South Korea amazes with the growing internationalization of its technological prowess and popular culture. So you are excused if you think that the Koreans have surpassed their former Japanese colonizers as the West's beacon in Asia. But the tender Korean democracy goes from shock to shock, to the despair of its citizens, who see how the tremendous political polarization favored by social networks, far from solving their problems, perpetuates and aggravates them. An unusual alliance between lifelong conservatives and their twenty-something sons, who believe that feminism has gone too far - something difficult to believe in South Korea - was key to leading Yun Suk to a tenth of a victory in the presidential election. yeol of the People Power Party a couple of years ago.
This Wednesday, the legislative elections promise to be a plebiscite on his mandate, which has reversed many of the policies of his center-left predecessor, Mun Jae-in, including the thaw with North Korea, replaced by a new military escalation and breaking of red lines both sides. But the threat from the North has not translated into cohesion in the South, quite the opposite. Li Jae-myung, the new leader of the center-left Democratic Party, narrowly escaped imprisonment in September on charges he considered politically motivated and which led him to go on a hunger strike for more than twenty days. What he did not escape is a dark stabbing in the neck, on January 2, which he survived. His party criticizes that South Korea has become a “dictatorship of prosecutors.” While Yun, a former State Attorney General who would have placed more than a dozen former subordinates in key positions, replies that his rivals are little more than North Korean fifth columnists.
While the acrimony in the South Korean political debate may not surprise us, it has few parallels in the East. It is the result of a history of foreign domination and interference, with collaborationism, revolt, repression, civil war, division, military dictatorships, industrial boom and, finally, after the Cold War, democracy. Of course, without reunification - unlike what happened in Germany - because the North Korean communist regime is not entirely alone in this part of the world.
Although South Korea wins in almost all comparisons, not everything works like a K-Pop choreography. South Korea's suicide rate is the highest in the world and its birth rate is the lowest. A highly hierarchical and ultra-competitive society, in which promiscuity between the chaebol - the large economic conglomerates - and the political class is taken for granted, despite sporadic vigilante rashes. See the imprisonment of the CEO of Samsung - recently released - while his company reached the sky. They are symptoms of a deep malaise, beneath the surface of discipline, work - a lot of work - and well-being. Before him, former President Park Geun-hye, ultimately the daughter of military dictator Park Chung Hi, who was assassinated, went to prison.
The pessimism in the Democratic Party of Korea, after losing the presidency, has now turned into a certain optimism and hopes of revalidating its current majority of 142 deputies in Parliament (out of 300) - which has allowed them to block numerous initiatives together with others groups - and even convert it into an absolute majority.
Added to this blockage are others, due to the impulsive nature of the president, added to some controversial ambassador appointment and, above all, the scandal over a Dior bag valued at about two thousand euros. Bag that the first lady, Kim Keon-hi, was filmed accepting from a pastor with a hidden camera, giving rise to rumors of influence peddling, which have always stalked Korean politics.
No less of a dent has been made by the president's blunders, which estimated the price of a kilo of onions at sixty cents, five times less than the real price. A “disconnection with reality” taken advantage of by the opposition. In the counterattack, Yun presents as a merit “having courageously applied unpopular measures.” One of them, the improvement of his relations with Japan, encouraged by Washington. He came to power by talking about preemptive strikes on North Korea and reopening its ports to American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. While North Korea continued its ballistic tests and both parties began a race to place their own spy satellites, in the case of Seoul, from the United States, with Elon Musk.
However, President Yun's conservatism has not prevented him from standing up to unionism in the medical sector, with which he maintains a fight in favor of creating a minimum of 2,000 additional places in the degree of Medicine.
According to the director of Gallup in Korea, “if there is a large influx of voters aged 20 to 30, who rarely vote, the opposition could win.” The “big” nuance is important. Because two years ago, those who were truly motivated were the kids under thirty, wanting to reverse the advances of feminism, as Yun promised. He complied, eliminating the Ministry of Gender Equality. Supporters of his predecessor, Mun, the “feminist president,” insult these new conservative voters: “Weirdos!” “Communists!” they reply.
Likewise, a Yun in low hours - 24% popularity - visited a memorial to General Park, to consolidate the right-wing vote in his fiefdom of Gumi. Although before he had been the prosecutor who put his daughter on the ropes. In fact, when Yun and Mun faced each other two years ago for the head of state, all of their predecessors in life were in prison or had been there, for corruption convictions. An abrupt way of turning the page, in a country worried about real estate asphyxiation, the fall in exports and the fear of recession. Of course, no one can deny that President Yun has rejuvenated the country. Specifically, one or two years, by adopting the universal way of counting age. Until now, Koreans were born at one year old and added another every January 1st.
