[Interview] British writer asking why Korea’s democracy is still delayed

Posted on : 2015-07-10 08:51 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Daniel Tudor spent seven years in South Korea, and has written a new book claiming the country doesn’t have real conservatives or progressives
 June 5. (by Kang Jae-hoon
June 5. (by Kang Jae-hoon

I sat on this interview for a long time. It was at the beginning of last month in a book cafe in the Gwanghwamun area that I met him - Daniel Tudor, 33, former Seoul correspondent for the Economist. 
Tudor came to Seoul at the end of May. During the ten or so days that he was here, he had already had quite a few media interviews. Even after he returned to the UK, prerecorded interviews were broadcast on the TV news.
If there wasn’t anything for this interview to add, I would have just quietly killed it. An interview isn’t interesting unless it’s hot off the press.
But unfortunately, the points that he made are still hot and fresh in South Korea’s retrogressive political machine, especially considering how the machine is creaking more every day.
Kyobo Bookstore figures suggest that Tudor’s study of South Korean politics - “Democracy Delayed” (the Korean title is “Accustomed to Despair, Uncomfortable with Hope”) - is the number one seller in the politics and society section.

“Obviously, I wasn’t qualified to write this book. I’m neither a politician nor a political scientist. I’m not Korean, and I’m not even that good at the Korean language. I’m well aware that I enjoy unfair privileges in Korea as a Western journalist and as a graduate of a prestigious university.” (from an article by Daniel Tudor that ran in the June 3 issue of the newspaper of the Journalists Association of Korea)

 staff photographer)
staff photographer)

As Tudor himself acknowledges, he is an outsider, and yet he wrote a book about South Korean politics. The reason he did, he says, is because he wanted to somehow spark a debate among Koreans who are “accustomed to despair.” 
As fodder for this debate, Tudor offers a variety of cases from a changing world, proposing, as he says, “something quite different.” 
What kind of “uncomfortable hope” did the South Korean readers who made Tudor’s book a bestseller hope to find in “something quite different”? Why are so many people responding with such energy to this 30-something British man’s diagnosis of and suggestions for South Korean politics?
 

They Say I’m a Western Leftist 

In the interview, Tudor alternated between English and Korean. When I asked him a question in Korean, he usually answered me in English, and when I asked a question in English, he would slip some Korean into his responses (though these are translated into English for this version of the article).
When he goes to a restaurant, he’s fluent enough in the language to mix jokes in with his order - “I need two servings with enough food for three!” Even so, when he says that his Korean still isn’t good enough to express his opinions perfectly, his cheeks blush bright red. I’ve seen a lot of Koreans embarrassed about their poor English, but this was the first time I’d seen an Englishman embarrassed about his poor Korean.
While sipping on a cup of English breakfast tea (instead of coffee), Tudor thoughtfully fielded my questions for three and a half hours.
 

Lee Jin-soon (L): The subtitle of your book “Democracy Delayed” is “A Western Leftist Talks Korean Politics.” So, are you leftist? 

Daniel Tudor (T): That’s mainly ironic. Somebody wrote something funny to me once on Twitter when I criticized TV Chosun (a conservative cable TV network). 

L: What did you say? 

T: TV Chosun was showing when Park Geun-hye visited the UK and met the Queen. They had some guy on the TV, saying that, to the English people, the Queen “receives unlimited respect.” So I took a picture of that, and put it on Twitter and said, “Stop lying, TV Chosun.” 

L: (laughing) 

T: I thought it was just ridiculous, because a lot of English people don’t like the royal family. And a lot of people do like it, but it’s a mixture of opinion. 

L: I didn’t know that, actually. I thought that all the English people respected and trusted the royal family. 

T: My dad, for example, loves the royal family. My uncle thinks that they are parasitic. As for me, I don’t really care. Anyway, so I wrote that. Then somebody wrote to me on Twitter in Korean, “a typical Western leftist slandering South Korea.” So I thought it was very funny. The idea that if I criticize TV Chosun, I’m criticizing the country; it’s quite bizarre. And so, I thought I would just use that phrase “Western leftist.” (laughing) 

Tudor was born in a small village called Stalybridge in the suburbs of Manchester in the UK. When he was 12 years old, his father was laid off from his job as a manager at a small company. After that, his father rotated through a number of jobs before finally retiring as a school custodian. 
His mother, who ran a small dance academy in the neighborhood, became the de facto head of the house and kept the bills paid. An only son, Tudor enrolled in Oxford University and majored in a program called Philosophy, Politics, and Economics - regarded as the royal road to the elite in Britain. 
Tudor first came to South Korea during the World Cup in 2002. When a Korean university friend invited him to visit South Korea with him, Tudor agreed to go, almost on a lark. Until that point, the only thing he knew about South Korea was that its capital was Seoul. 
The moment he stepped foot in South Korea, he was enchanted by Korean culture - dynamic, always changing, and full of heart. In 2004, he came back to South Korea and worked at an English language academy and a securities firm. 
After returning to the UK in 2007, he completed an MA in economics at University of Manchester and worked at a hedge fund in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2010, he returned to South Korea as the Seoul correspondent for the Economist.
 

L: This year alone, you’ve published two books. “North Korea Confidential” [coauthored with James Pearson] in April and “Democracy Delayed” now. In the last chapter of “North Korea Confidential,” “Will North Korea Collapse?” you said you doubt the possibility of North Korea collapsing in the near future. What evidence do you have for this? 

T: North Korea has survived for three generations, and it survived the fall of the Soviet Union. For years and years, a lot of smart people have been saying, “Oh, North Korea is going to collapse.” But it never does, right? I mean, those people die before North Korea collapses. The North Korean government is actually bankrupt, and there are many problems, socially, economically, culturally, and politically. But it’s extremely difficult to stand up to the government inside North Korea. Unlike South Korea, with its marvelous achievement of democracy, in North Korea they don’t have the historical experience to even imagine doing that. Most importantly, on a geopolitical level, I think the big powers get something from the existence of North Korea. If you’re Shinzo Abe, I think North Korea is useful, because it allows you to be more aggressive and develop your army and come back to military strength. If you’re China, it’s a buffer against the US army in South Korea. For the US, it’s useful because it justifies military spending, it justifies being present in Asia. South Korea, well, I think South Korea is basically powerless.

Daniel Tudor
Daniel Tudor

 

In Korea I think there’s a kind of inherent socialism. 

L: I should confess I don’t like how Koreans get so excited about books that foreigners write about Korea. I especially dislike how people want to quote the international media in order to support what they want to say, people who quote the New York Times or the Washington Post and say, “They reported this.”

T: See, that’s essentially the job of the international desk at Korean papers. Quoting the foreign press. 

L: But I’ve come to a different opinion about the books that you’ve written about Korea. When I read “Korea: The Impossible Country,” which came out in 2013, I thought it was going to be a collection of columns by a foreign correspondent. I was surprised to see it was more of an ethnographic study. Including the three years you worked here as a foreign correspondent, you were only in South Korea for seven years altogether. I’m very curious how you could do so much in-depth writing given the time you were here. 

T: It’s very kind of you to say that. I don’t really feel I’m doing anything special. But I think it basically comes from love, and the fact that I like this place so much. The first time I came here, I felt something like, “it‘s the right place for me.” Of course, I’m English. I’m shy and socially awkward, I like drinking tea, I like getting very drunk - that’s a very English thing, but it’s also a very Korean thing (laughter) One thing about my country is that the people are a bit cold, and they’re quite sarcastic. “This is my thing, that’s your thing, let’s not worry about each other.” But Koreans aren‘t like that. In Korea I think there’s a kind of inherent socialism. 

L: What do you mean? 

T: I don’t mean that in a political or economic sense, but people are naturally socialist here. Even though the foundation of the state is politically capitalist, I think that the people themselves are naturally socialist. Chinese people are born capitalists, and they had a communist government. But Korea is the opposite. Rather than distinguishing between my stuff and your stuff, they emphasize “us,” and they put food in the middle of the table and share it. 

L: I think I know what you mean. (laughter) Many international reporters or correspondents in Korea meet only a very limited group of people. But the impression I had when I read your book was that this guy must meet a variety of people in Korea. 

T: I try my best. Foreign correspondents generally talk to people who speak English very well, PR people for businesses and government people and fancy university professors. If you’re a journalist for three years and you know you’re going somewhere else after that, there’s no chance to learn Korean. My situation is a little different. I came here because I’m interested in Korea, so I became a journalist. After making up my mind to learn Korean language and culture, I spent a lot of time avoiding people who speak English well. I want to be forced to use more Korean. People who speak English are usually businessmen who are kind of boring. I tend to find the ones who don’t speak English more interesting. I think it was in 2011, I remember. One day, I met Lee Myung-bak, and the next day I interviewed a homeless guy. On average, people who speak English are more right-wing. Among foreign journalists, there are a lot of people who think that the Korean left is sort of crazy. Because I meet so many different kinds of people, I probably like and understand the Korean progressive side or left wing better than other foreign journalists. 

Tudor may understand South Korean progressives better than most, but that does not necessarily mean that he always agrees with them. He gets right to the heart of the fatal limitations that have kept the country’s progressives from gaining power and moving forward with fundamental social reform. No government in South Korea’s history has questioned the privileges enjoyed by large corporations, Tudor argues. As he sees it, conservatives and progressives here are “fake conservatives and fake progressives without a philosophy.”
Daniel Tudor
Daniel Tudor

 

In Korea, conservatism is basically Park Chung-hee-ism 

L: In your book, you wrote that Korean conservatives are not conservative and Korean progressives are not progressive. What did you mean by that? 

T: In Korea, conservatism is basically Park Chung-hee-ism. It‘s support for the developmental state, and GDP growth, and exports and numbers. “We have the second tallest building in Asia, we have a number 1 hit in America,” other stuff like that. If you’re a conservative party, you would usually support free-market economic principles. But I think Korea’s conservatives espouse a corporatism that goes against the principles of the free market. So when a group like Federation of Korean Industries talks about free markets, it’s completely false. Corporations receive subsidies for electricity, and they historically have gotten lots of nice treatment from the government. And whenever there’s talk of raising tax on companies, they always bring up free markets. It’s hypocrisy. 

L: What about Korea’s progressives? 

T: Just anti-Park Chung-hee-ism. Just like the conservatives, they’ve never moved beyond corporatism. Interestingly, I think the most free-market President was Kim Dae-jung. Roh Moo-hyun gave a different kind of feeling as a human being, but still he would pardon chaebol heads when they did something illegal. The Saenuri Party has no philosophy, other than numbers. The New Politics Alliance for Democracy is basically just the shadow of the Saenuri Party. If you’re progressive, you care about social minorities, weak people, poor people in society. You care about women’s equality, maybe gay rights, you care about things like that. But I don’t see much of that. These two parties are dominating the Korean political scene.

Daniel Tudor during his interview with Lee Jin-soon at a book cafe in the Gwanghwamun area of Seoul
Daniel Tudor during his interview with Lee Jin-soon at a book cafe in the Gwanghwamun area of Seoul

 

While this two-party system is preventing the rise of a new political party, Koreans are so accustomed to despair that they are afraid to dream of change that would break the mold, Tudor said. One phrase that he wrote in his book really jumped out at me.

“The greatest gift you could give bad politicians is a public that is apathetic about politics.” 

L: In your book you have some suggestions about effective ways to restructure the political environment. One example was the Five Star movement in Italy. 

T: In Italy you had Prime Minister Berlusconi, who was very unpopular, but always won. He also controlled the media. The opposition was quite unpopular. People would like somebody else to win, not Berlusconi, but they didn’t trust the opposition. That sounds quite like Korea. But then Beppe Grillo, this former comedian and popular blogger, had an idea. In each region, town, there are little groups that meet, discuss politics, and debate. Everyone has two or three minutes to speak. At the same time, you vote for something. These little groups joined together and turned into a national movement.

 June 5. (by Kang Jae-hoon
June 5. (by Kang Jae-hoon

 

Rejecting the traditional framework of left and right, the Five Star Movement advocates anti-corruption, direct democracy, sustainable growth and environmentalism, nonviolence. Under the motto of “temporary service,” one of the rules of the party is that anyone who is elected two times, at any level of politics, cannot be nominated again and has to go back to their own job. The point is to prevent politicians from becoming part of the establishment.  

Only two years after its establishment, the Five Star Movement mushroomed into a national organization with 650 grassroots meetings all over the country. The first time it fielded candidates for the general election in 2013, it took 109 seats in the lower house and 54 in the upper house. In the European Parliament elections last year, it had an impressive showing, electing 17 members of parliament. 

L: But do you think that political campaigns like the Five Star Movement can succeed based on the passion of citizens alone? Many people think that getting involved in politics - and winning elections - requires money, organization, and networks. 

T: The example of Podemos in Spain disproves that assumption. This is a quite left-wing political party in Spain that started last year. It was started by a charismatic young professor of political science. He used this kind of network style. Each member online has a vote, and they decide what the policies are going to be. It‘s now the most popular political party in Spain. When the next election comes, probably they will win. Their budget was 100,000 euros - that’s really nothing. And they did it all through online and offline campaigning. The thing that is really needed isn‘t money. It’s people willing to do the work themselves. 

In an election in which the established political party of Spain was struggling even with a budget of 2 million euros, Podemos only needed 100,000 euros, which it raised through micro contributions from ordinary people. This past February, 100,000 supporters of Podemos gathered at the central plaza of Madrid for a street parade. 260 buses were rented through crowd funding from around the country, and hundreds of families living in Spain provided free places for them to stay. It was a festival of politics of the people, by the people, and for the people. In Spanish, Podemos means “we can do it.”  
L: Can we do it, too? 
T: In Korea there are a lot of progressive people who are professionals. The sad thing is that these progressive political people are good at arguing and debate, at shouting and opposing and criticizing the Saenuri Party, but I don’t think they know how to organize a proper organization. There needs to be a way to encourage people like that to join politics. So this kind of group - something like the Five Star Movement or Podemos - that’s a way for those people to do something. Right now, if you‘re that kind of person, you don’t think it‘s something you could do.
 staff photographer)
staff photographer)
 
Korea’s very much driven by personal connections 
L: You lived in Korea for seven years, and you‘re talking about what is fundamentally wrong with Korean politics and how this twisted form of the free market that is focused on chaebol is hurting society. But why do we have to hear this from you? Koreans just don’t talk about it, even people who have been working as reporters for decades. 
T: I think it’s more of an institutional problem than an individual problem. I have a lot of Korean journalist friends, but even if they agree with what I’m saying, they‘re probably not allowed to say it themselves. Korea’s very much driven by personal connections. The British media mentality on this point at least is clear. “Even though I know this is going to hurt somebody‘s feelings, piss someone off, or get me in trouble, anyway I have to say it.” That’s British press mentality.
Daniel Tudor on his first trip to South Korea for the 2002 World Cup. He moved to South Korea after graduate school
Daniel Tudor on his first trip to South Korea for the 2002 World Cup. He moved to South Korea after graduate school
 
L: In Korea, it’s pretty common for well-known journalists to be sucked into politics. 
T: That doesn’t usually happen in England. In the case of England, journalists are mostly left-wing and rebellious. They’re educated, smart, and if they wanted to, they could become bankers or go into politics or something. But they see themselves as rebels. Their job is to fight or expose the system. It’s almost like, if you have pride in yourself, you don’t want to be part of the establishment. 
L: There are some Koreans who say the press is largely responsible for the divide between the conservative and progressive camps. On one side you have the Chosun Ilbo, the Joongang Ilbo, and the Dong-a Ilbo, and on the other side the Hankyoreh and the Kyunghyang Shinmun, and they run contradictory reports about the same facts. People say that this splits public opinion in two. What do you think about bias in the press? 
T: I think bias is okay, in the press, as long as there’s bias in both directions. 
L: Bias is okay? In what sense? 
T: Well, if you look at the Economist, it’s very biased. But people like it and respect it, even. So I think it’s okay to be biased, as long as you’re not lying. I think it’s a very American journalist mentality to be neutral and objective. Bias is natural. Everyone is biased, and I think it’s slightly false to pretend that you’re not biased. 
L: We were always told that the press in advanced countries is fair and unbiased. (laughing) 
T: No, the British press is super-biased. In the editorials of British papers, they say “we’re a conservative paper” or “because we’re a progressive paper.” They‘ll say that! 
Bias in the Press is Natural 
Tudor emphasizes that the real problem is not bias but the fact that the press is steadily losing its independence and diversity. Newspapers obsessed with making money overflow with awful reporting, and talented journalists are leaving their jobs. 
At the end of last year, Tudor wrapped up his time in Seoul and returned to London, where he established a new platform for news called Byline with Lee Seung-yoon, a classmate from Oxford. The website is a crowd funding platform through which reporters post briefs for reports they want to write and interested readers provide them with support. 
The platform hasn’t been in business for long, but it‘s already creating a stir as the Rupert Murdoch phone hacking scandal returns to the headlines. This is an issue that a paper kowtowing to capital would never have touched, but Tudor is attempting to tackle it through the power of ordinary people and networks.
 
L: When you look back at when you first came to Korea more than a decade ago, how are you different today? 
T: I’m less fat than I was ten years ago. (laughter) I was quite fat back then and I used to drink even more. I think I’m more idealistic. Most people go conservative when they get older, but I’m going the other way. Since I became a journalist, I‘ve learned all these things I never knew when I was focused on making money in finance. I’ve learned it‘s possible to be an idealist, do the things you want to do, make enough money to live, and do something that’s good for other people. I look at my old friends, and they‘re making a lot of money, but they’re quite stressed out and miserable. I think actually I’m lucky, and I’m grateful.
 which he says was the most important decision of his life.
which he says was the most important decision of his life.
 
Perhaps we too could become idealists who dream big dreams as we get older. As Tudor pointed out, perhaps what we lack right now is not funding, organization, and big heroes, but bold ideas and enough courage to put them into action. Korea, Podemos
 
Interview by Lee Jin-soon, Freelancer interviewer, and transcribed by Yonsei University graduate student Cha Min-tae
 
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
 

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