Politics has not kept pace with social change
Economist May 4th 2017
Last year millions of South Koreans took to the streets to secure the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, their conservative president. She is now behind bars; her trial, on charges of corruption and abuse of power, began this week. On May 9th the country will pick a new president in a snap election. The winner looks almost certain to be Moon Jae-in, the liberal whom Ms Park defeated at the last election in 2012.
The scandal tested South Korea’s young, raucous democracy—and it passed. No one was killed. The often cautious press vigorously pursued the allegations that Ms Park had divulged state secrets to a confidante and colluded with her in extorting large sums from private firms. Legislators, including many from Ms Park’s own party, voted convincingly to impeach her. The constitutional court unanimously upheld their decision.
South Korea, in contrast with its northern neighbour, is an inspiration to many. In 1970 less than half of South Koreans went to secondary school; now they are more likely to graduate from university than people in any other country. In five decades GDP per person has risen 20-fold, to nearly $40,000 (adjusted for the local cost of living). In a single generation, the country went from beggar to donor, showing that rapid growth and democracy can go hand in hand. Its economy remained turbo-charged throughout its transition away from military rule in the 1980s and 1990s. Its recent record of holding a sitting government to account is an example to all.
Yet there is a nagging sense that politics has not kept up with social change. South Koreans are increasingly disillusioned (see article). Like disgruntled voters elsewhere, they feel that their political system is not working for them. Growth is faltering. Unemployment is surging, especially among the young. And even those who have jobs feel that there is one set of rules for the elite and another, harsher one for the masses.
Ms Park’s removal has brought some comfort to the disenchanted. She was out of touch, surrounding herself with yes-men. Her chief-of-staff had helped to draft the martial law that underpinned the regime of her father, Park Chung-hee, a military strongman who ran South Korea for 18 years until he was assassinated in 1979. Now her nemesis, Mr Moon, has promised a less imperious governing style. He says that, if elected, he will not live or work in the presidential mansion, the Blue House. Ahn Cheol-soo, another liberal candidate, says he would shrink the president’s office and work more closely with his ministers. But South Koreans want their institutions to be more responsive, so more change will be needed.
One way to curb the “imperial presidency” would be constitutional reform. At the moment presidents hire and fire prime ministers chiefly in the hope of boosting their own political standing. They have little incentive to heed voters, because only one five-year term is allowed. Most leave office with rock-bottom approval ratings and mired in scandal. To force leaders to pay more attention to the public, South Korea should allow two-term presidencies and give more power to the national assembly. That would require a two-thirds majority of MPs and a national referendum—but it could help mend the rift between citizens and their government.
Political parties need to shape up, too. Four-fifths of South Koreans do not feel that their MP represents them properly. Parties constantly split and coalesce around new presidential candidates. The two main ones have changed their names 14 and ten times respectively since 1948, making it hard for voters to keep up. With a powerful national assembly parties might represent sets of ideas, rather than serve as vehicles for individual ambition. The media could help, too, by holding all politicians more fiercely to account, as they did Ms Park.
The anti-Park protests have allowed long-ignored voices to be heard. Before the vote on impeachment, some 929,000 citizens wrote to their MPs—an unheard-of engagement with politics. A culture of impunity within corporate and political circles is being eroded, too. Lee Jae-yong, the boss of Samsung, the country’s biggest conglomerate, is behind bars for allegedly bribing Ms Park. (He denies it.) That is a striking change: his father, who remains Samsung’s chairman, was convicted of graft in 2008 but received a presidential pardon.
Outrage at Ms Park has united South Koreans previously divided by ideology. The liberal, dovish Mr Moon has gone out of his way to court conservative and hawkish voters. If he wins, he has a chance to write the next chapter of the South Korean miracle. The rest of the world should wish him well, for South Korea matters. If, one day, the odious northern regime collapses, the South will have to pick up the pieces.
The red-clad women, who have turned out in their tens of thousands on several occasions since the spring and are planning their final protest of the year in late December, are the most visible part of a wave of activism against sexism in South Korea, where spycams in toilets are not the only problem vexing women.
Despite its material wealth, South Korea was ranked 118th out of 144 countries last year in the World Economic Forum’s measure of equality between the sexes. The average South Korean woman makes only two-thirds as much as the average man. Several cases have come to light recently in which companies deliberately and systematically discriminated against female job applicants, even though that is illegal. A group of male executives at kb Kookmin Bank, for instance, lowered women’s scores and raised men’s on a recruitment test, to ensure more men were hired. The case wound up in court, but the executives received only suspended sentences; the bank was fined a mere $4,500. Although young women are better educated on average than their male peers, many of them are pushed out of the workforce after having children, either for lack of good child care or because companies simply will not take them back.
In terms of appearance and behaviour, women and men are held to wildly different standards. A newsreader caused a scandal earlier in the year when she chose to read the morning news wearing glasses, rather than contact lenses. Many firms, it subsequently emerged, had an informal ban on female employees wearing glasses. A YouTube star who used her make-up tutorial channel to announce that she was giving up make-up to join the “corset-free” movement, which challenges unrealistic beauty standards, received a torrent of online threats.
Abuse from actual or would-be romantic partners is rife. A survey by the city government in Seoul found that four-fifths of women had experienced controlling behaviour (such as boyfriends telling them what to wear or whom they could meet). More than half had suffered unwanted (physical) sexual advances and nearly two-fifths outright violence. “Misogyny is still common sense in South Korea,” says Yun Kim Ji-yeong of Konkuk University in Seoul. “People do not accept that women are worth the same as men.”
But women are increasingly challenging this conviction. It is not just the anti-spycam protests. Many are cropping their hair, crushing their eyeshadow and throwing away their lipstick—and posting videos of their rebellion online. Emboldened by the global #MeToo movement, a string of prominent women have spoken out about experiences of abuse. Young South Korean women, long wary of using the term “feminist” in conversations with parents or boyfriends, are starting to make their voices heard. “I definitely spend more time talking to my friends and my parents about these things than I did two years ago,” says a 20-something student.
So far, tangible results have been few and far between. In September Lee Yoon-taek, a theatre director, was sentenced to six years in prison for sexual assaults on nine women during acting lessons. In another prominent case, Ahn Hee-jung, a former provincial governor, was cleared of a rape charge in August. The judge cited his accuser’s efforts to find his favourite breakfast on the morning after one of the alleged rapes as an indication that the encounter must have been consensual. Criminal complaints about sexual discrimination or assault remain vastly more likely to ruin the reputation and career of the victim rather than the perpetrator. A recent move by Seoul city hall to roll out daily anti-spycam checks of public toilets in the city may reassure some women (as well as keep bureaucrats busy). But it does not get to the root of the problem.
Many activists emphasise the importance of shared personal experience in strengthening the movement. Kim Han Ryeo-il, who set up a feminist café and bookshop in Seoul’s Gangnam district last year, says she wanted to create the kind of place she wished had existed when she was a single mother in dire straits after a divorce years ago. Her café hosts weekly meetings for women to talk about feminism.
A feminist co-operative in Sannae, a small village in a socially conservative region, has similar aims. The centrepiece is a meeting spot named “Salon de Mago” after a goddess of female creativity, which overlooks the village’s main street. Women from the area drop in to talk about conflicts with fathers and husbands and, often, domestic violence. Drawings and cartoons in which they have recorded their experiences are dotted around the room. Some depict rape scenes. “It’s a safe space for people to express themselves,” says Tali, one of the activists. Besides running the café, the women provide sex education in local schools. They also offer a discussion group for men, even though most of the male attention they get is hostile. “They say we are dividing men and women,” says Eerie, her colleague. A flyer on the table describes the insults and threats the women have received in the course of their work.
Ms Yun Kim believes the individual focus of the movement is its strength. Bottom-up organisation, via social media and word of mouth, makes it unintimidating and easy to join. She thinks the anti-spycam protests have drawn such crowds because they speak directly to women’s daily experience. “If you cannot even be safe from intrusion in the bathroom or in your own home, then where are you safe?”
Yet the focus on personal experience may impede feminists from seeking alliances with other groups battling social conservatism, such as activists for gay rights, or indeed sympathetic heterosexual men. The organisers of the recent anti-spycam protests, for example, specified that only “biological” women should take part. Yet such alliances may turn out to be crucial politically. Speaking out about mistreatment is one thing; changing a culture is another.