The war of the generations has begun in South Korea. With the defeat of the opposition party in the recent presidential elections, the younger people who voted for the defeated candidate are now experiencing a “mental collapse” and cursing those of the older generation who voted for President-elect Park Geun-hye. “How can this be possible?” an exasperated young man exclaimed after the elections. “We had no doubt that the opposition party would win.” 

Obviously, he is not alone in such sentiments. Many young Koreans, who are disillusioned and frustrated with the extremely tight job market, voted for the opposition party. By defeating the ruling party, they hoped to see the advent of a new society in which decent, well-paid jobs are readily available. Other young liberals cast their votes for the Democratic United Party, naively believing it to be a truly progressive, liberal party.

Since the opposition party was defeated, many young Koreans have been blaming and cursing older folks who they think are hopelessly conservative. At school, radical teachers have taught them that older people are nothing but parasites feeding on young people’s toils. In fact, the radical teachers have long instigated innocent students in order to wage war between the younger and the older generations. As a result, angry young Koreans are now signing for the petition that all the senior citizens’ privileges, such as free passes to the subway should be deprived.

Regrettably, Koreans tend not to accept defeat, but to blame others or come up with excuses instead. Although candidate Moon Jae-in, like a proper gentleman, acknowledged his defeat and congratulated President-elect Park, people who supported Moon obviously did not and still do not accept the results. Some have gone as far to make groundless claims that the electronic vote-counting system was manipulated, while others have developed a blind abhorrence of the older generation.

The young people’s resentment for the older people was expressed in its most extreme form recently by several young men who proclaimed on the Internet that one day they may dispatch killing squads to eliminate old people who are no longer useful to our society. Hearing about such repugnant statements of violence online, older Koreans were appalled. “What kind of a vulgar society is this?” lamented a senior professor lately. “Now we have to dye our grey hair to escape imminent assassination.” Indeed, it seems South Korea is no longer a Confucian society that respects seniority. Instead, Cormac McCarthy’s phrase, “no country for old men,” seems to ring true in Korea.

Even before the elections, some radical politicians in the opposition party insulted the elderly already by stating, “Old people should stay home on Election Day and should not attempt to cast a vote.”

They wrongfully assumed that everyone of the older generation is conservative and supports the ruling party. And how do they fail to realize that some day they, too, will grow old and be hunted down by the “killing squads” sent by another, younger generation? How do they not realize that older people were once young just like them, as Mary Hopkin’s lyrics poetically tell us?: “Remember how we laughed away the hours/ and dreamed of all the great things we would do/ Those were the days, my friend/ We thought they’d never end/... we’d fight and never lose/ for we were young and sure to have our way.”

According to a newspaper survey, Koreans in their 50s asserted that they voted for Park Geun-hye in order to provide a better future for their children’s generation. Ironically, these were the people who voted for Roh Moo-hyun when they were 10 years younger with high hopes and dreams for a new era on the Korean Peninsula. After witnessing the colossal failure of the Roh administration, however, they said they changed their minds; they voted for the ruling party this time because they wanted to prevent the younger generation from making the same mistake they had made in the past, especially at this critical moment. Paradoxically, young people maintained that they voted for the opposition party for their own better future. We can only wait to see who is correct.

President-elect Park faces the challenging task of putting an end to this clash of the generations, called “the war between the 20s/30s and the 50s/60s.” For that purpose, she must be not only soft and tender, but also strong and tough. Many successful female leaders were tougher than men: Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir, for example. But the more important thing is the alteration of our consciousness.

D.H. Lawrence once said, “You can’t have a new, easy skin before you have sloughed the old, tight skin.” In the Year of the Snake, let us hope that Korea, like a snake, sheds off her old consciousness, and is reborn with a shiny new skin, so we can “cross the border ― close the gap” between the generations at last. 

By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ― Ed.