Candlelight Protesters Surround KBS   2008-06-13 10:28

In response to the government's decision to carry out an untimely audit of KBS (the nation's public broadcasting station), nearly one thousand citizens staged a candlelight vigil in Yeouido last night despite the rain. The audit was requested by the New Right Coalition, a neo-conservative group which gives strong support to President Lee Myung-Bak. According to the New Right Coalition, there are good reasons to suspect that the current management of KBS is corrupt. For all we know, maybe it is. No one would be surprised these days to learn about corruption, especially in a corporation that is heavily subsidized out of the taxpayer's pocket.

The problem, however, has everything to do with the timing of the audit. KBS has been giving lukewarm support to the government in its news reports, but recently many of its employees began to demand a more critical attitude. That's exactly when the audit was announced, and a lot of People are concerned that the audit is being used by the government to exert pressure upon KBS. It is common knowledge that audits like this are never neutral in aim. Throughout our recent history, public and private corporations alike have been subjected to audits for political and/or ideological reasons. Corruption can be covered up if the management agrees to cooperate with the government, whereas every little fault will be turned into a huge scandal if the corporation in question refuses to cooperate.

The current administration has been rather careless in trying to hide its underlying motives; nor has the President been too careful in concealing his raw feelings. (We can understand radical right-wing groups trying to characterize the recent protests has a radical left-wing and/or North Korean plot to take over the country, or vice versa; but those kinds of inflammatory remarks certainly don't belong in the mouth of a nation's President!) Circumstantial evidence clearly suggests that the government is now targeting KBS. If there's corruption there, it should be uncovered and the perpetrators prosecuted. There's no disagreement about that. But threats of prosecution shouldn't be used as a device to keep the media in line. If audits are to be held, every major news channel should be equally subject to them. For this reason, we protest.

This is also the first time this year that an issue unrelated to U.S. beef has triggered a candlelight vigil. As U.S. beef is by no means the only problem we're concerned about, this is a welcome move. We don't want the protests to subside even if the government somehow pulls off a satisfactory deal with the U.S. with regard to beef. Almost everything that Lee Myung-Bak promised during last year's election is now surrounded by great controversy. His plans for reviving the economy made the Korean Won one of the poorest-performing currencies in the world: the Won is pretty much the only currency that has been consistently falling against the U.S. dollar this year, and consumer prices have skyrocketed accordingly. He is trying to import all sorts of outdated and failed policies from the West, including the privatization of the health care system and public utilities (such as water). The Grand Canal is also a tremendously controversial topic which deserves an entire article or two. Lee Myung-Bak must LISTEN TO HIS PEOPLE. Korea is a democracy, not a dictatorship anymore. If he continues to proceed in a style that he had learned during the age of dictatorship, he will be met with candlelight protests wherever he goes, whatever he does.