Is Ahn Cheol-soo just a nicer Lee Myung-bak?

Posted on : 2012-10-06 15:46 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Some find similarities in both men's backgrounds in business, entrances to politics

By Choi Sung-jin, staff reporter

"Park Geun-hye is Park Chung-hee, Moon Jae-in is Roh Moo-hyun, and Ahn Cheol-soo is a nicer Lee Myung-bak."

This is how some people are summing up the 2012 presidential election. The first two are fairly familiar comparisons: Park, the New Frontier Party (NFP) candidate, keeps summoning the specter of her father, former president Park Chung-hee, while Moon, the Democratic United Party candidate, is forever recalling Roh, a close friend under whom he served as Blue House Chief of Staff. Both candidates have stressed the need to weigh both the good and the bad about their predecessors. This suggests that after acknowledging the achievements of the former presidents - one a father, the other a friend - they will be able to overcome their limitations.

But the idea of Ahn being a "nicer Lee Myung-bak" isn't one people readily agree with. Ahn's camp, is not happy with the comparison. During the five years of the Lee administration, he has sided Lee's critics rather than his supporters. Before declaring his candidacy, he lambasted Lee's Four Major Rivers Project and pro-chaebol policies.

Still, many observers continue using the comparison to Lee to better understand Ahn. Park Eun-ji, spokeswoman for the Preparatory Committee to Inaugurate a New Progressive Party, did so back on Aug. 3, citing Ahn's past history of chaebol sympathies and calling him "a more likeable Lee Myung-bak." In September 2011, cultural critic Mun-Gang Hyeong-jun told the Hankook Ilbo in an interview that Ahn was "basically a nicer Lee Myung-bak, with the image of honesty and genuineness that Lee Myung-bak lacks."

In a Sept. 23 column for the Hankyoreh, freelance contributor Park Ga-bun said Ahn was "someone like Lee Myung-bak with a human face in the way he reduces politics to 'rational administration.'"

The comparisons are twofold. First, some observers are saying Ahn bears similarities to Lee in his identity and political style. The argument is that Ahn, as someone who has used his corporate CEO credentials as a springboard into politics and emphasized economic growth and national security, differs little from Lee in his basic conservatism, but that he also qualifies the growth as "embracing" and says he plans to complement his security approach by opening a window for dialogue with North Korea. In other words, a kinder, gentler version of Lee.

Other observers are positing that if materialist hopes for growth and personal success are what propelled Lee to the presidency in 2007, those hopes are represented by Ahn's popularity after 5 years of the Lee Administration. In other words, displeasure with Lee and his failure over the past five years to do anything about the establishment's greed and privatization of profits is behind the positive feeling toward Ahn, who advocates "fairness" and "justice" alongside competition.

Ahn's emergence and rise as a politician does indeed recall Lee's 2007 candidacy for the Grand National Party (former NFP). In 1995, Ahn founded the security software provider AhnLab, where he served as CEO for ten years. Lee was president of Hyundai Engineering & Construction. In both cases, success as a corporate manager was a powerful boost in their steps toward the presidency.

The "simple fact" of similar origins is not simple at all, since it goes some way in defining their basic stance on politics. In his book "Ahn Cheol-soo's Thoughts," Ahn interpreted his own popularity as "the desire to overcome the things that come across to people as the 'ancien regime' and to develop 'values of the future' that give people hope." He summed up the South Korean political landscape as a clash between old and new values and framed himself as the one detecting the new ones. In this, his approach resembled the one used five years ago by Lee, who positioned "Yeouido [" as the status quo and himself as the fresh new option.

The way the two men seem to view politics and statecraft as an extension of administration and corporate management also appears tied in with their experience. Before the Seoul mayoral by-election last October, Ahn commented that administration is the essence of politics. Similarly, Lee derided politics as inefficient and demanded an "entrepreneurial mind-set" from public servants early on in his term.

"Ahn Cheol-soo is supposed to symbolize the kind of post-political politics the public wants," said Moon-Gang. "That's also what happened in 2007 when Lee Myung-bak was elected president.

"The "nicer Lee" frame could be a roadblock to Ahn's efforts to reach a deal with the opposition on putting forth a single candidate. The conception from the opposition, and progressives in particular, largely stems from a critique of his identity.

"Ahn said in his book that we need to strengthen the finance/industry wall that prevents chaebol from going into financial businesses," Park Eun-ji said on Oct. 5. "But back when he was a businessman, he was inconsistent about it. He gave the impression of taking part in the founding of the Internet Primary Bank by big business which could be characterized as a signal for the eventual demolition of the finance/industry wall."

"It's questionable just what position he's going to take on issues where the interests of chaebol and workers or the working class are clearly at odds," she added.

Lee Suk-hyeon, a deputy spokeswoman for Ahn's camp, said the comparisons with Lee were "improbable."

"Mr. Ahn has never once neglected the public interest, as we can see with his decision to distribute anti-virus computer software free of charge when he was with AhnLab," she said.

"As far as the 'old guard' criticisms are concerned, they were less about repudiating politics and the party system, and more about how politics and the party system need to better reflect the public's wishes," Lee added.

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

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