hankyoreh

March 27. Ven. Jinje has been widely acknowledged as one of the most eminent teachers of Korean seon (Zen) meditation. In the last few years

By Kim Jong-chul, senior staff writer　

Park Geun-hye will reportedly spend Thursday, the first day of the election campaign, campaigning in and around Seoul, the election’s main battleground. Park is campaigning under the slogan “let’s go together into the future.” On Wednesday, she visited Jogyesa Temple in Seoul‘s Gyeonji-dong in an attempt to win over Buddhists, who have had strained relations with the Lee Myung-bak government. The pro-Christian Lee administration has cut funding for Buddhist initiatives.

Park has been leading the New Frontier Party (NFP) reform and election candidate nominations. She was given her influential position due to her image as a forward-looking politician and history of opposition to unpopular president Lee Myung-bak. She has spearheaded her party’s claims of reform, advocating “capitalism with principles” and increased welfare instead of the lowered taxes and deregulation that the party has traditionally argued for. She has appeared humble, saying at one lecture last autumn that she was “reflecting enormously [on past actions].”

More recently, however, Park’s behavior and attitude have moved away from self-reflection and towards criticism of her opponents. She has called for “judgment of the opposition” in April’s general election and has led a red baiting offensive, calling the Democratic United Party and the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) “powers that have fallen for the wrong ideologies.” Park‘s official mouthpiece, election polling committee spokesperson Lee Sang-il, has delivers even harsher criticisms of progressive politicians. He attacked the opposition by claiming that “those that hung up a portrait of Kim Jong-il and held a silent tribute” (an eastern Gyeonggi province alliance within the UPP) intended to use the DUP to seize the National Assembly, then set up their own government after five years. Another spokesperson for the same committee branded the UPP a “radical party” and claimed that the entire National Assembly could end up dominated by a UPP minority.

On the economy, Park appears to be returning to her neo-liberal approach. At an election committee meeting on Tuesday, Park reportedly commented that the opposition was making the coming election into a battle between the one percent and the 99 percent of Korean society, and that the NFP would create a “100 percent Korea.” By branding policies that attempt to hold big business and the rich to account through tax increases as something that instigates a conflict of one percent against 99 percent, Park is effectively speaking on behalf of the privileged one percent. Park has also criticized opposition moves to control the power of chaebol as covertly intending to dissolve conglomerates. Park is apparently aligning her trajectory with the current Lee Myung-bak government when it comes to big business.

Such a policy reversion was, to some extent, foreseen during the nomination of general election candidates. The NFP named economic democratization one of its key new policy objectives, but chose as candidates pro-chaebol figures such as incumbent lawmakers Na Seong-lin and Yoo Il-ho, and professors Lee Man-u, An Jong-beom, Lee Jong-hun and Kim Hyeon-suk. One reformist NFP lawmaker from the metropolitan region said on Wednesday that Lee Myung-bak’s nominations for the 2008 general election had produced a reformist faction that included lawmakers such as Kim Song-sik, Jeong Tae-keun and Kwon Young-jin, but that there was no-one among Park Geun-hye’s nominees this year that could form such a faction.

The ranks of Park’s confidants are also filling with members of the old guard. Typical examples include former lawmakers Kim Yong-hwan and Seo Cheong-won, who have been taken on as advisors at the NFP’s election committee. Kim was a loyal implementer of Park Chung-hee’s economic model, while Seo is a big shot among Park Geun-hye’s supporters and created the pro-Park alliance before the 2008 general election. Park, who values loyalty, is known to listen often to advice from this group of veterans who have been with her for a long time. One current lawmaker said that seeing Kim standing to Park’s left and Seo to her right at the election committee launching ceremony had confirmed that the two were now her closest confidants, and that it seemed that, instead of moving into the future, Park was going back to her old ways.

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