Democracy at stake, Economy in crisis, Security at risk
Joseph H. Chung, Ph.D (정희수) Professor of economics, Quebec University in Quebec (UQAM)
(지난 호에 이어)
Lee Jae-myung was a lawyer who has spent his whole career for the poor and the week. As a mayor of Sung-nam city, he has implemented several public policy measures including the system of "basis income", which can be spent in his city and corruption-free management of the city budget.
On the other hand, Yoon Suk-yeol has spent his career in arresting people as prosecutor and in 2021, he was appointed by President Moon as prosecutor general.
The presidential election took place on May 9, 2022. To the great surprise of all, Yoon Suk-yeol won, albeit a very small margin of 0.73%. Yon got 48.56% of votes, while Lee got 47.83% of votes.
Yoon was elected despite a long list of reasons against his victory. He had many sins and defects. Nevertheless, he won. But, why? The most important reason for voting Yoon was the wish of the PJCF people to revenge Moon Jae-in government and recover the wealth, the income and the privileges which they think they have lost due to Moon's government. They thought that Yoon Suk-yeol, the merciless prosecutor was the right man who could do the revenge for them.
Yoon Suk-yeol made his name by destroying the Professor Cho-guk, his wife and his children on the basis of controversial and fabricated evidence for the simple reason that the professor as Minister of Justice wanted to reduce the power of the prosecutors.
This seems to have pleased the PJCF and voted for Yoon Suk-yeol for the simple reason that he could arrest and put all the PLNF leaders in jail and restore South Korea where the corrupted PJCF could dominate again. In fact, it is what Yoon has been doing for last 6 months since he became president.
2. Impact of PJCF's Victory
As mentioned above, the government of Moon Jae-in has surely destroyed the lucrative source of bribe money and other types of illegal and immoral money, power and privileges of PJCF. The PJCF and those who received some benefits from the PJCF voted for Yoon Suk-yeol to recover what was taken away by Moon government.
However, a good part of those who voted for Yoon realize now that they made a mistake of choosing a wrong man.
What is important is what the Yoon government wants and how he intends to get what it wants. What it wants is not the promotion of national interests; what it wants is the promotion of the collective interests of the corrupted community of the PJCF. To be more precise, what it wants is the advancement of the interest of Yoon's family and his devoted friends.
To attain such objective, Yoon needs a regime of dictatorship, to be more precise, the dictatorship of prosecutors. In fact, most of the position of power within the government and government-funded institutions are filled by prosecutors and personal friends of Mrs. Yoon, Kim Gun-hee.
As a result, policies designed to advance the wellbeing of the population are absent. This is reflected in major national policies, namely, economic policy, social policy, security policy and foreign policy.
Yoon's economic policy is simply the neo-liberal policy of th 1970s and 1980s. The first thing his government did was to cut the corporate tax, increase subsidies to Chaebols, allow the Chaebols to exploit SMEs and weaken the negotiation power of labour unions. This is the usual way of getting bribe money for the PJCF.
This Chaebol-first policy is bound to make it difficult to prepare for coming digital-based 4th technological revolution.
The trade policy is a part of economic policy. Since Yoon government joint the Japan-US policy of China containment, the exports to China radically fell and the trade deficit with China has been increasing.
Yoon's social policy is extremely harmful not only to the welfare of the people but also to economic growth. Yoon cut down most of all the funds allocated to the elder, the jobless, the handicapped and other minority groups. Moreover, Yoon is planning to cut the minimum wage arte.
There is another negative impact of such anti-welfare policy. It is the inevitable worsening income distribution in favour of the well-to-do at the expense of the majority of the consumers. This leads to the weakening of consumer demand and provoke stagnation of the economy.
Yoon's foreign policy is simply a disaster. He spent all his life in the office of prosecutor and only thing he knows well is the catch those liberal and democratic minded people and put them in jail on the basis of fabricated evidence of wrong doings.
Yoon is totally ignorant about foreign policy. The tragic thing is that he does not know the fact that he is ignorant. He has with him experienced experts in foreign relations. But, it is reported that he never listens the experts' advice.
The world was surely scandalized to see clearly that Yoon does not know the ABC of politics as pointed out by the Economist (August 25, 2022). He does not know the ABC of diplomacy either.
The world saw strange behaviours of Yoon and his wife at the NATO meeting (June 28), the funeral ceremony late Queen Elisabeth II (September 19), the UN General Assembly (September 28), the ASEAN meeting (November 11) and the G20 meeting (November 16).
These behaviours have made South Koreans ashamed of Yoon and his wife. What Yoon has obtained through these international meetings was the fall of Korea's credibility as reliable country. Moreover, these behaviours have led to the critical damage of Korea's trade and security.
Yoon's participation at the NATO meeting, the ASEAN meeting and the G20 meeting have put ROK to join the camp of China bashing and China containment strategy. This has seriously hampered the previous governments' effort to maintain friendly relations both with the U.S. and China on the one hand, and, on the other, to increase trade surplus with China.
Yoon' speech at the UN General Assembly did not include ROK's DPRK policy letting Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida to handle the North Korean issues. This naive gesture of Yoon was intended to discredit the peace-process of the previous government of Moon Jae-in.
His declaration of pre-emptive attack against North Korea he made during his presidential campaign and persistent belligerent anti-DPRK words and behaviours have worsened the North-South tension and increased the Korea risk hurting foreign investment.
Yoon's courting for Japan-ROK summit and his official support for Japan's Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIP) prepared the ground for Japan-ROK military alliance, which will eventually force the ROK armed forced to join the Sino-US war along with Japanese forces.
What makes South Koreans the most worried about the possible Japan-ROK military alliances is the reunification of Korea by the allied armed forces of ROK, Japan and the U.S. which may lead to the presence of Japanese military, something which Koreans hate to see, except the Yoon's pro-Japan conservative force in South Korea.
All in all, Yoon's internal as well as his external policies is total fiasco. Moreover, the Itaewon disaster (the 10.29 Disaster) is likely to be the coup-de-grace to his political career.
The persistent refusal of admitting the responsibility of the tragedy and the apparent involvement of "shaman" Cheon-dong stir up even the controversies surrounding the relation between the shaman and Yoon Suk-yeol and his controversial wife.
Yoon Suk-yeol having failed completely as president, he is speeding up the creation of prosecutor dictatorship and this will expand and intensify popular uprising.
Already on October 9, no less than 400,000 people went to street and shouted "Down Yoon Suk-yeol and "Special probe for Kim Gun-hee!".
It is possible that the on-going battle between the two political forces is the end of century-old fight between the pro-Japan conservative force and the progressive liberal nationalist force.
3. Conclusion
If the PJCF wins, South Korea will go back what it was fifty years ago. On the other hand, if the PLNF wins, the policy of Moon Jae-in will come back and South Korea will march toward a better society where justice, equality, freedom and prosperity will prevail far all.
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