Global Research

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The political history of a country has been the fight between the “have yes” and ” have no”, between the strong and the weak and between the elite group and the ordinary people.

Humanity has tried to solve this fight through peaceful relations with little success. More frequent solution has been massive uprisings, bloodless civil wars and bloody revolutions.

The political history of South Korea has been the fight between the elite pro-Japan conservative force (PJCF) (Chin-il-pa 普守親日派) and the progressive liberal nationalist force (PLNF) (jin-bo-ae-guk-se-ryok (进步愛國派).

The PJCF-PLNF fight has been continuing since 1945, the year of Korea’s “liberation” from Japanese colonialism. Up to now, the fight has had cyclical variations and neither force has received fatal blow.

However, since the PJCF took over the power this year (May 9, 2022), the fight has become more aggressive and its outcome may have serous impacts not only on the survival of South Korea as a genuinely democratic country but also on the dynamics of regional economy and security.

This paper intends to examine the evolution of current PJCF-PLNF battle, the nature of the fight and its possible impacts.

Evolution of PJCF-PLNF Fight

The Western media treats South Korea as one country, but in reality, there are two South Koreas, one for the PJCF and, the other, the PLNF. Each has different way of looking at Korea and different role it has to play in Korean collective life.

Of course, there are those who are neutral and take side depending upon the policies of the two organized forces. At present, the political distribution of the South Korean population is as follows: the PJCF (30%), the PLNF (40%) and the neutral (30%).

The PJCF-PLNF fight has had the following periods of evolution: 1910-1945, 1948-1987, 1987-1998, 1998-2008 2008-2017 and 2017-2022, 2022-present.

1910-1945: Period of Japanese occupation in Korea and the formation of PJCF and PLNF

The Japanese brutal and illegal occupation of Korea had the tragic footprint of dividing Koreans between the pro-Japan force and the anti-Japan force.

Many Koreans had to work to survive under the Japanese colonial government. But, there were those who more than worked for the Japanese; they actively participated with the Japanese masters in the terrible crimes of oppressing and exploiting Koreans. These Koreans were regarded by other Koreans as “traitors”.

The traitors participated in the theft of lands, houses and other assets belonging to Koreans.

They participated in capturing more than 250,000 teenage Korean girls to be sent to the horrible military Comfort Women camps to be raped more than 20 times a day by Japanese soldiers during the entire duration.

They also collaborated in mobilizing 800,000 Korean workers to work as slaves in Japanese mines and factories under less than sub-human living conditions.

They helped for the conscription of a huge number of Korean youth to be sent to the frontline to kill Korean patriots.

Even worse, these traitors actively helped in killing Korean identity.

Koreans were forced to throw away Korean names and adopt a Japanese name. My family had a Japanese name. At schools, it was forbidden to speak Korean language. Koreans were forced to go to Shinto shrines every day. At schools, the history of Korea was forbidden to teach. The whole process of uprooting the Korean identity was to enslave Koreans. Even the Korean native trees were to be replaced by Japanese trees.

Under these conditions, the Korean population was sharply divided between the pro-Japan group which became later the PJCF and the anti-Japan group which became later the PLNF. This was the beginning of a century-old fight between these two political forces in South Korea.

1948-1987: Period of PJCF governments of Rhee Syngman (1948-1960), Park Chung-hee (1962-1979) and Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1987)

This period was the darkest Korean post-war history of brutal police dictatorship and military dictatorship under which South Koreans had to go through violent human right violation and suffering from fear and insecurity.

In 1945, Korea was liberated from the Japanese yoke. People filled the streets, singing, dancing and shouting “Long Live Korea!”

The priority in the mind of Koreans was the punishment of the traitors. But, to the dismay of Koreans, the traitors were welcomed by the US military government (1945-1948) and, in fact, they ruled Korea for the American interests.

In 1948, Rhee Syngman established the first civilian government after the departure of the American military government. He was elected after the assassination of Kim Gu, the president of the Korean Provisional Government along with other nationalists.

In 1962, General Park Chung-hee took power after a coup-d’état and ruled South Korea until 1979. Then, in 1980, General Chun-Doo-hwan snatched the power through another coup d’état.

These three presidents had several things in common.

First, they took power by force or by rigged election: Rhee Syngman by rigged election and, both Generals Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan by coup d’état.

Second, they ruled force and violence: Rhee Syngman by police dictatorship and the two generals by military dictatorship. This is explained by the lack of legitimacy of their government which made it impossible for them to take power in legitimate way.

Third, being denied by the Koreans, they felt insecure and, to protect themselves, they formed a tight knit community. Now, to maintain the community, they decided to cumulate money and assets by all means including immoral and illegal ways. This has led to the creation of corruption community and corruption culture.

Fourth, to expand and strengthen the corruption community, they intensified the violation of citizens’ freedom and their right to decent living. They imposed unfair wage and oppressed labour union. They embezzled public funds; they gave illegal grants to the members of the corruption community; the bribe money was a lucrative source of their income.

Fifth, these three presidents were devoted pro-Japan leaders. There were logical reasons for this. Rhee Syngman survived as president for 12 years owing to the supporters who had collaborated with Japan (traitors).

General Park Chung-hee was a Japanese army officer who wrote allegiance to the emperor of Japan with his own blood so that he could be admitted to the Japanese military academy in Manchuria. He killed Korean patriots for Japan.

He established the pro-Japan Republican Party with $66 million given in 1965 by Kishi Nobuske who was the worst racist and the most brutal oppressor of Chinese and Koreans in Manchuria. He was known as “Showa demon”.

General Chun Doo-hwan was a faithful subordinate to his boss, General Park. After the assassination of his boss in 1979, he stole the power by coup d’état in 1980. Chun was the most brutal dictator and he was ready to do anything as long as he can stay in power.

In fact, he killed thousands of innocent Gwangjoo citizens in order to prevent the opposition from challenging his power. He tried to become eternal president as his boss had wanted, but failed.

The three presidents of the PJCF ruled Korea with brutal police and military force. In order to keep power, they massacred hundreds of thousands of citizens who were suspected to be against the regime. They arrested, incarcerated, tortured and killed tens of thousands of college students to prevent anti-regime demonstrations.

But the PLNF was organized and fought against the dictators. The core of the PLNF was filled by students. The students organized huge street demonstrations four times during this period:

• The Student Revolution of April 19 1960,
• The BUMA Protest on October 16 1979,
• The Kwangju Democratic Movement on May 18, 1980,
• The Democratic Movement of June 1987.

The PLNF had important victory through these uprisings. The three presidents ended their presidency in a tragic way.

Rhee Syngman was chased by the students and fled Korea, in 1960, on an American CIA plane.

General Park Chung-hee failed to become permanent president, because he was assassinated in 1979 by his CIA director.

General Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death in 1996 for his crime of killing Kwangju citizens. He was also the most corrupted leader and the worst abuser of power.

To be sure, this was a significant victory of the PLNF over the PJCF. But, the corruption culture of the PJCF remained in tact.

1987-1993: Period of PJCF government of Rho-Tae-woo (1987-1993)

This was the period of the birth of a new constitution allowing the regime of direct election of the president made possible by the huge June Democratic Uprising in 1987.

The president was General Rho Tae-woo who was relatively peaceful compared to his violent friend, General Chun Doo-hwan. Rho Tae-woo avoided confrontation with PLNF, but he was accused for corruption.

As far as the PJCF-PLNF fight was concerned, no major change took place under Rho Tae-woo.

1993-1998: Period of the coalition government of PJCF-PLNF under Kim Yong-sam (1993-1998)

Despite the coalition between the two political forces, this period brought a major victory of PLNF. President Kim Yong-sam of PLNF was successful in bringing General Chun Doo-hwan and General Rho Tae-woo to the court. General Chun was given death penalty for his crime of Kwangju massacre. General Rho got the prison term for corruption.

1998-2008: Period of PLNF government under Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003) and Rho Moo-hyun (2003-2008)

This period was one of the major victories of PLNF over PJCF. In fact, during this period, there was major change in economic policy more in favour of the ordinary people and new basis for the North-South dialogue.

In 1998, the foreign reserve crisis hit Korea hard. Countless small and medium businesses had to close; several Chaebols went bankrupt and an army of jobless went hungry. Millions of poor Koreans gave their gold wedding rings, necklaces and golden properties to pay the debt to IMF.

But, above all, President Kim Dae-jung who took over power in 1998 imposed bold reform of Chaebols, which weakened considerably the strength of the corruption culture of PJCF.

Moreover, he undertook several reforms designed to make the income distribution more equal such as the regime of minimum income, the promotion of labour union, increase of corporate taxes, the incentives given to SMEs and measures.

President Rho Moo-hyun gave another big blow to PJCF. To begin with, he made substantial social and industrial reforms leading to a more equal distribution of income. Another major reform undertaken by President Rho was the de-bureaucratization of the Korean rigid and unproductive bureaucracy leading to the weakening of the corruption culture developed by the PJCF.

The measures taken by the two presidents of the PLNF could have slowed down the flow of public money toward the PJCF.

There was another event which took place in this period, namely, the “Sunshine policy” which could have damaged the PJCF’s interests.

The North-South tensions had been a useful tool of winning major election of the PJCF and promoting the close ties between the PJCF and Japan. The sunshine policy has surely hurt such tie.

Thus, the two presidents of the PLNF were relatively successful in improving income distribution and reducing the North-South tension resulting in a meaningful victory of the PLNF over the PJCF.

2008-20017: Period of PJCF government by Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) and Park Geun-hye (2013-2017)

This period was marked by a strong comeback of the PJCF. Under presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, the PJCF became successful in three fields of battle.

First, the distribution of income and assets was made more unequal through lower corporate taxes, more grants to PJCF-friendly institutions and individuals and, above all, the cutting of spending for the ordinary people’s wellbeing.

The notorious case of embezzling public funds was the 4-River Development Project involving billions of US dollars and so-called the Natural Resource Diplomacy. Nobody knows how much money went to the pockets of the PJCF members.

Second, the North-South tension was made to increase by stopping all North-South relations including the closing of the Gaesung Industrial Complex and the denial of the access to Gum-gwang-san tourist resort facilities.

Third, the PJCF was successful in taking out from history textbooks the story of the crime against comfort women. In addition, they put in history textbooks the Japanese claim that Japanese occupation of Korea was for the good of Korea.

This was indeed a big victory for the PJCF. But, in order to protect this victory, the PJCF deployed the following methods of discouraging dissidence.

First, the PJCF media justified the wrongdoings of the PJCF and criticized the normal doings of the dissidents.

Second, the police, the prosecutors and court judges overlooked the wrongdoings of the PJCF and accused the dissidents for fabricated crimes.

Third, they produced a blacklist of 10,000 artists, cinema people, intellectuals and possible dissidents and reduced or stopped official subsidies.

Fourth, they even eliminated in 2014 a legally-constituted political party of liberal ideology, the Unified Progressive Party.

Fifth, prominent leaders of the PLNF were victims of illegal incarceration or, worse, they were victims of frame up of sexual misconduct so that they cannot continue their political leadership.

These measures did not involve guns and tortures, but they were quite effective in discouraging dissidence.

But, the PLNF were not idle. They stood up and bravely fought back. For eight months from august 2016 to April 2017, not less than 17,000,000 people of all walks of the society and of all ages went down to the streets and shouted the impeachment of Park Geun-hye who stepped down as president and went to prison for corruption, abuse of power and incapability to run the government.

In short, during the 9-year period, the government of the PJCF put almost everything they had to destroy the PLNF but they did not foresee the impact of the Candlelight Revolution.

Candlelight Protest around Sejong Center at Gwanghwamun (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

2017-2022: Period of PLNF government of Moon Jae-in (2017-2022)

During this period, the PLNF government of Moon Jae-in hit hard the core of the PJCF making them to feel threatened to lose their wealth and privileges.

This period was marked by the brilliant success of the Moon Jae-in government’s national policies and desperate counter attack of the PJCF through two strategies to destroy the PLNF government of Moon.

Being threatened by Moon’s anti-corruption culture of PJCF and their friends, they fought back.

Having lost the election, they used the tactic they had been using all these years. These are the conspiracies of the prosecutors supported by the corrupted media.

The prosecutors gave themselves two tactics:

First, they eliminated potential PLNF leaders to succeed Moon Je-in in the future through the fabricated evidences of sexual abuse or bribes. Several potential leaders of PLNF were put in prison by the prosecutors and some others killed themselves due to the pressure punt on their families by the PJCF media and prosecutors.

Second, the PJCF media was given two functions. To begin with, they supported prosecutors’ criminal operation of accusing the PLNF for fabricated evidence of crime and the media’s job was to print whatever the prosecutors tell them. In other words, the PJCF media performed the kangaroo court to condemn the innocent before the court judgment.

Moreover, the mission of the PJCF media was to discredit whatever the Moon government did. They never printed or broadcasted Moon’s success as a national leader or international leader.

Moon’s visit to various countries for the promotion of Korea’s interests were seldom published or aired on TV. On the other hand, if Moon’s government makes a slight mistake, it becomes a federal case and they dramatize it as if it would bring the end of Korea.

Despite the violent anti-Moon tactics of PJCF, the government of Moon was able to accomplish major reforms for the benefit of all Koreans not just for the elite group of the PJCF.

President Moon Jae-in challenged the PJCF in four areas of dispute which were vital for the survival of the PJCF: unequal income distribution, the corruption culture, North-South tension and Japanese neo-colonialism.

Unequal Income Distribution: The measures adopted by Moon Jae-in in order to assure more equal income distribution included the following: reduction of grants and subsidies to Chaebols, increase of corporate tax, creation of more jobs through the development of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the increase of minimum wage, more income transfer to the poor and the increase of the supply of public goods such as free lunch for school kids, more coverage of medical care insurance.

Corruption Culture: The measures designed to destroy the corruption culture consisted of the following:

First, the cabinet ministers, advisors and other key positions in the government were corruption-free.

Second, the family members and relatives of the president were excluded from government jobs.

Third, the government stopped receiving bribes from Chaebols.

Fourth, President Moon has reformed the National Information Service so that it can no longer gather citizens’ information for political purpose.

Fifth, President Moon has established special bureau of criminal investigation of high ranking civil servants, the Bureau of Corruption Investigation for Officials of High Ranking (gong-soo-tcho).

Sixth, PLNF government of Moon Jae-in sent President Lee Myung-bak to prison for corruption and abuse of power.

The North-South tension: The North-south tension has been a gift for the PJCF for two reasons. It makes the Koreas’ reunification more difficult on the one hand, and on the other it facilitates PJCF’s victory at major elections allowing it to keep power.

The North-South tension has given the opportunity for the PJCF to create a climate of fear which allowed the PJCF to boost its militarism providing electoral comparative advantage.

The PJCF fear the reunification because, under a unified Korea, they will become a marginal political force and possible target of revenge for their collaboration for Japanese oppression of Koreans.

But to the disappointment of the PJCF, President Moon has been able to alleviate the North-South tensions.

Remember, in 2017, President Donald Trump was ready to attack North Korea, most likely encouraged by South Korea’s PJCF and Japan.

But, owing to North Korea’s trust in President Moon Jae-in and the brilliant diplomacy of Kim Yo-Jung, sister of Kim Jung-un, North Korea came to the Pyeong-Chang Winter Olympics of 2018 leading to the Kim-Trump summit in Singapore in June 2018, their Hanoi-Summit of 2019 and their Panmunjom summit of 2021.

Kim Yo-jong (far right, upper row), South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence at the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony (Licensed under KOGL Type 1)

True, the North-South peace process hit the wall in Hanoi that was too high to go over. But, the North-South peace process allowed the Korean peninsula to enjoy three-year peace and a hope for reunification.

The Kim-Trump summits and peace on the peninsula were a huge disappointment for the PJCF. It became impossible to demonize North Korea, because the diplomacy of North Korea revealed that Kim Jung-un was a “normal leader” and North Korea was not a hell. The demonization of North Korea no longer became an alibi for PJCFs election victories.

Japanese neo-colonialism: It is true that Japan left Korea in 1945. But the Japanese colonialism has never left Korea. In other words, the Japanese neo-colonialism has replaced its old colonialism. By neo-colonialism, I mean the colonialism in which the coloniser is absent physically in the colonized country.

The execution of the neo-colonialism is conducted by an agent. In Korea, the PJCF has been the agent ever since 1948.

Since 1948, South Korea has been the target of Japanese neo-colonialism in three areas: economic development, the denial of Japanese war crimes against the Koreans and the fear of Koreas’ reunification.

So, South Korea has been the target of Japanese economic neo-colonialism, security neo-colonialism and political neo-colonialism.

Economic neo-colonialism: The Han River miracle was partly attributable to the Japanese neo-colonialism in which Japan provided high value-added intermediary goods and services, while South Korea assembled these intermediary good to produce finished goods.

The value-added of the intermediary goods and services, in the case of smartphones, accounts for as much as 95% of the sale price leaving merely 5 % of the sale price to the job of assembling the intermediary goods and services to produce the smartphone.

Under such situation, South Korea has had to live with trade deficit with Japan until the Japan trade war in 2019. After this trade war, Korea’s dependence on Japan for key intermediary goods and services has declined.

Security Neo-colonialism: The peace process was not welcomed by Japan for it will lead to the reunification of Koreas which will be a threat to Japan. Hence, the continuation of the North-South tension was Japan’s interest in Korea. Japan has surely asked the PJCF to maintain the North-South tension for Japan. This is the security neo-colonialism.

To the disappointment of Japan, the government of Moon Jae-in was successful in reducing the North-South tension through the peace process. Thus, President was good in weakening PJCF’s role for Japanese neo-liberalism.

Political Neo-colonialism: One of the most important issues for Japan has been the denial of its war crimes, especially the crime of collective raping of 250,000 Korean young girls for the whole duration of the Pacific War.

This crime is impossible to accept for the Japanese Neo-Meiji Restoration Group (NMRG) who is suspected to dream for Holy War 2.0. For this, the NMRG needs the active participation of the Japanese people on the one hand and, on the other, they need to convince the Koreans that Japanese colonialism is beneficial to Korea.

Japan has asked the PJCF to take out from history textbooks the story of comfort women. In fact under the PJCF government of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, it was done. Thus, the PJCF did a good job to please their Japanese master.

But PLNF put the history of Japanese war crimes including the crime against the comfort women back into history textbooks.

Thus, President Moon Jae-in has caused significant damage to the interests of the PJCF. As a matter of fact, the PJCF seems to have felt threat of their survival and might have decided to revenge.

The revenge battle begun with the election of Yoon Suk-yeol as president in May 2022.

2022-Now: period of PJCF government of Yoon Suk-yeol

On 9 May, 2022, there was the presidential election. The candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) representing the PLNF was Lee Jae-myung, while that of the People Power Party (PPP) representing the PJCF was Yoon Suk-yeol.

Lee Jae-myung was a lawyer who has spent his whole career for the poor and the weak. As a mayor of Sung-nam city, he has implemented several public policy measures including the system of “basic income”, which can be spent in his city and corruption-free management of the city budget.

On the other hand, Yoon Suk-yeol has spent his career in arresting people as prosecutor and in 2021, he was appointed by President Moon as prosecutor general.

The presidential election took place on May 9, 2022. To the great surprise of all, Yoon Suk-yeol won, albeit a very small margin of 0.73%. Yon got 48.56% of votes, while Lee got 47.83% of votes.

Yoon was elected despite a long list of reasons against his victory. He had many sins and defects. Nevertheless, he won. But, why? The most important reason for voting Yoon was the wish of the PJCF people to revenge Moon Jae-in government and recover the wealth, the income and the privileges which they think they have lost due to Moon’s government. They thought that Yoon Suk-yeol, the merciless prosecutor was the right man who could do the revenge for them.

Yoon Suk-yeol made his name by destroying Professor Cho-guk, his wife and his children on the basis of controversial and fabricated evidence for the simple reason that the professor as Minister of Justice wanted to reduce the power of the prosecutors.

This seems to have pleased the PJCF and voted for Yoon Suk-yeol for the simple reason that he could arrest and put all the PLNF leaders in jail and restore South Korea where the corrupted PJCF could dominate again. In fact, it is what Yoon has been doing for last 6 months since he became president.

Impact of PJCF’s Victory

As mentioned above, the government of Moon Jae-in has surely destroyed the lucrative source of bribe money and other types of illegal and immoral money, power and privileges of PJCF. The PJCF and those who received some benefits from the PJCF voted for Yoon Suk-yeol to recover what was taken away by Moon government.

However, a good part of those who voted for Yoon realize now that they made a mistake of choosing a wrong man.

What is important is what the Yoon government wants and how he intends to get what it wants. What it wants is not the promotion of national interests; what it wants is the promotion of the collective interests of the corrupted community of the PJCF. To be more precise, what it wants is the advancement of the interest of Yoon’s family and his devoted friends.

To attain such objective, Yoon needs a regime of dictatorship, to be more precise, the dictatorship of prosecutors. In fact, most of the positions of power within the government and government-funded institutions are filled by prosecutors and personal friends of Mrs. Yoon, Kim Gun-hee.

As a result, policies designed to advance the wellbeing of the population are absent. This is reflected in major national policies, namely, economic policy, social policy, security policy and foreign policy.

Yoon’s economic policy is simply the neo-liberal policy of th 1970s and 1980s. The first thing his government did was to cut the corporate tax, increase subsidies to Chaebols, allow the Chaebols to exploit SMEs and weaken the negotiation power of labour unions. This is the usual way of getting bribe money for the PJCF.

This Chaebol-first policy is bound to make it difficult to prepare for   coming digital-based 4th technological revolution.

The trade policy is a part of economic policy. Since Yoon government joint the Japan-US policy of China containment, the exports to China radically fell and the trade deficit with China has been increasing.

Yoon’s social policy is extremely harmful not only to the welfare of the people but also to economic growth. Yoon cut down most of all the funds allocated to the elderly, the jobless, the handicapped and other minority groups. Moreover, Yoon is planning to cut the minimum wage.

There is another negative impact of such anti-welfare policy. It is the inevitable worsening income distribution in favour of the well-to-do at the expense of the majority of the consumers. This leads to the weakening of consumer demand and provoke stagnation of the economy.

Yoon’s foreign policy is simply a disaster. He spent all his life in the office of prosecutor and only thing he knows well is to catch those liberal and democratic minded people and put them in jail on the basis of fabricated evidence of wrongdoings.

Yoon is totally ignorant about foreign policy. The tragic thing is that he does not know the fact that he is ignorant. He has with him experienced experts in foreign relations. But, it is reported that he never listens the experts’ advice.

The world was surely scandalized to see clearly that Yoon does not know the ABC of politics as pointed out by the Economist (August 25, 2022). He does not know the ABC of diplomacy either.

The world saw strange behaviours of Yoon and his wife at the NATO meeting (June 28), the funeral ceremony late Queen Elisabeth II (September 19), the UN General Assembly (September 28), the ASEAN meeting (November 11) and the G20 meeting (November 16).

These behaviours have made South Koreans ashamed of Yoon and his wife. What Yoon has obtained through these international meetings was the fall of Korea’s credibility as a reliable country. Moreover, these behaviours have led to the critical damage of Korea’s trade and security.

Yoon’s participation at the NATO meeting, the ASEAN meeting and the G20 meeting have put ROK to join the camp of China bashing and China containment strategy. This has seriously hampered the previous governments’ effort to maintain friendly relations both with the U.S. and China on the one hand, and, on the other, to increase trade surplus with China.

Yoon’ speech at the UN General Assembly did not include ROK’s DPRK policy letting Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida to handle the North Korean issues. This naive gesture of Yoon was intended to discredit the peace process of the previous government of Moon Jae-in.

His declaration of pre-emptive attack against North Korea during his presidential campaign and persistent belligerent anti-DPRK words and behaviour have worsened the North-South tension and increased the Korea risk, hurting foreign investment.

Yoon’s courting for Japan-ROK summit and his official support for Japan’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIP) prepared the ground for Japan-ROK military alliance, which will eventually force the ROK armed forced to join the Sino-US war along with Japanese forces.

What makes South Koreans the most worried about the possible Japan-ROK military alliances is the reunification of Korea by the allied armed forces of ROK, Japan and the U.S. which may lead to the presence of Japanese military, something which Koreans hate to see, except the Yoon’s pro-Japan conservative force in South Korea.

All in all, Yoon’s internal as well as his external policies is total fiasco. Moreover, the Itaewon disaster (the 10.29 Disaster) is likely to be the coup de grâce to his political career.

The persistent refusal of admitting the responsibility of the tragedy and the apparent involvement of “shaman” Cheon-dong stir up even the controversies surrounding the relation between the shaman and Yoon Suk-yeol and his controversial wife.

Yoon Suk-yeol having failed completely as president, he is speeding up the creation of prosecutor dictatorship and this will expand and intensify popular uprising.

Already on October 9, no less than 400,000 people went to the street and shouted “Down Yoon Suk-yeol and “Special probe for Kim Gun-hee!”

It is possible that the ongoing battle between the two political forces is the end of century-old fight between the pro-Japan conservative force and the progressive liberal nationalist force.

If the PJCF wins, South Korea will go back what it was 50 ago. On the other hand, if the PLNF wins, the policy of Moon Jae-in will come back and South Korea will march toward a better society where justice, equality, freedom and prosperity will prevail far all.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr Joseph H. Chung is professor of Economics at Quebec University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and member of the Research Center in Integration and Globalization (CEIM-UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).