What to do with the dino in Yeouido?

Choi Hoon
The author is the chief editor of the JoongAng Ilbo.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the discovery of dinosaur fossils in Britain in 1824. A giant dinosaur had a brain the size of an adult human’s brain. The Jurassic Park movies sparked imagination of the enormous creatures coordinating hunts. Scientists believed that dinosaurs like the T-Rex could have been as intelligent as baboons with an IQ of 50 to 70. But a recent study by British and German universities challenged the theory and concluded that the T-Rex was no smarter than a reptile or crocodile. To the dismay of young fans, dinosaurs could have simply been ferocious beasts gorging everything they saw for their survival.

The majority Democratic Party (DP) commanding 171 seats — or 192 when including splinter opposition parties — in the 300-member National Assembly resembles a pack of predatory dinosaurs roaming around Yeouido all day looking for prey. On top of justifying themselves with confirmation bias and hating people against them, the flock is now under the aggression bias, having paranoia to attack the opponent as if their existence is at threat.

DP leader Lee Jae-myung stirred up his army by ordering a speedy attack on the governing party just like the Mongol cavalry. Mongol warriors known for their speed, mobility and ferocity left behind a tragic trail of destruction and devastation. Nothing was left after their attacks, which triggered the Yellow Peril among Europeans. I hope the DP chief used the rhetoric to emphasize just the speed of the Mongol cavalry.

Lee’s brigade is bent on going after the president, government ministers, prosecutors and ruling party members, or whoever gets in the way of their boss, through impeachment and special counsel investigations. The opposition has a duty to keep the sitting power in check, but the DP wants to wipe out the entire governing front.

DP Rep. Jung Cheong-rae, who took the helm of the mighty Legislation and Judiciary Committee, is building a fortress to protect his boss from judicial risks that can hamper Lee’s presidential bid. Despite its majority status in the legislature, the DP is readying mass rallies to muster support for its methodical campaign to end the conservative administration. Except for the diehard fans of Lee, this cannot be what voters expected from the DP when they chose it over the ruling party in the last parliamentary elections.

The DP’s campaign to intimidate the judiciary and the media can seriously undermine the core principles of democracy — the separation of power. Lee even sneered at the press, calling them “pets of the prosecution.” But humans differ from animals because they can feel shame.

Those who devoted their youthful years to fighting for justice and democracy are now busy trying to win favor with Lee, who did little in contributing to the country’s progress toward democracy. Those who were once dubbed warriors of democracy turned into sycophants to survive in a leviathan party under Lee’s dictatorship. Even former Rep. Woo Sang-ho, a key figure in the 1980s democracy movement, lamented that many of his generation ended up cementing a factional base in the DP while keeping their opinions to themselves to not upset the president after the party took power.

Killer and predatory instincts aside, I wonder about the intelligence of this dinosaur party. The liberal values lie in the defense of the weak through the amelioration of disparities. Regardless of its chant to uphold its values, the DP made home prices unattainable for the working class through punitive real estate taxes after it took power. With its unique “ingenuity,” the party even stopped people from selling their homes with a heavy capital gains tax and cut off supplies for new homes. It neglected the basic supply-demand principle. The spike in the minimum wage to improve workers’ incomes only ended up hardening other weaker parties such as the self-employed and small merchants. The hardships of the self-employed and irregular workers worsened because the party’s policies only favored labor unions enjoying big salaries and job security at large companies.

The party now champions basic income, subsidies for loans, housing, childcare, youth living expenses and tuitions, as well as insurance coverage extending to sanitary napkins and hair loss treatment.

DP lawmakers — most of whom had never earned money through hard labor — are exceptionally liberal on spending government funds and pay little heed to the means of financing. We must ask what they have done to contribute to the national wealth.

If they are true to their progressive genes, they should have joined the international trend to reform industrial policies and fixed regulations to hone national competitiveness. Since they do not care to learn and stay abreast of the times, they are dubbed as third-rate liberals who should have gone extinct a long time ago. After retirement, former liberal president Roh Moo-hyun said that the liberals preoccupied with the outdated dogma are bound to lose in the market.

The DP grabbing 57 percent of the legislature won just 27 percent of support from the public, according to a recent poll. It is in no position to ridicule President Yoon’s approval rating at 26 percent. Public sentiment cannot be molded to the DP’s wishes, as the public will be the judges of the dinosaur when the time comes.