Unauthorized email Access - It's a whole lot worse in South Korea

[fountainhall]

When you are in politics, email servers are not your only concern. Tablets are a mine of information if you are stupid enough to leave one lying around. And it is a Samsung Galaxy tablet that is at the heart of South Korea's biggest political scandal for a great many years.

Anyone reading the newspapers will know that another democratically elected President in Asia is now in deep shit. Huge demonstrations that she step down are now getting even bigger by the day. Whether she can remain in office till the end of her term at the end of next year is seriously in doubt.

Corruption in Korean politics both before and after military rule is more or less the norm. Every President and/or his family have been indicted for major fraud after stepping down. This time, though, the corruption seems to have seeped into the President's very consciousness and it is this that makes the case so different. Koreans are used to fraud - but not this.

President Park Geun-hye came to office 4 years ago. Her father was the military dictator of South Korea until he was assassinated by the head of the Korean CIA in 1979. 4 years earlier, a North Korean spy had shot her mother - her father having been the intended target. Soon after her mother's death, she was approached by a charlatan, a man claiming to be the head of a cult, a pastor with healing powers, Choi Tae-min, despite his only ever having worked in a soap factory, a small newspaper and as a soldier and policeman. He had no religious training whatever.

Choi claimed that the soul of Park's mother had visited him and told him she was not really dead. She had merely moved out of the way to let Park take her shoes and become effectively First Lady. That started an unholy alliance. Choi set up a number of phoney foundations which Park nominally chaired, thereby making himself a fortune and gaining huge influence. Choi's daughter became involved, Choi Soon-Sil. The influence peddling became so great that even her father tried to stop it, without effect.

By 1998, with her father and the cult leader both dead, Park won election to parliament. By now she was deeply under the influence of Soon-sil. This grew exponentially when Park became President. Even before then, the USA was clearly worried as evidenced in a wikileaks cable from the US Ambassador in 2007 -


"Rumors are rife that the late pastor had complete control over Park's body and soul during her formative years and that his children accumulated enormous wealth as a result
Once Park was in power, Choi continued her father's ways, peddling influence and extorting many tens of millions from companies. Worse, Choi was effectively controlling Presidential policy. Every day she received a huge stack of policy briefs which would then be discussed within her own inner circle, one that included a gigolo (!) and the video director said of a K-Pop group. Many of the papers were highly confidential, many dealing with relations with North Korea.

For years Park's aides complained that the drafts they had made of speeches she was to give came back more or less as gibberish - Choi having polished them up!

Using her influence, Choi got her daughter into the most prestigious Woman's University despite her very poor grades. This caused a mini scandal which grew over time. To escape the heat, Choi and her daughter scuppered off to Germany - inexplicably leaving behind in her office the Galaxy pad containing masses of Presidential material, none of it encrypted. This was discovered by a cable TV network a week ago, whereafter the shit hit the fan in a very big way. The following day, Park made one of those grovelling apologies so common in Korea and Japan followed by a deep bow. But it was too late. The public was simply incredulous!

That a President would line her own pockets is one thing. That a President would be so under the influence of the daughter of a charlatan who claimed to speak to her long dead mother and at the same time stand by as she and her father became very rich, to say nothing of permitting Choi access to state papers is entirely another - and one Koreans find repugnant.

Today's newspapers claim Choi has returned to South Korea to face charges. To try to weather the storm, Park has also fired a number of her closet aides. But it's unlikely to work. Either she will be impeached, or more likely the opposition will let her historically low opinion ratings fall further and thereby ensure their candidate wins at the next Presidential election.

If South Korea was well away from North Korea's nukes, perhaps matters would not be so utterly disturbing and disgraceful. But Seoul is just down the road from Pyongyang. And this is yet another example of democracy in Asia ending up with top elected officials who are both corrupt and quite possibly destabilizing to not just the rest if Asia but also the world.

And we all thought Duterte in the Philippines was about as bad as you can get!

[Old git]

So South Korea elevates to high office someone who's clearly bent and a close relative of a former president - the Americans would never do that - would they...?

When the people of the Philippines elected Duterte they knew exactly what they were getting - disturbing perhaps, but maybe they had tired of politicians who make false promises whilst lining their pockets.

He promised the extra-judicicial killing of scum when he was elected and now appears to be delivering. International groups who express outrage at that have no mandate - unlike Duterte..

[fountainhall]

Indeed the Filipinos did know more or less what they were getting. But for how long will they put up with Duterte? Estrada became President riding on the crest of a popular wave (as actors tend to do) and then ended up in jail after being ousted from power. I guess it won't be long before that homophobic religious zealot boxer Manny Pacquiao becomes President. And the Lord only knows how he will fare. And isn't that the problem particularly in The Philippines? They elect on the basis almost exclusively of personal popularity no matter how inexperienced the individual to run a country. Given the state of that nation, its Presidents over many decades have done precious little for the ordinary people.

As for South Korea, as I suggested, surely that's a very different and far more dangerous ballgame. Like The Philippines, it is ruled behind the scenes by a few mega-rich companies and individuals. But to have the strings of one President pulled so absurdly by the daughter of a Rasputin-like charlatan and a money-grabbing thief with access to a huge number of state papers has to be especially worrying with North Korea going even more rogue.

[Old git]

From time to time a person emerges who has immense personal charisma and influence - Jesus of Nazareth, Gregori Rasputin, Adolf Hitler and Dr Ernesto (Che) Guevara are perhaps the best known.

They can be forces for either good or evil, and embolden those around them. It is not necessarily a bad thing for a head of state to have someone they trust and rely on for advice - indeed, the ability of high office to corrupt the soul of the incumbent makes the case for a moderating personality in the shadows.

It doesn't look good from an electoral standpoint - voters are averse to electing a committee - but it isn't necessarily bad..

[frequent]

From time to time a person emerges who has immense personal charisma and influence - Jesus of Nazareth, Gregori Rasputin, Adolf Hitler and Dr Ernesto (Che) Guevara are perhaps the best known.
I deeply regret never having been able to live under a government led by any of the above-named and am grateful to Old Git for reminding us all of what we have missed.

[fountainhall]

From time to time a person emerges who has immense personal charisma and influence - Jesus of Nazareth, Gregori Rasputin, Adolf Hitler and Dr Ernesto (Che) Guevara are perhaps the best known.

. . . it is not necessarily a bad thing for a head of state to have someone they trust and rely on for advice - indeed, the ability of high office to corrupt the soul of the incumbent makes the case for a moderating personality in the shadows.

It doesn't look good from an electoral standpoint - voters are averse to electing a committee - but it isn't necessarily bad..
Do you realise what you just wrote? I suppose therefore that Beria, Goebbels, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Non Chea and that entire gallery of hard-liner second- or third-in-commands were forces for moderation? It seems to me that if a Head of State is a bad apple, none of those around him or her are likely to be anything close to moderating influences! Most likely they'd be in jail, dead or have conveniently disappeared.

I agree history throws up charismatic and influential leaders. You could have added Mandela, Aung San Suu Kye and the Dalai Lama. But these tend to be individuals who lead, not remain in the background as "moderating influences".

[Old git]

OK, I didn't make my point very well - the men I listed became well known because they came out of the shadows, and all came to a sticky end. Two of them were delusional, two of them became stupefied by the ability to kill, two of them have been idolised out of all proportion, one has been fairly damned by historians and another became the subject of modern folklore and fantasy the moment he met his grave.

That wasn't my point. My point was that there are many other people, who's names are mostly lost to history, who have had the same hypnotic influence and ability to inspire. Political heads of state invariably find themselves surrounded by toadies and faux friends. Advisers who have a calm magnetic presence, have no evident agenda of their own, and often a lack of deference to seniority, can often provide a rock of support and moderating influence to those in the highest office.

[frequent]

Advisers who have a calm magnetic presence, have no evident agenda of their own, and often a lack of deference to seniority, can often provide a rock of support and moderating influence to those in the highest office.

Traditionally the role of the Court Jester, or Fool

[Old git]

In medieval parlance they might have been called Sages or Healers, but not Jesters or Fools - they did not rise to prominence through entertainment..

[frequent]

Non sequitur of the week, Old Git

[scottish-guy]

....When the people of the Philippines elected Duterte they knew exactly what they were getting - disturbing perhaps, but maybe they had tired of politicians who make false promises whilst lining their pockets.

He promised the extra-judicicial killing of scum when he was elected and now appears to be delivering. International groups who express outrage at that have no mandate..

Has it even occurred to you that in the 1930's certain people/organistations were using much the same language about Germany and Hitler?

[Old git]

A few years ago someone proposed the theory that every online forum thread (if it went on long enough) would eventually include a reference to Hitler or the Nazi party..

History never quite repeats itself, but it often comes close enough to sound alarm bells. Politics in the thirties was dominated by big public gatherings, in countries where the media was often either wholly controlled or wholly intimidated. Politicians in many countries could lie and be widely believed. Today it is very much harder to conceal the truth and very much harder to whip up crowds into angry mobs.

That Duterte was elected speaks volumes about the sad state the Phillippine people find themselves in, and the abject failure of past governments.

Germany also was badly failed by it's leaders in the decades prior to Hitler's rise, and one cannot dismiss the similarity, but at least there is little risk of Duterte embarking on serious military adventures in other countries.

If he remains in office for any length of time though, he may feel the need for new scapegoats. The muslims of that country should be fearful of that..

[fountainhall]

The problem with notions that history repeats itself - or nearly does - is that is is totally impossible to recreate the conditions around which a particular dictator rises to power.

I think it is probably true - very generally speaking - that dictators like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao etc. came to power as a result of political vacuums that someone was eventually going to fill. The Germany of the time of Hitler's rise to power was a defeated nation subjected by the Allied Powers to crippling economic reparations. There was overriding poverty, mass unemployment, a very real fear of communism, hyper inflation etc. etc. Rather like Trump in the USA today promises to cure every single one of America's woes - inner city poverty, healthcare, international disputes, eliminating ISIS etc. - without any real, concrete programmes for doing so, Hitler promised to lead the country back to greatness on the basis of ideas allied to fear, hate and suppression. On that occasion, Hitler won power. We will soon know if Trump does. (And if so, God help the world!)

Pol Pot's rise was first a result of the fight against French colonialism and thereafter of the disastrous American undeclared war on his blighted country. If the Americans, for whom colonialism after World War II was anathema, had just used its very considerable influence to get the French out of Indo-China, how different this region's history would have been. But America needed the French to bolster Europe against communism. Like many revolutionaries, Pol Pot gained much of his Marxist-Leninist ideology when studying in Paris. Stalin would never have existed had Nicholas II not turned out to be such a desperately weak, impressionable individual and then had not Lenin died at a highly appropriate moment (poisoned by Stalin as some have suggested?) Mao led a faction in a country that was barely holding together after the fall of an archaic millennia-old system of central authority.

So I think there is zero similarity between these and other dictators and Duterte. There is something in the Filipino psyche, perhaps a manyana effect left over from its period as a Spanish colony or even the notion that democracy will cure all, a result of its American colonisation, that leads them as a people to pay little attention to the past. Or are they almost anaesthetised to the corruption that ensures 90+% are doomed to live in abject poverty and rather naively believe that a popular leader, no matter what his policies, will gain them a few more pesos? It is certainly a country that has been extremely badly served by its elected leadership.

[fountainhall]

Getting back to the OP, South Korea's first female President, daughter of the military dictator who was assassinated in 1979 by the Head of the Korean CIA, has now been impeached and the action confirmed by the country's Constitutional Court. So the unbelievably stupid Ms. Park becomes open to criminal prosecution. Like most of her democratically-elected predecessors, it is a near certainty that she will be found guilty of corruption and jailed - but then pardoned and released after a reasonable period of time. Such is the nature of South Korean democracy.

There now follows a Presidential election in 60 days. The former head of the UN Ban Ki Moon was initially said to be in the race, but he pulled out at the start of the year. The most likely candidate is now the more liberal Moon Jae-in of the opposition Democratic Party, a politician assumed from his past views to be more in favour of some form of developing rapprochement with the North. He has also expressed the view that the US THAAD missile defence system should not be installed in South Korea. One wonders how Trump will react if he wins the election.