Take a Ride on the @MoonRiver365: #Shigak no. 19

By | February 20, 2015 | No Comments

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Campaign posters from the 2012 presidential election. Moon Jae-in is no.2, between the current president, Park Geun-hye, and former party chairperson of the now-defunct United Progressive Party, Lee Jung-hee. | Image: Julio Martínez/Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0

“Shigak” (시각), or “perspective,” is a multilingual data collection effort that uses Twitter to curate sources dealing in key political, social, and economic issues on South Korea. Each monthly issue takes only the most important tweets posted by Sino-NK analysts under the hashtag #시각 and augments them with essential annotations and a small dose of concentrated analysis.

Shigak is edited by Steven Denney and Christopher Green. Back issues can be found on the dedicated page. All users of Twitter are encouraged to adopt the hashtag and take part in the project.

Take a Ride on the @MoonRiver365: #Shigak no. 19

by Sino-NK

Summary | This issue of Shigak focuses primarily on changes in the domestic political landscape over a month-long period between January and February, including, but not limited to, the election of popular liberal lawmaker Moon Jae-in (who can be found on Twitter: @moonriver365) as opposition party chairperson. Other issues include: debates over welfare, Lee Myung-bak’s highly controversial memoir, the Park Tae-hwan doping scandal, and a Supreme Court ruling on the Lee Seok-ki case.

Representative Yoo Seong-min was elected as the Saenuri Party’s new house leader, filling the void left by Lee Wan-koo after he was nominated for the position of prime minister. Yoo was first elected to the South Korean National Assembly in 2004.

In recent months, there have been intense debates in the South Korean legislature over issues of tax, welfare, and government reform. These have revealed a growing rift between the administration of President Park and the wider Saenuri Party. Park once promised greater welfare without increasing taxes [증세없는 복지], a contentious notion in itself, but in a recent meeting with Saenuri Party officials she apparently denied ever talking about welfare without concomitant tax increases. Now Park wants economic growth first, taxes and welfare later.

For his part, Yoo believes it is not possible to achieve greater welfare provision without increasing taxes. The current Saenuri Party leader, Kim Moo-sung, is also considered “anti-Park.” The election of Yoo can only add to the perception that the Park administration and Saenuri Party are growing apart.

Moon Jae-in was elected as new NPAD chief on February 8. He received 45.30 percent of the vote, clinching victory over rivals Park Ji-won and Lee In-young, who got 41.78 percent and 12.92 percent respectively.

In his victory speech, Moon stated that the party would abandon its old, divisive ways and face the Park administration head-on. “I am warning the Park government,” he declared. “If you continue to undermine democracy and the economy of ordinary people, I will start an all-out war with [you].” Moon has no shortage of issues to address, including partisan debates over tax, welfare, and government reform.

After the election, Moon went to Seoul National Cemetery to pay his respects at the graves of former presidents Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee, something he conspicuously didn’t do during the 2012 presidential campaign. The visit–designed to emphasize “reconciliation and unity”–drew predictable criticism from fellow progressives. While NPAD members were hoping that the party convention would make the party more unified, factionalism lingers on.

This Wall Street Journal article implies a critical view of marriage migration patterns in South Korea, suggesting that the ROK government’s attempts to promote tolerance and inclusion have only recently become strategic, rather than reactionary. Foreign brides and international marriages are the biggest factors challenging the ethnic demography of South Korea.

Following a large influx of marriage migrants in the 2000s, the government has sought to control the migration process while also supporting adaptation and assimilation efforts for incoming brides and their new South Korean families. One notable effort is language training and Korean language requirements for immigrants, particularly aimed at those whose marriage was brokered through matchmaking services. (There are several avenues to sidestep the regulation, such as a second common language shared with the Korean spouse or if they already have children.) Education of foreigners seeking long-term residence in South Korea is certainly complicated, however, by the outstanding question of incorporating North Koreans, particularly in the event of reunification. But whichever path of national identity the government chooses to promote, education will undoubtedly remain on the front line of policy implementation.

A Gallup Korea public opinion poll administered between January 27 and 29 finds that 65 percent of respondents (1,009 people) believe “welfare expansion without tax increases is impossible,” reports Hankyoreh (in the tweet above). The poll also finds that 41 percent of the respondents think that “more taxes should be paid to raise the level of welfare” and 48 percent think “more taxes should be paid to maintain current levels, which are adequate.” Interestingly, the poll also finds those in their 20s and 30s more supportive of welfare expansion than those in their 50s and 60s (who are those most in need).

The issue of welfare expansion does not fall along clear-cut left/right cleavages. Conservative lawmaker Ha Tae-kyung, for instance, is quoted at a press conference stating: “If the government does not quickly change its basic position, our country’s welfare will likely be ruined. [The government] must quickly change its position of welfare without tax increases. Given that welfare is now clearly a major policy issue (thanks to it being a central concern during the 2012 presidential election, notes JTBC), we can expect much debate and changing of positions going forward.

Former President Lee Myung-bak released a memoir at the end of January and walked straight into a firestorm of criticism. According to Lee, the reason for the rapid release of the memoir, entitled “The President’s Time [대통령의 시간],” was simply that he needed to get his experiences down on paper “before my memory fades.” Others doubt it. The possibility of getting his experiences down on paper and then placing them in storage until a more appropriate time was seemingly not considered.

Among the criticisms leveled at the memoir – which Dongyang University Professor Jin Jung-kwon told a radio podcast he “simply could not understand the act of paying money for” and Roh Moo-hyun-era government minister Ryu Si-min lamented had cost him 28,000 KRW ($25 USD), “the price of a geun (600g) of Jeju Black Pork” – was that it revealed too much of what went on in inter-Korean relations during Lee’s tenure, such that it undermines future diplomatic possibilities in the region.

In the tweeted article, Kyunghyang Sinmun gathers a selection of passages relating to inter-Korean matters, including the much-quoted headline that North Korea demanded “$10 billion and large-scale shipments of food and fertilizer” in exchange for a summit; a claim which, if accurate, surely indicates not that North Korea thought such a payment would actually be forthcoming, but that they sought to ensure no summit ever took place. Either way, conservatives including ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker Ha Tae-kyung piled criticism on Lee’s decision to release details of diplomacy with the North, calling it a “significant mistake” and accusing him of failing to put the country before his private interests.

By February 11 the memoir was under investigation by prosecutors for possible violations of the Presidential Records Act and leaking of official secrets. This followed complaints lodged by civil society actors.

It emerged in late January that the poster boy of South Korean swimming, Park Tae-hwan, failed a test for performance-enhancing drugs on September 3, 2014. Following the revelation on January 27, the finger of blame turned upon a doctor in Seoul who is alleged to have given Park an illegal substance in July last year – despite the swimmer reportedly asking about it beforehand. The doctor was indicted for professional negligence at the beginning of February.

Whilst it does at least seem plausible that Park took a banned substance unknowingly, his decision in late October to have a B-sample tested following the initial positive result and immediately thereafter to appear in and win four gold medals during official competition on Jeju Island means he will not receive credit for what the rules of FINA, the swimming governing body, call “voluntary provisional suspension.” That competitors should under no circumstances appear in competition after receiving notification of a positive test is “endlessly highlighted” in training sessions given by the Korean Anti-Doping Agency (KADA), an anonymous KADA official noted here.

The general consensus in the swimming community is that Park will face a ban from competitive swimming come what may; the only question is how long it will be. It is thought likely that he will miss the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Brazil. Park’s hearing at FINA headquarters in Lausanne was postponed at the end of last week so that his team could prepare the case.

As the tweeted article notes, Park won his first gold medal in the 400m freestyle at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, then acquired a silver in Beijing, and added two more of the same in London in 2012. He is one of modern South Korea’s sporting heroes, with only “Queen of Figure Skating” Kim Yuna better known to the general public. Kim retired at the end of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

On January 23, President Park nominated former Saenuri Party house leader Lee Wan-koo as prime minister in a preparation for a cabinet shuffle. Lee started his public career as a bureaucrat handling wide range of responsibilities from economy to policing. He is a three-term politician from Chungcheong Province who was first elected to South Korea’s National Assembly in 1995.

President Park’s past nominees have faced tough nomination hearings and Lee’s was no different. He found himself embroiled in scores of ethical issues, such as real estate speculation,dodging of military service by family members, and attempts to pressure the SKorean media (언론 외압). Probably the most serious allegation is that he tried to prevent the media from reporting unfavorable news about him. In a meeting with journalists, Lee was heard saying that he has experience of helping journalist friends get top jobs in universities.

[On February 17, Lee was approved by a vote of 148-128 in the National Assembly. NPAD lawmakers discussed not taking part in the vote at all, but in the end they did cast their ballots and only minor left wing lawmakers stayed away. Park has since initiated a “minor” cabinet reshuffle. — Editors]

On January 22, South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld the nine-year prison sentence for Lee Seok-ki, a former assemblyman of the recently disbanded United Progressive Party (UPP). The court upheld the verdict that found Lee in violation of the National Security Law for instigating armed rebellion. However, it did not find evidence to support the charge that Lee conspired to overthrow the South Korean government by forming a Revolutionary Organization (RO).

The Korean right (via Chosun Ilbo) viewed the ruling as the second time a “national consensus” had thwarted the power of “pro-North forces” in South Korea. The left (via Hankyoreh) saw it differently, and fundamentally so. They interpreted the Supreme Court’s ruling as contradicting the Constitutional Court’s earlier verdict on the constitutionality of the United Progressive Party’s existence (the party from which Lee Seok-ki hailed). The Constitutional Court ruled that the UPP’s raison d’etre ran contrary to the democratic order, thus justifying its dissolution. But how, reasons Hankyoreh, can this ruling stand if no substantial evidence can be found proving an RO exists (and thus justifying the court opinion that the UPP existence threatens the democratic order)?

Whether one agrees with Hankyoreh or Chosun‘s opinion, one perspective that went almost entirely unexplored in the Korean and English-language media is that the UPP took a drastic turn for the worse in mid-2012, when its more moderate (and uncorrupt) elements were purged from the party. It was all downhill from there, notes Christopher Green.

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