The new South Korean president takes office as constituents are furious over their government’s collusive ties with business, N.Y. Times reports
The day after South Korea elected a new president, the mood on the campus of Yonsei University in Seoul was bleak.
Many students, who might have been expected to celebrate the victory of a liberal, Moon Jae-in, to the presidency on Tuesday, instead spoke of fears about their prospects in a country plagued by corruption, household debt and other economic ills.
“Unfortunately, because we ourselves do not see the future of Korea as so rosy, I do not want to bring up children in this unpromising society, ” said Bang Seong-deok, 26, a civil engineering Ph. D. student taking a break with a friend outside a classroom block on Wednesday. “I think that mentality is persistent among many of my peers.”
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Anger at the collusive ties between government and business was at the heart of the protests that led to the impeachment of Mr. Moon’s predecessor, Park Geun-hye. During the election campaign, Mr. Moon vowed to end that corruption, but he also promised to address other factors that had fueled the revolt: skyrocketing household debt, high youth unemployment and stagnant wages, all of which are hobbling the economy.
He faces daunting obstacles as he tries to overhaul entrenched practices and deliver on ambitious campaign promises in a country that has yet to complete the tough transition from tiger economy to developed society.
Mr. Moon, whose party spent nearly a decade in opposition, “is a very sincere person, and I think he will try his best, but it’s a much bigger problem, ” said Gi-wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. “It’s not something that you can fix by tweaking one or two issues. They are all related to each other.”
In the food court of a student lounge at Yonsei, Lee Ji-won, 23, a public administration major, said her friends often described the moribund state of their country as “Hell Chosun, ” a reference to the last dynasty of Korea, which lasted for five centuries.
Ms. Lee, who aspires to be a lawyer, said she worried about eventually having to take care of her parents and grandparents. Although just over half of voters in their 20s and 30s cast their ballots for Mr. Moon, according to exit polls, Ms. Lee did not vote for him. She said she was not convinced that he would be able to pay for his economic policy prescriptions.
During the past decade when conservatives were in power, they tried to recapture the high-growth years that characterized South Korea’s dynamic postwar rise from poverty. Much of that growth was turbocharged by chaebol, the family-controlled conglomerates like Hyundai and Samsung that dominate the economy and in which vast wealth is concentrated.
Because the chaebol tend to guarantee lifetime employment to an elite group of employees, those who do not secure these jobs have grown disaffected.
