South
Korea Election – BBC, the Economist, and FT
CFR
"The
Saenuri Party has historically been firmly behind the chaebol [conglomerates],
so Ms Park's tack to the centre had alarmed the party's core supporters. But
the strategy first proved successful in elections for the National
Assembly last April, and then again today. Her instincts will now be to tack
back to the right," writes the Economist.
"Ms
Park might have good intentions to improve equality at home, and do something
towards reducing the influence of the chaebol. But it is still the chaebol and
the state of the global economy on which South Korea depends that will
determine the country's path," writes the Financial Times.
"Opinion
polls suggest that Ms Park's support in this election came from those in their
50s and 60s. Ironic, say Ms Park's critics, that it is precisely the generation who suffered under her
father's repressive rule who seem most firmly in favour of electing her. And
there is little doubt that her legacy has cost her votes, as well as boosted
them," writes Lucy Williamson for the BBC.
South
Korea election - chaebol challenge
FT.com
December 19, 2012
Park
Geun-hye has done it. She has become the first female president of South Korea.
Never mind that she is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the army strongman who
ruled in dictatorial style for 18 years until 1979. The South Korean people
think she is the one who can reduce the influence of the chaebol,
the huge family-run conglomerates, and tackle income inequality. Both Ms
Park and the opposition candidate, Moon Jae-in, made these central policy
issues in the run up to Wednesday's election.
Ms
Park must deliver against a challenging backdrop. South Korea's quarterly
economic growth has fallen to its slowest pace in three years. Domestic
demand has been stifled by mounting household debt, which stood at 85 per
cent of gross domestic product last year. The ability to redistribute income is
hampered by low tax revenues and social welfare spending - just 20 per cent and
8 per cent of economic output respectively, compared with over 30 and 25 per
cent in developed countries, according to Nomura.
The
problem with breaking the influence of the chaebol, however, is South Korea's increasing
dependence on them for growth. The combined assets of the top five chaebol
such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG are equivalent to 57 per cent of
economic output this year, compared to just over a third in 2007. A competitive
won (still a fifth below pre-crisis levels on a trade-weighted basis, according
to Capital Economics), has helped the likes of Samsung and Hyundai to stay
competitive, enabling exports to contribute 58 per cent of Korea's GDP
in the first half. And their dominance in the Kospi has helped the benchmark
index to return 10 per cent over the past five years, while Japan's Nikkei and
Hong Kong's Hang Seng have both fallen.
Ms
Park might have good intentions to improve equality at home, and do something
towards reducing the influence of the chaebol. But it is still the chaebol and
the state of the global economy on which South Korea depends that will
determine the country's path.
South
Korea's presidential election
A
homecoming
Dec
19th 2012
SOUTH
KOREA has elected Park Geun-hye, a 60-year-old conservative, as president for
the coming five years. The candidate is from the same party, the Saenuri party,
as the incumbent, Lee Myung-bak. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the
dictator who set South Korea on the path of break-neck development, seizing
power in 1961 and assassinated by his security services in 1979. Ms Park thus
becomes South Korea’s first woman president. Curiously, she also has the
distinction of having once been the country’s first lady, following the
assassination of her mother in 1974 by a North Korea sympathiser. Having grown
up in the Blue House, South Korea's presidential mansion, she now returns
there.
Ms
Park defeated the main liberal candidate, Moon Jae-in of the Democratic United
Party (DUP), by 51.6% to 48%, following a tight contest that had everyone
guessing until the end. Turnout was nearly 76%, despite bone-chilling weather.
Such a high figure was expected to favour Mr Moon, since he had support among
the young, who tend to drag their feet on the way to the polls.
After
her victory Ms Park spoke in Gwanghwamun, near the main royal palace in Seoul
and in front of a statue of the 15th-century Confucian, King Sejong. She called
her win a "victory brought by the people's hope". Mr Moon has
congratulated Ms Park, and apologised to his supporters for not being able to
"keep his promise".
As
much as anything, the election was a battle of the generations. Those in
their 20s and 30s fell behind Mr Moon, while those in their 50s and older—a
growing segment in a fast-aging country—overwhelmingly chose Ms Park. In
Gwanghwamun, older voters were in party spirit, dancing and chanting her name.
They are more likely to look back with nostalgia on the rule of her strongman
father and his era of rapid growth and full employment. This worked in
Ms Park's favour today. In the Hongdae student district, by contrast,
20-somethings had tears in their eyes. But they were outnumbered: for the first
time in a presidential election, more voters were above 50 than under 40.
For
all that each candidate appealed to different groups, both campaigned chiefly
on the issue of what came to be called, in regrettably clumsy parlance, "economic democratisation". It
meant reining in the power of the influential families that control the
handful of South Korea’s dominant conglomerates, known as chaebol. And
it meant increasing the security, for instance, through welfare spending, of
those left behind now that the era of development-at-all-costs
is ending.
The
Saenuri Party has historically been firmly behind the chaebol, so Ms Park’s
tack to the centre had alarmed the party’s core supporters. But the strategy
first proved successful in elections for the National Assembly last April, and
then again today. Her instincts will now be to tack back to the right. But she
will be closely watched to see how she deals with such problems as overly cosy
arrangements among conglomerate affiliates, as well South Korea's growing
number of irregular workers, many of them youngsters, who were hired without
full employment rights.
As
for foreign policy, South Korea’s alliance with America will be
reaffirmed. Ms Park will have few warm and fuzzy feelings for China, but
she will acknowledge its importance as South Korea's main trading partner. She
will persist with the country’s pursuit of free-trade agreements after Mr Lee
leaves the Blue House in February.
The
president-elect inherits troubled relations with Japan, given friction
over the Dokdo islets (known in Japan as Takeshima) and the historical issue of
wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women. The emphatic general-election
victory in Japan on December 16th for the conservative Liberal Democratic Party
and its leader, Shinzo Abe, who denies Japanese wartime atrocities, will not,
on the face things, help. On the other hand, Ms Park’s father, like so many
Koreans of the post-war order, had during the Japanese occupation been a
collaborator, an officer in the Japanese imperial army. Ms Park would do the
country a favour by pointing out that matters of history need to be faced
honestly by all sides.
As
for the country’s relations with North Korea, these have been
essentially frozen since Lee Myung-bak made clear that he was not going to be
blackmailed by a dictatorship that set off nuclear devices, launched rockets
and sank a South Korean naval vessel. Ms Park is in no danger of going so far
as her liberal opponent, Mr Moon, who appeared to want a return to the
“sunshine policy” of a decade ago; it served the North well in terms of oodles
of aid with few strings. But she is certainly readier than Mr Lee to seek an
opening. She will, she says with not much precision, “reach a balance between
hard-line and overly dovish stances" towards the North. She appears
unlikely to make many unconditional gestures.
For
the Democratic United Party, today's result is a blow. Mr Moon’s campaign had
insufficient time to recover from the challenge of Ahn Cheol-soo, a centre-left
political outsider who set the race on fire but who threatened to split the
liberal vote and who stepped down in favour of Mr Moon only in November. He
then took time to throw his support behind Mr Moon. The election was fought
chiefly over issues of economic inequality. That ought to have been classic DUP
ground. There will now be much soul-searching on the political left.
Can
Park move past legacy to unite divided camps?
By
Lucy Williamson 20 December 2012
Can
South Korea's first female president win over her detractors?
It
is a particularly South Korean trait to encompass both the future and the past.
This
ancient society manages to combine cutting-edge technology and modern
lifestyles with Confucian values and a strict social order.
Its
new president-elect is no different. Park Geun-hye's historic win as the
country's first woman president has led many to hope she will challenge South
Korea's patriarchal institutional attitudes about the kind of roles women
should play.
But
she's also carrying a lot of baggage from the past. Her father, Park Chung-hee,
was perhaps the country's best-known president, credited with laying
the foundations for South Korea's powerhouse economy but accused of doing
so at the expense of democracy.
His
story is also Park Geun-hye's story. When Ms Park was just 22, her mother was
assassinated, leading her to take on the role of acting first lady during the
last years of her father's time in power.
That
memory has stayed with many older Koreans, no doubt helping to boost her
support at the ballot box, some 40 years later.
In
fact, standing at a polling station on Wednesday, in the freezing December
morning, one thing that stood out was the number of elderly and very infirm who
turned out to vote - many of them had to be physically helped to the ballot
box.
Anecdotal,
perhaps, but a sign of how strongly elderly voters wanted to make their voices
heard in this election.
Opinion
polls suggest that Ms Park's support in this election came from those in their
50s and 60s. Ironic, say Ms Park's critics, that it is precisely the generation
who suffered under her father's repressive rule who seem most firmly in favour
of electing her.
And
there is little doubt that her legacy has cost her votes, as well as boosted
them.
It
is a quandary she has had to juggle during this campaign. Unable to shed the
powerful baggage of her past, Park Geun-hye has had to try and manage it in the
face of a divided electorate.
That
dual notion of South Korea's history - a
battle for economic growth versus a battle for democracy - is the legacy of this election too.
Both
Ms Park and her liberal rival, Moon Jae-in, were, in a sense, ciphers for the
long battle between this country's two political camps; its two views of
history.
Her
task now will be to bring those two sides together after a fiercely divisive
campaign.
Others
before her have tried and failed. And her personal history won't make that task
any easier.
