By Michael Breen
A little over the halfway point in her term, President Park Geun-hye is hearing familiar noises: a sustained moan of criticism mixed with sermons of protest from the other side of the police busses.
If the pattern of the last five presidencies holds, the moaning will get so loud by the end of next year that her own party’s presidential candidates will have to distance themselves from her to even have a chance.
Each president gets to this point in his ― and now, her ― own way. There are failed policies, scandals, poor crisis management, and unfulfilled campaign promises. But they are simply justifications, subjects for reporters and professors to write columns about. The real reason for the slithering popularity lies elsewhere.
And that is in the advancement of democracy.
Whenever there is criticism about the political process or the state of rights in Korea, the stock defense is that the history of Korean democracy is short. That is true. But the way to strengthen it is not simply to wait. Each new administration needs to do a democracy check and move things along.
The part of this that no president has yet done successfully is to convince the nation just how much democracy limits what a president is and can do. Instead, they do the opposite – their grandiose promises at the start make them look like monarchs and dictators. Kim Dae-jung said he would solve the IMF crisis in three years; Lee Myung-bak said he would introduce a 747 economy. We, the people, just had to wait a little and then tuck into the trough when the Great One had filled it.
When they didn’t, we felt our hunger and got angry.
Why didn’t they say, “The road ahead is tough but together we can get through this”? Why are politicians so short-sighted as to fail to see that the big promise just sets them up to disappoint later?
The answer is that they have an inflated view of their own power. It is as if Park Chung-hee set the standard for what a president can do, and everyone since has either deluded themselves they can match him or fears that admitting they can’t makes them look weak.
This is not just President Park’s problem. The whole country thinks the same thing. People expect too much of presidents.
This isn’t all that’s wrong with ideas about leadership. Politicians seem to think that their job as democrats is to do what “the people” want. As a result they’re obsessed with the reaction to whatever they say or do, whether it’s in the newspapers, online or on the street.
When the belief in democracy is shallow, governments have no qualms ― indeed, they may even think it is morally and strategically good ― to restrict freedom of expression in the press, on TV and online in order to manipulate the reaction to their rule.
Park is the leader not the follower of the people and she and her government must sometimes take unpopular steps ― and accept the debate that goes with it without trying to manipulate the reaction by restricting rights to expression.
To this end, she could take a leaf out of the book of the most criticized of all Korean presidents ― Roh Moo-hyun ― who, under attack from all quarters, refused to take out defamation suits or use the considerable powers at his disposal to shut people up.
Until now, she has been continuing the bad habit of her direct predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, under whose rule freedom of expression came under attack to the point that international rights agencies demoted Korea from being “free” to partly free.”
A president cannot solve these issues on her own and should not posture as if she can.
But, let’s be fair, she does have over two more years to go.