NewYork Times
본문
Democracy Takes Office in South Korea
By HA-YUN JUNG
AMBRIDGE, Mass.
"Koreans do not deserve democracy," my father used to say, on his most difficult and discouraging days as a failed politician.
He spent many weekends away from our home in Seoul, attending weddings, funerals and other obligatory events in the district he hoped to represent. When he returned, my brother and I fidgeted on the sofa with adolescent boredom while he poured out his complaints. It was our duty to listen; we stared at him as if he were an ailing beast that had crept in without invitation and would not leave, dying a sad, slow death.
My father had entered politics in 1979 after the assassination of Park Chung Hee, who had ruled South Korea for 18 years. With the regime gone, he believed, the country could smoothly steer itself toward a democratic two-party system. Yet the new military government quickly proved even more oppressive than its predecessor, and by the time my father's Democratic Korea Party dissolved into thin air, he was in his late 40's, broke and ill with liver disease.
Looking back, I wonder whether his condemnations were actually a symptom of a collective self-loathing that we South Koreans had fallen under over the years. Our political progress was so gradual that often it seemed nonexistent, and to avoid the crushing disappointment we turned to cynicism, telling ourselves that we might never have a turn at this thing called democracy, at least in its true spirit.
Today, Roh Moo Hyun is to be inaugurated as president, and I think we can finally say that the spirit of democracy is ours. In the rest of the world, Mr. Roh is usually described as a center-left liberal, a former human rights lawyer, a man inexperienced in public office, and a firm advocate of engagement with North Korea who has, believe it or not, never been to America.
This is all true. To the Bush administration and the American press, this profile spells danger, especially in the face of the North Korean nuclear crisis. They seem baffled. Why in the world did the Koreans pick this guy whom we hardly know, who seems to be unlike any of the presidents who came before him? Well, I hope it is because South Koreans are finally ready for someone who is different from all the others.
The election of Kim Dae Jung, the departing president, was historic: the first successful candidacy from an opposition party. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to reconcile with North Korea and he pursued domestic reforms. But his five years in office failed to pull us out of our collective self-distrust.
Toward the end of his presidency, public opinion turned sour. "See, we tried out the so-called liberal, but what difference did he make?" many of us asked. "His administration is equally prone to corruption, social injustice has not improved much, he shoveled all that money to the North and now they are making nukes again! We might as well go back to the soldiers ?at least they knew how to take control."
With Mr. Kim constitutionally barred from running again, we had to choose between those two paths. There was Mr. Roh, who represented Mr. Kim's Millennium Democratic Party, and Lee Hoi Chang, from the conservative Grand National Party, who had the backing of the old military network and the business elites. Mr. Lee played the role of the authority figure we had become perversely comfortable with through a century of colonial rule and dictatorship.
Mr. Roh, on the other hand, was born in a small village into a family of poor farmers, never made it to college and prepared on his own for the bar exam. He rose to political stardom in 1988 in the National Assembly, when he participated in nationally televised corruption hearings. "Did you or did you not know of this payment?" was the question he asked repeatedly of some of the most powerful men in Korea ?including Chung Ju Yung, founder of the Hyundai conglomerate.
Mr. Roh seemed destined for a stellar career, but in the years that followed he surprised everyone by making all the "wrong" decisions. He refused to join his mentor, Kim Young Sam, in a politically motivated merger with the ruling party. Then, after helping found a new opposition party, he chose as his new district Busan, the heartland of Korean conservatism. He wanted to challenge a deep-rooted regional antagonism that was seriously damaging Korean politics, and as a result he lost three consecutive elections. He has been called a maverick, at times a fool.
If a politician is called a fool because he stands up for what he believes in, pursues his ideals and does not give up, then it must be a compliment. And if being a fool was what it took for Mr. Roh to become president, then it is a compliment to the people of Korea.
We chose Roh Moo Hyun because we want to move toward peace on the Korean peninsula, not because we have forgotten to be afraid of war. We chose him because we want our opinions to matter in the world, not because we have decided to hate America. And most of all, we chose him because we want to believe that we deserve democracy.
My father died in 1995, two years before an opposition party finally took power, before he witnessed the evidence to prove him wrong. I hope he is looking down from somewhere today with a smile, for once not bitter with his country. For my part, I will be looking back at our lives with a belief that history moves forward, with help from not only heroes and martyrs, but also from failures like my father, men and women who lose hope and die and are forgotten, and then are remembered and accepted by daughters like myself.
Ha-yun Jung, a fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is writing a novel.
