October 16, 2003

GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF!

By Tom Plate

South Korea’s feral politics bode to undermine regional stability

LOS ANGELES -- Recall-itis -- certainly from a California perspective -- looks to be the political disease du jour, and, like SARS, no respecter of international borders.

The latest victim of this rampant foolishness is South Korea. Its president -- a former human-rights lawyer, self-educated, who claims as his inspiration Abraham Lincoln -- has offered to hold a formal referendum on his presidency, about which public opinion appears to be lackluster, and to step down if the result is negative.

This is a bad idea, for several reasons.

First, Roh Moo-hyun’s presidency is hardly more than a half-year-old. Rarely can a leader establish very much one way or the other in such a short period of time. Whatever Roh’s strengths or weaknesses, he was legitimately chosen by the people of the Republic of Korea in a nationwide election free of the controversy that marred George Bush’s Florida-driven minority victory in 2000.

Second, the corruption allegations about Roh’s staff that have just hit the overheated Korean media fan are not proven facts. These serious charges should not be prejudged but rather should be put through the grindingly thorough South Korean political and legal process. And Roh, who came into power as a whistle-clean reformer, has not been personally implicated. The charges involve bribe-taking by a close aide. A lot more dust needs to fall before anyone should insist Roh resign or abdicate.

Third, South Korea must realize it is a strategically vital and economically central part of Asia. It is a major trading partner with China and the United States, and, under the Roh administration as well as the preceding Kim Dae-jung’s, it has greatly improved traditionally tense relations with Japan. These are important accomplishments.

Fourth, there is the issue of North Korea. Roh is a strong advocate of negotiating with Pyongyang, and any successor probably would not be. Roh’s poll-driven abdication would therefore be morally irresponsible, pulling the rug out from under not only China, which has worked very hard behind the scenes to bring North Korea to the bargaining table, but also the United States, which under Secretary of State Colin Powell and his team appear ready to advance dramatically the effort to denuclearize North Korea.

And, finally, there is the issue of recall referendums in general. We just had one in California. It was a joke -- a bad one. A man elected for a four-year term -- admittedly, one of the most boring political figures to come along in a very long time -- was thrown out of office on a referendum notable for its many unqualified candidates, a low voter turnout and replacement by a muscle-bound Hollywood actor with no public-policy experience.

Californians may be comfortable with this kind of flippant risk-taking, and for all anyone knows, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may turn out to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan, another career actor-turned-politician.

South Koreans, however, would be unwise to take this level of risk. It is a country, not a political entity connected to 49 other parts. America can survive a joke governor; take Minnesota, which managed to get past former Gov. Jesse Ventura, a commercial wrestler by previous profession.

But running a whole nation-state is a far more serious business. Even the United States -- which tends to empower special prosecutors and fire up impeachment hearings at the drop of a sanctimonious New York Times or Washington Post editorial -- has a constitutionally embedded process that at least makes it very difficult to kick out the chief executive. And that’s the way it should be.

South Korea has to realize it is a big-time player on the international scene now. And while there is a certain self-effacing charm in Roh’s offer to step down if people don’t like him -- and to his assertion of confidence that many others in his country ‘‘can do the job better than I’’ -- this misses the point.

The point is that Roh was elected, fairly and squarely; the Republic of Korea has a lot of problems that need work, and Roh needs to devote more time to those problems and less time to his political enemies and fulminating media critics.

Most of all, opposition politicians must realize they are playing with fire right now. South Korea has been free of military dictatorship since only 1987. Roh is but the third democratically elected president in its history. Young democracies are slender saplings that can easily be washed away in an unexpected flood of irrationality.

It is deeply disturbing to see one of America’s most important allies poised on the precipice of self-inflicted disaster.

The above weekly column has just appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser, The South China Morning Post and The Straits Times of Singapore. The author, Tom Plate, is a regular columnist at these three papers. The column also appears in other world newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Japan Times and The Korea Times. Email him at: tplate@ucla.edu.

For publication and reprint rights, contact the author directly or John Simpson (john.simpson@latsi.com) of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International.

Bio Remarks: Tom Plate is a professor of Policy and Communication Studies at UCLA where he founded the AsiaMedia. He is a regular columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, the South China Morning Post, The Straits Times and the Honolulu Advertiser. He is a member of the World Economic Forum, the Pacific Council on International policy and the author of five books. He has worked at TIME, the Los Angeles Times and the Daily Mail of London.

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Previous Columns:

A Growing Peace Dividend: Unity in Prosperity? (October 9, 2003)

Asian Images of America and Australia (October 6, 2003)

From Axis of Evil to Twin Dominoes (October 2, 2003)

The Kind of Cuts That Only Hurt China (September 29, 2003)