Even with everything that’s going on today — the release of the <$Ad$>Japanese hostages, the bin Laden truce psuedo-story, continuing 9/11 Commission fireworks — the biggest story of the day, the one that will have the greatest impact, happened in South Korea.
That is the stunning victory by the liberal Uri party in today’s elections in South Korea. The Post rightly calls it the “sharpest shift to the political left [in South Korea] in four decades.”
What constitutes ‘left’ across national and cultural borders can often be difficult to define. But in this case one thing it definitely means is a disengagement from the continuing Cold War on the Korean Peninsula.
There are at least a couple points of interest here. One is an uncanny parallel to recent events in the United States. An out-of-touch conservative opposition party impeaches a liberal president on the basis of essentially trumped up charges against the overwhelming wishes of the public. Conservative party then faces a fierce backlash at the polls as the electorate punishes them for an attempted constitutional coup and ignoring the popular will.
In the case of South Korea, the corruption charges seemed not to be false, per se. It was more of a rather extreme pot calling the kettle black situation. The Post sums it up nicely in these three grafs …
The Grand National Party had impeached Roh for committing an electoral infraction and allegedly being unfit to rule following a series of corruption scandals that brought down his top aides. But prosecutors have actually implicated the GNP in far broader cases of corruption, which have severely undermined the party’s reputation.
While the Uri Party has been targeted in corruption probes, Roh has also been seen by many analysts to be stepping out of the way of prosecutors, granting them a new measure of autonomy to pursue political transparency and break the traditional ties between politicians and large South Korean business conglomerates.
Many South Koreans saw Roh’s impeachment as political hypocrisy, and it generated a sharp backlash, which favored the Uri party . Almost 3 in every 4 South Koreans opposed Roh’s removal from office.
Setting aside these uncanny parallels, there’s a more immediate significance to this result. It is the continuance of a global trend in which elections in countries allied to the United States are being won by parties advocating loosening ties with America. Running against America — or really against George W. Bush makes for great politics almost everywhere in the world.
We saw it in South Korea two years ago. Then later that year in Germany. Recently in Spain. And now again in Korea — with many other examples along the way.
Each election had its own internal dynamics. But in each case opposition to the policies of the Bush administration became a salient, even defining issue.
