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Edited on Fri Mar-12-04 01:00 PM by Snow
I don't think. If I may, I'll repost this from a thread that has faded, and tell me what you think.
Roh is IMHO a very decent man, a self-taught human rights lawyer, and a true political liberal. The force to push him out is coming from the old farts - some even left over from Pak Chunghee in the 70's - and some very definitely left over from those two awful turkeys, Chun Doohwan and Roh Taewoo. My wife, who comes from a family with long-standing political connections, refers to the old farts, who are of the so-called 'Han Nara Dang' or 'One Country Party' (the poster above calls it the "Grand National Party", the usual English translation), as the Korean equivalent of the Bush-Cheney bunch. Kim Jongpil and Kim Youngsam are excellent examples of the type. President Roh, on the other hand, has followed in the steps of his predecessor, Kim Daejung, in extending the diplomatic efforts with North Korea, in backing away from the US and warning them to keep a distance. He has appointed some very liberal people to his cabinet, including a Quaker woman who's friends with my wife and a very young (& female), fiery attorney general who raised hackles among the old farts from day 1.
On edit: I notice I'm using Roh and Noh interchangeably - don't let it distract you; they're pronounced the same (and spelled the same in Korean). And yes, the current impeached president does have the same last name as the former vicious dictator. Different clan, though - and that's very important.
What has me concerned is that while of course this push to impeach could be purely internal politics, the old farts are friendly with bushco and share many of their values. I can't help but wonder about the degree to which the US might be involved in this effort. John Bolton could be playing games here.
There're also some regional hatreds going on. The old farts have their power base in North Kyoungsang province, while the new crowd are centered around South Cholla province. Those two provinces traditionally don't get along, and ex-dictator Noh Taewoo, from North Kyoungsang province, murderously stomped on a rebellion in Kwangju, the capital of South Cholla province. So there's a lot of bad blood there. Just to confuse things even further, former president Pak Chunghee's daughter had been part of the old farts' party, and has split with them, despite also being from North Kyoungsang. So the geezers and wheezers are extraordinarily angry with her. Despite that, she has a secure seat in parliament and the folks back home love her. She could swing things one way or another, but it's hard to tell yet. I smell US fiddling, though - might be wise to keep our ears to the ground - given the overt clumsiness of the business in Haiti and Africa, it might be easy to spot the bushco hand in the chicken coop.
A little further confusion - the new party chenGod refers to, the Uri party (pronounced oo-ree or oo-lee, and meaning Our - stupid name for a party, eh?) apparently was started at least in part by Assemblywoman Park, mentioned above. I'm unsure of the reason for this - there were some corruption charges hurled at Kim Daejoong as his administration came to a close, but I thought that was just standard politics by the old farts. Kim always struck me as a pretty clean sort, although maybe his relatives couldn't resist a bit of dipping. It may be, however, that some of the reformers feel the MDP has become corrupted and want to start over. And that sort of thing, forming of new parties, is also a fairly frequent feature of the Korean political landscape. Interestingly, public polling shows right now over 60% support for President Noh. ~sigh~
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