In some happy news, Korea has its first female prime minister.
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Changing times
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on April 20, 2006 at 12:32 am, filed under South Korea, South Korean Politics. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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25 Comments
you know it’s a good thing that South Korea has females in high rank positions, but objectively I see thru what HanNara and Uri are doing. They’re basically putting up a female face in office or power, so that they appear to be “good” politicians. They’re kind of putting up a front to their negative public images. Oh, well, it starts somewhere. If I could vote, I would vote for Lee Myung Bak or Go Gun.
I think I agree with what wjk is getting at.
Back in 1993, Canada had its first female prime minister: Kim Campbell. The problem is, she became the leader of the Progressive Conservative party (and thus the PM) when the term was almost up and an election was due to be called any day, and the party’s chances were looking dismal. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that her party would lose the next election, no matter how good a leader or campaigner she might have been (not very good, as a matter of fact). I suspect that had the party been doing well in the polls, a stronger candidate (male or female…I don’t recall who ran for the leadership) might have won the leadership. So it looked very nice to finally have our first female PM, but it was as much for show as for anything else, and seemed like a throwaway at the time.
Granted, if Roh stays in power until 2007-08 and doesn’t appoint another PM before then, Ms. Han has over a year to prove herself—quite a different situation from the one Ms. Campbell ended up in.
Oh, heh heh, the same thing had happened just 2 years before in BC! Rita Johnson was elected leader of the governing Social Credit party, also pretty much going to heck in a handbasket at that point, and also just before her party’s mandate was up and an election had to be called. Again, it was a case of, “Okay, so we have our first female premier…hope she’s getting her concession speech ready!”
yup, sewing, that’s what I’m getting at.
I meet such smart and capable women in Korea that I can only hope this one is no exception. Korean women are, in many ways, the better than their male counterparts.
I hope she does well, and say what one might about the Uri Party, I don’t think this was quite the sort of cynical move I was describing above.
Both of the ladies I mentioned before were competent, but I get the nagging sense that the backroom boys in each party felt there was nothing to lose by handing the leadership off to them…kind of like the Chris Rock character in Head of State, who’s selected by his party to be its first African American presidential candidate, but only because it’s assumed the party’s going to lose anyhow, so he could be safely shunted aside after the election loss, and replaced with another white guy.
Sorry Sewing not so true,
Kim Campbell’s pre-election summer tour raised the Tories to just a few points behind the Liberals in opinion polls. When the election was called in the fall of 1993, the party had high hopes that they may be able to remain in government, and if not would at least be a strong opposition to a Liberal minority government.
She was just a dunce, a poor campaigner, with poor campaigning staff.
PS> The other candidate was Jean Charest. Who is now Premier of Quebec. The ’93 leadership did have strong candidates.
Okay, I stand corrected. I guess I forgot a lot of the details from that year. When Newman’s Mulroney tapes were made public a few months ago and Mulroney was heard to be complaining about how Campbell lost the election for the Tories, I thought he was just being bitter.
Now that you mention it, I do recall that Charest made a run for the leadership, and of course that he along with Elsie Wayne (sp.?) were the only two Tory candidates to hold onto their seats in ‘93.
What exactly is there to be “happy” about? This is just one more sign of the decline of modern S.Korean society - appointing women in high-level positions of responsibility in government and business.
How is this a “decline”? Although some of her policies were controversial, Margaret Thatcher doesn’t seem to have done too badly for the UK….
It’s a decline because women are not leaders. They are by nature ill-suited in roles requiring strength, acumen, vision, courage, and creativity. IOW, they are not men.
It is patriarchies that have (and will always) maintain and enrich societies. Unfortunately, SK - like the rest of the west - has lost its way. In recent years, it has aggressively promoted women to positions traditionally held by men. It has pushed thru legislation pro-female laws that challenge and destroy the fundamentally patriarchal nature of Korean society. And this is not restricted to just Korea. It has been a worldwide phenomenon for some time now. This kind of idiotic, brain-dead social engineering will only lead to a civilization’s decline and collapse.
OK, if you say so.
Ahh, very funny “rokman”.
You’ve got some Korean babe on your case, right? It’s ok, we can talk because we’re all men here, except for Shelton . . .
…and Judge Judy
(Hey, leave poor Shelton alone!)
Western society must recognize that women’s career aspirations must end at the kitchen door. Only then will the decline end.
rokman, you’re nuts, leaders like Margaret Thatcher had more balls than most men. More like her are badly needed, whether they be men or women.
“kind of like the Chris Rock character in Head of State, who’s selected by his party to be its first African American presidential candidate, but only because it’s assumed the party’s going to lose anyhow, so he could be safely shunted aside after the election loss, and replaced with another white guy.”
Let me guess, as a Hollywood picture, the offending party was those evil Republicans, right? And even if it were the Democrats, the story still plays to the leftist mindset of the ‘evil rich white patriarchary’.
Actually, I got the impression that Rock’s character’s party was indeed supposed to be the Democrats (although neither party was ever named, and I may just be reading my own assumptions into the whole thing). And there wasn’t really any identity politics written into it…it’s just that there was one sleazebag who had his own career aspirations, and was setting Rock’s character up. I shouldn’t have written “another white guy” at the end like that, but the way it might have come across was not the way I meant it to come across.
And I’m just as suspicious of Hollywood flakiness as you are…overall, the movie was kind of silly, but it had its moments, and was much more a standard Chris Rock vehicle than a standard Hollywood flick.
“rokman, you’re nuts, leaders like Margaret Thatcher had more balls than most men. More like her are badly needed, whether they be men or women.”
It is contemptible that women are described in (undeserved) glowing terms in such a way that men are simultaneously defiled and degraded - it frankly reeks of self-hatred. Thatcher, BTW, is not held in high esteem by many British conservatives. She once famously said that ‘”there is no such thing as society” - and she ran the country with that in mind.
She was extremely narrow minded who cared about nothing except making sure the books balanced. For her, money defined everything - morality, honor and the definition of self. The ethics of me, me, me, me. She was a zealous disciple of monetarism: for her, it was her ethics, defining everything and for all time, from soul to bank balance. And it hugely strengthened the dreadfully mistaken belief that women could not be fulfilled people if they chose family and motherhood as the cornerstone of their lives.
When a political party or a nation chooses a woman as its leader, it has lost its soul and has sold its integrity to the pimps of political correctness.
And the more influence women gain in whatever political, academic, technological, economic or artistic field you can think of - the greater will be its decline.
“rokman” has nicely summerized why the Power Rangers always beat that evil japanese witch . . . Up with Penis Power!
Without men as the backbone of society, society is nothing.
Patriarchy, as a cultural and societal norm, best ensures and delivers long term stability, human decency and widespread well-being amongst the population at large.
“rokman” you are such a unenlightened troll. The quality of a society is not decided upon which sex leads rather upon the participation of individuals therein — both men and women, together. Here is a fair example of such: A contemporary notion of matriarchy and a sucessful society
Your contention is anti-social, flawed, untenable and does not help “tiqtoRI”s sense of well-being either.
In response to the matriarchy example: BFD (Big F**king Deal)
The most relevant passage that rendered the entire article meaningless is right at the very beginning: “For the last century, historians, anthropologists and other scholars have searched both human history and the continents to find a matriarchy — a society where the power was in the hands of women, not men.”
That’s really all you need to know: by virtue of their extreme rarity, these (alleged) matriarchies simply do not exist anywhere near the numbers that can be classified as common or workable in nature. They are simply curious anomalies.
That whole example (from a woman, BTW) actually came off like some desperate mad scramble to find something - ANYTHING - that fits her notion of what her perfect matriarchal society should be like. Very ideological (i.e., feminist) in the way she presents her findings.
And anyway, even granting the truthfulness of this example, this really has nothing to do with the reality of modern western society today - or just reality, period. Of course males are dominant - they are stronger and more intelligent as a group than females are. So naturally, men will dominate. That is a function of nature, not ideology or politics as the women’s movement would have you believe. It is a core aspect not only of Korean/Asian society or of western societies, but of ALL societies. Take away that aspect and you destroy society.
“rokman”, you still have not addressed my main point, that is “the quality of a society is not decided upon which sex leads rather upon the participation of individuals therein — both men and women, together.” The quotation from the author is still relevant and that is the quality of the relationship between the sexes that determines the quality of the society, not wither or not men are in charge. A good example of societies that have suffered from the lack of such participation are Jordan, Pakistan or any number of middle-eastern nations where women are treated more like property than people and are often killed to avenge the honor of men. To most people who do not live with the antique mindset that is more common in these societies, one would not want to live in such places, considering the quality of life therein.
Also, contrary to your assertions about “modern society” and “nature”, I quote Aristotle, “Man(kind) is by nature a political animal.” and that was more than a few centuries ago. I think it is pretty obvious to most people that modern society is not about raw, physical struggle but is political in nature, unless one goes around mugging people on the sidewalk or is a professional fighter.
Snow:
For the record, “another white guy” was a pretty dumb turn of phrase. But as I am myself of the Caucasian persuasion, I claim the right to use the expression.
Historically, EWHA has produced only first-ladies. It’s nice to see EWHA getting to snub those cocky Seoul National University students. I wonder what her doctorate is in, law perhaps? Good for Korea! I’m happy to see that Korea can be progressive at least in the political arena.
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