윤석열, '브랜드코리아' 망쳤다[Yoon Suk Yeol has trashed 'Brand Korea']
"2년 연속 독재화"
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Yoon Suk Yeol has trashed 'Brand Korea'
윤석열, '브랜드코리아' 망쳤다
Impeached president has shattered South Korea's reputation and poisoned its politics
탄핵된 대통령은 대한민국의 명예를 훼손하고 정치를 오염시켰습니다.
NIKKEI ASIA Aidan Foster-Carter / March 12, 2025 05:05 JST
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University in the U.K.
South Korea's Constitutional Court is expected to soon deliver its verdict on whether to uphold the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol -- a move that would usher in a new leader.
Who could have imagined this four months ago? Back then, Yoon was halfway through a five-year term that wasn't going well. A career prosecutor with a tin ear for politics, elected by a whisker in 2022, his gaffes and his wife's scandals made him Seoul's most unpopular president ever, according to opinion polls.
Hobbled and harried by an opposition-controlled National Assembly, Yoon made no serious effort to reach out to the liberal Democratic Party (DPK) and seek compromise. Instead he fumed, falling prey to wild conspiracy theories. On Dec. 3, he lost the plot with his mad -- fortunately short-lived -- declaration of martial law.
Yoon went for broke. And in so doing, he broke his country. This was a ghastly misjudgment.
(윤은 무모한 승부수를 던졌다. 그리고 그렇게 하면서 그는 자신의 나라를 무너뜨렸다. 이것은 끔찍한 오판이었다.)
No one can possibly maintain that South Korea is better placed now than it was on Dec. 2. Both at home and abroad, the harm Yoon has wrought is huge and lasting.
For starters, he has thoroughly trashed "Brand Korea."
(우선 그는 '브랜드 코리아를 전반적(완전히) 쓰레기로 만들었다(망쳐놓았다).
In Seoul, that hurts. Few countries are as sensitive about their image, or have pushed so hard for a seat at the world's top tables.
Having guested at G7 summits, South Korea fancied itself as a potential member. Its backers talked this up. But it wasn't invited last year. Thanks to Yoon, it's unlikely to be asked again.
Then there's democracy. Or there was.
The Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) annual Democracy Index, published on Feb. 27, saw South Korea plummet 10 rungs to 32nd place.
Formerly classed as a "full democracy," it is now a "flawed" one.
( 이전에는 "완전한 민주주의"로 분류되었지만, 지금은 "결함이 있는" 민주주의입니다.)
As the EIU noted, Dec. 3 "served as a reminder of the comparatively short track record (37 years) and relative frailty of democracy in South Korea."
On Dec. 3, sensible leaders weren't launching self-coups. They were busy preparing for Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Protecting South Korea against the impending Trump whirlwind could have been a good bipartisan issue to seek the DPK's cooperation -- rather than labeling them, absurdly, as agents of Pyongyang.
Instead, Yoon threw a grenade and blew himself up. Seoul now faces Trump -- and Kim Jong Un -- under an acting president, Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok, who has no real authority.
Not content with trashing the brand abroad, Yoon is also busily poisoning the wells at home.
Unlike Park Geun-hye, the last leader impeached in Seoul, Yoon has not gone quietly. Quite the contrary. Defiant and unrepentant, he fights on. This has polarized South Korean politics in new and ominous ways.
Perversely, Yoon is more popular now -- under impeachment, on trial for insurrection, and in jail (a court freed him on March 7) -- than he was in office. After mass initial hostility to his martial law bid, opinion has grown more evenly divided. One poll in mid-January gave him 46.6% support.
In 2017, Park's conservative party was quick to ditch her as a liability -- only to lose the presidency to the DPK. Keen to avoid a second defeat, Yoon's ruling People Power Party (PPP) has largely swallowed its misgivings and rallied round him. But that comes at a price.
Opportunistically, centrist conservatives who should know better are embracing conspiracy theories. One is the claim, hitherto confined to far-right YouTube channels, that the DPK's parliamentary election victories in 2020 and 2024 were fraudulent. On Dec. 3, Yoon sent troops to the National Election Commission (NEC), as well as the National Assembly.
While the NEC has had cybersecurity issues, this canard is baseless. The PPP never cried foul at the time. Yet "Stop the Steal!" -- the slogan of Trump's bid to undermine democracy after his defeat in 2020 -- is now prominent at pro-Yoon rallies. Recently these have been bigger than those opposing him, though polls show that a majority still support his impeachment.
Another ominous conspiracy theory, equally fact-free, is that ousting Yoon is a Chinese plot. DC Inside, which hosts far-right online channels, features wild claims that Beijing was behind mass voting fraud -- or even (wait for it) that Constitution Court justices are really Chinese in disguise.
This would be funny, if the consequences weren't so serious. As hostility ferments, Chinese students and others face harassment on the street. A great way to encourage the tourism sorely needed by Seoul's retailers, amid weak domestic demand. And just when China is reportedly about to lift its unjust ban on much South Korean cultural content.
Not that South Koreans should harbor illusions about China, as the DPK sometimes has. But with Xi Jinping hopefully poised to visit for the first time in a decade, when Gyeongju hosts the APEC summit in November, irrational Sinophobia is the last thing Seoul needs.
As the Chinese scholar Cao Xin recently argued in these pages, China and South Korea need each other more than ever. Though staunchly anti-communist, in office Yoon had resisted U.S. pressure on chipmakers like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to scale back their operations in China.
Equally to his credit, Yoon defied domestic sentiment to mend fences with Japan. That legacy, too, he has jeopardized. If the DPK regains power, ties with Tokyo may well deteriorate again.
If only Yoon had thought about all this: Deploying his brain, rather than going with his gut.
In democracies, even flawed ones, the state -- fortunately -- isn't everything. South Korea still has powerhouses (if also flawed) like Samsung and Hyundai Motor, and K-pop. Han Kang won the Nobel literature prize -- how Yoon must have hated that -- Blackpink's Lisa graced the Oscars, and the world is watching Squid Game 2.
All this will continue. But the proud boast that since democratization in the 1980s martial law is ancient history -- so last century! -- is irrevocably lost.
Trying to short-circuit politics, Yoon learnt the hard way what even a child knows. Short-circuits are dangerous. They start fires. They damage the fabric, sometimes beyond repair.
The past three months in South Korea should and need never have happened. It is one man's fault that they did, but millions will pay the price for Yoon's impetuousness.
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한국이 어쩌다…2년 연속 “독재화되고 있다” 박한 평가
스웨덴 예테보리대학 산하 민주주의 다양성 연구소 보고서
민주주의 단계도 자유민주주의→선거민주주의로 낮춰
한겨레 김미향기자 / 수정 2025-03-17 19:43 등록 2025-03-17 16:02
스웨덴 예테보리대학 산하 민주주의 다양성 연구소(V-Dem)는 지난 13일(현지시각) ‘민주주의 보고서 2025’ 보고서를 내고 민주주의 지수를 발표했다.
지난달 영국 이코노미스트의 부설 경제 분석기관인 ‘이코노미스트 인텔리전스 유닛’(EIU)이 발표한 ‘민주주의 지수 2024’에서 한국은 민주주의 성숙도에서 전 세계 167개국 중 32위로 10단계 떨어졌고, 최상위 단계에서 탈락한 ‘결함 있는 민주주의’로 분류됐다.
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