The fateful National Assembly election — one that may well decide the presidential election later this year — is a little more than a month away. Although in the last few months, the political game has been a straight-up beat-down applied by the progressives to the New Frontier Party (the official English name of the Saenuri Party,) the tide seems to be slowly turning in the last couple of weeks.
The most impactful move by NFP was to put out Sohn Su-Jo, a 27-year-old woman and a neophyte in politics, as a possible candidate against Moon Jae-In in Sasang-Gu, Busan. Early reviews on Sohn are quite favorable — she is fresh, energetic and sincere with her words. She is not some scion of a wealthy family, as her father is a truck driver and her mother is an insurance saleswoman. She pledged to run her campaign only on KRW 30 million of her own money, plus any donations that she might receive.
To be sure, Sohn might not even make it past the NFP primaries for Sasang-Gu. The local NFP chapter — likely supporting a local politician who had been “waiting in line,” so to speak — already made a public opposition against Sohn. Even if Sohn somehow becomes the NFP candidate, it is extremely unlikely that she could beat a heavyweight like Moon Jae-In. From NFP’s perspective, however, there is no reason to validate Moon’s street cred by throwing out another heavyweight, especially in a hostile election environment. Even if Moon beats Sohn, beating up on a young woman certainly would not look all that positive. In fact, tapping Sohn as a potential star might have been the first good move that NFP has made in a year or two.
On the other hand, DUP is getting progressively more inebriated on early champagne. DUP’s preliminary list of candidates include former National Assembly members who are under indictment, defectors from NFP, and son of a current National Assemblyman. DUP’s negotiations with United Progressive Party is also in choppy waters, as the two parties cannot agree on how much of a share UPP ought to receive.
In this backdrop, the numbers for Park Geun-Hye have been inching up for the last six weeks. In a poll from February 27, Park Geun-Hye led the field with 32.2% of the support. Moon Jae-In followed with 21.1%, and Ahn Cheol-Soo with 18.1%. In a head-to-head scenario, however, Park still trailed both Moon and Ahn. Moon Jae-In versus Park Geun-Hye was 44.9% to 44.6%, respectively, and Ahn Cheol-Soo versus Park Geun-Hye was 49.7% to 42%.
{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
It will be interesting to see whether the 2012 presidential election is a blow-out election, a la 2MB’s victory in 2007, or a squeaker election, a la, well, pretty much every other Korean election other than 2007.
With the exception of 2007, since 1987 every Korean presidential election has been marked by close races by multi-party candidates, with the president-elect often winning less that 50 percent of the vote, and pols like Lee Hoi-chang and Rhee In-je playing the role of spoiler.
I suspect this year will be more of a squeaker than a blow-out, as many had predicted even a few months ago. But from now until December is an eternity in politics, so we’ll see.
DLB
That’s an okay round up of the DUP’s current problems. However, I was wondering what your thoughts are concerning this fella as well as the fact that in in some progressive circles there’s suspicions that other progressives aren’t all that “progressive.”
It’s a fucking embarrassment. It is one thing to have an opportune political environment to exploit. (E.g. opposing the FTA.) It is quite another to sell out your first principles.
That’s a fundamental dilemma in the progressive camp — it is composed with true-blood, hardcore leftists as well as with moderate leftists who don’t necessarily oppose market capitalism. The hardcore ones are louder, but the moderate ones are more numerous.
At the end of the day though, I expect them to patch it all up and form a unified front. It would be unbelievably stupid if they don’t do that. (Although, to be fair, unbelievable stupidity is always in play.)
For hardcore leftist there is always NK. Why don’t they go there? Those buns are all about kissing up to NK. This opposing FTA crap is all about generating some noise and attention. I doubt they would scrap it all together.
For retarded rightists, there is always MH.
Sorry but leftist have been more retarded than rightist.
Guess you haven’t actually read what some of the rightist here at the MH actually write.
Well provide me some links of the dumb rightist.
Why don’t you have a look at some of the contributions from MH’s cm or Wedge. These are the ones just off the top of my head.
And you don’t links to these dumb rightist. You can google it if you are indeed curious.
Are you Korean by any chance?
jk6411,
yes I am korean but don’t take me for a Korean apologist or a Korean nationalist who gets defensive at criticism of Korea.
BTW, has anyone else noticed that Korea’s English-language press — the JoongAng Daily, Korea Herald, Korea Times, Yonhap, etc. — are still generally going with the “Saenuri” designation and not picking up on the “New Frontier” moniker?
This is in direct contrast to the Hannara / GNP situation, where everyone went with the English and no one went with the romanized version.
It also seems to me that just as the GNP was an intellectual nod to the GOP, translating “saenuri” as “New Frontier” is a pretty conscious attempt to infuse the part with a Kennedyesque vigor that, frankly, just doesn’t work. If anything, the NFP seems to me more a throwback to an age of back-room deals by aging, business-interest pols than anything remotely resembling a young and vigorous party.
DLB
Here’s one.
I kid. And anyway, for every dumb rightist there’s a pompous leftist. I’m not sure which is worse. But I do agree with Richard Armour, who once said, “Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.”
For once, I want to have a reasonable discussion about Korean politics that is relevant to the OP. In fact, in this post, there is so much red meat for the conservatives. If rightists ever wanted to launch a series of very warranted attacks on the progressives, this OP gave tons of ammunition to those attacks.
But instead, what is the first rightist response? Call the progressives communists and wave their arms. It really gets fucking tiresome. Is there any point for me to keep writing these posts? Does anyone care? Can we PLEASE have some informed debate about Korean politics?
That was not funny hoju_saram.
C’mon man, take a hit!
To be fair, theKorean, you can tend to be very, erm, strident in your political commentary at times as well, and the tone hardly invites measured responses from the “rightists”. Sometimes it’s like watching someone bash a wasp nest and rage against the angry wasps. (Really enjoyed your recent posts on China’s North Korean repatriations, BTW).
To be honest some of the political maneuvering and propaganda in Korean elections gets a bit comical. The manner that the opposition has bashed the FTA agreement when in fact it was originally agreed upon during the Roh administration. I really can’t take the opposition seriously because I doubt they have the guts to do anything about it because the US will be breathing down their neck if they did try to tamper with it. Also if they are against the FTA why not against the EU too? That doesn’t mean that the ruling party is any better. Park Geun-Hye is hardly an inspiring figure and I don’t think she has the standing to effect any significant change.
I never start it. I am like how the Sunshine Policy was supposed to work — peace and cooperation as a default, eye-for-an-eye for shit-slinging. And like the Sunshine Policy, the critical flaw that leads to the failure of my policy is that the policy underestimates the level of assholery the counterparty is willing to engage in.
Thanks. I really wish I could write even more, because the stories I am hearing are incredible, ridiculous, maddening, all kinds of things.
Left, right, NFP . . . none of it matters. Huh Gyeong Yeong can SEE THE FUTURE. How can any mere politician compete with that? This election is already sewn up. 2012 is the year of the Huh.
redwhitedude @#11,
My comment #10 was for Charles Tilly @#9, not you.
Sorry, should’ve been more specific.
Since the issue of raising the level of political discourse on MH has come up, I would personally like to see one, seriously-minded thread devoted to some explanation — beyond the typical ranting of the usual suspects — of precisely why, despite a decade of progressive KDJ and RMH administrations, South Korea’s National Security Law was not either (a) revoked or (b) amended out of all recognition, despite legislative majorities to do so.
I have heard so many different “explanations” of why this was not done that I frankly don’t know which versions to regard as plausible and which to consider apologistic propaganda. The 2MB administration’s vigorous use of the notoriously vague clauses of the law against even casual Twitter users is a reminder of just how ripe the law is for abuse against pretty much anyone with something to say about North Korea.
With Park Won-soon, a vocal critic of the law, elected mayor of Seoul late last year, maybe there will be a renewed debate on this odious little left-over from Korea’s dark, dark past.
Until then, let the debate resume here on MH.
DLB
@18 “I never start it. I am like how the Sunshine Policy was supposed to work — peace and cooperation…”
I’ll admit that you take more than your fair share of shit and abuse here, but to beatify yourself, ironically or not, as an unblemished victim is over the top. If you are aiming for sainthood I suggest you leave the personal attacks out of your responses. For example, in this thread you have already referred to one poster as “retarded” and I’m sure the tone will continue its usual march into the gutter on both sides. One of the reasons people come after you so hard is not only your progressive stance on issues (red meat for rednecks) but also because your chain is so damned easy to yank.
Like I said already, it is very easy to make me leave personal attacks out of my responses: don’t engage in obvious stupidity like smearing progressives by equating them with the commies in North Korea.
I get it: You have no logical counterargument, so you call the person (or persons) on the other side “dumb” or “retarded.” In the real world, this means you lost the argument. In cyberspace, you can still pretend you’re winning.
#21: National Security Law? It’s one more lever of control over the citizenry. Why would “progressives” give that up?
@Wedge
Unless the original arguments are consistently in the line of “Well, you’re a communist, so… yeah. Commie! Why don’t you just live in North Korea, Commie?”
I think that Wedge actually has a right, DLB — it’s the same kind of reason why Obama didn’t roll-back GW Bush’s expansions of violations of American civil rights, has even further expanded those violations a bit, as did Bill Clinton. Continuous disappointment on this score my entire life; you always think it’s gone too far and the next guy will claw some of our rights back, end stupidities like the “War on Some Drugs”, but no — ever since Lincoln the executive powers of the American government just keep expanding, and almost never retreat. (or Jackson? or Adams…?)
These matters actually have nothing to do with left or right in classical political thinking, rather they are played out on an authoritarian vs. libertarian axis, with authoritarian almost always winning — especially during any time of crisis, it advances.
This is the best explanation I know for why the ROK NSL was not repealed or significantly liberalized, even though we widely expected that 10 years of leftist administrations would do so. I still think it’s possible that some future administration might do so, let’s say under international human rights pressure and the domestic desire to appear as a more modern and first-world country…
@26
I think you are correct in singling out the Lincoln administration. Of course, feferal power grew in fits and starts before then, but there was such an enormous expansion in federal authority under Lincoln, because of the Civil War, that it marked a singular and qualitative change. The Lincoln disposition lasted until FDR, when as a result of the Depression and WW2, there was another enormous expansion of federal authority that didn’t abate until Johnson left the WH and remains more or less in place still.
This is what I am talking about, right here — even as we are talking about Korean politics, there is not a single link to a factual story, or even a reference to what actually happened in Korean political scene. KDJ-RMH administration was not that long ago, but people can’t be bothered to look up or even remember the progressive attempts to repeal the NSL. Instead, we have irrelevant discussions about American politics and the lazy attempts to equate progressives with the dictators of the past.
In 2004, repealing the NSL was the centerpiece of the “four major legislations” plan by the Uri Party. (The other three were: private school reform, media reform and modern history review.) This agenda was set at the beginning of the 17th National Assembly election, which happened in the wake of RMH’s impeachment (which caused a massive blowback to GNP.) Riding at the crest of power, Uri Party thought it could basically take down everything that had been aggrieving the progressives for the past decades.
GNP fought this tooth-and-nail, because literally their lives depended on it. Giving into this plan meant the elimination of the raison d’etre of Korean conservatives. GNP threw out every single obstructionist tactic in the playbook, including forming a physical blockade in the National Assembly’s main chamber to prevent the legislation from being submitted.
In the end, there actually was a compromise reached between GNP and Uri, as GNP agreed to repeal Art. 7 of the NSL — the clause that punished praising North Korea. This was a good, practical solution, as 90% of the prosecution under the NSL happens under Art. 7; in essence, it would have neutered the NSL. But this time, the hardcore leftists of the Uri Party broke the rank — to them, compromise equaled selling out. The fight raged on until April 2005, when Uri suffered a decisive loss in the by-elections. Afterward, UP lowered its sights, and got the two easier laws out of the original four — namely the private school reforms and modern history review.
Why wasn’t NSL repealed? I would say that the progressives overreached, and they did not know when to strike the right compromise. This is one of my major criticisms of the RMH administration and the Uri Party — they were revolutionaries, not politicians. They were mentally divorced from the political reality and the minds of the people who elected them. They thought they won the election, when in fact it was the other side who lost. Instead of scoring tactical victories, they were more interested in grandstanding.
Thanks for the solid historical information, TK — i had forgotten about the struggle over those four pieces of legislation, but now recall it from your description.
However, this is still not the total story — one can still say that those two leftist presidents did not really try very hard to cancel or seriously weaken that NSL, or halt all prosecutions under it — seems to me that much more they could’ve been attempted and possibly accomplished if they had really wanted to; the ROK presidency is quite powerful, more than the American. It still seems to me a factor that those presidents were not much more eager to give up state powers over their citizens than were the right-wing ones, when it came time that they could stop only complaining about such powers and actually do something about them.
And I myself do find it interesting and relevant to compare what has happened on this in the ROK with what has happened in other democracies — we can see something that is common to nearly all democratic systems, and not something that is necessarily rooted in Korean culture or isolated in the specific facts of this one legislative process that you describe. If you don’t agree, that’s fine, just skip-over our discussions…
@28-29
I agree with sanshinseon. TK’s summary is useful, notwithstanding his usual squirming apologetic attempt to use the historical detail to obscure the salient historical fact: despite having the power and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use it more or less unimpeded, the ” progressives” failed to either abolish the law or render it effectively toothless as an instrument for quashing domestic dissent when they had the chance.
sanshinseon #29 and Sperwer #30, me three. That was a good historical lesson from TheKorean, but I have followed politics for a while to know:
1) People eager to get into office make all kinds of promises they hope to keep
2) Once in power they start to deal with the complexities
3) They will, at some point, try to fulfill their promises. In some cases, they push hard. In some others, they go through the motions.
I am convinced that every president-elect in the U.S. for the past several decades has gotten an envelope upon being elected or sworn in, which he takes a look at and says, “Holy shit, is this for real?” Then, when running for re-election, they look at their challengers as idealistic neophytes who are, as James Brown might have said, talkin’ loud, sayin’ nuthin.
President Obama may eventually make another strong push to close Gitmo, he’ll be able to point to his efforts, but he hasn’t made a priority of it (he certainly hasn’t kept that strong promise to close it within a year of taking office). I suspect the same is true with the examples TheKorean has listed. I don’t doubt that the leftists/progressives made an effort or went through the motions, but it wasn’t a priority compared to other policies or they may have also gotten an envelope after getting into office that took some of the fury out of their promise.
Naya, Sperwer, Sanshinseon: Good points all. I don’t know what it takes to roll back government power other than outright revolution [ducks as the Secret Service heads his way], but it’s pretty unusual in a democracy for anyone in the governing class to give anything up once they’re in power. Even in the current GOP race only Ron Paul is serious about it, with the others only playing at the edges.
I am convinced that every president-elect in the U.S. for the past several decades has gotten an envelope upon being elected or sworn in, which he takes a look at and says, “Holy shit, is this for real?”
judging from his Michigan speech, Romney already has gotten a peak in the envelope. Compared to the full-throated celebration of the importance of limited government voiced by Santorum ( who in his sanctorum mode has other problems), Mitt’s very empty pledges to pare down govt were pathetically unconvincing (not to mention his failure to add Schafer’s caramel frosted cake and Stroh’s to the Vernor’s recalled by his wife in her introduction
thekorean #28, the most interesting tidbit was about the GNP forming a physical blockade to block legislation. Are there any cases of them using tear gas, axes or fire extinguishers? Would you happen to recall the most aggressive physical actions done by the GNP to block legislation?
sanshinseon @29,
I have a great deal of respect for your opinion, but the failings demonstrated on this thread are quite egregious. I often lament that people who want to run their mouths about Korea cannot even communicate in Korean, but this is even worse. Just 7 years ago, NSL repeal was “issue number 1″ for more than a year. It was one of the fiercest political fights in the post-dictatorship South Korea. Anyone who pays even the most glancing attention to Korean politics would have heard about it. Yet in a discussion dealing with NSL, the fight to repeal the NSL just 7 years ago was never even raised.
Can you seriously believe that by 2020, educated people of America would completely forget about the “issue number 1″ during the Obama presidency, like the Affordable Care Act or the debt ceiling? If today, someone seriously wondered “hey, Democrats had the White House and the Congress before, why didn’t they try to pass a national healthcare law before?”, could that person possibly escape ridicule? Yet that is exactly what is happening here.
If one wants to discuss Korean politics, one needs to discuss what happened in Korean politics. Right now, this thread is like listening to the monks of the Dark Ages discussing the composition of the stars by referring to the Bible, instead of venturing outside in the night to actually observe God’s creations.
Roh Moo-Hyun did exactly this — which is why I do not deem his presidency a complete failure. He took on the prosecutor’s office and attempted to significantly curtail its power. Given that the prosecutor’s office is consistently used as a political scare tool (just look at the way they are coming after Han Myeong-Sook right now,) it is quite meaningful that RMH essentially tied his own hands to restore the democratic process.
right, “attempted”, when it suited his partisan agenda. In contrast, consider the eg of Kim Young Sam, whose administration did make significant and lasting structural changes in what were theretofore two of the most oppresive institutions on Korea: the military and ANSP (the security service)
The conservative has always been the majority party in the National Assembly from 1992 to today, except for the 17th National Assembly between 2004-2008. So there are relatively few occasions where GNP acted to block legislation. I would say the most aggressive physical actions by GNP in an attempt to block legislation was in Dec. 2007, when the GNP staffers destroyed the side door of the National Assembly in an attempt to occupy the main chamber, to block the Special Prosecutor investigation on allegations that Lee Myeong-Bak engaged in insider trading. (The so-called “BBK case.”) This prompted the National Assembly security guards to blast fire extinguishers on the GNP staffers.
Also, a bit of clarification on the fine art of physical confrontation in Korea’s National Assembly is in order. The talk about axes is misleading, because it never, ever escalates to a point where someone can get seriously hurt. Against a person, the worst that ever happens is pushing, shoving and (very rarely) punching. The only time an axe was involved was to break down a barricaded door. (In that case, it was the GNP that barricaded the door. Even the barricading was unprecedented — in previous occasions, a human wall used to suffice.)
Right, because KYS had zero partisan agenda when he took on the military and the ANSP. None. He was not concerned about consolidating his own power at all.
At least we are in the realm of what happened in Korean politics, which is a progress. It would be even better if we could talk about what happened in RMH administration, since we are talking about the RMH administration.
Like this: people under-appreciate how foundationally weak RMH administration was. (In fact, the progressives themselves did not appreciate how precarious their position was.) The progressives may have had the Blue House and the National Assembly, but the conservatives completely occupied everything else that mattered — the military, the bureaucracy, the media, large corporations, etc. For every progressive proposal, there were a million and one ways for the actual agents who would have implemented those proposals to drag their heels. And when the progressives attempted anything that touched upon the fundamental basis of their privilege, the conservative factions would scream bloody murder.
Private School Reform Act is such a great example of this. Private school foundations in Korea are such festering shitholes of corruption. So the reform mandated adding outside board members and independent auditing of private school foundations. Uri Party thought at least this law out of the Four Major Legislation was going to be an easy win, because the justifications for reform were solid and the reform only affected a small slice of the conservatives. Boy, were they wrong. This one took another physical scuffle, breaking through the GNP Assembly members who again occupied the podium. And the only reason why that could even happen was because the UP gave up on the bigger issues, i.e. the NSL repeal.
Same with the prosecutor’s office reform. In what other administration did a Korean president have a personal meeting with ordinary members of the bureaucracy to convince them of reform? RMH cut off the prosecutors from the Blue House and attempted to abolish the Central Investigation Bureau of the prosecutor’s office, the department in charge of political investigation. Again, prosecutors screamed fucking bloody murder — they needed to keep their own power. RMH eventually could not finish the job, and it arguably cost his life, as the politically charged prosecutor’s office came at him with a vengeance when the Park Yeon-Cha bribery case surfaced.
TK, i thank you again for your good information. I think i ‘get’ your point in #35 and before, and i respect it — You’re definitely on the right track regarding that we actually often pay insufficient attention to actual Korean political history when making our theoretical and comparative statements. Otherwise, i stand by what i said earlier, and have nothing now to add to it. This has been an unusually good marmot’s hole discussion…
of course he was; don’t be so disingenously naive. But unlike your Great Pretender: (1) it wasn’t his only motive, and (2) he was astute enough to accomplish the goal of effecting what amounted to a small “c” constitutional change in the Korean polity that demonstrably advanced the cause of ordered liberty.
Is that a fact? I suppose it is for someone as ideologically blinkered as you, who apparently can’t conceive of the notion that the other side could accomplish anything at all worthwhile, the historical record notwithstanding
you are dead wrong about the media at least, unless you focus your tunnel vision on just the ownership of the three largest newspapers; but the really interesting revelation in your apologetics for the “progressives” is the implicit acknowledgment of their combined political weakness and incompetence.
the regulatory regime for private schoolmfoundations is a disgrace. Again, though, this is another example of political ineptitude as much as anything else – the ineffectuality of the ideological zero sum game the “progressives” tried to play
Please, the Great Pretender, like President Aesop, was not above using the Prosecutor’s Office for political purposes. And abolishing the central office is not a solution to that problem of separation of powers. Even the attempted reform here doesn’t rise to the level of those undertaken and accomplished by KYS.
Really?! They pushed him off the cliff? If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
@41
At the risk of giving you an appearance of coherence, I fixed your Sperwered html.
Why is KYS relevant again? We were discussing why NSL was not repealed in RMH’s time. You baselessly argued that RMH left NSL standing (although it was Uri Party’s Issue Number One for more than a year) because RMH wanted to have power. Then you introduced an irrelevant factoid about KYS, as if KYS had absolutely no partisan bias in his reforms. I called you out on that, and now you back off into throwing bald assertions unsupported by facts, once again. (Discussed further below.)
Try and put it all together, will you? I know you can do it.
Here, you have a series of bald assertions without any factual support. (In contrast, I always gave examples to support my point.) If you want to say RMH’s only motive for attempting to reform the prosecutors, prove it with RMH’s words and deeds. If you want to RMH used the prosecutors for political purposes, give examples. Otherwise, all this is just meaningless arm-waving — which is, I must add, rather typical of MH conservatives. But unlike other MH conservatives, I know you are capable of giving examples.
But then again, who knows — maybe I am overestimating you.
GNP blockaded the main chamber defending this “disgrace” (a weasel word that vastly understates the degree of corruption in Korea’s private school foundations) — and it was the progressive’s fault? Allow me to quote: you are so “ideologically blinkered” that you “apparently can’t conceive of the notion that the other side could accomplish anything at all worthwhile, the historical record notwithstanding.”
By this, what you are telling me is: I am mostly correct about the media, and I am absolutely correct about the military, the bureaucracy, the large corporations, etc.
There is nothing implicit about my opinion that the progressives of RMH’s time were politically inept, as I explicitly made that point twice on this thread alone. I also made the same point in my retrospective for RMH, and I make the same point to any progressive politician who is listening.
I’m just getting up to speed on this thread after a week in LA Superior, and a few thoughts come to mind.
After the April 2004 parliamentary elections, the then-Uri Party had 152 seats, the GNP 121, the Democratic Labor Party 10, the Millennium Democratic Party 9, the United Liberal Democrats 4, and independents 3.
A year later, the Uri Party still had a solid majority of 144 seats, the GNP 123, the Millennium Democratic Party 11, the Democratic Labor Party nine, and the United Liberal Democrats and independents 8.
In other words, the progressives and their allies had — in theory and in fact — more than enough votes to amend the NSL if they wanted to. TK mentions progressive defections based on the belief that even partial reforms, particularly of Article 7, would be a sell-out absent total repeal. That’s certainly plausible, but it also suggests that RMH’s failure to push through this legislation was due as much to a lack of party discipline as it was to the clear obstructionism of the GNP.
In contrast, I know of no efforts by the progressive camp to amend the NSL at any time from 1997 (i.e., the election of KDJ) to 2004. Given the nervousness that Korea’s ruling class had over KDJ’s election, his progressive policies, the Sunshine Policy, and the general focus on economic recovery in the midst of the Asian financial crisis, this may reflect a decision by the KDJ administration to concentrate its efforts at more pressing matters.
Nevertheless, there is a dearth of good academic analysis of the NSL during this period, and that needs to be corrected.
DLB
You must log in to post a comment.