The New Right: Remarkably Like the Old Right

In what has to be the most disappointing story about Korean politics I’ve seen all year, a new group that calls itself The New Right National Alliance has formed in Seoul. As you may have noted from previous posts, I had been looking forward to a realignment of political forces in Korea that might offer the voters something better than the choices the voters have now: Old Right, with its authoritarian history, authoritarian instincts that continue to this very day, and complete absence of dynamic leadership or vision required to win The National Debate about how to achieve unification. About the New Left, I’ve said plenty–they have never missed an opportunity to betray their fellow citizens (prisoners of war, North Korean citizens and refugees, abductees), glibly pitching them into the volcano’s maw for political and financial profit. I foresee the day when they will be as thoroughly repudiated as those who collaborated with Japan.

Since I began submitting articles to the Daily NK, my associates in that publication have shown themselves to be a species I did not think existed in Korea today: democrats, with a small “d.” They are a collection of defectors from the North, disillusioned leftists, former political prisoners from both Koreas, and students who refused to accept the fashionable leftism of campus politics. They even had a popular standard–bearer, Kim Moon Soo, who seemed relatively free of the corruption and amorphous morality so apparent in the GNP’s big guns. What they shared was a commitment to democratic principles they had learned the hard way. Kim carried the credibility of fighting the Old Right dictatorship to the point of doing time for his beliefs, and emerging to fight the appeasement of North Korea. This appearance of super-ideological principle is an exceptionally rare sight in Korean politics. Could a movement coalesce around such principle?

In contrast, the GNP’s big guns, Princess Park Geun-Hye and Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-Bak, are both strongly connected to South Korea’s dictatorship, which deserves credit for shepherding Korea’s transition into a modern industrial state, but which also has much to apologize for, particularly in its latter years, after it had outlived its usefulness. So how do those who call themselves leaders of the New Right distinguish themselves from the Old Right?

The group selected Kim Jin-hong, a Protestant clergyman and leader of Doorae Community Movement, as the group’s first leader. “The right has been plundered of its achievements of the past 60 years by the leftists, and labeled as the wrongdoers of the self-tormented historical view,” the alliance said resoundingly in its founding declaration. “We must not be ashamed of the right’s legacy. The values and the achievements of the right must be reexamined positively and continued constructively.”

A very bad sign here, because there are indeed things in the right’s legacy it should be ashamed of, and which younger voters will not and ought not accept. Worse yet, take a look at the cast on this stage:

The conservative opposition Grand National Party was well-represented at the opening ceremony, seeing it as a potentially useful ally. Grand National political stars – its chairwoman, Park Geun-hye, Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak and Gyeonggi Governor Sohn Hak-kyu – congratulated the group. “The path of the New Right and the path of the Grand National Party are not different,” Ms. Park said. “We share the conviction of defending the identity of Korea on the basis of a liberal democracy and a market economy.”

Pardon me for thinking this, but I thought the New Right was going to articulate a new vision for South Korea’s relations with the North and a more realistic view of how to achieve that forgotten dream, reuinification. That seems most unlikely with Park, Lee, and Sohn sharing the stage (and Kim Moon-Soo rumored to be mulling a run for Governor of Kyonggi-Do or Mayor of Seoul instead). Could the New Right instead hope to influence the latter as they try to distinguish among themselves during the coming campaign? One hopes, but neither of the articles I’ve seen on this event contains a word about human rights, the treatment of refugees, food aid, rebuilding a useful and sustainable alliance with the United States, or anything else that could differentiate the New Right from the Old Right.

No wonder Uri had this reaction.

“If New Right wants to be accepted in our society, it must overcome the Cold War-era ideological debate,” said Oh Young-sick, Uri’s deputy floor leader in the National Assembly. Another Uri legislator, Min Byung-doo, added, “New Right has become nothing but the Red Guards of the Grand National Party.”

It takes one to know one, as they say. Just to add to your confusion, but perhaps to introduce a thin reed of hope, this is not the only “New Right” group in business:

The new group is Korea’s second national organization of conservatives; in October, the New Right Network appeared on the scene. Their ideology differs little if any, but the network appears to be more focused on developing a philosophical basis for conservative politics while the newer alliance is more focused on grass-roots organizing.

That philosophical basis is what’s desperately needed, but it’s hard to see the likes of Park Geun-Hye or Lee Myung-Bak credibly reinventing themselves around one.

Afterthought: That basis, summarized in one word, should be “freedom.” I would argue that few peoples on earth have more potential to exploit the potential of freedom to its fullest than Koreans, with their remarkable drive, will, and talent. Unburdened of its pre-industrial confucianism and xenophobia, and united under a reasonably ethical and rigorously democratic government, Korea actually has the potential to transcend its historical status of chessboard to become a regional power.