Some weeks ago, I was invited to an academic conference, aimed at providing a forum for a critical evaluation of the performance of the Kim Dae-jung administration three years after its inception.
It is praiseworthy that the organizing institution, which enjoys very close relations with the president, gave much time to dissenting voices. I was honored to sit on a panel with probably the most prominent liberal political scientist in Korea today, Professor Choi Jang-jip. For many years Choi, who teaches at Korea University in Seoul, was a close personal adviser of Kim Dae-jung.
After Kim's election Choi was appointed head of the presidential commission on policy and planning, an influential position in the inner circle of power.
Choi's excursion into the political world did not come to a happy end. It didn't take long, and the scholar turned politician felt the muscle of the conservative establishment. Eventually, the attacks against the liberal intellectual -- ?which were backed by an influential media-group -- became so fierce, that the president saw not other solution than to sacrifice his adviser on the altar of political harmony.
At the conference, Choi presented a penetrating analysis of the problems and impediments barring the South Korean president from putting into practice his political reform agenda.
According to the professor, the two main stumbling blocks preventing the liberal transformation of Korea's political system are, first, hyper-centralization and, second, an ideological schism and prevalent anti-communist ideology. Choi considers hyper-centralization one of the most important cultural and structural aspects of politics and society in Korea. He argues this hyper-centralization has made political pluralism almost impossible: The implications of centralism are manifold.
In the political field a lack of local autonomy is hazardous for democracy, as it strengthens the winner-takes-all situation and lets political competition for public office become a fierce life-or-death struggle.
Choi's analysis compellingly explains the hostility prevailing in South Korean politics.
Significantly, this has not to do only with political style, but has very practical implications for the relations between opposing political camps.
These tend to be poisoned to a degree that prevents issue-related cooperation in policy matters. As Kim has lacked a majority in Parliament, the passage of reform bills against the will of the opposition has been practically impossible.
As the second impediment for political reform, Choi highlights what he terms the ideological schism and the deep ideological conflicts related to the Korean War. The climate of ideological conflict, the scars of which are all but healed, have prohibited the maturing of political tolerance.
This according to the liberal Choi has resulted in a lack of political pluralism: Social demands and interests have hardly been organized at the political level.
Opposition has competed as an ideologically alternative force in a narrowly limited ideological spectrum. Under such circumstances the only powerful political opposition, in the sense of a political alternative, came from the discriminated region.
Explaining political regionalism, which many Koreans consider the main source of political backwardness, as resulting from a lack of political tolerance, is both original and convincing.
RSS