[Column] Those days and today

The movie ``Buddies`` is all the rage. It is emerging as a blockbuster attracting about 4 million over the past several weeks since its release. Its attraction seems to be a mixture of such ingredients as memories of the 1970s and `80s, when students wore black school uniforms, explosive scenes giving vent to the strain and stress of the reality of the day, and nostalgia for ingenuous friendship and kinship. Some might have sweet memories of the time, while others might have dark and painful memories of the political and social conditions of the time.

Some of the recent events seem to re-enact the sights and sounds of those days over 20 years ago in near black-and-white representations. The videotapes of indiscriminate and brutal clamp downs on Daewoo workers by riot police are reminiscent of the films of the YH incident involving women unionists in 1979 or the bloody Kwangju incident of May 1980.

In the 1970s a novel by Cho Se-Hee titled, ``A Small Ball Shot Up by a Midget,`` was the leading bestseller because of its vivid portrayal of the underprivileged people alienated in the course of industrialization. Today`s bestseller might be ``Will Ya Come Over to Meokko`s,`` a story written by Lee Man-Gyo on the impoverished life of the common man existing in the aftermath of the financial crisis of late 1990s. This is a society in which more than 1 million healthy youths are unemployed, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer, going through the bailout by the IMF, and more parents are sending their children abroad to study out of discontent at the inadequacy of educational opportunities here. Politics that gave more disappointment than hope in those days is here to stay. Some of its outward changes have not been accompanied by any real inward changes.

There no longer are Namsan or Seobinggo barracks of the state intelligence agency, where journalists used to be taken arbitrarily for questioning and torture by secret agents wearing dark sunglasses -- for having spoken up against government policies. But there exist a system of ``lawfully`` pursuing the bank accounts of newspapermen to scare and harass them, and a press directive subjecting newspapers to tax audit by way of browbeating and taming; there is underway a ``press reform`` behind which some front organizations in the media are rallying to echo the voice of the government.

A few shifts of administrations have taken place in the meantime, leading to the incumbent ``government of the people.`` The big players on the stage remain quite the same. Those figures, who had been active through different stages of military and authoritarian governments, emerged as leaders of the coalition on the pretext of policy alliance. Letting targets of housecleaning to play the leading role of house cleaners never will get the job of cleaning done.

More remarkably, a few old-guard politicians, posing as leaders of the coalition or partnership, are presenting themselves as ``king makers`` of late. We feel tempted to question on what strength they could play a king-maker role. Suppose they could make it. A king to be enthroned by these dubious king makers is most likely to lead this country to nowhere in the 21st century.

We have good reason to worry. Why can`t the current democratic government that came out of a peaceful political change after 50 years of straightening out politics? A recent utterance made by a former prime minister might provide a clue to the answer.

``Kim Young-Sam and Kim Dae_Jung became presidents after going through all sorts of hardships and difficulties, yet the blights of the political community are there as before. To my way of thinking, the two presidents praised democracy as part of their sloganeering to seize power, lacking in profound understanding of and strategies for practicing it.``

The two leaders who claim to have devoted their whole lives to a struggle for democratization, and particularly the incumbent President Kim, who has been honored with a Nobel Peace Prize, hardly can accept that verdict. However, the two Kims cannot shirk from the blame for delaying democratization in the spring of 1980 and in the presidential race of 1987 by failing to rally behind the cause of democratization because of their greed for power and personal gains.

YS undertook a union of three political parties, while DJ built an alliance of three parties to embrace old-guard politicians the two had denounced as anti-reformist in a partisan maneuver running counter to the wave of democratization.

For all their brilliant records of fighting for democracy, the two Kims exhibit political behavior and leadership patterns of highly authoritarian and dogmatic natures far removed from the essence of democracy. Accordingly, the reforms they profess cannot but have their limits. This is the reason for the failure of their loud drive for democratization and political reform.

Unless President Kim comes up with a democratic leadership born of humble soul-searching and based on open-minded dialogue, debate, compromise and concession with his critics the crisis of today would hardly pass.

Euh Kyong-Tack, Chief editorial writer

euhkt@donga.com