Socialists in Hongdae

By Michael Breen

There I am one night last week, sitting on a low wall at a busy corner of the Hongdae district of Seoul, pushing the pram back and forth and listening to a passionate speech by the wife of a Ssangyong Motor unionist, when a nice man in a white hanbok appears from behind and coos at the baby.

It's Kang Ki-kap, the Democratic Labor Party lawmaker. He's the man in traditional clothes in the front line of all the protests. I assumed he opposed foreigners, but no. He inclines, I stand and incline. We shake hands as his bit of English and my mumbled Korean collide in mid-air. He shakes some more hands and sits deferentially on the pavement, waiting to be introduced as the main speaker.

Like so many politicians these days, Kang in real life is surprisingly small, delicate and non-threatening. With his trademark costume and beard, his movements appear self-conscious, as if he is an actor in character from a period drama. But his oratory reveals the fire in the belly. Kang has an emotive cause ― the jobs of people who don't earn much. He is a fighter for farmers and workers.

His socialist message is a hard sell in South Korea. Governments, democratic and dictatorial alike, have controlled the economy, interfered in citizens' lives and acted in the name of ``the people." What's that, if not socialism?

Their big themes taken, the trick for politicians a la gauche is to home in on specifics. That works because government here is never popular. I think that's because people demand that government interfere in their lives and resent it when it does.

Whatever.

Kang is preaching to a small choir. Each time the subway spills its passengers up onto the street, there are more of them walking in front of the mini-stage than audience members whose view they are blocking.

The pitch of all the speakers is emotional victimhood. We hear about the suffering of the families of the protestors killed in Yongsan earlier this year. We hear about the suffering of the families of the people being downsized at Ssangyong, the bankrupt auto manufacturer. We hear about the new media bill which might allow popular conservative newspapers to own TV stations and deprive people of liberal commentary.

This pitch is very appealing, especially to nice people. Those giving it and those listening to it have an aura of earnestness. As empathizers and victims, they seemed drawn not to power and hatred of those in the way, but to a simple appeal for the world to be a nicer place.

But that's the trick of victim politics. It's passive-aggressive. It invites you to be holy while blaming someone besides yourself for your life. The next step is to accept that those at fault need punishing. This is the process by which the nice people drawn to communism and other -isms get overruled by thugs.

The problem in Korea, we are being led to believe, is the evil wrought by business and money. The innocent protestors in Yongsan, burned by the fuel they had spread around, were demanding more compensation for shopkeepers whose rents were not being renewed because of re-development by faceless capitalists.

The resistance at Ssangyong, where innocent worker-victims were forced to set fire to tires and fire bolts at police with industrial strength catapults, would not be necessary if people in suits cared more about people than profits. The feared entry into terrestrial TV by the Chosun Ilbo would not happen if government listened to the people.

The solution, then, for this anti-government crowd, is more government control, except not by this government.

This is where politics gets confusing. It might just be easier to join the Hongdae crowd that's here to eat and drink with friends. Korea's a democracy now, so does it really matter if I don't care about politics any more?

Michael Breen is chairman of Insight Communications Consultants and exclusive partner of FD International. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.