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S Korea struggles to move beyond zero-sum politics

South Korea, already in uncharted political territory with President Roh Moo-hyun in impeachment limbo, may enter the equally unfamiliar middle ground of compromise if this week's election fails to produce a strong majority party.

Initial predictions that anger over Roh's impeachment would trigger a landslide for the pro-Roh Uri Party have given way to forecasts that a comeback by the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) could deliver a hung parliament.

Such a close race -- the Uri Party's chairman was predicting that his party and the GNP would each capture 110 seats in the 299-seat National Assembly -- could force compromise to a degree rarely seen in South Korea's history of winner-take-all politics.

Roh's impeachment on March 12 showed a worldwide TV audience a melee of brawling and bellowing politicians who threw their shoes and physically obstructed the vote. Earlier votes on free trade with Chile also resembled a rugby scrum.

Some politicians are saying enough is enough.

"That is really a shameful matter," said Park Geun-hye, leader of the GNP and her country's most prominent woman politician. "My GNP has nothing to say for itself."

While the Uri Party caused the impeachment fracas, the GNP has dominated the unruly parliament for the past two years.

On the other side of the aisle, Roh broke a long public silence on Sunday over the turmoil leading up to his impeachment after just one year of a five-year term. Roh's powers are suspended while the Constitutional Court debates his impeachment.

"We can see hope for a change from the politics of life or death to politics of dialogue and compromise," Roh was quoted as telling reporters during a hike among cherry blossoms on Mt Bukak behind the presidential Blue House.

South Korea is an ethnically and linguistically homogeneous country the size of Belgium that has developed over the past two decades from a military dictatorship into a raucous democracy.

Despite a unifying nation-alism, politicians have been divided by ideology, region and faction. Bipartisan consensus has rarely lasted longer than the cherry blossoms in Roh's backyard.

Pundits are sceptical that tomorrow's election will change old habits overnight.

"It is natural for Roh to call for an end to political strife, considering all the political conflict he has brought about since last year," said Lee Nae-young, a politics professor at Korea University in Seoul.

But he said a post-election coalition in parliament could not be ruled out.

Roh's left-of-center predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, suffered large mid-term parliamentary election losses and was forced to form a fragile coalition with a small right-wing party. Both Uri and the GNP back plans to send South Korean troops to Iraq.

Park of the GNP said that new election laws reserving for women half of the 56 seats allotted by proportional representation from party lists "could produce politics of co-existence" after years of fights in a nearly all-male bastion.

"Women tend not to reject counterparts but to recognize and respect them, so this may help stop the fighting," she said.

On Monday, the omens for bipartisanship were not good.

Less than 24 hours after Roh's hopeful comment, six junior Uri Party lawmakers launched a hunger strike in the National Assembly building to protest the reported conservative comeback.

"The hunger strikers say the resurgence of the GNP is the death of South Korean democracy and letting the GNP take the top position in parliament will facilitate impeachment," said a party spokesman. He said the six would fast through election day.

The scholar Lee said bitter partisanship would not disappear.

"I doubt new lawmakers including women will make things better," he said. "It is conceivable that they will just follow Roh's initiatives and further upset the balance of power between parliament and the executive branch."
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