Their long national nightmare is over (Updated)
[Updated and Bumped — scroll down — original post 19 Dec 07]
Following record low voter turnout, Yonhap has Lee Myung Bak winning by a landslide with over just under 50%. This is unbad news to me; I always root for a lying stock manipulator over a lying abettor of genocide with untamed abandon. I can hear the celebratory gunfire all the way out in Centreville. I’m also pleasantly surprised that the last-second leak of a video proving that Lee fibbed his way through the BBK scandal didn’t mush up the prospect of any one candidate getting a mandate.
The best news of the election? Comrade Chung, the poster-boy for propping up Kim Jong Il and slamming the furnace door on his wretched subjects, has now led two leftist parties to record-breaking beat-downs. He drew just 26% of the vote. Chung also led the Uri Party to defeat in the summer of 2006, and that defeat eventually destroyed Uri. There’s a good chance that this lopsided defeat will destroy its successor, the United New Democratic Party. Chung had a well deserved reputation for shallowness, but let’s not forget that he was also a conniving, black-hearted, anti-American demagogue (three links) whose mouth emitted words of breathtaking stupidity whenever it wasn’t otherwise occupied in fellating Kim Jong Il.
At least it’s possible to say that for now, appeasing North Korea and bashing Uncle Sam don’t have the voter appeal they did five years ago. I am not too cynical to deny that one thing will improve, which is the volume of Yankee-baiting cheap shots from the Blue House.
The worst news of the election? South Korea missed its chance to have a national conversation about The Big Issue, unification. The campaign was really about which candidate was the most repellent, and with the abundance of such exquisite material on that question, there wasn’t much time to talk about when, how, and on what terms Korea should resolve that nation’s most fundamental question. There wasn’t even much discussion about the smaller issues that devolve from The Big Issue: refugees, concentration camps, nuclear disarmament, defense policy, conventional disarmament, reconstruction planning, or humanitarian aid policy.
Flashback: The Lee Myung Bak Dossier, from September 2005; Much, much more: Andy Jackson, bless his heart, semi-live-blogged this.
Update 1: A reader was kind enough to pass along a scan of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s letter of congratulations to Lee.
Update 2: The official results have Lee falling just short of 50%. Here are the final results.
Lee Myung Bak, Grand National Party (Conservative), 48.7%
Chung Dong Young, United New Democratic Party (Nationalist-Left), 26.1%
Lee Hoi-chang, Independent (Conservative), 15.1%
Moon Kook-hyun, Create Korea Party (Center Left), 5.8%
Kwon Young-ghil, Democratic Labor Party (Socialist), 3%
Rhee In-je, Democratic Party (Center Left), 0.7%
This means that conservative candidates’ combined support totaled 64%, nearly two thirds. That’s a very significant shift since 2002. So what will that mean as far as South Korea’s policies toward North Korea and the United States? Lee used his first press conference to say some encouraging words:
The president-elect is expected to tie aid to continued compliance with international demands in the atomic dispute in line with Washington’s wishes, but was not expected to make any dramatic change in assistance while the North remains on the path to disarmament.
“The North’s abandonment of its nuclear programs is the way for the North to develop” its economy, Lee said in his comments to reporters Thursday.
Lee said he would not shy away from raising the North’s shortcomings. “I think unconditionally avoiding criticism toward North Korea would not be appropriate.”
On relations with Seoul’s key Washington ally, Lee said he would “renew the common values and peace based on trust.” [AP, Burt Herman; emphasis mine]
Can we assume he refers to human rights? Lee is also saying he will conduct a review of the soft-line policy toward Kim Jong Il’s regime.
All of this got me to wondering how this is going over in Pyongyang, but KCNA is uncharacteristically at a loss for words today. They found time to congratulate the President-Elect of Switzerland and to get in one last dig against Lee Hoi Chang, but not a word on Lee Myung Bak’s victory. I can see why. In a place where saying the wrong thing can easily get you killed, I can see why nobody is volunteering to write the official reaction. Still, you’d expect at least some kind of terse reaction. I wouldn’t want to be serving the drinks here tonight.
Lastly, it bears notice that Roh was a charter member of a group of faux allies who found it politically profitable to exploit anti-Americanism in the post-9/11 era. Iraq is frequently cited as the cause for this by the American left, but Roh’s use of this tactic preceded Iraq, and was primarily about domestic quarrels with the U.S. military that had protected Korea for 50 years. Now, he and his most recognized political ally have gone the way of Schroeder and Chirac, only they’ve been much more roundly discredited at the polls.
We bid them good riddance, though for uncounted numbers of North Koreans who are dead instead of free today, it comes too late
The worst news of the election? South Korea missed its chance to have a national conversation about The Big Issue, unification … There wasn’t even much discussion about the smaller issues that devolve from The Big Issue: refugees, concentration camps, nuclear disarmament, defense policy, conventional disarmament, reconstruction planning, or humanitarian aid policy.
Well, I don’t know… do most South Korean voters really WANT a discussion of the Big Issue right now? My observation has been that, particularly among younger voters, Koreans are fatigued by and somewhat indifferent to the unification issue. There’s a general sense of humanitarian sorrow over the human rights situation in the North, but there’s less tolerance of the defectors (perception that they show up without any marketable skills and don’t fit in) and not much sense of North Korea as a threat or really anything other than an eccentric regional problem.
And among the older crowd, I think there’s an outright terror of unification and its potentially huge costs. South Korea may understand that at some point in the far-distant future, it will have to absorb the North’s wrecked agricultural base, its busted economy, and its huge, unskilled, illiterate (at least in South Korean), and starving population. But I’m willing to bet that NOBODY wants that to happen tomorrow, and probably no one wants to have a national debate about it. It’s a lot easier to ignore it and hope that eventually, slowly, North Korea will fragment and splinter apart in such a way as to be gradually absorbed into the South’s political and economic system.
It certainly may be in South Korea’s interest to start thinking about this stuff now, but just like Americans, they show a remarkable talent for ignoring the stuff they don’t really want to talk about. Doesn’t surprise me.
I welcome the news, but I do not expect much. The new administration will still do its best to maintain a short-term “stability” ignoring everything else. The policy towards the North will not change much. Jason is right when he doubts whether “most South Korean voters really WANT a discussion of the Big Issue right now”. They do not, IMHO. They are happy with status quo. It’s short-sighted, I know, but…
I regret that I must agree with both of you. But that is what distinguishes a populist follower like Lee Myung Bak from a leader like Kim Moon Soo. This wasn’t Kim’s year, but Kim does have the dynamism to start that national conversation when the time for it is right.
Regrettably, neither he nor anyone else with a sense of the South Korean state of mind thinks that the time for that is now.
I am not very familiar with ROK politics, but the bottom line is, the DPRK has trucked along with many elections. I am going to venture a guess and say the the DPRK’s Juche will have to implode on itself before any change can take place and people will have to talk about “Big issue”. The US and the ROK do not appear to really care about the DPRK because both the ROK and the US have other issues to focus on.
I would like to see something done about the dire situation in the DPRK and give the folks in the gulags and starving will get some help. However, nothing has not been done other than a lot of political wrangling. In other words, not much has changed.
Since NK will surely implode (and perhaps explode at the same time) in the future, some day, I really hope the United States is putting some consistent long term thought behind it, because it will be very, very difficult to handle however it comes, and we surely don’t need to wait until it actually starts happening to get some ideas and wheels in motion.
On the election, I thought of something yesterday:
What is likely to change now that France or Korea have a pro-US leader in charge?
Will it be cosmetic?
Or will it come with serious, significant support for US-led geopolitical initiatives?
Will we see South Korea re-commit an even larger amount of troops to Afghanistan?
Will it give its troops in Iraq different marching orders (like allowing it to march off base) or even send more troops?
What about France? Will it send troops to Afghanistan and/or Iraq?
Will France become an active supporter of the US on issues like Israel and the Palestinian question?
It will be good for the US just to have leaders in both nations who don’t look for ways to stick their thumb in Uncle Sam’s eye….
….but…….are the new leaders willing to become active partners with the US on a variety of issues?
And will their citizens let them?????
The next two years should be interesting to watch in relation to these questions…..
I think Korea stands a better chance of having a full reversal of the Roh diplomacy. Especially given the fact that I don’t think South Korea’s leadership will reverse North Korea policy in any big way, I can imagine a possibility that the government will seek to gain an OKAY from the US by being extra helpful in other areas – like Iraq and Afghanistan. It is hard to guess on this next point, but I can see a potential that Korean nationalism would also take to the idea of South Korea being more assertive in world affairs — and South Korea’s citizens, who are so used to being opposed to US foreign policy, might suddenly switch to taking pride in the fact South Korea is doing something on the world stage….???….
I’m not familiar with contemporary France much at all……so I am just guessing in the dark……but I doubt French citizens will allow their new leader to do much in the way of putting his pro-US feelings into substantial material and political partnership with actual US foreign policies…….meaning I think this new friendship will be mostly words…
Time will tell…
Things might not change that much, but it sounds like it was the best possible outcome for the election, getting someone who at least will be a little tougher on North Korea.
On the USFK reformation side, as long as plans are based on South Korea footing a lot of the bill and on SK beefing up its own military to avoid in gaps in strength, I do not see the changes taking place.
The embassy was supposed to be gone in the early 1990s.
And it seems the US has also lost the people who were pushing so hard to get the changes in motion.
I think it is a dead deal just waiting for the inevitable years of delay by South Korea until the US finally agrees to bury the plans.