South Korea: Swift Social Progress Despite Protests Home and Abroad

Americans, who have little patience with historical and cultural differences, consistently see South Korea from extreme perspectives. To conservatives, the country is important only as a link in an anti-communist security chain. Conversely, most liberals dismiss South Korea out of hand as a dictatorial government, famous for human-rights abuses.

The Washington visit by Republic of Korea President Roh Tae Woo this month went virtually unnoticed by the American public.

That nation--and that president--deserve better. Not only has South Korea piled up the most impressive economic growth record in East Asia over the past decade, but the 40 million South Koreans have been paying their debts and cutting down tariff barriers. They encourage imports and domestic consumption, despite a pronounced slump in their 12% annual growth in gross national product.

For all the serious cases of censorship and human rights interference that still occur, South Korea has largely held to the declaration of democracy made in 1987. The country now enjoys a multiparty government and a press that is basically free. This is a striking achievement for a nation that only emerged from stifling Japanese colonial rule in 1945 to suffer an appalling war, a divided country and sustained periods of authoritarian rule.

If we think in terms of historical time --as we should in Asia--South Korea began its post-war independence in something like mid-19th Century conditions. Giant strides in education, economic skills and national consciousness had to be made to turn this undeveloped country into a modern industrialized and culturally secure nation.

Yet South Korea has taken a worse pounding from self-righteous American journalists and academics than real dictatorial regimes like China. U.S. businessmen, too, tend to view South Korea as the latest tooth-and-claw Asian competitor, little different from its presumed exemplar, Japan. Such narrow views do an injustice to a complex but vigorous people painfully transforming themselves into a working democracy.

Since Roh took over two years ago, a winner without a majority in Korea’s first truly free election, the government has been lurching along in a search for stability and support. The search has been hindered, or some would say facilitated, by the inability of the two large anti-government opposition parties--one led by the great protester Kim Dae Jung, the other led by his bitter rival, Kim Yong Sam--to agree on a joint course of action. Although Roh is a former general and part of the ruling military Establishment, the president has shown himself a realist in his efforts to keep democratic processes going.

His problem is complicated by a long chain-reaction of anti-government protest launched by students in the universities. This movement, its roots in the vicious oppression practiced by Roh’s predecessors, has often escalated into nasty violence, so nasty that angry students have lost the sympathy of most citizens.

The communist regime in North Korea has done its best to foment more trouble. Kim Il Sung runs the world’s most monolithic dictatorship in Pyongyang; North Korea is the last surviving vestige of Stalinism today. Yet his propagandists have grabbed the emotional issue of reunification and used it as a magnet to attract thousands of well-meaning but naive South Korean students.

In many ways, these young protesters are reminiscent of Japanese students in the wild and woolly demonstration days of the early ‘60s, but they are perhaps more alarming because of their susceptibility to cynical instigation and exploitation by the North.

In most student demonstrations, the United States is portrayed as a prime villain. True, some years back, the U.S. military did little or nothing to interfere in the disastrous Kwangju riots, which were brutally suppressed by South Korean army units under U.S. control. Nor did the American Embassy do much in 1979--when South Korea’s dictatorial President Park Chung Hee was assassinated--to prevent the iron-fisted Chun Doo Hwan from seizing power. The students are particularly irritated by the continuing visible presence of the American military, which the propaganda bosses in the North cynically cite as the main obstacle to a happy, peaceful reunion of like-minded Koreans.

The only real validity in this exaggerated charge is that U.S. policy has consistently been based primarily on security, with economic, political and social factors far in the background. In an even more extreme way, we have made the same security-above-all mistakes in South Korea as the Reagan Administration made in its dealings with Japan. As the Cold War becomes less real each day, it is time to change the premises of South Korean policy.

South Korea is quickly making its own way in the new world, where ground rules everywhere are changing. On a visit to Seoul last month, I missed seeing some academic associates because they were out welcoming a Soviet academic and economic delegation. Another friend in Korean industry told me over dinner about his successful trip to Moscow. Three or four years ago, such Soviet-South Korean conversation would have been unthinkable in this militantly anti-communist country.

South Koreans have built up a quiet, almost under-the-counter trade with China, and they want to do the same thing with the Soviets. They believe that their hugely productive economy, somewhat less high-tech than Japan’s, can establish a mutually profitable trading relationship with the two communist giants--and perhaps ultimately with its own sundered segment in the North. This shift in economic targets is probably necessary; Koreans understand that they can no longer depend so heavily on exports to the United States, a realization they came to at an earlier stage than did their remote cousins in Japan.

The South Korean economy has been absorbing many bumps lately. After democracy was proclaimed fashionable, unions were quickly organized. A once-docile labor force has become an economic and political bargaining power. As a result, industrial costs in what was once a land of cheap labor have soared and manufacturing is giving ground to the service sector. This has happened elsewhere, notably in Japan. While it hurts competitiveness in the short run, in the long run it is just another step toward the democratic polity and economy South Korea correctly sees on the way.

At the same time, a not inconsiderable force of human-rights activists, led by Christian protesters, often pushes too hard. Christians form more than 20% of the population and a large portion of them are rights activists. One of Roh’s big problems is to find the proper balancing act, between satisfying the ardent demands for greater democracy and quieting the right-wingers who still have a strong voice in the government. Indeed, the right put him in power.

Still, the outlook is by no means dark. I have visited South Korea regularly for almost 40 years, having first gone there in 1950 as a correspondent. The transformation toward industrial democracy has exacted great costs, environmental and social problems not least among them. But those of us who visit often cannot help but be impressed by the progress made. Most South Koreans, given their druthers, would have preferred a president other than Roh, but the general feeling in the country--in contrast to the antic demonstrations on TV--seems to be a yearning for stability. “We just have to keep on a steady course, with all our problems,” one businessman said. “We have no choice.”