He came to give the country back to the people

Joseph H. Chung (정희수), Ph.D. Professor of Economics at Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM)

Introduction

For centuries, Koreans have been asking the Almighty to bless them with a true leader who would provide daily necessities, hope for the future, courage to fight for the justice and self- respect and self confidence.

During the 500-year of Choseon dynasty, kings could not perform properly their duty as national leader because of the corruption of the "Yang-ban" (aristocrats).

King Kojong, the last king of the Choseon dynasty was a failure, because he could not prevent Lee Wan-yong from selling Korea to Japan for his own political and financial greed.

During 35-year Japanese colonial rule, Korea was governed by pro-Japan Korean bureaucrats who collaborated with Japanese for the oppression of Koreans.

After 1945, Korea was ruled, for 62 years, by former pro-Japan collaborators and their descendents who regarded the rest of the Korean people as enemies and who were more concerned with their own interests than with those of the rest of the Korean population.

There are also a great number of Japanese who remained in Korea, adopted Korean names to keep their wealth cumulated during the 35-year Japanese occupation. This group is one of the key elements of the pro-Japan corrupted conservative South Koreans. In other words, these Japanese have been an integral part of the pro-Japan conservative government.

Moon Jae-in came along and, for Koreans, he was the first true national leader they had been waiting for so long. He was the third true leader who would give them their daily necessities, the hope for a better future, courage to fight for justice and respect for and confidence in themselves.

President Moon has left his office on May 9, 2022.  I thought that it is right time to discuss what and how he has accomplished his historical tasks.

As the legacy of President Moon, I would point out the following achievements

•Fight against the corruption culture

•Fight against the CORONA-19 Virus

•Social Reform

•New Economic System

•Crisis Management

•North-South Relations

•The Northern Policy and the Southern Policy

•Korea-Japan Relations

•Unfinished Task of President Moon Jae-in

1. Fight against the Corruption Culture

Before we discuss the corruption culture, we should remember its historical background.

In 1948, South Korea was deeply divided between the pro-Japan conservative South Koreans (PJCSK) and the pro-Korea liberal South Koreans (PKLSK).

The PJCSK was composed of those Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese colonial government (the traitors), those Japanese who remained in Korea after WWII by adopting Koreans names, the descendents of these two core groups and other groups. I will elaborate the composition of the PJCSK later.

On the other hand, the PKLSK was composed of those Koreans who fought against the Japanese and the vast majority of Koreans who suffered from humiliation, oppression and exploitation by the Japanese. The leader of the PKLSK was Kim Gu who was president of the Korean Provisional Government fighting against the Japanese in China and Manchuria.

The PJCSK were able to win the election in 1948 by not only assassinating Kim Gu but also arresting most of the PKLSK leaders and rigging the election. Sygnman Rhee became the first post-war Korean president and formed a government run by the traitors and the Japanese who remained in Korea

On the other hand, in North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Il-sung, the traitors were executed and there were few Japanese remained by fear of execution. The core of the North Korean society was composed of those who fought with arms against Japan

You may wonder how come the traitors could become the member of the government.

To understand this, we have to go back to 1945, the year of the establishment of the American military government. Being ignorant of Korea and Korean history, the military government hired the traitors who were around and who had experience in running the government.

Thus, important positions of the government including the police were given to collaborators. This was how the collaborators (traitors) were not punished, while, in other countries including France, the traitors were severely punished.

The military government left in 1948 and the presidential election was coming. The PKLSK revolted and organized a committee to identify the traitors and succeeded in making a part of the list of traitors. But, the traitors, under the leadership Syngman Rhee, destroyed the list. Thus, the collaborators were not punished.

Coming back to the question of corruption culture, it is important to understand the psychic of the traitors. These traitors knew that they were enemies of most of the Koreans. They knew that, to survive, they had to keep power. They knew also that they would never be elected through normal democratic political process. Under these circumstances, it was necessary to grab power by force and eliminate those who opposed them

This explains the police dictatorship of Syngman Rhee, the military dictatorship of Generals Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-whan, rigged election of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye.

There was another important means of survival for the PJCSK, the money and the corruption. To survive, the traitors have formed community which cumulated, through illegal or immoral ways, enormous wealth. To increase and protect their wealth, they have developed what I call "corruption community" and "corruption culture."

The corruption community is a very solid organization. At the core, we have the descendents of Lee Wan Yong and his friends, who were knighted by the Japanese emperor in 1929 for their efforts for the annexation of Korea to Japan in 1910. At the core, we find also large corporations, namely, the Chaebols.

The modus operandi of the corruption community is essentially based on the corrupted relations between politicians and the business corporations. The role of the politicians is to provide privileges including all sorts of permits, policy loans, grants, tax allowances and illegal and immoral land ownership. On the other hands, the role of corporations is to provide bribes and other forms of illegal or immoral money to the politicians. (다음 호에 계속)

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