Asia Times: ANALYSIS: Predecessors' fate haunts Kim Dae-jung



	September 30, 1999	atimes.com

The Koreas

ANALYSIS: Predecessors' fate haunts Kim Dae-jung
By Bradley Martin

South Korea's ex-presidents in recent weeks have been making all sorts of interesting noises. Consider Chun Doo-hwan, whose aide let it be known that the ex-dictator would like to be appointed as the government's special envoy to North Korea. Few would have thought of the old coup artist as the type for a sensitive diplomatic mission. But Chun's aide enthused that his boss would be just right for the job - because Chun is both hated and feared in North Korea, which tried to assassinate him when he was in office. Although it is no doubt a fascinating theory, within the current government Chun's patriotic offer to go north predictably elicited no enthusiasm.

But never mind, there are other ways for an old warhorse to serve. Chun then was said to be giving thought to returning to politics, perhaps joining with his successor, Roh Tae-woo, to start a party made up of the same political hangers-on - mostly from the city of Taegu and surrounding North Kyongsan province - who used to support the two ex-generals back in the '80s. Meanwhile, another ex-president, Kim Young-sam, said he was reviving the old political organization he used to head from his days as a pro-democracy crusader against the likes of Chun and Roh. That sparked talk that Kim also might be thinking of starting a new party - this one filled with his own old backers concentrated in Pusan and South Kyongsan province.

What Chun, Roh and Kim share besides their former residency in the Blue House - and a huge part of what motivates them to plot political comebacks instead of writing their memoirs and playing golf, as ex-presidents elsewhere tend to do - is humilation. All three were made to suffer big time after they left office. After Kim Young-sam took over the presidency, his government saw to it that Chun and Roh were garbed in prison coveralls and locked up like common pickpockets for their political and economic crimes in office. Then when his own presidency gave way to that of Kim Dae-jung - his longtime bitter rival within the democracy movement - Kim Young-sam himself drew intense public scorn. One investigation after another delved into his incompetence and nepotism, which the new government blamed for the country's financial crisis. No wonder those ex-presidents want another shot at burnishing their legacies.

Current President Kim Dae-jung is nobody's fool and sees the pattern: if your successor isn't one of your pals, forget about easing out of office into a comfortable retirement - and don't even think about basking in the approval of a grateful nation. Once your rivals are in power, the way things work in Korea, they will make absolutely sure it's retribution city for you, in turn. In Kim Dae-Jung's case, there's enough controversy swirling around, including corruption allegations against some figures in and close to the government, that the inquisitors would have the usual field day. And they might not wait until after he is replaced as president. The fun and games could start much sooner if the present opposition wins the National Assembly elections next April.

And that, in a nutshell, is what's behind all the talk of a ''grand political realignment'' that has grabbed front-page play and prime air time in the South Korean news media during the last several months. Kim Dae-jung presides over a coalition government composed of two minority parties whose philosophies are far apart (at least in South Korean terms - terms that don't really permit a vast ideological chasm). The coaltion has been too fragile to reassure Kim Dae-jung that friendly forces will win a majority in the next parliamentary elections, or that someone he can trust will become president after him. What he needs is a BIG party, a party with an enduring majority.

Kim Dae-jung's first step, once he realized it was time to act, was to take care of some old business with Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil, who heads the conservative smaller party in the governing coalition. Together, Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-pil are the ''three Kims'' who have been fixtures of South Korean politics for decades. But Kim Jong-pil is the perennial bridesmaid. Although he had his first term as prime minister in the 1970s, J P has never made it to the presidency. Past 70 now, he still craves the chance to wield something like ultimate power on his own. So he made it a condition of his alliance of convenience with Kim Dae-jung that the government they established would push for a constitutional amendment, to shift the country from a presidential system to a parliamentary cabinet system. In the new system, the presidency would be more of a ceremonial role. That would make Kim Jong-pil the boss, assuming he were still prime minister by the time of the system change.

Aside from its benefits to Kim Jong-pil and his core supporters from North and South Chungchong provinces, there was not much to recommend a parliamentary cabinet system in Korea. A deeply Confucian country, accustomed to having a big man at the helm, it's also a country of intense political passions and frequent plots and betrayals. There have been 80-some parties established in the modern period, by one journalist's count, and none of them has lasted from one election to the next. With a parliamentary cabinet system, the country no doubt would quicky outstrip Italy to win the Guiness Book record for frequency of voting governments out of office. Most Koreans know that and don't want the change, polls show conclusively. Thus Kim Dae-jung apparently didn't have too much trouble when he sat down during the summer to talk Kim Jong-pil into putting his pet constitutional change on the back burner.

A bit more difficult has been figuring out what to do with Kim J P's party while Kim D J sets out to use his own party as the core for building a new party - the new party that would prevent enemies from taking over and making D J's own post-Blue House days miserable. This was complicated because D J was pushing in two directions. First there was the public, idealistic component. The new party would be a reformist one, casting out the regionalism that had characterized previous South Korean parties including his own (which is based largely in his home region of North and South Cholla provinces and in Seoul) and Kim J P's. Thus D J wanted to broaden his own party by bringing in fresh faces to augment the usual career political hacks.

But then there was that ultimate imperative: to command a majority of lawmakers after the next elections. The National Assembly is considering two electoral systems. In one, only a single representative would be elected from each district. In the other proposed system, multiple winners would be chosen in each district. If the multiple winners system should prevail, D J's party and J P's party could put up separate candidates and have a good shot at registering a combined majority for their coalition. But in a system of single-seat districts, if their two parties competed separately they would too often be beaten by the main opposition party's candidates.

The single-seat district system seems to be emerging as the likely outcome. Voila! It's time to talk merger of D J's and J P's disparate parties into a single party. The followers of J P have been divided, with fierce sentiment against merger exhibited by one wing of that party. Nevertheless, on September 15 J P told lawmakers from D J's party: ''I will consider the matter for the sake of national interests.'' (The national interests are all about keeping the incumbents in power so that they can finish the job of reforming the government and the economy, in his view.)

But J P's willingness to merge does not solve everything for the country's incumbent president. Kim Dae-jung is having trouble fending off critics who say merger would mean the effective end of his avowed push to bring in new faces and create a reform party, one that would represent the lower and middle classes and lead the country into the new millenium - as the rhetoric goes. One problem is that there are only so many seats in the assembly; in the event of a merger J P's followers would have to be nominated for many of them in place of the outsiders D J wanted to recruit. A second problem is that J P might have to be given the new party's presidency for his trouble. Identified with former authoritarian, military backed governments (as a young colonel he was a key plotter of a military coup in 1961), he is hardly the front man to give the new party the fresh image D J seeks.

Stay tuned. By the way - and you can either file away or forget this information - Kim Dae-jung's party for the moment is called National Congress for New Politics. Kim Jong-pil's party, likewise for the moment, is the United LIberal Democrats. And the chief opposition grouping, itself constantly threatening to splinter into the factions backing Kim Young-sam, Chun, Roh, et al, is the Grand National Party.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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