[Editorial] Energizing Korea’s Right

The New Right Foundation, aimed at systemizing the New Right Movement’s ideology, was launched yesterday. The movement has seen positive results since its start at the end of 2004.

The movement took on those who challenge Korea’s national foundation and helped the public better understand the market economy.

For all the meaningful success, the movement should do more to overcome predominantly leftist social structures and provide an environment conducive to balanced and rational public discussion. It should propose compelling alternative policies by highlighting its clear and concrete ideology with more consolidated power and efforts. In this regard, the embarkation of the foundation is a necessary step in the right direction toward the New Right’s future as a mass movement.

The foundation defines itself as a group which shares the same basis of a democratic movement with those in power, but which pursues liberalistic reform by straightening the ideological absurdities of the powers-that-be. The New Right flatly rejects the authoritarianism and corruption of the old guard.

Its foundation must exhibit the difference and superiority of a movement through an ideological platform and actual policies. It should bring a public consensus that free democracy and market economy are the spirit of the 21st Century.

Against this backdrop, the New Right Foundation has declared itself to be an ideological group. Apparently this is a realistic approach to distance itself from politics. Its commitment to a re-examination of Korean modern history is laudable.

Seoul National University Professor Emeritus Ahn Byeong-jik, named the president of the foundation, said, “The incumbent government’s weakest link is presenting ‘falsehoods’ and denying truth.” The “falsehoods” stand for the government’s divisive view that modern history is consisted of imperialist aggression, the national independence movement and nothing more.

Ahn warned that recognizing just aggression and resistance in history might lead us to become another North Korea, whose excessive emphasis on “us” as opposed to “them” drove that nation to despair and agony. That historic view of going against the world is bound to fail, said Ahn.

The foundation is also planning to set up a research center and run education programs by republishing the quarterly “Zeitgeist.” The leftist historic view is deep-rooted in our society. However, this imbalance can be redressed if the public is convinced with truthful appeals by the new right. Conservatives other than the new right should also endorse the movement, along with painstaking efforts for renewing themselves. They should no longer sit back and watch idly social values crumble.