POLITICS-SOUTH KOREA: Hopes Rise with President’s Second Chance

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ahn Mi-Young

SEOUL, May 15 2004 (IPS) - South Koreans are hoping that reinstated President Roh Mu-Hyun will make good use of the second chance he now has after impeachment charges were dropped Friday to pursue genuine economic and social reforms.

Tens of thousands of people welcomed the Constitutional Court’s decision to throw out the impeachment charges brought by the Roh’s political foes, a ruling that gives Roh a much stronger and more stable political mandate.

A survey by KBS TV of 1,042 adults found 85.5 percent of South Koreans to be happy with the verdict, and 62.6 percent of those polled said they were optimistic about his capabilities to function as president.

”(Before the impeachment), President Roh was weak and talking a little too much rather than acting on it. (After reinstatement), he is likely to confidently move forward with his reform drive but taking a hands-on approach,” said an editorial at the liberal ‘Hangere’ newspaper Saturday.

In a speech Saturday, Roh, the son of a poor farmer, sounded firm about his will to reform the economy. ”Nothing could justify hindering the reform drive. Even an attempt to deter the reform drive in the name of the economic difficulties won’t be tolerated any longer,” he said. ”I feel even more responsible than when I first took the office for the task I must carry on, and in doing so I won’t be carried away by different interests and conflicting voices,” Roh said in a 25-minute speech that was televised nationwide.

”The impeachment was a sobering reminder of how urgent it is to reform backward politics, while it also was a wake-up call for the politics-wary South Koreans to participate in politics,” said Lee Ho-Gi, a sociology professor at Yonsei University.

Roh, a former labour lawyer, also delivered a message of apology, gratitude and renewed commitment when he made his public appearance after 63 days of self-imposed isolation at the presidential residence. He took this on after he was suspended from his presidential duties.

The suspension followed a Mar. 12 impeachment vote against him, based on what parliamentary foes said was illegal electioneering, incompetence in managing the economy and corruption among his aides. ”Until the end of my (five-year, single-term) tenure, I won’t be able to shed my moral and political responsibilities in causing this crisis due to corruption among my aides,” added Roh, who spent the past two months reading books and mountain hiking.

The court upheld the charge of illegal electioneering, but rejected the other charges as groundless.

Now that he has resumed his presidential responsibilities, Roh will be able to rely on his Uri Party’s stronger presence in the National Assembly. After all, the party tripled the number of seats it holds in the Apr. 12 parliamentary election – a vote where most of the opposition leaders who sought Roh’s impeachment were booted out of office.

But Roh cannot be complacent, because the impeachment crisis and political instability it caused comes at a time people expect him to mend the troubled economy and address the nuclear issue with North Korea, whose uranium enrichment programme remains a security concern for Asia.

”It is lamentable to think of the huge resources and time wasted on the impeachment that could have been prevented with a little more wisdom and strong leadership by President Roh,” said Ahn Byong-Wook, a history professor at Catholic University.

In his speech Saturday, Roh gave little indication on whether he would pursue the planned dispatch of an additional 3,200 troops to Iraq as his government had promised to Washington. He faces strong opposition from critics who want the government to cancel this plan.

”We have little cause to send our young men and let them die in Iraq. They will just die for nothing and die in a war that was in itself unjust and meaningless,” said one activist. ”Sending our troops is just ridiculous when other nations are trying to drag their feet on it.”

More than 300 non-government groups are lobbying to keep more troops away from Iraq. They say they will collect 200,000 signatures against this and send it to the National Assembly.

But for many South Koreans, the key issues they want Roh to tackle are the economic slump, rising oil prices and the expected slowdown in the Chinese economy that may affect the country.

At the same time, Roh is hearing conflicting voices over what to prioritise – generating more national wealth or tending to its fair distribution – as labour calls on him to do more about the surging number of part-time and temporary workers.

Roh also faces a sticky issue over how far he can go in engaging with North Korea, caught between the more liberal forces that want to be more sympathetic to North Korea’s sufferings and conservatives who want to pursue this dialogue more cautiously. The two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States ended a three-day working-level meeting in Beijing this week without making any breakthroughs. They will hold a third round of six-nation talks before June.