'Yoon must go'

By Scott Shepherd

On July 11 2023, I started writing an article titled “Autocracy Rising” about Yoon’s tendency towards misusing his power. I gave up on the piece after three days. I felt it was too controversial and may open me and my young family to some kind of attack — even before this week’s chaos, Yoon has demonstrated a habit of going after his critics. There was also a more mundane reason: I wasn’t happy with the way it sounded and I didn’t have any more time to spare on editing. In September this year I restarted work on the piece but again after a few days of tinkering I gave up on it.

Rather than a direct response to Yoon’s declaration of martial law, I want to publish the piece as I left it back in September. It’s not perfect and I would not usually put something out in its unfinished state. But the point is that there were already so many signs of Yoon's disrespect for democracy. It’s not fair to say that we could have predicted something as drastic as martial law, but with hindsight we can at least agree Yoon always had an autocratic tendency. By the time this is published I imagine and hope that Yoon will have resigned, but if not then let me add my voice to everyone else’s: He must go.

So below is the article in exactly the form it was when I gave up on it in September, including the rather melodramatic coda.

I have no political affiliation in Korea. I can’t vote and so I feel no particularly strong sense of belonging to one party or the other. This, I think, benefits me in that at least in principle, I can view the actions of the two main parties without the partisan history and blinders which may impact my vote-holding neighbours. We all hold various biases, of course, but party loyalty at least is not one of mine.

And honestly, I had low hopes when President Yoon took office in 2022. My view at the time was that Yoon rose to power by using his position as chief prosecutor to clash publicly with the previous President Moon. His stance against Moon gained him public support as a defender of freedom and justice against powerful politicians. It obviously worked — he was elected president. But I had the unpleasant feeling that he had used his public office to advance his personal political agenda.

To my surprise, President Yoon exceeded my expectations. He has proven to be a reformer willing to make big bold changes that challenge collective assumptions and inertia: last year’s hullaballoo over the Suneung’s Killer Questions is one clear example (though his reforms don’t go far enough), but he also moved the seat of government from the Blue House, and brought about an end to the Korean age system. He has at times signalled a willingness to open Korea to more skilled foreign workers.

Yoon has also shown himself to be astute at international diplomacy, compromising with Japan in ways which inevitably drew criticism from the anti-Japanese elements of Korean society but were ultimately necessary for the country. His surprisingly good rendition of "American Pie" at the White House also displayed an innovative approach to soft power which certainly cemented Korea’s image as a cultural powerhouse. From the start Yoon has been actively engaged in trips abroad, politicking across the world with various leaders of countries and international organisations, including meetings of both NATO and G7.

Yes, there have been failures – his remarks caught on microphone allegedly insulting the whole of the American Congress were embarrassing, and the implementation of his policies has sometimes been chaotic and last-minute. His government does also seem to be making things worse for unskilled laborers, and the plan to pay Filipino care workers less than minimum wage is a hot mess

But credit where it’s due: thanks to his willingness to challenge tradition and also in part to his mellifluous tenor voice, Yoon has proved a more innovative and frankly more impressive leader than I expected when he took office.

However, alongside these successes, there has been a constant hum in the background, a nagging theme which undermines any positive changes Yoon may have been making.

Put simply, the prosecution seem to keep going after Yoon’s opponents.

This is all the more concerning when we remember that Yoon himself was Korea’s chief prosecutor until March 2021, four months before he announced his candidacy for the presidency and a year before he won the election.

Soon after Yoon took office, investigations were launched into several Moon-era figures. The prosecution either arrested or attempted to arrest at least five top officials: former Trade Minister Paik Un-gyu; former head of the National Intelligence Service Park Jie-won; former National Security Director Suh Hoon; former Coast Guard Commissioner General Kim Hong-hee; and former Defense Minister Suh Wook.

That’s not even mentioning the more obvious cases. In the midst of last year’s National Assembly elections, the opposition leader and Yoon’s former opponent in the presidential race, Lee Jae-myung, only avoided arrest because the National Assembly voted against revoking his immunity. Yoon himself approved the prosecutors’ request to arrest Lee.

Also last year, after announcing his surprise Suneung reforms, Yoon faced criticism from the country’s largest private tutoring companies. He declared war on what he called the education “cartels.” Within days the tutoring companies found themselves under investigation from the police, tax authorities and the Fair Trade Commission.

And now in recent months we have the news that Yoon’s predecessor and political enemy, Moon Jae-in, is under investigation for bribery. Are we surprised?

Let’s state the obvious: the authorities should investigate people they suspect of breaking the law, whether they are the president’s enemies or allies or nothing to do with him at all. I also want to make it abundantly clear that I have no knowledge of and am making no comment on the veracity of any particular alleged crime.

But the government must not use the police, the prosecution or the tax authorities to pursue party political aims, to silence opponents or critics of the president. Such an action would present a real threat to Korea’s still relatively-young democracy. Given that Yoon was the country’s chief prosecutor before taking office, he must be particularly careful that his actions do not even have the appearance of improper interference.

To be fair, the prosecution has shown independence in its pursuit of Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon Hee over allegations of corruption in this apparently-interminable luxury bag scandal. For this the prosecution is to be commended. But this is not enough to counterbalance the worrying trend of apparent interference that seems to be continuing.

Forget any innovative policies Yoon has implemented, forget all his surprising successes and disappointing failures, the appearance that he makes political use of the prosecution has the potential to mar his presidency. I repeat, suspected crimes should absolutely be investigated – of course they should – but not at the behest of the president, and certainly not for any individual’s own political purposes.

As a small coda to this piece, I would like to note that I wrote the bulk of this article over a year ago, but decided to shelve it. This was partly because I was too busy to finetune the piece, but a large contributing factor was that I was worried I would open myself to governmental reprisal. Only in light of the recent investigation into Moon did I decide to submit it for publication. Perhaps that bare fact says more about the state of Korean politics than anything else I could write.

Dr. Scott Shepherd ([email protected]) is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently an assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.