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Shift the politics of subtraction to the politics of addition

Published: 23 Dec. 2024, 19:06

Chang Se-jeong
The author is an editorial writer for the JoongAng Ilbo.

The joint investigation team probing the alleged illegality of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s decision on Dec. 3 to declare emergency martial law sent a second summons to him on Dec. 20. Following the National Assembly’s passage of the motion to impeach Yoon on Dec. 14, Yoon was notified that he must submit to the investigation on Christmas Day as a suspect of high treason and abuse of power. Yoon did not respond to the first summons on Dec. 18, so it remains to be seen if he will submit to the notice this time. Yoon, who turned 64 on Dec. 18, is receiving the worst Christmas present of his life.

What is Yoon — who has been suspended from office and is now virtually locked up in the presidential residence — thinking about? Is he lamenting that the gamble of martial law that he risked everything on was thwarted due poor execution, or is he resenting the public for their inability to understand his serious intentions to catch all the election fraudsters and clean up the mess?

Yoon must keep his promise to “not evade legal and political responsibility for the declaration of martial law” in his statement to the nation on Dec. 7. If he feels any sense of responsibility, he should diligently submit to the investigation, as people have been divided into pro-impeachment and anti-impeachment groups and staging street rallies despite cold weather. At the same time, Yoon must take time to reflect on how situation came to this point by thoroughly revisiting what had happened.

When Yoon stopped the Moon Jae-in administration from producing a successor — much to the disappointment of the people — and took office in May 2022, he was proud. Although he won the presidential election by a narrow margin of 0.73 percentage points, his approval rating peaked at 53 percent in the second week of June that year. His party swept the June 1 local elections. The conservatives, which had been in chaos since the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye in 2017, realigned and successfully returned to power in just five years.

The conservatives, who had been pushed out from the center since Park’s impeachment, presented a new political product of “Prosecutor-general Yoon Suk Yeol, who challenged the reckless state affairs of the Moon administration.” Yoon received election strategy help from Lee Jun-seok and Kim Chong-in and merged with Ahn Cheol-soo’s centrist campaign at the last minute to win the presidential race.

However, intoxicated with the unexpected victory and overconfidence, the Yoon administration soon started down a downward spiral and ultimately faced impeachment. The reason for its failure lies in Yoon’s politics of subtraction, unwilling to embrace even key conservative politicians for attempting to challenge him.

In July 2022, a month after the local election victory, the Ethics Committee of the People Power Party (PPP) handed down a six-month suspension of party membership to Lee Jun-seok, then the chairman of the party, who had been feuding with Yoon. Lee left the PPP ahead of the April 10 parliamentary elections. With Yoon in control of the ruling party, the PPP has been operating without a standing chairman for the past two and a half years, while Joo Ho-young, Chung Jin-suk and Han Dong-hoon served as acting leaders. Abnormality was a norm for the party.

After promising a joint government during the presidential campaign, Yoon has thoroughly excluded Ahn from running the government after he took power. Enraged, Ahn publicly supported Yoon’s impeachment and cast his vote during the National Assembly’s session. The conflict between Yoon and the ruling party was exposed during the legislative election period and the public felt more anxiety than stability as they watched the ruling party. After several close calls, Yoon and Han finally split with the impeachment. The rumors of Yoon’s orders to arrest or assassinate Han during emergency martial law weren’t completely groundless.

Isolated, Yoon probably wanted to escape from his crisis by declaring martial law. He probably wanted to remove Lee Jae-myung’s Democratic Party (DP), which had been obstructing his government in every way, and Han simultaneously. But that is an undemocratic and anachronistic delusion. Some say that Yoon was blinded by YouTube’s algorithm and was suffering from drinking problems, but the fundamental problem is the old, dysfunctional style of leadership that failed to embody democracy and freedom.

The conservative forces seem to have returned to the disastrous level of the impeachment of Park in early 2017. The situation is much harsher and more desperate than it was then, and some say that conservative politicians are now abolished. There are laments that the constitutional values and liberal democracy that conservatives have been promoting are about to have a funeral.

Will conservatives perish like this? Only when the fake conservatives die will the real conservatives live. Fairness and common sense must be revived. They must face any independent counsel probes whether it was to investigate Yoon’s treason charges or Kim Keon Hee’s corruption allegations.

Opportunists who are plotting internal divisions and looking out for their own political futures must be removed. The dignity of conservatives that fake conservatives have tarnished must be revived and cleaned. The possibility of a snap election is being discussed as Yoon’s impeachment is being reviewed by the Constitutional Court. The late President Syngman Rhee was right. United we survive, divided we all die. We must change the politics of subtraction to the politics of addition. Only then will Korea live.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.

The dignity of the conservatives that the fake conservatives have tarnished must be revived and cleaned.