Embarrassment   2008-08-10 06:48

The Beijing Olympic Games have begun, and our President Lee Myung-Bak was there at the opening ceremony. Why did he go there? Apparently because Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was feeling a little too warm!

Rumors have it that the man on the left, obviously annoyed by Lee's arm and fan flapping in front of him, is Norway's King Harald V. (I couldn't confirm that bit of information, though.) Well, who cares about the ceremonial monarchy of a Scandinavian country, when the man sitting in front of him is powerful enough to be involved in this week's death of 1,600 South Ossetians? President Lee Myung-Bak, ever so friendly towards foreign leaders, was such a kind man that he had to risk annoying the Norwegian King in order to pretend to be one of Mr. Putin's aides. Or so he will want to explain his manners -- or lack thereof. Total embarrassment for the rest of us!

Oh, and he was waving the Korean Flag upside down at the woman's handball game. (The red half of the circle is suppsed to be on top!) Maybe it's the manufacturer's fault that the flag was defective. But here's my guess: Lee doesn't even know that his flag is upside down. I mean, he's the President. And he's on TV. If he ever cared about what the Korean Flag looked like, he could have had it exchanged immediately. Oh well, what can we expect from a man who has such a low regard for his own People as I have reported on numerous occasions?

Maybe I'm picking on minor mistakes. Maybe it was also nothing more than a mistake that Lee forgot what he talked about with Mr. Bush only a few days ago. But sometimes, mistakes like these reveal the real man better than any official speech or policy. We, the Korean People, have been watching Lee very carefully; and we will continue to do so. Keep making stupid mistakes, and sooner or later he'll screw himself up.

While I'm at it, let me just introduce you to one more "minor" issue that has gathered considerable controversy in Korea of late. Really, it's just a matter of terminology, but one that says a lot about Lee and his gang's true nature.

Koreans have existed as an independent nation for 2,500 years at the very least, and up to 4,500 years according to ancient history books. We lost our independece for a brief period from 1910 to 1945, when Japanese forces occupied our territory. Our leaders in exile soon organized themselves and established the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea on April 13, 1919 in Shanghai, China. (China was also a democratic republic back then, and supported PGRoK because both of us were fighting against Japan.) Then, on August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allies and we regained our sovereignty. The Cold War caused us to divide into South and North just like Germany and Vietnam were; but after much unrest, PGRoK leaders returned to Seoul and set up South Korea three years later, on August 15, 1948. Now, this Friday is the 60th anniversary of that last date; and Lee's government is trying to organize large events to celebrate the "60th anniversary of the establishment of the country" (geongukjeol). Which could be taken to mean any one or more of the following:

1) Our country didn't exist until August 15, 1948;

2) The Provisional Government from 1919 to 1948, explicitly mentioned in our Constitution as part of the history of the current Republic, actually isn't part of our history;

3) The Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945 isn't part of our history, either;

and most compellingly,

4) The conservatives who took power in 1948 are the only legitimate rulers of Korea.

Again, maybe I'm just picking over minor details. But I, like many other Koreans, think that these little details say a lot about the mindset of the current ruling group. After Kim Gu -- a long-time President of the Provisional Government who was somewhat left-wing -- was assassinated in 1949, conservatives took over and had remained in power for fifty straight years. Then they lost a couple of Presidential elections, leaving Korea in the left-wing's hands for a decade. But this February, the neo-conservative Lee Myung-Bak came to power. Now the conservatives are calling the left-wing regime "a lost decade" (ireobeorin sip-nyeon), as if it wasn't part of Korea's history. Some of them have even proposed the demolition of Kim Gu Memorial Hall, calling him a "communist". And now the period before 1948 is being left out of the history of Korea as well. Besides, Lee's gang is already working on new history textbooks. What will our children learn from these textbooks? That our homeland isn't even as old as my grandfather is, and that conservatives must be worshipped forever for giving birth to it?

If you consider yourself a conservative, please do not be offended. I am not particularly opposed to conservatism per se. Indeed, conservatism -- or rather, a variation of it -- has taken a very peculiar, and corrupt, form in South Korea. The New Right Coalition, a loosely connected group of President Lee's most loyal supporters, is a curious mixture of corporate interest, religious fanaticism, and Cold War ideology. They aren't "real conservatives" at all; for if they were, why does the economy go down whenever they're in power? Moreover, conservatives in Korea do not even acknowledge the opposition as a legitimate part of political life. They want to be dictators forever. The opposition, in their eyes, is just a blemish on the face of the earth, "Satan's servants" as one of them said. So the conservatives in Korea want to expunge from their country's history everyone who disagrees. Which makes the rest of us wonder if their country is the same country as what we have in mind when we talk about our country.

It's no surprise, then, that President Lee doesn't know what our National Flag should look like! Really, it's all connected: the incident pictured above, the 60th-anniversary event, the response to our recent protests, and history textbooks. Lee Myung-Bak's gang is being extremely consistent -- in their attempts to grab and hold onto power and money at the expense of their own homeland.

Will President Lee and his New Right group last? Perhaps they will. Will they last long? Probably not. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely"; the more power the ruling group wants for themselves, the sooner they will go the way of self-destruction. Dictator Park Jung-Hee, in 1979, was assassinated by one of his own men. Dictator Chun Doo-Hwan's attempts to control protests, in 1987, only brought about his own downfall. In the long run, democracy is irrevocable. Once a democratic mindset is instilled in a People, the People will resist infringements of their newfound freedom and equality. When we didn't know, we let dictators have their wish. But now that we've had democracy for a few years, we will not let somebody take it away from us.

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