Even before his inauguration in May 2022 it became clear that Yoon Seok-yeol isn’t simply bad at politics; he lacks all interest in it. The former prosecutor gives every appearance of being mainly out to enjoy the perks of the presidency — from the freedom to leave work “like a knife” every evening, as Koreans say, to the privilege of dispensing key posts to people he met in the sauna.
Was the ruling party unaware of this side of Yoon when it nominated him? And could it really not keep him from abandoning the Blue House in order to work out of an office building? I doubt it. This is precisely the sort of self-diminishing, depoliticizing president the party hoped he would become, so as to smooth the way to a semi-parliamentary system.
Having made vote-getting noises to the contrary last year, Yoon now expresses support for such a transition (as I predicted he would). Last week, according to the Korea Times, he delighted the National Assembly Speaker — a Minjoo man who has long opposed the “royal presidency” — by stressing
the need for the Assembly to play a central role in managing state affairs even though the country has a presidential system.
Which is a remarkable thing for a newly-elected leader to say about a body in opposition hands. I feel like asking local conservatives what Johnny Rotten famously asked an American audience: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” But that’s not all:
Yoon has given a positive response to Speaker Kim’s proposal to launch a bipartisan consultative body aimed at discussing major issues. Through the body, if created, the rival parties can deal with matters such as a constitutional revision, an amendment to the election law and more broadly, much-needed political reforms.
Sound vague, opaque, boring? It’s meant to, those “reforms” being of the sort that only the 1% wants. (If you’re new to this issue, which my readers can hardly say I’ve neglected, see here among other posts).
Presidents tend to oppose the weakening of the office the moment they move in, naturally, but it’s easy to see why an apolitical one like Yoon might like the idea of becoming an integrative figurehead like Germany’s Bundespräsident, cutting ribbons and flying around the world while the Assembly takes the blame for a tanking economy.
The public, however, voted last March for a strong president and a weak assembly. Too fundamental and abrupt a change to the current system would require not only constitutional revision, but also new presidential and parliamentary elections, perhaps as early as next year — with Yoon likely to lose the former (unless a tomato can is winkingly chosen to run against him) and the Minjoo likely to lose seats in the latter.
The above-mentioned consultative body can thus be expected to focus on “underwater” ways of strengthening the assembly while the media spend a year or two softening the public up for formal change. Journalists are already po-facedly touting the advantages of a new system as if the main force behind it were disinterested social scientists. For a while there I hoped the Hankook Ilbo was becoming a world-class newspaper I could cling to, like Thomas Bernhard to the NZZ, but now I see it’s just like all the rest.
The foreign media have been ignoring this issue, as they ignore everything under the surface. When things go fully public, we’ll be getting their reactions — which, judging from Youtube thumbnails, are all people want from the media anymore. What position Western journos then take will depend on the one taken by their man Lee Jae-myung, whose legal woes they continue tiptoeing around. The Minjoo chairman, who has made conflicting statements over the past few months, is going to have to decide soon whether a) to go with the flow in the hope of favorable treatment from prosecutors, or b) to launch an impeachment push against Yoon on a crowd-pleasing, anti-naegakche platform.
If he takes the latter route his party may see pro-naegakche members defect to the PPP. On the other hand he can expect support even from some “asphalt” or extra-parliamentary conservatives, who argue that while a President Lee could usher in a kleptocracy, there’d at least be a chance to repair things afterward. Whereas the only way out of a naegakche would be a military coup. As happened the last time.
It’s to keep South Koreans from recalling the paralysis, president-PM tussles and runaway corruption of 1960-61 that the media try to associate the semi-parliamentary model with today’s Germany. The consultative body mentioned above is already being pitched as a counterpart to the Bundestag’s Council of Elders. But as economic historians know already, Koreans like to talk Germany while thinking Japan. Deep down each big party wants to become like the perma-ruling LDP.
Considering that the bedrock left comprises a third of the electorate, and the bedrock right only about a quarter, the Minjoo seems more likely to make that dream a reality. (I’d expect a President Lee to turn pro-naegakche himself near the end of a very “royal” term.) Unlike the Park-impeachers and Park-loyalists of the right, who still loathe each other, the “moderate” and “radical” left have been discreetly engineering electoral alliances for the past 20 years. A ruling coalition of the two forces — which blend into each other anyway — would be almost certain, with the smaller partner demanding and getting the North-relevant posts of intelligence agency boss and Unification Minister. If that sounds far-fetched, consider that Moon, unforced, appointed both Park Jie-won and Lee In-young.
A semi-parliamentary system would not only grease the rails to “North-South cooperation,” but make it far easier for Kim Jong Un, who would then be the only authoritative leader on the peninsula (if he isn’t already), to keep the ROK under his heel. All this is another reason why Pyongyang watchers, the circularity of whose commentary has become so apparent since the North closed its borders, should take a more inter-Korean view of things.
