The shape of things to come: the Lee Jae-myung government
What Constitutional Court’s ruling means
While the Constitutional Court gave out the unanimous decision to expel Mr Yoon from the office, the full text of its ruling implies that there were serious debates among the judges.
In its conclusion, the court acknowledges some of Mr Yoon’s points including the opposition Minjoo-dominated parliament escalated the political confrontation with impeachment rampage, before it quickly denounces declaring martial law for it as unacceptable.
The points like this appear to be inserted as a compromise between the judges, which is very rare in politics these days.
In fact, maximalists are everywhere: some “pro-democracy” people who apparently didn’t like waiting so much for something that is so obvious like Yoon’s impeachment suggested to disband the Constitutional Court as if it is a broken vending machine. Even after the unanimous decision to expel Mr Yoon, some criticized the court for making compromises.
What they don’t or refuse to see is that there were tens of thousands of people rallying their support for Mr Yoon. They may have been misled, but they are not nobody. If the judges couldn’t draw the unanimous decision, there might be a civil war. The judges knew it, and kept discussing over and over. So they did it, making compromises.
Well, that’s actually what politicians are supposed to do in a functional democracy, but we’re living in a different age in which many institutions of yesterday ceased to work as intended. However, the Constitutional Court has shown there is at least one institution from the 1987 democratization working.
What the Lee Jae-myung government would look like
President Yoon’s out and the race for the next presidency is on. But it’s going to be one of the least exciting presidential campaigns—if not the least exciting—of all time.
Minjoo has the high ground, per my previous letter, and Lee Jae-myung survived the biggest legal challenge to his bid to Minjoo candidateship.
My base scenario—obviously not mine only—is thus 1) Mr Lee gets his party’s nomination with no sweat, and 2) Mr Lee wins the race.
Still the race will be worth following closely as it is going to show us where the republic is heading to. We will catch the glimpses of what the next government under Lee Jae-myung would look like.
Mr Lee doesn’t hold a strict view on anything: one day he calls for revising the constitution, and the other day dismisses it. One day he criticizes chaebols, and the other day stresses Samsung’s role in the national economy. The closer he gets to the throne, the less he sounds like a revolutionary. He used to be likened to Hugo Chavez in his Gyeonggi governor days, but now his campaign team is redirecting his platform to the right and even got rid of his brand policy of “basic income.” in an attempt to appeal to moderate-conservative voters.
But is this what Lee will really do when he takes power? Politicians are rarely men of their words, but Lee’s almost pathological. A better way to predict Lee’s policies would be to take a look at what his key supporters prefer—he’s known to be very attentive to what his supporters say, always checking their reactions on his phone.
Despite what his team says now, I predict that Lee’s economy policies will echo those of South American populists: strong state intervention and social welfare. But there could be positive reforms, too. Minjoo’s recent push for corporate governance reform would continue even after Lee takes the power as the Minjoo key supporters don’t like the performance of the Korean stocks.
There will also be some departures from the traditional Minjoo policy stance as the social/economic status of the key supporter base evolves. One specific case will be real estate. Unlike two decades ago, its key supporter base has become a part of the establishment who devoted most of their life income into real estate. They wouldn’t like any policies that are likely debase their properties’ value.
(How Minjoo’s key supporter base evolved is the single most important factor in Korean politics, which I’ll cover next time.)
Analyzing Mr Lee’s allies would also help. I won’t go in depth for now, but the most important figure here is Lee Hae-chan, whose alliance with Mr Lee goes back to at least Lee’s governor days. Lee Hwa-young, the star of the Lee’s North Korea scandal, was the go-between for the two Lees.
Former “reunification activists” are known to dominate Lee Hae-chan’s group, and it is still the case even after Lee Jae-myung’s group grew larger than ever. I suspect Lee government will seek reengagement with Pyongyang avidly.
Last but not least, Mr Lee will be ruthless in his revenge. He is a man of cruel nature, no matter how hard he pretends he isn’t now. He had talked too much about his nature when he tried to portrait himself as a revolutionary. Worse, he’s not good at hiding it. When invited to a Minjoo partisan YouTube channel, he accidentally revealed his paranoiac nature.
Moon Jae-in may be shivering this time.
Conservatives’ meltdown continues
When conservatives appointed Mr Yoon as its presidential candidate, they probably had hoped him to be a flag bearer to rally not just voters but also new generations of politicians to revive the conservative politics.
Instead, Mr Yoon became its pallbearer. Not just that he shortened the conservative administration’s term by two years. He also isolated conservatives from his government. He surrounded himself with former prosecutors and a handful of technocrats, some random guys close to his wife in key government positions. He allegedly despised career politicians.
Mr Yoon and his cronies didn’t bother to distributing jobs from governmental agencies to fellow ruling party politicians, political analyst Cho Gwi-dong points out. One key feature of the spoils system is that a ruling party can give jobs to those who worked hard for the party but failed to win an election to keep their career intact. One politician famously said there are around 5,000 jobs of vice-minister level and above a President can give out. It often leads to corruption—the politician was also found guilty for demanding kickbacks to a businessman—but let’s just say for now that doing politics takes a lot of people and they need a job to keep up.
Conservatives brought this on themselves. After failing to cultivate new politicians, the People Power Party chose to adopt its presidential candidate. A former top prosecutor who’s spent less than a year as a politician won the election, and he didn’t think it was due to his party. He believed that his fellow prosecutors, the brightest people in his world, would do a much better job at running a country than corrupt, incompetent career politicians.
As a result, the conservative party looks frailer than ever. Now it’s looking up to another adoptee: this time, much older than the previous one.
Han Duck-soo is the only “if” in this race
Right after the Constitutional Court brought Han Duck-soo back to his acting president job, Mr Han issued a statement with too polished words for a technocrat when a simple “thank you come again” would do. There must be a team working for him.
That’s when I began to suspect his intention. But he’s 75. Is he really thinking about running? His next move convinced me of his intention. Apparently he doesn’t intend to end his decades-long career as a neutral technocrat.
Mr Han appears quite promising as the PPP primary lacks talent. Kim Moon-soo and Hong Jun-pyo are way past their shelf life. Han Dong-hoon is already proven a failure during his stint as the party leader.
Leaking a conversation with Donald Trump is probably a calculated move. PPP politicians began to call for “invite” him to their party. Mr Han’s name popped up in the polls.
Not everything is favorable for Mr Han. Constitutional Court’s injunction threw a cold water and there is an issue of impartiality as the acting president who’s supposed to hand over the administration to the next president. History is full of technocrats who called off their big ambition in the last minute. (Remember Ban Ki-moon?)
There’s one more reason that I still believe Mr Han is going to run. It has something to do with Lee Jae-myung’s vengeful nature. When Mr Han refused to appoint Minjoo’s pick for the constitutional judge, Mr Lee pressed Mr Han via various intermediaries including my source.
Mr Han is probably well aware that the President Lee Jae-myung won’t let him enjoy retirement in peace. The only way for him to achieve peace is denying Minjoo a win.
Interestingly, it was also behind the ex-President Yoon’s drive to run three years ago. After announcing his bid for presidency, Mr Yoon was asked in private why he decided to run.
“They’re coming after me,” he said. “What else am I supposed to do?”
