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| Kim Byong-joon, former interim leader of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times Monday. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
By Oh Young-jin
Unification could spell a curse for South Korea because the current progressive government, lacking clear vision and hobbled by its ties with big labor, has failed to prepare for it, said Kim Byong-joon, who just finished a seven-month tour as interim leader of the main opposition conservative Liberty Korea Party (LKP).
"There would be a big sucking sound that knocks the wind out of our manufacturing base," said the 65-year-old former top policy aide to the late progressive President Roh Moo-hyun during a recent interview.
Kim worked together with President Moon Jae-in, then Roh's chief of staff. Now, the two find themselves on the opposite ends of the political spectrum _ after Kim took the job of fixing the Liberty party that was reeling amid a resounding defeat in the June local elections following the impeachment of Park Geun-hye.
"Neither is a bonanza," Kim said, dismissing Park's famous phrase to push for her reciprocal "trustpolitik"policy with the North that faltered almost immediately after it started.
He noted that the North's quality and cheap labor would pull the southern firms like a magnet, leaving the South industrially hollow.
"The current administration is supposed to prepare for a transformation to more efficient, higher-value industries," Kim said. "The government appears not to even have a clue about it. If it does, it has just sat on its hands, fearing it may irk the unions."
He cited as example the shipbuilding industry, once the world's leader that has been reduced to a shadow of its former self thanks to a big global slump and delayed action.
Kim said that Moon doesn't even have a philosophy about the economy.
"The income-led growth policy is a carbon copy taken from the website of the International Labor Union (ILO)," he said. "That formula is possible in economies that have a sizable and mature domestic market such as the United States, not one like ours, one that is relatively small, relies on exports and needs constant growth."
Many economic indicators such as growth and employment have headed south with conglomerates being dissatisfied with what the conservatives see as Moon's anti-business policy and distribution-oriented approaches , while small entrepreneurs have been set back by a series of hefty increases in the minimum wage, and the mandatory 52-hour workweek.
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| Kim Byong-joon in the interview Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
Adding to the mix is Moon's "blind" pursuit of better ties with the North, misjudging what mediating role the South could play.
"Moon apparently thought too easily of the North's denuclearization issue," he said. "As shown in Hanoi, Vietnam, last week, it is a deeper issue that involves other stakeholders such as the U.S. Congress."
Now, he said that Moon's North Korea policy is a "cat's cradle gone haywire."
"Kim Jong-un is apparently angry that he has lost his face, trusting Moon in dealing with the U.S.," Kim said. "Trump can hardly devote himself back to the North Korean issue now that he is distracted by the Democrat-controlled Congress, the possibility of impeachment and a re-election campaign, among other things.
Kim and Trump parted ways without even having a scheduled lunch at their second summit in the Vietnamese capital, the two sides having since blamed each other for dishonesty.
Trump said that the U.S. confronted Kim with the North's secret nuclear site and offered a big deal for the North's complete denuclearization. Kim's aides later said that their boss has lost his enthusiasm for dialogue.
"President Moon should stop romanticizing about the North," he said. "Kim would use its nuclear arsenal against us. He wouldn't hesitate much."
He also cautioned about Trump, ruling out he would settle for the North's long-range missile and warheads.
Then, what is his policy alternative?
"We can't help it being a zero-sum game," he said. "It is an either or proposition - us against them."
Kim said that only continued sanctions will work on the North and put us in a position of strength but this won't be the end of the story.
"The North is a dynasty that was founded by Kim Il-sung, passed to Kim Jong-il and is now under Kim Jong-un's control," he said. "Neither we nor the U.S. can guarantee its survival because angry North Koreans will topple it as soon as the North opens up and they have a taste of freedom."
So Kim won't give up his nuclear weapons or get his country out of isolation, will he. "He just pretends he is doing it," he said.
So these turns of events could help improve the unpopular conservatives' chances in the next year's general election and 2022 presidential elections. Not surely, he said.
"We might," he said, if the government keeps doing boneheaded plays with the economy and the LKP stays clear of the Park Geun-hye stigma.
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| Kim Byong-joon in the interview Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
The second seems harder to achieve than the first as Hwang Kyo-ahn, Park's last prime minister who served as acting president during the impeachment process, has been elected as the party's leader and has chosen Han Sun-kyo, an old Park hand, as powerful secretary general.
"The jury is out," he said, denying that Hwang means the revival of the Park faction. If he is wrong, it could mean the decimation of LKP candidates in the important Seoul and Gyeonggi constituencies, reducing the conservative parties further to a regional force based in the Yongnam areas, which include Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province from which Park is from.
Currently, the ruling progressive Democratic Party of Korea has 128 seats; the LKP 113 and the smaller conservative Beunmirae 29, among the National Assembly's negotiating groups. Currently, there are 298 lawmakers out of the 300-seat unicameral parliament.
The conservatives remain shell-shocked by Park's impeachment, shamed by the imprisonment of her conservative predecessor Lee Myung-bak and hobbled by sophists such as Hong Jun-pyo, former standard bearer in the previous presidential election, all this being well reflected in their dismal showings in opinion poll after opinion poll.
The ongoing joke, although its punch line is greatly weakened by the progressives' own bungling, is that the conservatives have helped the progressives' rule for the next 20 years.
Toward the end of the interview, I asked him what I felt curious about from the beginning _ his political orientation. He was an aide to President Roh and fought for the same cause as President Moon.
It caused political pundits and those who know him to scratch their heads, when he also made himself available as Park's prime minister and then took the job of the beleaguered conservative party's emergency committee. Was it his transformation?
"No, I was a conservative at heart when I worked for Roh. Roh was a big enough vessel to hold me and allow me to push for the conservative agenda _ such as the ROK-U.S. free trade agreement," he said.
"If I had become Park's prime minister, I would have tried to reduce the political vacuum left by the impeachment," he said. Kim's nomination was withdrawn and Hwang, now the LKP chairman, was appointed.
Finishing his stint and opting not to compete for the party's chairmanship, he said that he would stay in the U.S. for a couple of months, writing a book of essays about his family and thinking of his future.
"The party needs a long-term vision, something that the lawmakers can't afford to do because of their busy daily engagements," he said.
By the tone of his remarks, the likelihood is that he won't go astray from the politics and, if he does, he will come back. I smelt politics on him.
