What is Democracy?

Democracy is “government by the people; especially: rule of the majority” [1]. Focus based on how “the whole body of all eligible executes its will” ^[1] All citizens are given the right to have active participation in political design making such as voting on policy initiative directly. ^[2] Democracy allows citizens to be able to actively participate in decision making of the country and electing candidates such as the President of the country. Power is not wholly given to a representative in favor of the leader's will, rather citizens opinion and support as a whole permit one to exercise power for the people or the citizens.

Struggles of being a real democratic country: South Korea

But is South Korea really a 'Republic of Korea'? Is supreme power really held by the people and the elected representatives? Are powers given to elected representatives exercised for the citizens of the country? South Korea is a constitutional democracy, where the government is divided into three branches of executive, judicial, and legislative branches. Judicial and legislative operates on a national level although executives also carry out local functions. So the local governments are semi-autonomous and have their own executive and legislative bodies. Also, Judicial branch operates both on local and national levels.^[3] However, in recent events and unfoldings of the truth in deeply corrupted government and the President, it turns out to be that in fact, power was never exercised in favor of the citizens or the people. Why would this be? Let's take a look at what really was underneath the smiles of a puppet, President Park.

Who is Park Geun-hye?

president park

Park Geun-hye was the 11th president of South Korea who served from 2013 to 2017. She was the first woman to be elected as the President of South Korea. She was also the daughter of a dictator, Park Chung-hee who was the president of South Korea from 1961 to 1979. As the daughter of the president, she was also regarded as the first lady due to the assassination of her mother. ^[4] Park Geun-hye was in politics all her life as assemblywomen and GNP chairwoman. And in continuous tries of trying to become president, she was finally elected as the President of Republic of Korea on 19th of December 2012. And between the two leading candidates, Park Geun-hye and Moon Jae-in, Park was able to gain more votes from the older generations as opposed to Moon Jae-in. And the acknowledgment of Park Chung-hee’s past achievements in improving South Korea’s economic development largely influenced the older generation voters to vote for Park, as she was the daughter of Park Chung-hee. And in Park’s inauguration, she stated that she will “open a new era of hope through “economic prosperity, people’s happiness, and cultural enrichment”. And shared four principles of her vision being the economic prosperity, people’s happiness, cultural enrichment, and establishment of a foundation for peaceful unification.^[5] Was this really achieved by Park Geun-hye? And the answer to this question is Not At All. Based on Park Geun-hye's performance as president of South Korea, it seems that as a daughter of a dictator, she doesn't quite have an exact definition or even a concept of being a true democratic country.

Choi Soon Shil, why do we have to bother knowing this name?

Choi Soon-Shil and Park Geun-hye

Choi Soon-Shil is the pastor Choi Tae-min’s daughter of a Christian pastor who worked as a mentor of President Park before his death in 1994. Choi Tae-min used his relationship with Park to obtain bribes from government officials and businessmen. ^[6] And this computational relationship was passed onto Choi Tae-min’s daughter Choi Soon-Shil as she was the wife of Park’s chief adviser when Park was in the National Assembly even before becoming president. And Park as the daughter of slain military dictator Park Chung-hee first met Choi in the 1970s around the time Park was acting as first lady after her mother was killed and Choi’s father is suspected of building a fortune by using their connections with Park to extort companies and government organizations.^[7] And as Park’s late mentor, Choi Soon-Shil again used her ties to president Park to pressure corporations to cough up millions in donations to dubious foundations that Choi used for personal profit. ^[8] Although Choi Soon-Shil has neither knowledge nor experience in being in the government or official public profile, she continuously used president Park as her puppet to order and advise president Park to make important decisions for the country. Choi Soon-Shil used president Park’s relationship to gain power and money through the use of Mir and K-Sport foundation to forcefully threaten big companies like Samsung, Hyundai Motor, Lotte Group, CJ, and LG to participate in making donations to a so called “non-profit organization” when in fact Choi Soon-Shil used these “donations” to personal business investments and personal profit. The total amount of “donations” or you can also say non-official extortion was an estimate of about 774 million dollars in total.^[9] And the reason why these companies were pressured to give these “voluntary” donations were because they were afraid of their companies getting into business disadvantages, such as difficulties in gaining government approval for projects or being targeted in tax investigations making them unable to refuse in making these “donations”. ^[10] As president Park’s secret mentor, Park allowed Choi to get access to drafts of Park’s speeches. And Park even made a public apology for giving Choi access to draft speeches during the early months of presidency. And Choi was also given access to the government documents from president Park.^[11] So basically, president Park was a puppet of Choi Sun-shil to control in governing South Korea herself covered behind president Park.

Sinking Sewol ho ferry

Sinking of Sewol ferry

The sinking of MV Sewol occurred on April 16th of 2014 in the morning carrying 476 people of which most passengers were from a Danwon High School students. In a total of this accident, 304 passengers died with approximately 172 survivors.^[12] The reason for this big loss of passengers were because of the captain and most of the crewmembers. The captain announced for all passengers to not move and stay still in the ferry for safety, in a boat that was sinking. And after making this announcement, the captain and his crew escaped the boat themselves without announcing the passengers to do the same to survive. And in the midst of all of this disastrous accident, president Park did not respond for about 7 hours although military secretary and many others reported and called President Park for this issue for about nine times. Although it was on a weekday, President Park was at her Presidential residence and many are suspecting that President Park was unconscious under anesthesia for her aesthetic surgery at the Presidential residence. However, until now no one knows the real truth of where and what President Park was doing during those 7 hours since President Park is not revealing what she was doing at that time. Not only that, President Park wasted more than 90 minutes getting her hair done after being notified during a 2014 ferry disaster.^[13] And criticism was towards president Park and the government for it’s inept response to the sinking of the ferry Sewol ho.^[14]

Struggles to achieving democracy

protest

Due to the corrupt relationship between Choi Soon-Shil and Park Geun-hye, citizens of South Korea started to protest for the resignation of Park Geun-hye in Seoul starting on October 29th of 2016. The citizens that day stated that they felt president Park betrayed the public trust and mismanaged the government and has lost a mandate to lead the country. And this was mainly due to Choi Soon-shil’s inappropriate influence on President Park and interference in state affairs. ^[15] The citizens demanded immediate impeachment of the president and no longer wanted this crisis to worsen through Choi Soon-shil’s influence on the president. And on this day, about 8000 people attended the rally and organizers said up to 30,000 people took part in the march through the capital.^[16] This protest continued and on December 3rd of 2016, 1.9 million people were on the street protesting for the impeachment of president Park and it was the largest in South Korea’s history. And this protest lasted until the March of 2017 after the Constitutional court removed Park Geun-hye from power over a corruption scandal. People of the crowd were cheering with flags and candles to celebrate the removal of president park’s removal from power. People fought for their rights through protesting and supporting each other. It was the largest crowd gathered to protest in South Korea’s History. People were gathered as one and the act of candle protesting together allowed citizens to have a voice in this corrupted society. And in doing so, it actually allowed citizens of South Korea in achieving a democratic nation.

Impeachment of President Park

Impeachment vote of president Park was on December 9, 2016 and 234 members of the National Assembly voted in allowing impeachment and temporary suspension of Park Geun-hye’s presidential powers and duties.^[17] And through continuous battles and protesting of the citizens, further investigations were performed to find further proof of the deeply corrupted society and the performance of president Park. And through the citizen’s continuous voice gathered together to impeach president Park, finally on March 10th of 2017, the court upheld the impeachment decision in an 8-0 decision to removing Park from office.^[18] Although there were complicated and difficult steps to reveal this nasty corrupted society of the rich, eventually at the end through thorough investigation and protesting of the citizens, South Korea was finally able to achieve democracy. And finally, Park Geun-hye was arrested and jailed due to her corrupting performances.

Reference

[1] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#cite_note-90

[2] ttps://books.google.ca/books?id=srzDCqnZkfUC&pg=PA224&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

[3] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea#cite_note-155

[4] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Geun-hye#cite_note-43

[5] ttp://news1.kr/articles/1024223

[6] ttp://www.huffingtonpost.kr/2016/10/26/story_n_12651732.html

[7] ttp://bigstory.ap.org/article/55f42fd8578e401194e3cc3b7e084131/s-korean-prosecutors-say-park-conspired-her-friend/

[8] ttp://www.huffingtonpost.kr/2016/10/26/story_n_12651732.html

[9] ttp://bigstory.ap.org/article/55f42fd8578e401194e3cc3b7e084131/s-korean-prosecutors-say-park-conspired-her-friend/

[10] ttp://bigstory.ap.org/article/55f42fd8578e401194e3cc3b7e084131/s-korean-prosecutors-say-park-conspired-her-friend/

[11] ttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-politics-idUSKCN12T08V

[12] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol

[13] ttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4005888/South-Korean-president-denies-claim-response-2014-ferry-sinking-disaster-delayed-spent-90-minutes-getting-hair-done.html

[14] ttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4005888/South-Korean-president-denies-claim-response-2014-ferry-sinking-disaster-delayed-spent-90-minutes-getting-hair-done.html

[15] ttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-politics-idUSKCN12T08V

[16] ttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-politics-idUSKCN12T08V

[17] ttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/world/asia/south-korea-president-park-geun-hye-impeached.html?_r=0

[18] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Park_Geun-hye

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