(MENAFN-Asia Times)
SEOUL – Although he was warned of a possible “annihilation” through the not-so-friendly neighbor Kim Jong Un, South Korea’s conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol probably has plenty of good news to ponder.
The national flagship, Samsung Electronics, reported its second-largest quarterly profit: 11. 1 trillion won, up 15. 2% from a year earlier. And the expansion of national GDP this year is expected to reach an estimated 2. 7%, according to the IMF.
In terms of global prestige, Yoon, the first for a South Korean president, was invited to this year’s NATO summit in Madrid. It also receives a revolving door of high-level climbers from its main ally: after President Joe Biden’s stopover in Seoul. In May, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived this month and Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland arrived in town this week.
All very presidential and positive. However, Yoon’s approval score has fallen below 30% according to a Gallup ballot reported (July 29) through the Yonhap News Agency.
For such an early leader, Yoon took office on May 10, those numbers are unprecedented. And what if he has already lost the popular mandate to govern so early in his term?
This political truth would certainly not be well received in Washington. Yoon, after all, has grown closer to the United States: preaching the values of freedom, democracy, and human rights; helping Ukraine by adding through arms sales to NATO allies; agree to resume the summer joint military exercises, despite Kim’s bluster; and promising for relations with Japan.
Certainly, the political misfortune of a great friend of the United States is unique at this time.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden publicly declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin could remain in power. Indeed, Putin remains firmly entrenched, while anti-Putin American allies are collapsing to the left.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticized for his endless lies and cover-ups. In Italy, President Mario Draghi fell from power, in part because of his anti-Russia stance.
Certainly, Yoon is, at least still, headed towards the abyss that sank Johnson and Draghi. But its nosedive is unlikely to facilitate the implementation of politically risky pro-Japanese, pro-American or anti-North Korean policies.
Gallup found today that only 28 percent approve of Yoon’s policies, compared to 68 percent who oppose them. According to a Gallup poll of Korean presidents at the end of their term through local outlet Joongang Ilbo, Yoon’s numbers are closer to the odds. of those who are about to leave than to a newcomer with a new electoral mandate.
Since Korean presidents are constitutionally limited to periods of singleness, the lame duck of the end of the period necessarily means that their dictates can be ignored or slowed down through a lethargic bureaucracy, their strength diminishing.
The Joongang found that approval rates at the end of the term of presidents who were in office between 1998 and 2017 were 24%, 27%, 24% and five%. (This last five% is an anomaly: then-President Park Geun-hye was indicted and left the workplace following protests by a million people. )
Yoon’s quick predecessor came out with a stronger mandate.
Although Moon Jae-in went through the messes of several high-profile policies, in particular, his reach in North Korea and his efforts to signal the real estate market, a perennial political hot potato, he resigned with a 45% rating.
But, beyond ultra-hardcore and for most right-wing seniors who insist Moon is a “red” coconut traitor, most Koreans saw Moon as an affable leader who had dealt smoothly with the covid pandemic.
Many analyses point to the fact that Yoon faces a hostile National Assembly, at least, until the 2024 parliamentary elections.
In fact, a scenario in which one has the presidency and the other has the (unicameral) legislature is the classic balance of forces in South Korean democratic politics.
What is undeniable is that he won the presidency by a hair, with a margin of less than 1%.
Given this, it is that he introduced his management with a significant outlay of rare political capital: an unnecessary and unjustified transfer of the workplace and presidential apartment outside its same old location and built for that purpose, the Blue House, to a website of the daily work department.
A stated purpose of leaving the closed Blue House leaning against the mountain to “get closer to the people”. In this regard, Yoon did something even more shocking: he instituted a normal morning Q&A consultation with the media they expected.
Previous Korean presidents tended to hold a New Year’s press conference, offering a dash of exclusive interviews the rest of the year, regularly with questions submitted in advance, and that was it. The “knock on the door” just wasn’t a media culture here.
Yoon turned everything around. His improvised technique for answering journalists’ questions deserves to have been a breath of new air. Unfortunately, without a script he seemed unprofessional, and his improvised and unprepared responses were criticized even among members of his own party.
There are also substantive issues. Gallup found that many disapproved of Yoon because of economic concerns. This is not surprising: Korea, an energy importer, is suffering from the rise in energy costs that followed the standoff in Ukraine.
Korea’s consumer price index (CPI) rose 6% year-on-year in June, its highest point since the traumatic Asian currency crisis of November 1998. they have a harder time coping with their debts.
Gallup found that there is also controversy over staff appointments. These are not unusual scarecrows in Korean politics, yet Yoon has been criticized for hitting so many former prosecutors in major places.
There is also discontent among the public and the police over the mention of a police oversight workplace, leading to another perennial Korean controversy: the policy of law enforcement agencies.
Another challenge Gallup uncovered regarding Yoon’s inexperience, which turned out to be dubious.
Unlike Moon, who, despite his modest stature, walked in an aura of charisma, perhaps the sum of years of political delight, Yoon did not have an intelligent political religion before his presidential run. His professional experience in the most sensitive of elitists however, the faceless ranks of the office of the national prosecutor, a hard and not at all soft organization.
At the NATO summit, Yoon photographed with a distasteful smile as he reached out to squeeze Biden’s flesh. It seemed that Biden was about to greet Yoon, but in fact, he was approaching another participant.
Although it was a diplomatic mistake by the former US president, Yoon’s embarrassing photo mocked when it circulated on all Korean media and social networks.
She has been accused of falsifying segments of her resume, providing positions to cronies, and profiting from internal data — those are all common practices in Korean politics.
The biggest challenge is that Kim is very different from the past first, they tend to be matron figures who blend in with her husband’s shadow.
Eleven years younger than Yoon, Kim looks much younger, dresses like a celebrity, and has brought a high-profile technique into his public service. Disapproval simmered and the media approached.
All of this provides abundant ammunition for Yoon’s critics among the electorate.
A pro-Moon voter who runs a design firm stormed Seoul: “He speaks badly, walks like a gangster, and his wife is embarrassed!”
“He has great self-confidence around him, but he is uncompromising, he doesn’t pay attention to the other people around him,” Kim Sung-nam, an Inchon translator who voted against Yoon, told the Asia Times. suggests that he beautifies his image, but he has a strange Trumpian attitude: ‘I’m the president and I’m running this show!'”
Internal controversies within Yoon’s People’s Power Party don’t help either. The PPP saw the young party leader resign amid allegations of sexual abuse. This could potentially erode Yoon among men in their twenties, a politically active cohort.
What was so fast?
“The general wisdom is that Yoon inherited the problems,” Michael Breen of The New Koreans told Asia Times. “We thought that coming out of Covid, we were free, but this is the time for economic recovery and war in Ukraine. it has come with all its consequences.
“There are a lot of issues to deal with and there’s not a strong sense of leadership to advise us,” Breen said.
Kim, the translator, agreed. ” He doesn’t seem to know what to do,” he said. “Without having a macro direction, without a general policy, the Yoon government proposes that. “
If Kim is right, Korean democracy is heading into uncharted waters. For a country with a leadership culture and top-down trade policy, it has never been led by a president without powers so early in his term.
But Breen responds that the lame duck thing has less to do with the popularity of the polls than with the fact that Korean presidents are running the show for a five-year period of singleness.
“In the last year [of the presidency], everyone is thinking about who the next leader will be, which means that the existing leader has no authority to do anything,” Breen said. “But I don’t think that applies now. Yoon still has more than 4 years ahead of him.
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