President Moon Jae-in makes irreversible 'all-in' bet

President Moon Jae-in prays at St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, Czech Republic, during his recent visit on the way to Argentina for the G20 summit. At his side is first lady Kim Jung-sook. Yonhap

By Oh Young-jin

Will President Moon Jae-in make a U-turn on his key policies that are alienating the public in order to recover his sagging approval? His approval rating has dipped below 50 percent for the first time since he took office 18 months ago.

You would be wrong to think President Moon would reverse the minimum wage rises, revoke the exit from nuclear power in the nation's energy mix and slow the rapprochement with North Korea.

The progressive president could not even if he wanted to.

You may call Moon's lack of flexibility many things.

It may be the curse of a single-term presidency. Because presidents have no re-election to worry about, they neither have a chance nor need to change the course of their actions, let alone reverse them.

One may say the presidential system has outlived its usefulness as a state governing formula. Look at many president-led countries and one would, with few exceptions, see legislature and judiciary virtually at the beck and call of the chief executive whose power has grown comparable to a dictator. The problem is that a dictatorial leader can't help but clash with the people, whose power is multiplying thanks, among other things, to technology. Emmanuel Macron of France and Donald Trump of the U.S. are examples.

Then, it is the nature of Korean politics. It is the extreme case of the winner-take-all gamble and the take-no-prisoners battle, leaving little room for political compromise. The Moon government's policy of cleaning up old ills, is an arbitrary and encompassing social purge that can target political enemies, present and potential.

The other side, the conservatives, can be as vindictive when they take power. It can be a vicious cycle of the plurality-ruled democracy, the alternative being the authoritarian monarchy. One would choose the first over the second but with less enthusiasm than before.

Put these factors together and one can picture with a sense of clarity what is transpiring in Moon's mind or, more correctly, in the mindset of the governing class of progressives.

For them, any adjustment in the policies of minimum wages, nuclear power and North Korea is the same as showing a weakness they can't afford, because it risks inviting the conservatives to stage pack attacks on them just like wolves finding their prey.

Backtracking on the agenda, more importantly, is bound to create an internal schism, alienating supporters and turning them into the worst of enemies.

The late former President Roh Moo-hyun lost his support base as he pushed for the settlement of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), which was the core agenda of international trade-friendly conservatives.

The imprisoned former President Lee Myung-bak's presidency turned into a basket case when his key presidential pledge to create a nationwide canal faced strong public opposition, forcing Lee to scale down the project.

Maybe a two-term presidency would ease the single-term presidents' conundrum and enable them to use more flexibility. For Korea, attempts to revise the Constitution for a presidential term change have been tried but thwarted at a very early stage because of the failure to create bipartisan consensus.

It is an open question as to how effective the term change would be, considering the general decline of the presidential system.

It would be almost silly to expect the current government to discontinue what it is doing in the way it has been doing it before the end of its term.

The risk is expected ― an unpopular president deprived of all his political capital, with the nation rudderless and adrift, if the economy doesn't improve, renewable energy stays out of mainstream and the North Korean issue is stuck. As things stand, none of those things have a good outlook.

The opposite could be more dramatic. If Moon's determination pays off, the nation would see a new opening in its economic development through collaboration with the North, one of the few new potential growth engines; the nation-dividing issue of growing income inequality addressed and the environment becoming safer from fears of a disaster like the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis.

Adding a sense of rigidity to Moon's agenda is the hallmark of presidential chief of staff Lim Jong-seok, a former pro-North Korean student activist in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1989, Lim masterminded the unauthorized and daring visit to the North of Lim Su-kyung, who heaped praise on the North during the tense inter-Korean rivalry.

Despite the passage of time, it is hard to miss that Lim's brand of "my way or no way" ideology has pervaded the approach the Moon government is taking in its agenda promotion.

Surely, Moon's agenda cannot be replaced by that of a conservative leader, and its success would be pivotal to the nation's further growth. But the people's patience is running out fast.