Why replacing South Korean president is no walk in the park
With President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, South Koreans have an unenviable choice: the ‘nowhere man’, the Pyongyang stooge or Korea’s ‘Bernie Sanders’
The tragedy of South Korean President Park Geun-hye is in its third and final act. She has been impeached by an overwhelming margin – 234 votes. Her power will now be suspended and the Constitutional Court will determine whether to uphold the motion. Meanwhile, South Koreans will have 60 days to choose her successor, but given the rank of top contenders, that’s easier said than done. Incidentally, all her probable alternatives work great for China – if not so much for South Korea.
Those most likely to replace Park are UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, stepping down at the end of the month, who would probably represent the president’s conservative Saenuri Party; Moon Jae-in, former leader of the progressive Minjoo Party; and Ahn Cheol-soo, founder of the centrist People’s Party.
Ban was named by The Economist as “the dullest – and among the worst” secretary generals to ever hold the UN office, Moon has been described by opponents as a North Korean stooge and Ahn recently resigned from his post amid a kickback scandal. Ban is perhaps the best bet, merely in terms of popular appeal, provided the scandal surrounding Park doesn’t bring him down with her. But he’s probably not the best option for Koreans.
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Even those who have worked with Ban have little good to say. In 2009, Mona Juul, a Norwegian representative to the UN, sent out a memo in which she called Ban “spineless” and said he shrank from defending human rights in places like Myanmar. Later, Inga-Britt Ahlenius, then head of the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services, filed a report in which she said Ban’s office had “no transparency”.
“Ban lacks the moral leadership of a [Dag] Hammarskjold or a [Kofi] Annan,” wrote James Traub in a July 2010 piece for Foreign Policy. Traub noted the Juul memo and the Ahlenius report, and painted a picture of a man completely in over his head or, worse, indifferent. More likely Ban, like Beijing, favours non-interventionism. But what South Korea needs most, especially in the wake of Park’s scandal, and without the promise of moral leadership from the US any time soon, is someone with a shockproof moral compass. The direction that the country needs isn’t likely to come from someone who has earned himself the nickname “Nowhere Man”.
His non-interventionism, however, would make him an attractive candidate from Beijing’s perspective. For one thing, Ban has refused to acknowledge Taiwan, which, especially after US president-elect Donald Trump’s recent phone call with the Taiwanese president, could be an especially important trait in China’s view.