Democracy at stake, Economy in crisis, Security at risk
Joseph H. Chung, Ph.D (정희수) Professor of economics, Quebec University in Quebec (UQAM)
(지난 호에 이어)
Second, the family members and relatives of the president were excluded from government jobs.
Third, the government stopped receiving bribes from Chaebols.
Fourth, President Moon has reformed the National Information Service so that it can no longer gather citizens' information for political purpose.
Fifth, President Moon has established special bureau of criminal investigation of high ranking civil servants, the Bureau of Corruption Investigation for Officials of High Ranking (gong-soo-tcho).
Sixth, PLNF government of Moon Jae-in sent President Lee Myung-bak to prison for corruption and abuse of power.
The North-South tension: The North-south tension has been a gift for the PJCF for two reasons. It makes the Koreas' reunification more difficult on the one hand, and on the other, it facilitates PJCF's victory at major elections allowing it keep power.
The North-South tension has given the opportunity to the PJCF to create a climate of fear which allowed the PJCF to boost its militarism providing electoral comparative advantage.
The PJCF fear the reunification, because, under unified Korea, they will become a marginal political force and possible target of revenge for their collaboration for Japanese oppression of Koreans.
But to the disappointment of the PJCF, President Moon has been able to alleviate the North-South tensions.
Remember, in 2017, President Donald Trump was ready to attack North Korea, most likely encouraged by South Korea's PJCF and Japan.
But, owing to North Korea's trust in President Moon Jae-in and the brilliant diplomacy of Kim Yo-Jung, sister of Kim Jung-un, North Korea came to the Pyeong-Chang Winter Olympics of 2018 leading to the Kim-Trump summit in Singapore in June 2018, their Hanoi-Summit of 2019 and their Panmunjom summit of 2021.
True, the North-South peace process hit the wall in Hanoi that was too high to go over. But, the North-South peace process allowed the Korean peninsula to enjoy three-year peace and a hope for reunification.
The Kim-Trump summits and the peace on the peninsula were a huge disappointment for the PJCF. It became impossible to demonize North Korea, because the diplomacy of North Korea revealed that Kim Jung-un was a "normal leader" and North Korea was not a hell. The demonization of North Korea has become no longer the ally for PJCFs election victories.
Japanese neo-colonialism: It is true that Japan left Korea in 1945. But the Japanese colonialism has never left Korea. In other words, the Japanese neo-colonialism has replaced its old colonialism. By neo-colonialism, I mean the colonialism in which the coloniser is absent physically in the colonized country.
The execution of the neo-colonialism is conducted by an agent. In Korea, the PJCF has been the agent ever since 1948.
Since 1948, South Korea has been the target of Japanese neo-colonialism in three areas: economic development, the denial of Japanese war crimes against Koreans and the fear of Koreas' reunification.
So, South Korea has been the target of Japanese economic neo-colonialism, security neo-colonialism and political neo-colonialism.
Economic neo-colonialism: The Han River miracle was partly attributable to the Japanese neo-colonialism in which Japan provided high value added intermediary goods and services, while South Korea assembled these intermediary good to produce finished goods.
The value added of the intermediary goods and services, in case of smart phone, accounts for as much as 95% of the sale price leaving merely 5 % of the sale price to the job of assembling the intermediary goods and services to produce the smart phone.
Under such situation, South Korea has had to live with trade deficit with Japan until the Japan-Trade war in 2019. After this trade war, Korea's dependence on Japan for key intermediary goods and services has declined.
Security Neo-colonialism: The peace process was not welcomed by Japan, for it will lead to the reunification of Koreas which will be a threat to Japan. Hence, the continuation of the North-South tension was Japan' interest in Korea. Japan has surely asked the PJCF to maintain the North-South tension for Japan. This is the security neo-colonialism.
To the disappointment of Japan, the government of Moon Jae-in was successful in reducing the North-South tension through the peace process. Thus, President was good in weakening PJCFs agency role for Japanese neo-liberalism.
Political Neo-colonialism: One of the most important issues for Japan has been the denial of its war crimes, especially the crime of collective raping of 250,000 Korean young girls for the whole duration of the Pacific War.
This crime is impossible to accept for the Japanese Neo-Meiji Restoration Group (NMRG) who is suspected to dream for Holy War 2.0. For this, the NMRG needs the active participation of the Japanese people on the one hand and, on the other, they need to convince the Koreans that Japanese colonialism is beneficial to Korea.
Japan has asked the PJCF to take out from school history text books the story of comfort women. In fact under the PJCF government of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, it was done. Thus, the PJCF did a good job to please their Japanese master.
But PLNF put the history of Japanese war crimes including the crime against the comfort women back into the school history text books.
Thus, President Moon Jae-in has caused significant damage to the interests of the PJCF. As a matter of fact, the PJCF seems to have felt threat of their survival and might have decided to revenge.
In fact, the revenge battle begun with the election of Yoon Suk-yeol as president in May 2022.
?2022- Now: period of PJCF government of Yoon Suk-yeol
On 9 May, 2022, there was the presidential election. The candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) representing the PLNF was Lee Jae-myung, while that of the People Power Party (PPP) representing the PJCF was Yoon Suk-yeol. (다음 호에 계속)
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