hankyoreh

Lee Hoi-chang has indeed declared his candidacy for president, the third time he will be running for the office. There were some who tried to discourage him from running out of their own political interests, but there were others who were opposed because they are genuinely worried about a crisis in the political party process. It is said that he ignored them and has decided to go ahead anyway.

At the press conference during which he announced his decision, Lee Hoi-chang said Grand National Party candidate Lee Myung-bak has failed to win the public’s confidence because he is unfit as a candidate in legal terms and is unprincipled, and because he has not taken a firm stance on North Korea. What he did not do at the press conference was to explain why his candidacy is the answer to problems about Lee Myung-bak. All he did was repeatedly ask for another chance. It was pathetic to have to listen to.

It is actually Lee Hoi-chang who is a politician who has ignored “law” and “principles,” to use his choice of words. It was when he was the GNP’s presidential candidate during the last election that the party took its “bribes by the truckload” (cha ttegi), breaking the law quite literally, something about which he was questioned by the prosecution and for which he issued an apology to the Korean public. And it is unprincipled of him to go back on his earlier declaration that he was retiring from politics. He did not participate in the party’s candidate selection process, so it is also unprincipled of him to justify his candidacy by saying there is something wrong with a candidate who was chosen through such a process. If Lee Hoi-chang was truly unable to find the character of a “leader who respects law and principles” and the “spirit and courage that knows how to honestly admit one’s wrongs,” and if he therefore felt the party was at risk of “being unable to win the country’s confidence,” then he should have worked within the party to bring those issues up and set things right. If in the view of the Korean public and the members of the GNP he did not work in good faith to that end, then the problems inherent in Lee Myung-bak do not justify his decision to run himself.

The part where he took issue with Lee Myung-bak’s approach to North Korea was also a crude excuse. It would be hard to find fundamental differences between the two men on North Korea. So to have Lee Hoi-chang take issue with Lee Myung-bak’s attitude towards Pyongyang makes you wonder whether he was just in need of an excuse to run. Otherwise his behavior goes against the flow of history, which is moving toward peace on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia.

He talked about the lofty goal of making sure there is a “change of government,” but he also left open the possibility he might step down along the way or participate in an effort to field just one conservative opposition candidate, something one has to assume means that he himself recognizes he is in a bad position. The image he used to have as a judge who respected principles but issued forward-thinking decisions lost its luster in the course of two presidential elections. This decision of his to run again for being unable to rid himself of his deep attachment to being president might mean he ends up, in his own words, “surrendering the personal honor and pride” he has maintained his “whole life.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]