A businessman friend of mine who serves as the honorary consul general in Seoul for a Latin American country said during a recent dinner, “Korea needs to have a more tolerant politics befitting a ‘sonjinguk’ (advanced or developed nation).” He may have ranked his country on the advanced level in comparison with the foreign country he is connected to by his consular title. Yet, I felt compelled to respond: “Well, I don’t know if we can call ourselves ‘advanced,’ in politics or otherwise.”

We occasionally hear the Republic of Korea being classified as “advanced” in public speeches or private conversations, occasionally in articles by foreign columnists. For some time, people used to say that we were “at the threshold” of advanced status in the international community, but now many seem to believe that we have crossed the invisible line into the covetous category.

Some cite the $30,000 per capita gross domestic product that Korea has approached (and not actually reached), although they know that the rise in dollar figure is due to the continuing strong value of the won ― to the dismay of our exporters. Others satisfactorily look at the ever-expanding highway network that crisscrosses the peninsula through mountains and river valleys. Many point to our clean public restrooms in highway service areas, which are even used free of charge, unlike in most places in Europe where you pay 1 euro ($1.10) to enter.

Surely there are many signs that convince us of the rapid upward swing that this nation has achieved over the past decades to draw exclamations of praise from those Korean War veterans visiting here from America and Europe. However, we encounter as many faults and shortcomings in the everyday happenings of our society and in the acts of our leaders that bring doubt to the ROK having achieved the “advanced” status.

Just let me recount my recent trip to my native town Gangjin in South Jeolla Province primarily to see the peonies in full bloom around the birthplace of Poet “Yeongnang” Kim Yun-sik, famous for his poem “Till Peonies Bloom.” It used to take nearly six hours to go there from Seoul through highways and meandering provincial roads, but this time I was on the road only 4 1/2 hours, including two short rest stops at service areas.

The Kim Gisa (chauffeur) navigation app in my smart phone guided me to drive along as many as six expressways linked to each other. I started southward from the Han River Bridge entrance of the Gyeongbu (Seoul-Busan) Expressway, then veered into the Cheonan-Nonsan Expressway and passed a short 2.5 kilometer section of the Dangjin-Sangju Expressway to enter the Seocheon-Gongju Expressway which brought me to the West Coast Expressway. At Jukrim junction near the southern end of the expressway, I briefly passed through a four-lane highway before cutting into the Yeongam-Suncheon Expressway which finally took me to the Gangjin exit. My “Hi-pass” card logged 18,700 won for the entire 378 km course.

It was good to save time, though I had to be a little cautious not to miss junctions to change expressways. On the high-speed roads, I from time to time realized I could see no vehicles running either ahead or behind my car and wondered if all these newly-built expressways were really necessary. Skepticism grew when I saw construction work underway for still more highways, some running alongside the existing routes.

Infrastructure projects in provincial areas consume large portions of the national budget and we know the lobbying and politicking behind them ― between builders and local administrations, between community leaders and their lawmakers and between the assemblymen and budget authorities. Appropriations are made as a result of backroom deals rather than in accordance with the proper priority order under established plans for balanced regional development. Many industrial parks and highways are built at the sacrifice of more urgent production and environmental facilities.

All parts of the country have the likes of Sung Woan-jong, a small-town construction businessman who created a mini-empire by following the Korean pattern of business growth, but who tragically ended his life after stepping into politics with excessive belief in the power of money. In many provincial cities, construction enterprises have taken over newspaper companies, expecting such investment to have the effect of protecting their business from outside harassment and to get them easier access to power holders. These are the kinds of things that happen in this supposedly advanced country.

We are proud to have built a liberal democracy and dynamic market economy following the tolls of war and subsequent dictatorships. Full local autonomy started in 1995 in the hope of solidifying the democratic order from the bottom. Over the past two decades, while five rounds of four-year tenure have passed, more than 200 local administration chiefs from 227 counties, cities and districts of metropolitan cities have been removed from office upon being prosecuted for bribery and illegal electioneering.

Since the adoption of the 1987 Constitution for the “restoration” of democracy, six presidents have been elected by direct votes, and they have worked with as many as 23 prime ministers ― plus a dozen acting ones ― along with innumerable cabinet ministers. Overall, these men and women had less than a year on average to sit in the State Council, which I suspect is the shortest among the OECD countries. It is a miracle that the government has kept going with such a fragile upper framework.

Now, we have yet another nominee for prime minister, Hwang Kyo-an, after the exit of Lee Wan-koo, in office only a little over two months. Oppositionists are ready to grill the appointee on the issues of unfulfilled military service duty and a large amount of income during a short period of legal practice after retiring from a career as a prosecutor. Nationally-televised confirmation hearings will be held at a special National Assembly committee in accordance with the established democratic system, yet the performances of our lawmakers on such occasions have only demonstrated the distance between the Korean reality and the true objective of the event.

Koreans have been exhorted by their leaders to aim high and work hard to reach sonjinguk. But the difficult part in the procession was that our leaders and guides themselves have fallen from the march, leaving the people wondering today how far we still are from the pedestal of the “advanced” group in the global society. 

By Kim Myong-sik 

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. ― Ed.