Roh Drama
Shortly after Christmas, an episode of the irreverent UK car show, Top Gear, showed Jeremy Clarkson riding into the studio atop two washing machines on wheels. This, he explained, was how the Koreans built their cars.
Among Top Gear’s many viewers was a Korean student living in the UK who recorded the incident, and, outraged, posted a clip of it on the internet. Back in broadband South Korea, it sparked a huge furore, and the Koreans are very serious about their furores.
When Toyota and BMW are mocked in the same context, the Japanese and Germans stay silent. The Koreans, whether they work for Hyundai or not, flood the BBC and the British Embassy in Seoul with thousands of frothy-mouthed complaints. It is this particular brand of nationalism – the passionate and faintly paranoid desire that Korea be taken seriously – that brought President Roh Moo-Hyun to power in 2003. As he enters a third year of office, it is fast becoming his biggest headache.
Roh’s difficulty is that he exploited and enhanced a deep division in Korean society to win election, and now sees that in order to achieve anything worthwhile, he has to straddle the same gulf. He isn’t managing it, and Korea’s self-belief is so high at the moment, that his stagnation is all the more unsettling. For a president supposedly butting at Korea’s problems from outside the establishment and the left, his recent performance has also been disappointing. In a desperate lunge at fixing the economy, for example, Roh recently said he would be consulting with the bosses of the old chaebol – the corporate leviathans whose power he has always vowed to smash.
The real snag is that both sides of divided South Korea are fervent nationalists. The older generation, whose establishment ways Roh has vowed to reform, loves Korea in its Cold War role: a staunch ally of the US and a die-hard bastion against communism. Younger Koreans, who voted for Roh and vehemently protested his impeachment last year, love Korea as they hope the outside world sees it: a fiercely competitive country that can stand on its own without the US and which hosted the World Cup.
Samsung is now Asia’s most valuable electronics company, and made bigger profits last year than Microsoft. Koreans surf the web on some of the most advanced mobile phones in the world. When Koreans discreetly ask whether they have caught up with Japan, it is partly out of manic rivalry, and partly because many think the answer is yes.
Looming over this is the spectre of a nuclear-armed North Korea and the fact that the time to resolve matters is quickly running out. In the view of both defence and political analysts, 2005 will be the make-or-break year for the Pyongyang nuclear crisis. The stalemate has lasted too long, and the frustrations of all parties are growing more clear. To make matters worse, North Korea has, since September, boycotted the six-way talks with its neighbour in the south, China, Japan, the US, and Russia that have become the last hope for a successful resolution.
In his New Year speech Roh was forced to admit what most knew anyway – that the stalled talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme would likely resume as soon as President George Bush completes his inauguration on 20 January. They haven't. In another blow to his young supporters, Roh grudgingly admitted that a summit between himself and Kim Jong Il was highly unlikely.
Everyone in South Korea under the age of 30 may believe that Seoul can sort out the escalating problems of the peninsular alone, but in reality Pyongyang will only come to the table when it knows the US is there and listening.
It is this brand of realpolitik in North-South relations that now leaves Roh’s position looking so weak as champion of a Korea bristling with patriotism. A new generation has been quickly bruised by exposure to what has long been the country’s biggest fault: its leaders have always been far better at keeping nationalist fervor bubbling away with grand gestures than hammering out the details of reform. Equally, the country’s car companies are pitched as global players fighting for Korea’s image as an industrial giant; details such as the finish on the dashboard are where things fall down.
Examples of this effect are everywhere. Korea has repeatedly bid to hold the Winter Olympics in a town where snowfall is not a regular annual event. A major campaign to fight crime became little more than a four-week flurry of brothel raids. Economic success is measured by achieving particular per capita salary levels – round, arbitrary numbers that mask a perilous divide between rich and poor. Korean pop culture is sweeping through Asia in a phenomenon known as “hallyu” – a government-backed variation on Blair's “Cool Britannia” nonsense - but a survey recently showed that the first word foreigners think of in connection with Korea is the spicy pickle “kimchi”.
In common with his predecessors, Roh faces the job of making his people correct in their belief that Korea is unstoppable. His problem is that his supporters are a more savvy breed of patriot, who need more than grand gestures. When, last week, Roh talked of Korea’s “joining the ranks of advanced nations”, it once again sounded more like an ambition of image than substance. In order to persuade people that Korean cars are not, in fact, two washing machines strapped to a chassis, he has to demonstrate that all the little engineering details have been given as much attention as the logo.
Posted by totoreo at March 18, 2005 09:28 AM