hankyoreh

Lee Myung-bak has won the presidency. We congratulate Lee for his hard-fought victory and we offer our condolences to the candidates who fought hard until the very end.

Lee’s victory means that the country wanted change enough to let him win, despite questions about his ethical character, including allegations that he engaged in stock price manipulation. In other terms, it was an expression of disappointment in President Roh Moo-hyun’s administration. Five years ago, we were just half a decade beyond the unprecedented national disaster that was the 1997 financial crisis, and ordinary people (seomin) elected Roh in the hope that he would improve their lives. Disappointment was the result. The economic indicators looked nice enough, but real estate prices skyrocketed, small business owners went bankrupt, and irregular employment became commonplace, so the situation for ordinary people only became worse. Many of the reform measures Roh’s administration enacted were accompanied by a lot of talk, without ever being adequately implemented. Dissatisfaction with the situation led to calls for judgment to be issued upon Roh’s administration, and nothing was able to curb that.

Lee needs to remember all this. Popular sentiment settled on Lee not so much because the people have confidence in his abilities or ethics, but because they were “voting retrospectively.” As one can see with this assessment, it was an expression of a desire to render judgment on the current government and to have a change of government. When the populace wanted a change, the first place it inevitably looked to was the largest opposition party in the National Assembly, the Grand Nationals (GNP), and Lee was the candidate chosen by that party. The fact that voter turnout was the lowest in presidential election history also shows you how it was not as if popular sentiment was delighted with Lee, either, which is why Lee must not allow himself to become arrogant because of the votes he won. He needs to be aware of how he could suddenly lose the people’s hearts, depending on how effectively and in what direction he runs the country, “like grass that leans over before the wind and rises before the wind.”


Getting beyond the economy

The first thing, then, that Lee needs to do is wipe the tears of the people who are suffering and strive to improve their quality of life. Being a businessman, and having been a candidate who promoted himself as the person who would be the “economic president,” the country has particular hopes for what Lee will do. However, the realities are not so simple. International economic conditions are not very optimistic, with the subprime situation and concerns about Chinese inflation, and domestic conditions are not very favorable either. He needs to reexamine his “747 Policy” proposal and see just how realistic that and other economic campaign promises are so that he avoids taking the country into another state of disappointment. He also must remember that he will not be able to resolve the serious socioeconomic disparity that exists in Korea today with policies in which nothing matters but growth.

In addition, he must also strive to heal the discord and animosity that has intensified during Roh’s administration and during the course of the campaign. Throughout the current administration there has been much discord, and differences over policies relating to the economy, education, the environment, and other major areas, but there was no forum for public opinion that would have made rational debate on resolving those differences and discord possible. Lee is no longer a candidate from a single political party. Now he needs to bring the whole country together. He needs to be a leader who knows how to listen to various views and not insist exclusively on his own. It is in this sense we would hope he will be able to reconsider controversial policy ideas from the campaign, like his pledge to build a massive canal; to change education to, among other things, expand private independent schools; and to instate a media policy that would include allowing media companies to own both newspapers and broadcasting companies. We say this because there are many elements to his policies that could exacerbate social discord.

Lee needs to further develop inter-Korean relations, which have been advanced with great difficulty since the administration of Kim Dae-jung. Lee failed to take a consistent stance on relations with the North in the course of the campaign. However, the mood is more ripe than ever to build a peace regime for the Korean peninsula based on the results of the six-party talks and the inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang this past October. The new government must take a guiding role in creating an atmosphere conducive to peace and lead the way in building peace on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia. By doing so, his party will also be able to free itself from its old establishment image and come to be loved that much more by the Korean public. We would hope that Lee’s pragmatist approach can become a catalyst for change in the GNP.

Leading with BBK

Korean democracy has just barely begun to sprout, and protecting it will also be a heavy responsibility. People in some quarters like to talk as if democracy has taken root in our society, but in the 60 years of the history of the Republic of Korea it has been for only about the last decade that democracy has been able to function as a system. While campaigning, Lee made comments that suggested he thinks of the police as a major tool for resolving social discord and that he does not recognize the legitimate right of laborers to strike. It is because of such thinking that the international media has expressed concern that the outcome of the election could lead to a retrogression in Korean democracy. The Korean people spent blood and tears in achieving democratization, however, and they will not tolerate the turning back of democratic progress.

If Lee wants to answer to the country’s demands and expectations, he needs to start by resolving the various questions that remain, like those about BBK. He himself said he accepts having an independent counsel look into the case, so he needs to prevent complications later on by responding surely and in good faith to the inquiry. It is highly likely that he will be dogged by problems for the duration of his time in office if he tries to get himself beyond the questions with clumsy lies and by patching up his explanations as they go along, just as he did during the campaign. Korea does not have the luxury of being able to waste the next five years.


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