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titled “Park Chung-hee’s Yushin and Park Geun-hye’s New Yushin

By Lee You-jin, staff reporter

A debate yesterday compared and analyzed what it called the “new Yushin” era under President Park Geun-hye with the actual Yushin government of her father Park Chung-hee, who was president from 1963 to 1979.

The debate, titled “Park Chung-hee’s Yushin and Park Geun-hye’s New Yushin,” was held at the Sejong Center in downtown Seoul on Oct. 15. It was organized by the Association for Carrying on the Democracy Youth and Student League Legacy , in conjunction with the Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice (CPAJ), the Dong-A Committee for Free Press (DCFP), and the April 9 Unification and Peace Foundation.

The organizers decided to hold the event after determining that democracy is backsliding visibly as South Korea marks the 40th anniversary of the elder Park’s Emergency Degrees and the 42nd anniversary of the 1972 declaration of the Yushin Constitution, which granted him dictatorial powers.

One of the presenters was Sungkonghoe University political science professor Chung Hae-koo, who spoke on the “Characteristics and Limitations of the Atavistic Park Chung-hee/Park Geun-hye Governing Paradigm.”

Examining the approaches of the two presidents, Chung explained, “If the father Park Chung-hee was an example of the ‘original authoritarian system,’ then the Park Geun-hye administration is a ‘knock-off authoritarian system.’”

Chung’s argument was that while Park Geun-hye came to power by winning an election - unlike her father - she continues governing according to a repressive paradigm.

As similarities between the two administrations, Chung pointed to their overwhelming focus on economic growth, the mobilization and use of repressive state organizations like the prosecutors and National Intelligence Service (NIS), and their preference for authoritarian rule, including media control.

“We’re seeing intensifying conflict as [the administration] ratchets up its ‘ruling’ approach of ignoring the National Assembly instead of the ‘political’ approach of reflecting the public’s will,” he concluded.

Chung also identified clear signs of the Park administration’s authoritarian approach in its handling of the Sewol ferry tragedy.

“That tragedy was a product of policies focused on accelerated economic growth, unlimited pursuit of private profits, deregulation by the state, and corruption and collusion between government and business,” he said. “Now they’re refusing to even investigate it and engage in the same kinds of clever distortions and suppression.”

Han Hong-koo, a liberal arts professor at Sungkonghoe University, observed that Park has been referring to “her father’s model” for governance.

“Not only that, but of all the 18 years of his rule, she’s learned from the ‘arteriosclerosis of power’ from the later period, which was the worst of Park Chung-hee’s rule,” he said.

Han also mentioned widespread online posting by state institutions during the 2012 election as a serious threat to the current administration’s procedural legitimacy.

“The Yushin regime wouldn’t have been able to survive without being shored up by public security agencies like the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), and the KCIA’s successor, the NIS, undeniably played a role in helping the ‘new Yushin regime’ come into office,” he said.

A conspicuous difference between the two administrations is the matter of government appointments, Han said.

“The Park Chung-hee administration hired some of the top experts of the day in their respective fields, whereas the Park Geun-hye administration has faced a backlash over appointment catastrophes like Yoon Chang-jung (a former spokesperson who resigned after committing sexual assault) and Moon Chang-keuk (former Prime Minister nominee who stepped down due to controversial comments he made as a journalist),” he explained.

Another difference Han mentioned was issue of a “gatekeeper” who has power to limit access to Park Geun-hye. In contrast, her father had no second-in-command, Han noted.

The presentations were followed by designated debates, with Sungkyunkwan University emeritus professor Suh Joong-suk describing the elder Park‘s one-man Yushin system as “the equivalent of one person making a country his own private property.”

“The regressions that recall militaristic fascism are a history that must not be repeated,” Suh said.

Other participants noted that the Yushin-era nightmare of espionage frame-ups lives on. Kim Jeong-sa, chairman of the Association for Retrying and Clearing NPO Zainichi Korean Prisoners of Conscience, commented on the retrials of espionage cases involving Zainchi (ethnic Koreans from Japan) in the 1970s to 1990s.

“The prosecutors’ attitude has changed a lot since Park Geun-hye took office. They’ve started requesting investigators and others as witnesses, and it’s delaying the trials, which is causing greater suffering to the victims,” Kim said. “Meanwhile, the compensation amounts are dropping.”

Attorney Jang Kyung-wook, who represented the defense in a high-profile espionage case involving a Seoul city official, said the current Park administration “is setting a similar precedent to the Yushin era’s espionage frame-ups, with the same kind of old-school public security methods.”

“We need society to come together and give support so that they can’t trample on the human rights of the socially vulnerable,” Jang urged.

Lee Cheol, head of the Association for Carrying on the Democracy Youth and Student League Legacy, called for “immediately stripping the NIS of its investigative authority and giving it a new identity as an agency specializing in intelligence.”

“We need an encyclopedia of people involved in anti-democratic activities to give us a basis for setting this history right,” he added.

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