expect Yoon to do a good job in office, a much smaller share than for previous presidents.
Also working against Yoon is the fact that the Democratic Party still holds a commanding majority in the National Assembly. “Yoon has to make conscious efforts to establish a working relationship with the soon-to-be opposition party if he wants to get anything done
“Regardless of who is president, our country’s people want the same things, like jobs and houses”
JUNG JIN-SOO Gwangju resident
legislatively,” Song Se-ryun, a law professor at Kyunghee University in Seoul, told Nikkei Asia.
“Rather than focusing on one-upmanship, both parties have plenty of reform agendas, especially on generational change and fresh visions for the future,” Song said.
Yoon has taken an unconventional path to his country’s top office. Born in Seoul to educator parents, he attended a Protestant missionary institution, Daegwang Elementary School. The religious narratives he heard there about saving the souls of the vulnerable have played a role in shaping his worldview, a former classmate says.
Zhang Ki-chul says the prosecutor-turned-politician’s behaviour throughout his career is “inseparable” from what he learned at the missionary school in the early 1970s.
Zhang told Nikkei that he believes Yoon’s early education left him with the belief that he’s involved in a perpetual fight of good versus evil.
Yoon studied law at Seoul National University, a stepping stone into the ranks of the elite for some. It took him nine tries to pass the bar exam but he ultimately thrived in the prosecution service, which enjoys extensive powers and whose staff have a reputation for being hard-driven.
“The profession of prosecutor attracts a lot of ambitious people who use it as a vehicle toward political responsibilities. A lot of prosecutors see themselves as warriors for justice, and they see their role as protecting society from criminals,” said Christophe Duvert, an assistant professor in the Global Law Department of Soongsil University and author of The Ways of Justice in South Korea.
Yoon became a household name in 2016, when tasked with investigating then-President Park Geun-hye on charges of corruption and influence peddling. The sprawling scandal, which gripped the country for months, involved Samsung Group and a shadowy informal adviser to Park.
Park was ultimately removed from office and replaced by Moon, who then named Yoon as prosecutor-general, the top job in the service. But Yoon refused to cooperate with the administration’s efforts to reform the prosecution service in a way that would deprive it of key investigative powers. He and other prosecutors insisted that diluting the agency’s powers would lead to more crime.
Rather than comply with Moon’s reform drive, Yoon resigned. In a country where public officials are expected to defer to their superiors, the unconventional move earned Yoon a reputation as a man of principle. His political star rose from there.
It is possible that in his highly publicised rift with the Moon administration, Yoon was motivated less by fealty to a general concept of justice and more by a desire to protect the institution where he had spent his career.
In any case, critics fear that Yoon will bring his confrontational tendencies to the presidency.
“There is a great deal of uncertainty in Korea right now about what a Yoon presidency is going to mean. A leading concern is over the possible politicisation of law. … The likely targets are figures in the Moon administration and figures who have been vocal in their criticism of Yoon,” Erik Mobrand, a professor at Seoul National University and author of Top-Down Democracy in South Korea, told Nikkei.
On the foreign policy front, Yoon is untested. He has been vocal about bolstering South Korea’s alliance with the United States and taking a tougher approach to China. He has also spoken of repairing ties with Japan, which deteriorated under Moon amid disagreements over the two countries’ fraught wartime history.
Throughout the Moon administration, Yoon’s conservative party accused
Moon of going too easy on China, South Korea’s largest trading partner, while risking the alliance with the US to pursue an ultimately fruitless drive for peace with North Korea.
Mobrand said that Yoon’s position on China will depend on whether his tough talk engenders economic retaliation from Beijing.
Domestically, Yoon will face an economic question that has vexed many presidents before him: how to boost consumption to bolster the waning middle class and spread prosperity throughout the country, beyond the densely populated Seoul area to places like Gwangju.
His economic team has spoken of reducing government interference in the economy while criticising the Moon administration’s policies, such as steep increases in the minimum wage and a legal limit of 52 working hours per week. Yoon has pledged to allow large corporations more room to operate in the hope that higher corporate profits will spur job creation.
In Gwangju, a customarily left-wing region where Yoon’s party has long been unpopular, voters and civic groups are bracing for possible friction with the incoming administration. Koh Jaedae, a director at the May 18 Memorial
Foundation, a group dedicated to commemorating victims of a violent 1980 government crackdown, said the foundation is willing to look past Yoon’s at-times fiery rhetoric.
“Yoon’s comments during his campaign were meant to attract votes, by appealing to people who feel frustrated. … We don’t think Yoon meant to impinge on the spirit of Gwangju,” Koh told Nikkei.
The market where Yoon complained about the lack of a mall is in the west of Gwangju, near the airport and train station, and away from downtown. On a spring afternoon, the area was busy with shoppers.
“It is true that the living environment here lags behind other metropolitan cities,” said Jung Jin-soo, a 27-year-old office worker who comes to the market for coffee and indicated he would patronise a mall.
Jung said he didn’t vote for Yoon but hopes the incoming government can boost the economic fortunes of his home city. “Regardless of who is president, our country’s people want the same things, like jobs and houses,” Jung said. “We’re anticipating that Yoon’s government can bring some of those.”