And Samsung is the envy of Sony. Now Korea has beat Japan to another milestone with its first female President, Park Guen-hye, of the conservative Saenuri Party.
In an electoral victory that at once symbolises the remarkable change in her country as well as a deeper hankering for the past that was shaped by her father, former dictator, Park Chung-hee, architect of Korea’s economic ‘miracle‘, she triumphed over opposition liberal-leaning candidate, Moon Jae-in, former adviser to President Roh Mu-hyun. Park joins the ranks of Asia’s other female heads of government or heads of state who have benefited from the political legacy of a patriarch — Benazir Bhutto, Corazon Aquino, Indira and Sonia Gandhi, Sheikh Hasina, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Gloria Arroyo.
Park’s victory highlights the importance of women as a voting bloc in South Korea’s electoral politics as well as their low representation in politics more generally. After democratisation in 1987, elections were fought and decided upon regional interests and the personalities that represented them. The political matrix is now more complex. The last two elections have seen a shift towards more ideologically-based campaigns as well as the emergence of other important voting blocs. Prominent among these blocs is the ‘youth vote’, which secured Roh’s election to the presidency in 2002.
The criticisms of Park’s candidature from her own side of politics included worries about the ‘appropriateness’ of a woman president in dealing with the North Korean threat. In the campaign, Park criticised the current Lee Myung-bak government’s isolationist policy toward North Korea and urged building a basis for cooperation. Her stance, interestingly, did not shield her from being mocked by Pyongyang in a ‘Gangnam Style’ parody on an official government website, showing a photo-shopped image of Park performing the Gangnam dance moves and labelling her as legatee and admirer of the Yushin system of autocratic rule set up by her father.
Park and Moon, ultimately the two primary candidates in the election, in fact staked out similar ground on a more proactive and cooperative approach to dealing with North Korea. And the election was significantly decided on domestic issues.
As Keeseok Kim argues in this week’s lead essay, the older, more conservative element in the electorate hoped ‘that Park would follow in the footsteps of her late father’s economic achievements even at the expense of political democracy. The unexpectedly high turnout of aged conservatives, braving the sub-zero temperature, helped Park turn a narrow lead into a comfortable victory’.
A growing number of Korean voters have become disillusioned with political parties, political partisanship, ideological confrontation and blatant self-interest. This force — the ‘new politics’ — enticed the independent Ahn Cheol-soo, a self-made anti-computer virus software mogul, to join the race. Until his abrupt withdrawal on 23 November, the polls had shown him with nearly equal support to that of Moon Jae-in, of the United Democratic Party, in a three-way race and some polls suggested that Ahn might beat Park in a two-horse race (as it were).
Park’s challenge now is to overcome the negative (domestic) legacy of the Lee government and to make good on her promises to revive political and economic democracy. Even within the framework of Korea’s democratic institutions, Korea’s leaders have been inclined to take liberties with Korean liberty. ‘Wide segments of society are subject to interference by the government in the form of ad hoc guidelines that do not require legal passage through the National Assembly’ Kim points out. ‘Liberals have criticised the Lee government for trespassing on democratic and human rights by abusing this power under the pretext of partisanship and efficiency. An array of corruption and power abuse scandals involving Lee’s aides and relatives aroused deep anger and concern about the soundness of Korea’s democratic institutions in the electorate’.
Park was at pains to distance herself from this autocratic tradition and her antecedents during the campaign. She will now have to quickly establish her credentials on the ‘economic democratisation’ slogan she adopted during her campaign. The paradox is, as Kim suggests, that despite the rhetoric of reform and change from both sides during the campaign, continuity and stability have won the day.
Next week, among other features, we begin our annual year-in-review series with contributions from distinguished observers from around Asia.
May I take this opportunity to extend the best wishes of all of us at EAF to our loyal readers around Asia and the world for the Holiday Season and the New Year!
Peter Drysdale is Editor of the East Asia Forum.
It’s a pity to go the American route and obliterate the distinction between heads of state and heads of government. In the list of ‘heads of state’ in this post, only the two Filipinas qualify, the others being heads of government with the exception of Sonia Gandhi, who has not even served as head of government. One woman who was indeed head of state who is not mentioned here is Megawati Sukarnoputri, who not only reached the presidency in essence because she was Sukarno’s daughter but has also retained the leadership of her party largely because of the same factor despite losing the presidency eight years ago. Another example of Asian dynastic politics bringing women to prominence, if not yet to power, is Aung San Suu Kyi
A good point, Ken, and now corrected.
The pedantic focus on distinctions of title in my earlier post should not hide the broader point to be made here. This has to be expressed for the time being in terms of the question: ‘why is dynastic rule so common in Asia compared to the West?’ Both the West and Asia have inherited monarchical systems, and yet the transfer of power from father to son, or to widow, or to daughter, is much commoner in Asia than in the West, putting aside the Bushes and Clintons. I don’t know the answer to this question. What is remarkable is that dynastic succession in Asia doesn’t seem threatened by democracy. We have seen three generations of the Kim family come to power in the DPRK, but three generations of the Nehru family have also come to power in India, if not in the same uninterrupted way as in the DPRK. There’s some possibility in Indonesia that Megawati will transfer leadership of her party to her daughter, Puan, a woman who displayed no political nous until a few years ago. This is another three-generation example, though Puan will probably never be president. Rahul Gandhi may have a better chance of becoming the fourth Nehru family prime minister. SBY’s second son, Ibas, now ensconced as secretary-general of his father’s party, similarly appeared to have no political skills a couple of years ago. What we can say in the face of this is that a woman seems to have only a slight prospect of achieving the apex of power in Asian countries without having been married to or descended from an earlier political leader.