Seoul Leans to the Left with Its Choice of a Progressive Mayor
Park Won-soon, a lawyer and civic activist-turned politician running on an independent ticket heavily backed by the liberal opposition, defeated ruling Grand National Party “Hannara” candidate Na Kyung-won in a bi-election to become the new mayor of Seoul on October 26.
Critic Ryu Geun-il, former editor-in-chief of the influential newspaper Chosun Ilbo, described the election result as a case where a “pure-blooded left-winger” became a “hero of the people” by jumping over the heads of his long-time sponsors. In other words, Ryu further explained, Park was able to ツ黴jump directly to center stage as a leading man instead of the left-wing forces ツ黴exerting pressure on the political parties and the incumbent administration from the sidelines.
The result of the mayoral election in Seoul is said to predict the future of the parliamentary elections and presidential election scheduled, respectively, for next April and December. If so, the hub of South Korean politics will soon be under the full control of left-wing forces.
Like former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), Park is a civic activist-turned politician. Kan was a patent attorney and Park a lawyer, both embracing similar thoughts and creeds. Park is tough on his motherland, but generous with North Korea. Kan has in effect supported the Citizens Party, a left-wing political entity, over the years by making huge political contributions to the “Citizens’ Association for a Change of Administration” - a civic group believed to have a deep connection with North Korea. Meanwhile, when North Korea sank the South Korean Navy patrol boat Cheonan in March 2010, Park blatantly demonstrated his support of Pyongyang by openly holding the administration of President Lee Myung-bak responsible for inciting the North.
By the same token, North Korea gave support to Park during his election campaign. On October 26, reporter Tatsuya Kato of Sankei Shimbun pointed out:“North Korea had long contemplated intervening in the Seoul election in an attempt to support the birth of a progressive administration in the South.” Kato noted that the state-controlled North Korean press reported on the mayoral election in the South Korean capital every day and that as many as 20 related articles were carried on October 24, just two days before the election. In one of the articles, added Kato, North Korea referred to Park’s opponent Na as “‘the ringleader of corruption,’ and criticized her by referring to such matters as her alleged participation in events hosted by Japan’s Self Defense Forces.”
Cho Kab-che, one of South Korea’s most respected men of letters, has voiced strong criticism over the process that produced a progressive mayor in the South Korean capital. Specifically, Cho takes issue with the Park camp’s calling an urgent press conference on the afternoon of election day, declaring that “as of 4 p.m. today, Mr. Park is behind his opponent, although the margin is very thin,” further appealing to voters to “vote for your candidate as we proclaim a state of emergency at this moment.”
Mounting “Unfit-to-Run” Campaigns in National Elections
Cho maintains that the Park camp committed a grave violation of the election laws by disseminating information quite contrary to the real situation at the time as a ploy to urge Park supporters to go to the polls and vote for him when exit polls actually showed Park clearly leading.
Meanwhile, Hong Hyung, visiting professor at Tokyo’s Obirin University, refers to the false record of his academic career that was filed by Park prior to the election, noting:“On the election day, notices were posted at all of the polling stations across Seoul under instructions from the Central Election Control Commission correcting the record of Park’s academic career. Park had long professed to have been expelled from the law school of Seoul National University, but the truth of the matter is that he never was enrolled there. He was enrolled in one of the social science departments of the university, but was struck off the list of students (for participating in violent student demonstrations.) Had he completed the first year course in the department, or any other department for that matter, he could have chosen to move on to the law or political science departments. But he hadn’t quite gotten there before his expulsion. So, at the last minute he had to admit he had been lying and shamelessly profess so in a public notice at the polling stations. Would such nonsense be put up with anywhere else in the world?”
Despite such a scandal, Park now is the head of the capital embracing more than 20 percent of South Korea’s population. Part of the methods which have carried Park thus far is described in Beyond the Candlelight March: Where Is South Korean Society Headed? (by Shunji Kawase and Mun Gyong-su, Toho Shuppan Co., Osaka; 2009). In this 376-page book, Park discusses the history and functions of People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), an organization dedicated to promotion of social activism, responding to questions from Mun, who serves as a professor at the School of International Relations of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.
Park first advocates developing campaigns aimed at replacing “undemocratic laws” with new laws based on nomocracy, i.e., advocacy of the exercise of political power in accord with the rules of law. Then, aggressive legal action is necessary to meet the objectives of the new laws. Explaining these campaigns in four stages - adoption of new legislation, revision of pertinent laws, indictment of key persons culpable under the new laws, and, finally, public interest lawsuits - Park claims his organization had a total of 78 law reform petitions submitted to the Korea National Assembly in four years (1996-2000), succeeding in getting half of them made into law.
PSPD is also keen on promoting movements demanding freedom of information. Its modus operandi is to increase small shareholders, demand corporations to disclose information, and subsequently bring suit against corporations and their leaders as the organization likes. Park proudly claims South Korean “chaebols” (business conglomerates) have undergone a sea change thanks to PSPD, pointing to the arrests of several prominent South Korean business leaders on charges of illegal activities, including three chairmen of major corporations - Choi Tae-won of the SK Group, Choi Soon-young of the Shin Tonga Group, and Chun Mong-koo of Hyundai Motor Company. There has also been an indictment against Chairman Lee Kun-hee of Samsung Electronics. Additionally, PSPD launched far-reaching “unfit-to-run” negative ad campaigns targeting specific candidates in the 2000 national elections, which it claims contributed to the defeat of “more than 90 percent” of the targeted candidates. By any count, Park is an astonishingly professional social activist.
After handing over PSPD’s management to the younger generation, Park set up “The Beautiful Foundation” and “The Beautiful Store” in rapid succession. The purpose of starting the foundation was fund-raising to finance PSPD campaigns. This Park calls the “Beautiful 1% Sharing Campaign,” which solicits contributions to the tune of just one percent of the incomes or profits from a cross section of South Korean society.
In fact, the campaign has been so successful that actress Lee Young Ae, whose popularity soared with her performance in the classic court drama “Dae Jang Geum” - the tale of a beautiful orphan kitchen cook in the imperial court who went on to become the king’s first female physician - donated all of her proceeds from this hit drama series. Also, during the four years in which he was mayor of Seoul, President Lee Myung-bak contributed his entire salary to help promote PSPD’s causes.
Meanwhile, “The Beautiful Store,” a chain of shops specializing in recycled clothing, also scored a smashing success, with well-known actors and actresses willingly giving away their costumes and clothing.
Abundant funds have thus poured into Park’s organization, enabling him to further promote his campaigns - proof that support of left-leaning policies such as those advocated by PSPD has seeped into South Korean society to an extensive degree. Amid such times, the Roh Moo-Hyun administration was born in 2003, dubbing itself the “participatory government.” Comments Park in the afore-mentioned book:
“Many people who were actively involved in various civic groups became public servants under the ‘participatory government.’ Bodies such as the National Human Rights Commission can actually be called bodies representing civic groups. Those who fought the government in the past have become government clerks. Through various government commissions and committees, a large number of those who once were engaged in anti-government civic activities are now taking part in the government’s decision-making apparatus.”
Setting Up the Hope Institute in Japan
Hearing such remarks, I cannot help being reminded of the DPJ administration run until just recently by highly unpopular Naoto Kan as prime minister and Yoshito Sengoku as chief cabinet secretary. But Park describes the situation in South Korea under the Roh administration as similar to “eating from the same rice steamer,” explaining that his progressive social movement became one with the Roh administration, which could safely be called a radical left-wing administration by any standard.
That, however, obviously did not satisfy Park, who proceeded to set up a new organization called “The Hope Institute,” described as a “citizen participatory research institute.”
This institute, allegedly an independent think tank, is designed to educate and lead in a set direction local government chiefs and clerks, as well as those who are expected to spearhead future social movements. Apparently, Park feels strongly that civic leaders, when satisfied with being able to “eat out of the same rice steamer,” tend to become complacent and lose sight of future goals. To Park, that is a dangerous tendency, as he believes PSPD must pursue more progressive and revolutionary policies in order to implement fundamental social changes. To him, there is no end to reforms and revolutions. Park, unabashedly nicknamed “a pure-blooded left-winger” because of his radical beliefs, talks about his impressions of Japan, which he visited for three months in 2000, as follows:
“Looking at the people with the Consumer’s Cooperative in Japan, I get the impression that those people who ran the ‘Zenkyoto’ (the radical left All Japan Students Joint Struggle Councils active in the late1960s) have spread across various fields…However, frankly I feel that they have somewhat failed to nurture the younger people of Japan as a generation enthused about committing themselves to campaigns, whatever they may be.”
Park, who stresses the need for Japanese social activists to “continue to create and propose new agendas and once again move the public to action,” presumably because of such sentiments, has already finished setting up the Japan Branch of the Hope Institute within the premises of the Tokyo office of DPJ Diet member Ms Masako Ohkawara. Japanese should bear in mind that the policies toward Japan pursued by the new mayor of Seoul, as well as the next South Korean leader to be elected in December 2002, will certainly not be neutral or passive.
(Translated from “Renaissance Japan” column No. 484 in the November 10, 2011 issue of The Weekly Shincho.)