The Marmot’s Hole

Ordinarily, I’d prefer to first submit a whole lot of links to local news reactions. However, I don’t have the time to process and translate them all until later this evening, so I’ll just jot down a couple of personal observations, many if not all of which are probably ill-informed.

Firstly, as the numbers would seem to indicate, this was an ass-whooping on the first order of magnitude. Voter participation was quite low for a Korean election, however, so Lee should remember that there are a lot of voters out there who were simply too disinterested or disgusted to vote. If he screws up, those voters will be on his case.

I watched Lee’s address at the Cheonggyecheon last night, and I have to say, I was impressed. Yeah, you know he’s about as principled as Tony Soprano, and one shudders to imagine that he might actually keep his promise to build a trans-Korea canal, but watching him, you can’t help but like the guy. There’s just something about him that says, “I’m going to get shit done.” That’s something that has been very much missing over the last five years. As a friend of mine said, part of the problem with President Roh is that he doesn’t act like many Korean expect their president to act. By and large, he’s a hands-off guy. Heck, half the time he doesn’t appear even to want to be there. Not so with Lee. He wants to be president. And he wants to call the shots. Or at least that’s the impression he gives.

Lee is legitimately popular (at least in some circles), but yesterday’s vote was as much a rebuke of President Roh and the ruling party as it was an affirmation of Lee. Part of this is a natural desire for change — the progressives have been in power for a decade, after all. But Roh and Co. have rubbed people the wrong way since they took office, the post-impeachment boost they got not withstanding. Now, granted, they’ve had the mainstream press on their asses since Day 1, and truth be told, the last decade of progressive rule will leave an important and positive legacy (see this excellent comment). But they haven’t done themselves many favors, either. Much of it is just their demeanor, which usually oscillates between amateurishness and arrogance. The nail in the coffin was nominating Chung Dong-young as presidential candidate. This was a man who had to resign twice as chairman of the Uri Party. Goh Kun, Lee Hae-chan, Han Myung-sook, Son Hak-kyu and Moon Kook-hyun either were available or could have been enticed to run as a ruling party candidate, and instead, they went to Chung. Yesterday, they payed the price.

What to expect from Lee? Well, he’d like to think of himself as a CEO-style president, much as he was during his stint as Seoul mayor. Given the company that he was CEO of for 15 years — Hyundai Construction — that’s not necessarily a good thing. Granted, seeing how his corporate career (27 years, at least with Hyundai Constuction) is much longer than his political one (10 years, six as a lawmaker and four as Seoul mayor), it’s refreshing to see a president who has spent the bulk of his life doing something approximating productive work. Corporations, however, are not democracies, much less so chaebol like Hyundai, so one wonders whether he’ll be able to work together with Yeoui-do. As Seoul mayor, he could be a hard-ass and ride roughshod over opposition to get projects done. He’ll have a much tougher time doing that at the national level. Assuming his alliance with Park Geun-hye lasts, she could be of tremendous help coordinating relations between him and lawmakers.

There’s something else that bothers me about his CEO experience. Lee’s spent his formative years at the tip of the spear of Korea’s capitalist development state of the 60s, 70s and 80s, when the state was highly involved in the national economy. Nothing about him tells me that his thinking about state intervention in the economy has changed — see, for instance, his fondness for grandiose national projects like the national canal. Yes, men like Lee created the Miracle on the Han River. They also created Hanbo Steel and the IMF era. Sure, he’ll favor free-market reforms in education and real estate, but is he wedded to the idea of economic liberalism? We’ll have to wait and see.

On a positive note, I think we can say good-bye to the days of presidential truth commissions examining whether the grandmother of an aide of so-and-so lawmaker was a friend of a man who went to school with the mother-in-law of a noted colonial collaborator. Thank god.

Foreign policy — does Lee even have one? It was amazing to the extent that foreign policy was NOT an issue during this last presidential election. Lee is much more concerned with getting Korea Inc. in working order than with, say, the burning desire of the Korean people for re-unification. His campaign has been talking about “reciprocity” with the North, which we all know won’t happen. Whether that leads Lee to scrap relations with the North, I don’t know. Frankly, I doubt he will. Given his focus on economic issues and his CEO-style, you’d think he’d be skeptical about pumping money into projects in the North. But then again, this is a man who wants to build a canal from Busan to Seoul. Concerning the United States, the feeling is relations will grow warmer — as if they could get any worse. Ditto for Japan. Where Korea relations with China will go, however, I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say up — Lee likes money, and there’s a lot of money to be made there.