hankyoreh

President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea gives a speech at the government-organized Liberation Day ceremony held on the front lawn of the presidential office in Seoul’s Yongsan area on Aug. 15, 2022. (Yonhap)

I welcomed this year’s Liberation Day with a heavy heart. A national holiday that should be spent reminding ourselves of the injustice of colonization and the sacrifices of those involved in the independence movement was instead besmirched by historical controversy.

The fact is, this debacle was presaged when the Yoon Suk-yeol administration filled key positions at national research institutions and in the government with scholars and politicians affiliated with the “new right,” which sees Japanese colonial occupation as having positively contributed to Korea’s modernization.

After repeated controversies over the relocation of the bust of Korean independence fighter Gen. Hong Beom-do and debate about South Korea’s “humiliating” diplomacy toward Japan, the conflict finally boiled over when a man with questionable historical views was appointed as the president of the Independence Hall of Korea.

The veracity of the claims surrounding Kim’s involvement with the new right aside, seeing how organizations related to the independence movement unanimously banded together to call for his removal shows that this appointment was a severe mistake. 

Many appointments to key positions made by Yoon have stirred controversy. The candidate for the head of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea has denounced attempts to enact anti-discrimination laws and made no efforts to hide his openly homophobic views. The nominee to become the next defense minister, the former Presidential Security Service chief, is known for roughing up protesters, while the hapless defense minister who sat idly by amid scandal in the military has been appointed as the director of the National Security Office.

At this point, it’s hard not to think that Yoon became president explicitly with the intent to instigate social conflict and political strife.

One by one, he has stripped away historical and social consensus, hard-won through turbulent democratization and the establishment of electoral democracy, and reduced them into bones of contention. 

The truth behind the independence movement: Fighting communist forces?

The same can be said for the administration’s most recent discourse on unification. Initially, it talked a big game about presenting a new unification plan tailored to the changing times, but ultimately it circled back to a unification discourse centered on the philosophy of freedom.

Many experts were reportedly concerned about the scrapping of what’s known as the “National Community Unification Formula,” the framework that surpassed partisan boundaries to become South Korea’s official unification policy in 1994. Despite sirens warning of poor governmental judgment ringing left, right, and center, Yoon is, strangely enough, placing a big emphasis on unification.

That tactic is strange considering the state of politics in South Korea itself. After the crushing defeat in the April general election, civil servants are unable to do their work and the prime minister and other ministers have, despite announcing their resignations, remained in office after failing to find successors. 

The Yoon administration, which has exercised the most vetoes out of every administration since South Korea’s democratization, is certainly not capable of pushing for unification. Also, it seems like a pipe dream that a rigid, ceremonial governmental campaign would change the minds of the people, who have never been less sympathetic to the prospect of unification. Yoon must have ulterior motives.

The first clue can be spotted in Yoon’s first Liberation Day address, in 2022. All previous presidents adeptly used the historical importance of the Aug. 15 Liberation Day to bolster South Korea’s national identity and to send a message on the improvement of inter-Korean relations. However, Yoon took a less conventional, surprising approach by putting forth an understanding of Korea’s independence movement not as advocating “liberation” from colonial Japan, but as a fight for a “free and democratic Republic of Korea.”

While doing so, he argued that the independence movement, which he characterized as a process of building a “free and independent nation in the face of communist aggression,” is ongoing. His interpretation maintains that independence movements do not take place so as to build a totalitarian country, but to construct a free country that guarantees freedom and human rights.

As such, while Yoon is always happy to drone on about solidarity with Japan as a country that shares the common value of freedom with South Korea, the president seems to harbor nothing but hostility toward North Korea. Any denouncements of Japanese colonialism or demands for Japan to reflect on its history have been swept under the rug, and instead, North Korea is being invoked as the “true” target of the independence movement.

His address for Liberation Day in 2023 further reinforced such sentiments. After accusing North Korea of its “communist totalitarianism,” he warned that “anti-state forces” blindly following such beliefs still remain in South Korea.

He also emphasized the need to fight the “despicable and unethical tactics” of the forces of communist totalitarianism, which have disguised themselves as “democracy activists, human rights advocates or progressive activists,” and defeat them.

Hearing such belligerent rhetoric from the president, who should prioritize social unity and solidarity above anything else, is surprising enough. But his perception that certain forces in South Korea are devoted to communist totalitarianism is even more disturbing.

The freedom that Yoon is so staunchly allegiant to states that those who should be defeated in its name are not limited to the communist totalitarian regime of North Korea, but includes anyone in South Korea who advocates for historical justice by calling for dialogue with North Korea, peace on the Korean Peninsula, and the resolution of historical issues.

Yoon’s branding of all opposition parties, civil society organizations, intellectuals and journalists critical of the government as followers of communist totalitarianism, makes it difficult to expect that he will engage in any sort of cooperation, dialogue or reflection.

But has the Yoon administration, which claims that its guiding principle is the pursuit of liberal democracy, actually allowed the South Korean people to become any freer? Phone records of journalists and politicians are being pulled by prosecutors for their alleged defamation of the president, and Reporters Without Borders announced in its 2024 World Press Freedom Index that South Korea plummeted to rank 62nd out of 180 nations.

The government’s emphasis on the free market has allowed cuts in inheritance tax and corporate tax for the wealthy, but income taxes for the ordinary person have not budged a cent. It has demonized welfare by claiming that increasing welfare through aggressive fiscal spending is only possible in communist states, and has gone so far as to make the preposterous claim that the “yellow envelope bill” — a bill to revise the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act to improve the rights of trade unions and workers — infringes on the free exercise of property rights. 

Furthermore, it’s difficult to enumerate all the instances of the government’s selective vision of “freedom” — or in many instances, overt anti-freedom. In other words, the Yoon administration’s version of freedom targets “communist totalitarianism” as its main enemy, and is caught up in ways to stigmatize its political opponents. 

Can’t even govern internally

Within this context, the Yoon administration will persist in its calls for unification. It will call for the annihilation of the “communist totalitarian” regime in North Korea in an attempt to unite any leftover supporters. It will revert to an ideological strategy that hearkens back to the Cold War, when such appeals were more effective. We are witnessing an anachronistic attempt to resurrect that strategy in 2024. Fortunately, the majority of people know that just because you do something in the name of irrefutable ideals like freedom and human rights, it doesn’t mean you’re living up to those ideals.

Unification is a nationalist project with a clear counterpart. But not only is eradicating our counterpart impossible, even if heaven smiles upon us and allows for the unification of Korea, it’s clear that it will be a trying and challenging process. Considering how rarely we see Yoon engage in dialogue or cooperation with those of differing opinions in the South alone, it’s going to be darn near impossible to create the social groundwork upon which two states that have lived independent of one another for 70 odd years can come together as one. 

Flying the flag of war and promising to stamp out North Korea for the sake of creating a “free” country won’t just fail to achieve unification of the Korean Peninsula, it will fan the flames of division within South Korean society. 

Recently, the frank way that Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz criticized Donald Trump has become a refrain among younger voters in the US. Walz’s comment that Trump and running mate JD Vance were “creepy and just weird as hell” has riled up the Democratic base in a way that commentators say political rhetoric has failed to thus far. 

At such a grave point in history, watching Yoon harp on unification while fomenting division in his one-man show has made me think Trump isn’t the only one Walz’s comment applies to. Rumor has it that first lady Kim Keon-hee has a particular interest in Korean unification. Now that’s not just weird, it’s creepy as hell. 

By Kim Sung-kyung, professor of North Korean society and culture at the University of North Korean Studies 

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