Korea’s First Woman President
On this past 19th of December Korea held their 18th presidential election. The two candidates were the victorious conservative Saenuri Party’s Park Geon-hye and her liberal challenger Democratic United Party’s Moon Jae-in. A record 75 percent of the 40 plus million eligible voters turned out to vote, up from about 60 percent from the previous election. Park Geun-hye will be the first woman president of South Korea.
Regarding Park’s policies, her social programs are less ambitious (but maybe more realistic) than Moon’s. Primarily she wants to raise the middle class to 70 percent of the total population, in part through selective financial aid focused on healthcare and education. Her Saenuri Party is known to be tougher on North Korea and national security in general, while critics argue that their policies are less likely to achieve unification of the Koreas.
Park has actually lived in the Blue House before as First Lady after her mother was killed during a failed assassination attempt on her father, Korean dictator Park Chung-hee in 1974. Park Chung-hee took over by military coup in 1961 and ruled until his assassination in 1979 by his own intelligence chief. He is credited by Korea’s elder generation for rapidly building up the economy into what is today’s 11th largest economy. However the younger generation sees him largely as a dictator guilty of many human rights violations.
Moon Jae-in was a human rights lawyer and aide to the late Rah Moo-hyun, the liberal president prior to Lee Myung-bak. Moon Jae-in appealed to the younger generation, his social programs are more ambitious (and likely more expensive) and his party is generally considered more open minded when dealing with North Korea and international relations.
Both Park and Moon have stated that they essentially want Korea to become a welfare state. Moon even went as far as to say that it’s the responsibility of the state to take care of children. It’s worth looking at both their welfare plans closely.
Park wants selective welfare tailored for each age and income group. She wants 30 percent more state run daycare for children, one month leave for fathers of newborns, full medical coverage for the four prominent diseases including cancer and heart disease by 2016 and full dental care for seniors. And she wants lower college tuition for low income families. This is all estimated to cost about 130 billion US dollars and will be paid for with value added taxes (VAT) and by reducing unspecified “inefficient government spending”.
Moon also wanted 30 percent more day care centers, a roughly one thousand dollar ceiling on any individual household’s annual medical bills and expanded federal support for caregivers and low-income families. He also wanted 100 thousand won monthly aid to all families with children under 12 years old and to halve college tuition for all students. All this would have cost roughly 190 billion dollars to be paid for by abolishing tax breaks for the rich and increasing the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent.
According to PSPD, (People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy) among the key issues for both candidates this election was what to do about the prominence of chaebols. Chaebols are business conglomerates, but not just of single industries but spanning over often several industries. For example, as Time magazine put it, “South Koreans can easily wake up in an apartment built by a Samsung subsidiary, check their schedules on a Samsung phone or tablet, throw on a Samsung jacket and drive a Renault Samsung car to the Samsung Medical Center.”
Regarding the controversial Jeju-do military base currently under construction, it appears both candidates ultimately support it, but Moon has been more critical of its environmental implications. PSPD added that leaked communications between the US and Korea indicate that the US is dictating the exact specifications of the base’s construction, which would vindicate allegations that the base is largely being built for the US military.
This election was historically close; when polling closed a week before Election Day Park led Moon by just a percent or two. Political Science Professor Lee Jun-han of the University of Incheon, suggested that Moon’s last debate performance and the withdrawal of Unified Progressive Party candidate Lee Jung-hee should have tipped the odds in Moon’s favor. It’s also possible the latest North Korean missile launch scared some voters over to Park.
Issues notably missing from this election include the lack of any proposals for a Yeodo (Wall Street) tax on financial speculation (that could presumably help fund all the social welfare programs). Some may remember Minerva, the internet journalist briefly jailed for his blogging on economics. He talked about derivatives (speculation) playing a critical role in the 2008 financial crisis. And there was not much discussion about carbon taxes set to take effect in Korea, which may raise energy and commodity costs.
Another point worth noting is that while the initial voting was paper ballot, the vote counting was with electronic machines. According to Beth Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org, any electronic voting or electronic counting is an easy opportunity for manipulation of the results.
In conclusion, as Moon Jae-in won, she will be the first Korean president for a country known to be very male dominated. That’s something, but firsts aside, it’s the economic programs, foreign policy and so on that actually matters. In any case, it’s up the citizens to stay politically aware and active after the election if people really expect any president to implement real policies of progress and peace.