South Korea’s new president must embrace the people of North Korea

If democracy, as Winston Churchill once mused, is indeed the “worst form of government except all those already tried,” then South Koreans can take comfort in having elected the least undesirable candidate among all contenders for the presidency.

On Wednesday, Yoon Suk-yeol, a former top prosecutor and political novice, prevailed over the smooth-talking Lee Jae-Myung, a former mayor and governor. In garnering 48.56 percent of the total votes to Lee’s 47.83 percent — 247,077 more votes, with a 0.73 percentage points differential — Yoon has set a Korean record for the slimmest margin of victory in a presidential election.

Compared with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s unbroken streak of 100 percent votes and approval ratings, or even the more earthly 2020 win by President Biden with 51.3 percent of the votes, Yoon’s numbers appear modest. But they are higher than both Donald’s Trump’s mark (45.9 percent) and Hillary Clinton’s (48.0 percent) in the 2016 race. More importantly, Yoon’s tally is markedly higher than the outgoing President Moon Jae-In’s in 2017, when he won with a mere 41.09 percent. And Yoon has won nearly 3 million more ballots than Moon did five years ago (16.4 million v. 13.4 million). The difference gives Yoon the mandate and imperative, once he assumes office on May 10, to redirect his democratic nation from the undemocratic course chosen by his soon-to-be predecessor.

In fact, it is Moon’s distinctly undistinguished legacy and the public’s thirst for change, rather than any discernible political acumen on Yoon’s part, that has carried the former prosecutor general to victory.

Senior South Korean prosecutors long have been stereotyped, with some basis, as “stiff-necked.” Yoon lends himself to the stereotype. He comes across not only as imperious and inflexible but also prone to gaffes and insensitive remarks. On the other hand, he has doggedly abided by principles. As a prosecutor, he investigated his nation’s spy chief for election-meddling. In 2017, he sought the maximum sentence of 30 years for the impeached President Park Geun Hye. Park was sentenced at first to 30 years for bribery and corruption, before her sentence was reduced to 20 years. In connection to Park’s case, Yoon also indicted the head of Samsung Electronics. Later, Yoon had another former president, Lee Myung-Bak, arrested for corruption.

Impressed by Yoon’s utility in Moon’s campaign of “eradicating deeply-rooted evils” — also known as political revenge against opponents — in July 2019, Moon appointed Yoon as prosecutor general. The president called on Yoon to be “strict” even with the powers-that-be. The next month, much to Moon’s surprise, Yoon quite literally carried out his exhortation. He took the same hard-nosed stance even against Cho Kuk, Moon’s confidant and Justice Minister. Much to Moon’s chagrin, Yoon indicted Cho (and his wife) for alleged abuse of power, falsification of records, graft, embezzlement and corruption. Last year, Cho’s wife was sentenced to four years in prison; Cho’s case is still pending.

It is the public’s appreciation for Yoon’s principles — that he does not yield to political pressure — that has made Yoon, a relatively unknown and visibly unsmooth political neophyte, into the president-elect. This perception matters and will be an asset throughout Yoon’s presidency, for South Korea faces numerous domestic and foreign challenges.

First, Yoon must reverse South Korea’s democratic backsliding under Moon, who has waged an impressive war on the universal freedoms of speech and information. Moon has sued private citizens for mocking him. A young man was found by a court criminally liable for placing posters lampooning Moon on an open college campus. Moon sued another man for distributing near the national assembly leaflets insulting him in 2019, but later dropped the lawsuit. Moon has used South Korea’s notorious libel/slander laws, which are so overly broad as to intimidate and censor private and media statements with a criminal penalty, to imprison a man who once called him a “communist.”  

Moon also took cues from North Korean leadership to ram through the National Assembly a law that criminalizes sending into North Korea any item with an exchange value, including cash and other means of property gains. This “gag law,” as a senior British parliamentarian called it, was dictated by Kim Jong Un’s sister, Yo Jong, in a written statement issued on June 4, 2020. Minutes later, Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which governs Seoul’s relationship with Pyongyang, promised to work on it. Within the month, Moon’s point man on the task, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, proposed a bill.   

Moon, a former human rights lawyer, also waged war on human rights. Since 2017, his administration has cut funding to nongovernmental organizations that research human rights abuses, which, according to a 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry, are crimes against humanity in a category of one. The Moon administration has conducted pretextual audits of those groups, which human rights organizations around the world have denounced.

Yoon must do much more than just rectify these injustices. He needs to address what I called on the newly-elected South Korean leader 10 years ago to tackle — “the greatest moral challenge to the Korean nation: alleviating the tremendous suffering of fellow Koreans in North Korea.”

The long-suffering people of North Korea need a strong South Korean leader who can articulate the nature of their oppressors, as well as the scale and severity of the cruel repression the Kim regime has meted out for more than seven decades. They need a leader who can raise awareness of the extreme human rights violations in the North and instill empathy in the South Korean public and the world at large. The entire Korean nation needs a leader who can define a path to greater freedom and information for the North Korean people and, eventually, their liberation through a peaceful reunification with the South. 

To this end, Yoon can start by doing the very opposite of Moon’s policies: vastly increase funding for radio broadcasts and other information transmission efforts across the border; embrace North Korean escapees by expanding resettlement programs and financial support; and take the lead at the United Nations and in other international forums to call the Kim regime out on its manifold crimes. In sum, normalize both domestic and international conversations on the North Korean human rights issue with sustained financial support and public diplomacy.

Such efforts will raise tension with the North’s criminal regime. The Kim regime will bristle. It will call Yoon vile names. And it will use the Yoon administration’s defense of human rights to justify its crimes and military provocations. But the absence of justice in inter-Korean relations is a greater problem than the presence of tension. There can be no justice without freedom, and no true peace without justice. 

If Yoon can muster up the moral courage to call on Kim to tear down his inhumane gulags — which, to date, no South Korean leader has — and, with the same kind of loyalty to principles he has shown throughout his career, support during his single five-year term the invaluable work of human rights activists who seek to help, save and liberate the enslaved people of North Korea, then his will be a legacy no less renowned than that of any brave and inspiring wartime leader. 

Sung-Yoon Lee is Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies and assistant professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and faculty associate at the U.S.-Japan Program, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Follow him on Twitter @SungYoonLee1.