NIS 41B, South Korea, Country Profile/Revitalization or Retrogression in Politics?
"Revitalization" or Retrogression in Politics? (c)
President Pak, a peasant's son, keeps in touch with his "riceroots" by leading off in paddy planting on the anniversary of the 1961 coup
The revival of past patterns is perhaps clearest in Pak's approach to political "renovation." His style combines some modern political methods and forms with the age-old tradition of authoritarian rule. The President's autocratic proclivities, however, finally became painfully clear in 1972. In late 1971 he had proclaimed a state of national emergency, partly to prepare the country for talks with the North. Then in October 1972 came his sweeping "Revitalizing Reforms," along with martial law, rigid censorship, and the arrest or harassment of those who might object. He justified these actions on the grounds that they were needed if he was to engage in a successful dialog with the North over the issue of Korean reunification.
Pak's move was no spur-of-the-moment improvisation. It had been long prepared in secret, though the precise timing was perhaps fortuitous. As early as November 1969, Pak proclaimed in a major speech that the 1970's would be a "decade of national revitalization." Moreover, the October reforms merely complete the process of concentrating power in the President's hands, begun when Pak first assumed that office in 1963. In fact, the term "revitalization" subsumes all the goals of the original coup. In mid-May 1973, on the twelfth anniversary of the coup and the eve of the first session of the newly emasculated, hand-picked National Assembly, Pak stated that the spirit of the "Revitalizing Reforms" was "identical with the spiritual basis of the Military Revolution."
The early efforts at "spiritual mobilization" had been undertaken partly to prepare the way for the revolution in political life which some of the coup plotters had envisioned. In part, they also served as a substitute for the long-range political program that the military leaders were hardly prepared to provide. These leaders had no ready-made panacea beyond their strong commitment to economic development, and Pak has even yet to develop any systematic program of political organization or ideology. He has, rather, effectively improvised and gradually gathered all the threads of power into his own hands.
No direct attack has been mounted on the concept of popular, democratic government, and a facade of constitutional forms has been maintained. Despite the abuses of democratic forms under President Syngman Rhee, and the subsequent failure of Korea's closest approach to democracy under Rhee's immediate successor, the ideal of democratic government is not discredited. Korea's history and political experience, however, provide a poor base for nurturing democracy. The strong paternalistic and authoritarian traditions of Korean governments, continued by the Japanese and to a remarkable degree by Rhee, inculcated a master-servant relationship between people and government. There had been little or no opportunity for political parties or even interest groups to mature and compromise. Neither has there been any sizable middle class with the interest, training, and opportunity to participate in public affairs.
The "cold war" confrontation between the United States and the U.S.S.R., and the lingering affects of the Korean war played into the hands of the rightwing extremists, whose whole stock-and-trade was anticommunism. Even moderate opposition parties were proscribed before they had any chance to leaven the political process. The government of Prime Minister Chang Myon was fatally handicapped by the barren conservatism and bitter factional bickering among the only political survivors of Rhee's practice of divide, destroy, and rule. The concept of a golden mean, or a middle-of-the-road approach, it totally missing in Korea.
Because the military leaders had no systematic ideology to substitute for democracy, they looked abroad to military-based regimes elsewhere in Asia. The plotting for the 1961 coup began shortly after army takeovers in Burma and Pakistan. After the coup, study missions were dispatched there, as well as to South Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan. The example of Chiang Kai-shek's party, the Kuomintang, in particular, influenced the thinking of the junta leaders. Again, the recent "Revitalizing Reforms" followed hard on similar trends in Thailand and the Philippines.
Whatever Pak may have imported from abroad, however, his style is closest to Korean tradition. His "administrative democracy" is little more than the administrative authoritarianism of the past, plus modern methods and efficiency. There is precious little room for any expression of public opinion through political parties, the legislature, or the media, and little regard for the concept of an independent judiciary and the protection of individual freedoms. What the military has managed to exploit successfully, however, is the energy and modern training of a younger generation free of the trammels of tradition. The youthful military leaders were quick to enlist the force and enthusiasm of the new postwar generation released in the 1960 student revolution but not effectively channeled by the Chang Myon regime. In his first years of power, Pak coopted the almost puritanical zeal for reform of his youthful cohorts. The old, Japanese trained bureaucracy was replaced by younger, much more broadly educated recruits to provide a more effective, "revitalized" civil service.
Nevertheless, in the early days following the coup its leaders were so eager to get an economic program moving that many older, less-motivated types were also accepted. In time, the more enthusiastic young reformers no longer set the tone. This trend was reinforced by the move to restore civilian government in 1963. Senior officers, donning mufti, managed to get the lion's share of important posts, largely due to their more extensive administrative experience. The zealous young colonels who had occupied the top posts in the SCNR lost out in the shuffle and this resulted in a general change of tone under the present "Third Republic."
This did not mean, however, that political reform was dead, but only that Pak was working with somewhat different means in the same general direction. The military leaders generally had been highly reluctant to honor their original pledge to restore a constitutional form of government, and did so only in response to a variety of pressures. U.S. prodding was perhaps the most important inasmuch as they were well aware of their dependence upon U.S. goodwill. A significant factor, too, was that there was still strong attachment to the principle of democracy despite the weakness of political parties. At least equally important, however, was division and mutual suspicion among the military leaders. Their infighting, combined with cases of ineptitude, left some room for democratic opinion to put pressure on Pak to restore civil government.
The dropping of the more radical junior officers from administrative posts of importance and the concession to civilian participation under a constitutional framework did not prevent the gradual growth after 1963 of the role of former military men in Pak's government. Even more significant, however, has been the growth of executive power concentrated increasingly in Pak's own hands. Particularly since 1868-69, when Pak pushed through a constitutional amendment enabling him to run for a third term, he has steadily increased his powers, most spectacularly since October 1972. Under the October reforms, the way is paved for Pak's lifetime presidency even more clearly than it was for Rhee in the mid-1950's.
This situation merely postpones the succession problem. The only constitutional succession that Korea has experienced was hardly a normal transition. President Rhee's forced resignation in April 1960 was followed by drastic revision of the constitution in June and elections in August. The election victor, Chang Myon, became Prime Minister, but he was ignominiously turned out of office less than 9 months later by the military. Rhee had persistently eliminated any potentially strong successor as a threat to his power, and Pak appears to be pursuing his example here, too. He has played off the military factions against each other, and by occasional rustication abroad has kept his nephew-in-law, Kim Chong-p'il, first head of the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency and now Prime Minister, from becoming too powerful. The chief architect of the group, Kim had quietly organized a sort of Trojan-horse Democratic Republican Party (DRP), which won Pak his first term, having had a head start when parties were permitted to reappear in 1963.
Suspicious of politics, Pak has kept all political parties, including the government's own DRP, from becoming strong forces which might support a challenge to his position. The DRP has helped to preserve the facade of democratic government, but its job has been purely electoral. Pak now calls for parties "on the American pattern—active only on the eve of an election," as he has put it. In fact, their role has been rigidly curtailed under the 1972-73 reforms. The DRP is confined largely to propaganda-peddling and training youthful supporters.
Pak's curbing of the DRP is in keeping with his careful control over all his former comrades-in-arms occupying positions of power. The military constitute the only force which could conceivably mount a successful threat to his authority under present conditions, and many ex-officers are well entrenched in office. Some of them have also built up private fortunes through bribery and corruption, thus flouting Pak's strictures. Officers on active duty are still prone to Korea's endemic factionalism. In early 1973 Pak cracked down by arresting one of his oldest associates, the commander of the Capital Security Command, who had been building up his own personal following and had broached the idea of expanding the military's role in running the nation by having it supplant the existing civilian political organizations. In Pak's reaction there was little solicitude for the principle of civilian participation; his primary motive was doubtless to protect his own power from any possible threat and to demonstrate that he would tolerate suspicious activity by no one.
"Korean democracy" remains the name of the game. In reporting state policies at the opening of the new National Assembly in May 1973, Prime Minister Kim Chong-p'il announced that the ROK "had succeeded in surmounting the superficial imitation of Western-style democracy . . . we have established our own democracy in accord with our traditions and history." This "revitalization" has, however, reduced the role of the parties and the legislature and curbed civil liberties to the point where domestic critics, primarily the intellectual and Christian communities, privately maintain that South Korea can no longer claim to be the "frontier of freedom," but instead is becoming the mirror image of the totalitarian regime in the North.