hankyoreh

June 24. (by Shin So-young

By Lee Se-young, Lee Seung-jun and Kim Su-heon, staff reporters

South Korea‘s conservatives have been on a tear lately. Since Moon Chang-geuk’s decision to withdraw his nomination for the post of Prime Minister, they have been abandoning their defensive tactics and lining up for an offensive against the political opposition and progressives. Not just the Blue House and the ruling party, but extreme conservative groups and media outlets also seem ready to cooperate in the offensive.

The cancellation of Moon’s hearing is now being denounced as opposition obstructionism, with threats of going after the media outlets that reported on his past pro-Japanese statements for bias and “selective editing.” Moon’s withdrawal may touch off a full-scale onslaught by the country’s right wing.

Soon after Moon held a press conference to announce his decision on June 24, conservative journalist Cho Gab-je went on his homepage (chogabje.com) to declare that President Park Geun-hye had “sacrificed her principles for the sake of her popularity,” calling the decision “a case of the state surrendering to falsehood.”

The Joong-Ang Ilbo newspaper, where Moon served in the past as editor-in-chief, printed a front-page story about his announcement on June 25. The title it chose was “Democracy has new homework.” Its argument was that politicians had bowed to public opinion that had been stirred up by distorted reporting, and ignored their legal responsibility to hold a hearing.

Another conservative newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, had previously distanced itself from the Joong-Ang Ilbo’s slant. But an editorial the same day came out strongly defending the speech in which Moon made his controversial remarks. “When Moon Chang-geuk talked in his speech about shameful and negative parts of history, it was in the context of explaining how we had overcome that and moved forward into a positive and proud history,” it argued.

It is a perspective that even some conservatives are criticizing. Lee Sang-don, a Chung-Ang University professor who served as a member of the ruling Saenuri Party’s emergency committee, said Moon was “unacceptable as a senior public official even by conservative standards.”

“I think these attacks are being led by extreme right-wingers who feel alienated and disappointed, including some members of the Protestant community and the Park administration,” Lee added.

Another conservative scholar, who held a key Blue House position under the presidency of Park’s predecessor Lee Myung-bak, agreed that South Korean conservatives are facing a crisis, but added, on condition of anonymity, “It’s not appropriate to use Moon Chang-geuk’s withdrawal as an issue to rally conservatives.”

“The problem here is the mainstream media companies are behaving in a political way because of their own corporate interests,” insisted the academic.

Indeed, public support for Moon is well below the percentage of South Koreans who identify as conservative.

But some progressives are comparing the current situation to the security scare-mongering situation of the late 1980s, with its calls for a “conservative uprising.” Left on the defensive after the April 1988 general elections with a parliamentary minority and hearings on the Chun Doo-hwan military regime and Gwangju massacre, conservatives took advantage of unauthorized North Korea visits the following year by Suh Kyung-won and Lim Su-kyung [now lawmakers, then student representatives] and corporate union strikes to launch a full-scale campaign to drum up security fears. At one point, the Ministry of Home Affairs printed up 100,000 copies of a booklet calling for the right wing to “band together to prevent the leftists from taking power” and distributed it to government offices around the country.

“The people who are defending Moon Chang-geuk and going after the opposition and critics in the press really are fringe figures among conservatives, the ones voicing the most extreme views,” said Korea National University of Arts professor Jeon Gyu-chan.

“The issue right now is that the conservatives are agitated because they feel threatened over their lackluster performance in the [June 4] municipal elections, the falling approval ratings for President Park, and now the withdrawals of nominees for Prime Minister,” Jeon added.

The argument is that even mainstream conservatives who typically do not agree with claims about the inevitability of Japanese colonization or the justification of dictatorships may feel a sense of political solidarity with their more extreme peers once they feel the administration they supported is being threatened and faces an uncertain future.

“The tragedy for South Korea’s conservatives that they’ve never regarded nationalism, which is the conservatives’ stock in trade, as their philosophical base,” said Daejeon University professor Kwon Hyuk-bum. According to this analysis, conservatives conceded the nationalist angle to the country’s left because of conservatives’ collaborationist roots, which left them with developmentalism and anti-communism as core principles. As a result, they have been left in the contradictory position of having to defend even statements about Japanese colonization being the “will of God” as somehow patriotic.

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