Leave it to the Grand National Party to use yesterday’s coup in Thailand to say something either really stupid or really frightening.
During a briefing at the National Assembly on Wednesday, GNP spokesman Yoo Ki-joon warned that the Bangkok coup shouldn’t be regarded as just some other county’s business. Elaborating, he said the major cause of the coup was Thailand’s corrupt administration. He noted that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had attracted international attention early in his term with his strong leadership, but that corruption involving his aides had brought about the coup. The prime minister had lost the support of the people, he noted. And for good measure, the opposition spokesman remarked that Thaksin’s leadership style reminded one in several ways of President Roh, and warned that the coup should serve as a lesson to Roh.
Needless to say, politicians in the Uri, Democratic and Democratic Labor parties found it a little unsettling that the spokesman of a party widely associated with Korea’s past military governments would make statements some considered a virtual call for a coup. Criticizing his opposite number, Uri Party spokesman Woo Sang-ho said the spokesman of a political party shouldn’t use the example of an unfortunate coup in a foreign country to threaten the Korean president with a coup.
Even more worrisome is that according to a front-page story in this morning’s Hankyoreh, many netizens seem to agree with him.
The paper noted that commenters at major conservative websites in Korea were reacting to the news from Bangkok with what some might consider an unhealthy amount of pining for the good old days of Park and Chun. For instance, the Chosun Ilbo article on the coup had garnered some 334 comments as of Wednesday afternoon. The bulk of the commenters, said the Hani, were either agitating for a similar coup or sympathizing with calls for a coup. Meanwhile, online comment wars were being fought on the nation’s portal sites between those calling for a coup and those opposing such calls.
16 Comments
If the GNP wants to succeed in selling itself as a “kinder, gentler” version of its antecedents and thereby have a hope of sweeping the next presidential election, talk of a coup is definitely not an option, as appealing as it might be in some quarters. Roh is doing a good enough job as it is of helping the GNP!
Thaksin was dictatorial. Roh is merely a dick.
I’d be lieing if I said the thought didn’t cross my mind…. a least half a dozen times.
These guys throw shoes at each other in the Assembly, you can’t expect measured discussion from this generation of politicians. Hopefully after Roh, Park Geun-hye, and all the useful idiots in the DLP are gone some younger and foreign-educated lawmakers will take the reins.
My hopes, exactly. This country has suffered enough from amateurs and political parasites.
What irritates me about the coup in Thailand and talk of it in SK, is that it just give the Chinese Communist Party ammunition to say, “See, democracy sucks and brings instability.”
That’s all you ever hear from the CCP: anything else but them would bring instability, instability, instability. Never mind the fact that the guy they name their founding father called for constant upheaval.
BTW, what is Cheonggyecheon?
Cheonggyecheon used to be a stream running through downtown Seoul that was covered by a roadway, and Mayor Lee had it uncovered, except that it actually doesn’t have water and the city spends millions of dollars a year pumping water for it, and it’s all concrete, and looks like glorified drainage ditch.
But I guess Mr. Marmot likes it.
I prefer to think of it as a long, flowing, linear fountain myself.
Okay, it’s not to everyone’s taste and yes, it did cost a lot of money to build, but given the sad paucity of open space in downtown Seoul, it beats the eyesore of an elevated expressway that used to be there.
Ok. thanks for the info. I was thinking it might be a little more Stanley Kubrick-esque.
Michael, I lodge protest!!! I love it too. People used to hate Eiffel Tower, did they? Maupassant hated it, so what???
And money… Well, this is the third time in Korean history when this nearly non-existent stream sucks a very substantial part of Korea’s budget. It was the case in the 1750s, in the 1960s, and now. Both old Cheonggyecheon projects were very expensive too, and much criticized, but Korea survived it!!! It will survive it again. Long live Cheonggyecheon, the beautifully kitchy place!!!
I too think it has been a great improvement for downtown Seoul, and i salute the City Gov for doing something right for a change… This is constructed about as good as it can be, given the circumstances (crowding, etc). Koreans are proud of it, with good reason.
“I was thinking it might be a little more Stanley Kubrick-esque.” It was: “Eyes Wide Shut.”
Look, it’s great for Seoul to have “amenities” or whatever urban planners call it, so why not start with the obvious and inexpensive ones like closing Insadong and Myeongdong off to traffic permanently? “Lee’s Folly” didn’t do anything for the area, in fact several small businesses were evicted from the stream area because they were “inappropriate,” but nothing was done to replace them with anything better.
It’s just the mayor’s monunment to his own ambitions, and it looks like a small version of the L.A. River, only with water–and that’s not a compliment.
Yeah, I’m a big grump. I do like the Claes Oldenburg sculpture going up at the Kwanghwamun end of the stream.
The GNP is right on the mark in their assessment of the situation, particularly given how outlandishly Pres. Roh and other communists in South Korea have been acting. During their visit, I suspect Pres. Bush said in no uncertain terms that a coup’de’tat is a real possibility in South and North Korea.
I could easily see the Korean government over-thrown in a military coup. In fact, the ROK’s discourse might be better served with another hardline conservative former/active military man.
–Remort
Micheal wrote:
It’s just the mayor’s monunment to his own ambitions, and it looks like a small version of the L.A. River, only with water–and that’s not a compliment.
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If he really wanted a monument to vanity, try something like Millenium Park here in Chicago by our own very corrupt Mayor. It looks nice, but it still cost half a billion dollar.
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