PARK AND HER PROMISES

AFTER HER ELECTION, PARK NEEDS TO MAKE GOOD ON HER PROMISES

The Hankyoreh, December 20, 2012

Park Geun-hye of the Saenuri Party (NFP) was elected on Dec. 19 as the 18th president of South Korea and the country’s leader for the next five years. Her victory means that by the time her term ends, conservatives will have held power for a decade since Lee Myung-bak took office in 2008. The public chose to hand the reins over to Park for another five years of Saenuri Party rule. There are other noteworthy aspects of her election: she becomes the country’s first female president, and she and Park Chung-hee (president from 1962 until his 1979 assassination) become the first father and daughter to both hold the post.

It was a tightly contested elected with the Democratic United Party’s Moon Jae-in, and Park’s triumph shows just how imposing the conservative barrier is in South Korea. Evidence of the country’s conservatism was apparent in the dramatic distortions of public opinion by conservative newspapers and broadcasters, as well as deeply rooted regionalism and generational gaps. The reason Moon lost the election - at a time when anger at the Lee administration and hopes for a change of administrations were higher than ever - is that the opposition failed to win the public’s trust. Having shown no real signs of change since its parliamentary election defeat this April, it was unable to win over the moderates.

The most urgent task facing President-elect Park now is uniting a divided country. The election was nearly without precedent in how united a front conservatives and progressives both presented. It is impossible to truly call either side the victor when a country is so clearly split in half. It is, rather, a half-and-half mixture of victory and defeat. This is why politics, now more than ever, need to be geared toward unity and shared benefits. It is not enough to set up some organization and stick a few politicians in it. The winner should consider the wishes of the half of the public who voted for her, but she also needs to tend to the half who didn’t.

(...) [article here]