[Column] Will hatred politics really end?

Moon Byung-joo
The author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.

It is easy and effective. The temptation to make comments and do things that reveal hatred is difficult to control, just like a drug. Politicians’ promises to stay away from the temptation can hardly be taken seriously for the same reason.

On Jan. 30, a nonpartisan political reform group of 131 lawmakers was launched. Their goal is to overcome the politics of extreme confrontation and hatred. The meeting was attended by leaders from all the major parties, including National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo, acting head of the People Power Party (PPP) Chung Jin-suk, Democratic Party (DP) Chair Lee Jae-myung and Justice Party Chairwoman Lee Jung-mi.

It is encouraging that such a group was formed. The meeting of the bipartisan group showed that our politicians were aware of the need to attract the people’s attention due to the deepening public distrust with politics. Some interpreted the meeting as a starting point to reform the governing system through electoral reform or Constitutional amendments.

But the meeting will likely yield little but some political shows. On Saturday, the DP held a massive rally to “condemn the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s failure and the prosecution-based dictatorship” in central Seoul. The rally was aimed at attacking the prosecution’s investigation targeting Chairman Lee. As the DP held the protest to shield Lee from the probe, it could turn into another “Cho Kuk” crisis. After DP lawmakers made speeches on the podium, hateful comments from both sides were plastered on social media.

Earlier, loyalists of Lee posted a list of DP lawmakers who accompanied him to the prosecution office and made comments attacking the prosecution on the bulletin boards of media outlets, stirring a controversy inside the party. The list named 169 DP lawmakers and marked whether they had escorted Lee when he was summoned for a questioning at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office last month and whether they had made remarks criticizing the prosecution. The offices of lawmakers who didn’t do so — and the mobile phones of those lawmakers — were bombarded with hostile text messages. Lee joined the chorus by saying, “If you are a true comrade, you should stop criticisms and attacks on our side.”

Through the last presidential election, Lee’s loyal supporters, dubbed the “daughters of reform,” solidified the “fandom politics” based on hostility toward Lee’s opponents. Online comments are the most popular means. According to a seminar in Jan. 31 hosted by Sungkyunkwan University and the Korean Society for Journalism & Communication, Prof. Lee Jae-kook’s team presented an analysis of the online comments inciting insults, contempt and hatred posted on major news portal sites during the last presidential election. Of the 27 million posts, about 14 million included such expressions.

Comments linked to then presidential candidate Yoon Suk Yeol were largely about his wife and the PPP while most of the comments linked to Lee were about his criminal history and his use of abusive language. During the presidential primary too, Lee’s supporters did not hesitate to use hateful language to attack supporters of Lee Nak-yon, a rival of Lee. One of the hateful expressions they used to attack Lee Nak-yon supporters was “watermelon.” The term had been widely used by the far-right to insult people from the Jeolla region over the 1980 Gwangju democracy movement.

Politicians are ultimately responsible for the politics of hatred, which is inseparable from fandom politics. Rep. Kim Eui-kyeom of the DP had raised the suspicion that Yoon had attended a drinking party with a group of lawyers from the country’s largest law firm, even without checking facts. Rep. Jang Kyung-tae of the DP criticized President Yoon’s wife for visiting the house of a child with heart disease in Cambodia as “poverty porn.” The remarks from the two DP lawmakers were intended to fuel hatred toward President Yoon and the first lady to benefit from it.

The case of former Justice Minister Cho, convicted of most charges concerning academic fraud surrounding his children’s college admissions, is similar. Politicians had mobilized their supporters to stage massive rallies near the prosecution’s office by resorting to emotional, hateful expressions for their political gains, regardless of the facts. Even coworkers and families were split over the case and people with different opinions were simply labeled “antidemocratic and thoughtless” at the time.

Political polarization only fuels hate politics. The vicious cycle of suppressing the centrist voices will expand during this process. The harsh reality of the Korean politics is that aggressive supporters win. As the prosecution’s investigation of Lee is progressing and as the general election draws near, the general public will most likely suffer from the voices of hatred that demands extreme political decisions. We hope the nonpartisan political reform group will faithfully complete their mission to end the hate politics.