In the April 15 parliamentary elections, President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) captured an overwhelming majority of the National Assembly (180 of 300 seats). This historically unprecedented feat in South Korea reminds us that, to borrow a phrase, “Timing is everything in politics.”
Last year, Moon was mired in low approval ratings (in the low 40s), because of South Korea’s economic slowdown and various political scandals, especially those tied to his former Justice Minister Cho Kuk. A couple of months ago, in the early stages of the novel coronavirus outbreak, Moon was criticized for not banning travelers from China, against the advice of the Korean Medical Association. Since mid-March, however, South Korea’s mainstream media have effusively praised the Moon administration for leading, and winning, the battle against COVID-19.
But Korean public attitudes may shift again later this year, if other countries recover and adapt more quickly to the post-COVID economy. South Korea’s economy was the leading political issue before COVID-19, and it shall rise to the top again as the pandemic eases. If the economy does not recover by the next presidential election (May 22, 2022), critics will again blame Moon and the DPK’s policies — sharply raising the minimum wage, limiting workers to a 52-hour week, phasing out nuclear power, as well as (informally) boycotting Japan-related goods, services, and travel.
In contrast to COVID-19, critics claim, the Moon administration’s approach to economics and foreign affairs has not been guided by experts in line with the global mainstream, but by a left-wing, nationalist ideology designed to rectify the accumulated injustices of (allegedly) pro-Japanese, pro-capitalist elites. The Moon administration, emboldened by its legislative majority, may further its leftist-nationalist agenda, including enforcing the 2018 Supreme Court ruling expropriating Japanese company assets to compensate colonial-era laborers. Unless Moon follows in the footsteps of Germany’s Gerhard Schröder and shifts to pragmatic and pro-market policies, South Korea may experience continued bilateral tensions and economic stagnation.
Conversely, the 2020 elections will help unify opponents of the ruling DPK and potentially open up the major rightist United Future Party (UFP) to new leaders and ideas. The elections wiped out the center-right Party for People’s Livelihoods (PPL, Minsaengdang), formerly the minor party alternative for politicians who defected from the major rightist party (then called Saenuri) over former President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment. With PPL’s demise, anti-DPK politicians have little choice but to rejoin the UFP. With their own electoral setback — nearly all of UFP’s senior leaders lost their competitive Seoul races — the UFP will be more open to former defectors, such as 2017 presidential candidate Yoo Seong-min.
Although South Korea’s immediate political future will be determined by the ruling DPK, its long-term politics may be impacted more by what happens with the conservative opposition. Sustained electoral defeats potentially open up opposition parties to alternative ideas, movements, and leaders that may, over time, generate new majority coalitions. In the United States, for example, for nearly half a century (1932 to 1980), the Republican Party (GOP) was dominated by the Democrats, both in electoral politics (especially control of the U.S. Congress) and in the cultural realm of ideas. Activists and intellectuals outside of the GOP leadership focused on building a grassroots, conservative movement and counterculture. By 1980, the conservative movement helped create a new governing majority behind Ronald Reagan.
The COVID-19 pandemic overshadowed South Korea’s ideological divisions, but they remain deep and growing. The DPK’s ambitious campaign to remake South Korea’s domestic institutions and foreign relations is a continuing earthquake that unsettles various social groups, from UFP mainstays (e.g., older anti-communists) to relative newcomers. The latter group includes prosecutors, who oppose Moon’s proposal to reduce their investigatory powers (e.g., former prosecutor and newly elected Assembly member Kim Woong); North Korean defectors alarmed by Moon’s North Korea policies (e.g., former North Korean ambassador and newly elected Assembly member Thae Yong-ho); and free-market liberals opposed to increasing government regulations (e.g., Korea Hayek Society).
The group with potentially the most radical cultural and political impact are self-described post-nationalist classic liberals, who reject South Korea’s ingrained, anti-Japanese nationalism – for example, fans of the highly controversial 2019 best seller Anti-Japan Tribalism (edited by former Seoul National economics professor Lee Young-hoon), which sold more than a hundred thousand copies in Korea and double that in Japan. Emerging “new right” or “post-nationalist right” groups, such as the intercollegiate Truth Forum, have endorsed Lee’s book and promote a South Korean identity based not on ethno-nationalism but on universal values of individual freedom, free markets, and religious-based (especially Judeo-Christian) morality (i.e., “markets and moralism”). They oppose the nationalist and anti-Japanese historiography taught in schools and promote a “liberal-democratic” alliance of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. On October 3, 2019, South Korea’s first-ever CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) conference, partly organized by Truth Forum, brought together like-minded conservatives from the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, including senior UFP leaders and the Hawaii-based One Korea Network.
April 15’s overwhelming victory by the DPK does not guarantee future results. Opportunities and pitfalls lie in front of both the major ruling and opposition parties. Like “anti-Trumpers” in the United States, anti-Moon partisans, whatever their various viewpoints, share a strong goal to defeat the president’s party in the next presidential election. As a result, the major opposition UFP is experiencing an influx of new ideas and activists that may, in the long term, fundamentally reshape South Korean culture and politics.
On a closing note, April 15, 2020 also marked the 31-year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests in China, which started April 15, 1989. (Back then, the first author was an idealistic high school senior, who helped deliver a petition of support, signed by more than a hundred classmates, to the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles.) Many of those Chinese protesters were inspired by South Korea’s June 1987 Democracy movement. Every free election in South Korea celebrates democracy and hopefully encourages all those struggling for liberty in their countries.
Joseph Yi is an associate professor of Political Science at Hanyang University (Seoul).
Wondong Lee is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of California, Irvine.
This article was supported by Hanyang University Research Fund.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
