hankyoreh

During my time on the Blue House beat, I had a question I’d been saving for the right moment. I hoped I’d have the chance to pose that question two years from now.

But then I was moved to a new beat, and besides, I figured there was nothing wrong with posing the question a little earlier than planned, while there’s still time to do something about it.

So here goes: How much have you changed the South Korean mainstream so far?

When South Korean President Moon Jae-in was asked why he’d entered politics, he said his goal was to change the mainstream. Some say he made the comment while trekking in the Himalayas, while he was out of office. Others say he made the remark while he was being interviewed by somebody.

If I was lucky enough to be there, I wanted to raise my hand during Moon’s farewell press conference and ask him that question.

Moon has a year and a half left in his presidency. I wonder how much progress he’s made on his ambitious plans, after spending three and a half years in the Blue House.

The president has tried to put some dents into the mainstream, which has passed through phases of Japanese collaboration, anti-communism, and dictatorial rule. The phase of chaebol domination is still running strong. He quashed a debate about the rightful founding of the Republic of Korea, put the spotlight on the deeds of freedom fighter Kim Won-bong, and highlighted how ordinary people also took part in Korea’s independence movement.

Moon has his achievements. By organizing three inter-Korean summits, Moon managed to push the far-right, anti-communist forces out of power in parliament, parasitic forces that had thrived on conflict between South and North Korea. That was no mean feat.

But when we look more closely at several long-standing challenges, Moon still comes up short.

In memoirs and several interviews, Moon has expressed great regret about not managing to tame Korea’s public prosecutors; even now, those reforms remain doubtful. To borrow an expression from Seong Han-yong, a senior reporter at the Hankyoreh, the prosecutors are about to showcase their miraculous ability to outlast all kinds of adversity and outlive yet another administration.

Considering that Moon had tasted the bitterness of defeat when he tried to reform the prosecutors during the presidency of Roh Moo-hyun, it seemed impossible that the prosecutors could wriggle out of reform under a Moon administration.

But sure enough, reform has gotten bogged down, and nothing seems to be going right.

In the past, the prosecutors’ key tactic was keeping files on corruption by the party in power and then bringing them to light at the right moment. But now their primary approach is making a mess. They sow so much chaos that the two sides can no longer be distinguished.

Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl signaled that he wouldn’t be fighting fair with his no-holds-barred investigation of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk, his habit of promoting prosecutors from the office of special investigations, and his attempts to cover for close associates.

Since then, Yoon and Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae have been locked in an unending and impenetrable struggle that reminds one of a Mobius strip. Their struggle has sapped momentum from the prosecutorial reform drive. In fact, the whole thing has become exhausting, and I’m starting to get sick of it. The reform initiative itself has grown indistinct. The winner here is surely career prosecutor Yoon, who has both preserved the prosecutorial status quo and gained a reputation as a frontrunner in the next presidential election along the way.

The Moon administration has spent so much energy wrangling with the prosecutors that it hasn’t been able to even begin its reform of the courts, an even more entrenched institution. Meanwhile, former Supreme Court Justice Park Byung-dae, who faced charges in a judiciary scandal, has been reinstated as a lawyer, and the Supreme Court has upheld fines levied on teachers who signed a statement about the Sewol tragedy.

Prospects are even dimmer for the administration’s key pledge of moving forward with balanced regional development. Currently, more than half of South Korea’s population is clustered in Seoul and its satellite cities. Gangnam, mighty bastion of the mainstream, looks as impregnable as ever with its skyrocketing real estate.

Repeating the same mistake is the height of folly. It wasn’t until last month that the government incorporated balanced development measures as a major plank of the Korean New Deal. That became the fourth plank in the program, after the digital deal, green deal, and social safety net deal. My impression is that priorities aren’t necessarily organized from top to bottom.

Then there’s the issue of labor. Fifty years after the death of Jeon Tae-il — a young worker who set himself on fire to protest atrocious labor conditions — I still feel sheepish talking about workers taking ownership. Workers in precarious jobs and gig workers are still collapsing from exhaustion, outside of the protection and sometimes even the reach of the law.

In the high-tech era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the walls of the mainstream are even harder to scale than in previous eras, when those walls were erected with capital.

I suspect that Moon himself probably feels much of the same regrets. He once said, “Jeon Tae-il would probably say we have a long way to go” before we achieve a society in which workers are respected.

We do have a long way to go, and the sun is starting to set. But a year and a half is absolutely not too short to lessen our regrets down the road.

So that’s why I’m asking the question here that I won’t be able to ask in person. “Can you change the mainstream?”

Seong Yeon-cheol

By Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporter

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