Lost Opportunities in Korea

Anti-government forces won a solid majority of the votes cast in South Korea’s presidential election in December, but that didn’t stop Roh Tae Woo of the ruling Democratic Justice Party from sweeping to victory anyway. More than anything else Roh’s triumph could be seen as a gift from his opponents, the result of the failure of opposition leaders Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung to put aside their personal ambitions and merge their causes in a single anti-Roh effort. Each Kim instead insisted on making his own run for the presidency, with the predictable result that each went down to defeat. Now, four months later, the two Kims and their followers are on the verge of squandering still another golden political opportunity.

South Korea’s April 26 legislative elections will continue to find the opposition parties divided, their half-hearted attempts to unite after the shock of the December debacle buried under an avalanche of hostility and recriminations. A united opposition could almost certainly expect to win a majority of the 299 seats in the National Assembly, particularly under new electoral rules that allot each constituency only one seat. Now the one-seat rule that the opposition had long sought--in earlier legislatures constituencies could have up to three parliamentary representatives--is likely to work in favor of government-party candidates, as the opposition vote again splits.

The prospect, then, is that the legislature along with the presidency will end up under the control of the same party. It is no reflection on President Roh’s leadership or his intentions, both of which so far have been quite encouraging, to suggest that this is not necessarily a good thing in a country that is just starting to emerge from the long shadow of authoritarian rule.

For one thing Korea’s nascent democracy would probably benefit by having legislative checks on executive power that opposition control of the National Assembly could provide. For another, with most signs indicating that the Democratic Justice Party still doesn’t command the loyalties of a majority of voters, a lot of Koreans who vote for one or the other of the major opposition parties might feel themselves effectively disfranchised and thus bitter and frustrated because their votes failed to produce an opposition majority. None of this can be blamed on Roh and his party. The fault instead lies with those politicians--the two Kims particularly--who place their personal interests ahead of the national interest that a unified and responsible political opposition would serve. Korea’s struggle toward democracy is not being helped by this kind of egoism and stubbornness.