How Far to the Right has South Korea Moved?

Although the polls suggest that South Koreans have made a modest shift to the right on how to deal with North Korea, issue polls don’t measure the intensity of opinion or how candidates’ North Korea policies affect their appeal to voters. Those matters are key, however, when you try to whom the voters will choose to set national policy.

It was this article, which I’ll quote extensively below, that brought me to the realization that I may have underestimated just how disillusioned South Koreans really are with the uni-fiction politics of Kim Dae Jung, Roh Moo Hyun, and Chung Dong-Young. (No, I’m not forgetting that the June 2006 parliamentary elections that are written on Uri’s death certificate. In a country whose politics are as volatile as South Korea’s, one disastrous election might not be a sustained trend.)

Just two weeks from South Korea’s next presidential election, the combined support of all presidential candidates who support the unconditional preservation of Kim Jong Il’s misrule equals just about 20% support. The most popular of those candidates, Chung, lags in third place, at less than 15%. [Update: or, according to this, second place at 20%.]   If the election results reflect those poll numbers, it would mean such a decisive electoral repudiation of the Sunshine Policy that it will be driven from the Blue House to the political fringe overnight. Such a result should make us thankful that Comrade Chung decided to run.

Both conservative candidates are citing the denuclearization of the North as a precondition for further inter-Korean economic cooperation. Chung, however, asserts that cooperation should continue as the denuclearization process goes ahead.

The two conservative candidates are also saying that aid to the North should be given under the condition that Pyongyang opens itself to the outside and implements reform measures. Lee Myung-bak has promised that if the North meets such conditions, with the help of the international community, he would raise the North’s GNP to $3,000 within a decade.

The former Seoul mayor plans to revive the North’s ailing economy by building up its infrastructure, while nurturing 100 export-oriented companies and a talent base to be used in developing various industries.
Both Lees say inter-Korean economic cooperation and humanitarian aid should be linked with the issues of abductees and South Korean prisoners of war. Lee Hoi-chang has the strongest voice on this issue, promising that under his administration, all separated families will meet and he will make the abductees and POWs issue his priority.

Lee Myung-bak and Lee Hoi-chang have similar views regarding the establishment of a peace regime. They insist that the denuclearization of the North should come before the establishment of a peace regime, while Chung advocates simultaneous action to achieve both. According to this view, talks on the establishment of a peace regime should start as soon as the North has finished disablement of its nuclear programs. Once dismantlement is underway, a summit meeting should announce the end of the Korean War and the setting up of a peace regime. [Joongang Ilbo]

Lee Hoi Chang’s candidacy does appear to have pulled Lee Myung Bak modestly to the right, far enough that there’s almost no daylight between the two Lees’ North Korea policies today. Will be now see KCNA calling Lee Myung-Bak “human scum,” too? It’s an interesting test of North Korea’s pragmatism, given that Lee M.B.’s election victory is as certain anything can ever be in South Korean politics.

While I’m not very confident that Lee Myung-Bak will make immediate demands that the North meet some of the conditions he specified at the debate, I suspect he’ll at least stop the increase in aid and make good-faith efforts to impose some conditions on it. North Korea’s reaction to that would be bombastic at first, but it will be interesting to watch a more practical response take shape.