hankyoreh

A crucial quality required of a national leader is a true belief in democracy. A conviction in popular sovereignty and the inviolability of human rights was fundamental in overcoming monarchy and giving rise to republican government. New Frontier Party emergency measures committee chairwoman and presidential hopeful Park Geun-hye‘s dedication to these principles is questionable.
Park, 60, has spent her whole career in the shadow of her deceased father, former military dictator Park Chung-hee (1917-1979). While his legacy has cast a dark shadow on her own political activities, Park herself has failed to articulate her thoughts on democracy.
Of course, doing so would require her to first make her views known about her father’s regime, which usurped power by overthrowing a democratic government and was responsible for human rights violations and devastating damage to constitutional government. In other words, she might have to repudiate her very political assets and roots.
Still, someone with aspirations to lead a democratic republic cannot simply skirt such issues. But we saw something the other day in Busan, when Park told victims of her father’s regime that she “had always felt sorry for the people who suffered unfairly in the industrialization process.”
The essential problem with the Park Chung-hee government was its status as an administration that seized power illegitimately and used repressive tactics to maintain itself. The regime argued that its brutal ruling style was an unavoidable phase of the industrialization process. All the arrests, detentions, torture, imprisonment, and even murders perpetrated by the repression system were presented as unintended. The understanding was that democracy could be suspended and human rights violated or curtailed so long as it was for the sake of industrialization.
In 2004, Park apologized for her father’s mistakes to then President Kim Dae-jung. Kim, for his part, seemed to take her at her word. But the remarks Park made a few days ago suggest that Kim‘s kidnapping and near-murder in 1973 were also unwitting errors of the industrialization process. Contrary to her reputation, Park is someone who says one thing and thinks another, and who doesn’t hesitate to do things that fly in the face of human decency.
Unfortunately, Park basically proved with her recent statement that the disparaging nickname of “Yushin princess” is not far off the mark. Yushin refers to the October self-coup in 1972 when Park Chung-hee, already president, assumed dictatorial powers through the declaration of a state of emergency, eliminating the National Assembly and revising the constitution to allow unchecked authoritarian power.
Park hasn’t shown genuine contrition for this legacy. She views democracy within a framework of dynasty and dictatorship. Such a person cannot be the leader of a democratic republic.
　
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