Special to WorldTribune.com

By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com

WASHINGTON — The FTA (free-trade agreement) with the United States is an obscenity in the eyes of leftists in South Korea who believe their conservative government is foisting it on them.

Hostility toward the KORUS FTA, as it is known, is such that the political and ideological foes of President Lee Myung-Bak sense a cause they can nurture and exploit to victory in National Assembly elections in April and in the presidential election in December next year.

The failure so far of the National Assembly to ratify the agreement confounds U.S. officials who had assumed it was more or less a done deal after the U.S. Congress finally voted its approval by a wide margin despite undying concerns about the impact of any FTA on U.S. manufacturing, notably motor vehicles. On top of that, President Barack Obama and President Lee seemed like such old pals when Lee visited Washington that no one quite imagined the depth of the hostility toward him at home.

When the two presidents saw each other again last weekend at the confab of leaders of nations banded together in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation grouping in Honolulu, Lee was clearly more than a little miffed that he was unable to present Obama with a happy denouement to the agonizing process of pushing and pulling the FTA through the assembly.

Instead, he had to plead for his foes at home to perceive the FTA as a critical element in Korea’s “survival strategy” while trying to convince world leaders of his efforts at stripping away regulations that might hinder competitiveness.

The real problem is that firebrands in the opposition in South Korea don’t really care about whatever arguments Lee might give for approving the FTA if only they can use the issue to marshal mass protest against his government.

For Sohn Hak-Kyu, leader of the Democratic Party, the main opposition force, the FTA provides a cause around which he would like to rally an electorate in ferment over many of the same kinds of issues that are upsetting Americans — rising prices, unemployment and the sense that the rich are the main beneficiaries of economic policy.

As long-time business consultant Tom Coyner summarized the standoff, “The often irrational opposition to the FTA is largely due to frustration of young people and their families over the lack of adequate employment opportunities for college graduates, who make up over 80% of the country’s younger population.”

With that audience in mind, Sohn has little choice but to persist in hammering away at the FTA if he is to demonstrate that the Democratic Party is capable of serving as the voice of discontented voters against much more strident opposition from independents and radicals.

The election last month of career activist Park Won-Soon as mayor of Seoul was as much a wake-up call for the Democratic Party as it was for the ruling Grand National Party. Park, running as an independent, has been more outspoken in his opposition to the FTA than have many members of the Democratic Party.

As mayor of Seoul, Park would appear to have many other concerns, but his voice is a constant reminder to Democratic Party leaders that they had better mount effective opposition to whatever the government is doing if they are to have a chance of harnessing popular support in next year’s elections.
Reluctantly, the Democratic Party threw its support behind Park in the election campaign only after it became clear that he had a serious chance of defeating the Grand National Party candidate, a wealthy woman closely allied to President Lee.

Foes of the FTA, however, face a problem that forces them to mute their opposition somewhat — that is, to try to avoid appearing as bully boys whose primary strategy is to block the doors to meeting rooms in the assembly so nothing gets done. Nor, in the interest of appearing as reasonable people, do they think it’s a great idea to spurn government entreaties for meeting in an effort to come to terms.

In that spirit, no sooner had Lee gotten back from showing off before the Asia-Pacific leaders in Honolulu than he agreed to go to the National Assembly and talk over the FTA with critics as well as advocates. Democratic Party leaders would sit down with him, it seemed, in order to tell him not to try to “pressure us” into giving the FTA their stamp of approval.

Such willingness to meet President Lee might have seemed as a serious concession to reason but for the reality that his diehard foes are sure to persist in complaining about the FTA no matter what. Leftists can only go so far in the direction of compromise before appearing as weaklings easily subdued by a president whose main constituents are the owners of the chaebol, or conglomerates, that control most of the country’s business.

Americans keep assuming the FTA will eventually work its way through the labyrinth of assembly debate and popular protest, whether this week or the next, or next month. If it fails to win approval by the end of the year, however, the whole edifice may be in danger.

Thus it was with an obvious urgency, bordering on desperation, that Lee decided to make a rare excursion to the assembly on Nov. 15 on an arm-twisting expedition in which he sees his country’s future at stake.

Just as his foes would rather not resort to overtly tough tactics, so Lee has to be extremely careful. The makings of open revolt against him are not hard to find.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, representing 600,000 workers, many in motor-vehicle manufacturing and shipbuilding, has vowed to “aggressively fight to block” approval of the FTA, while children have been demonstrating with signs thoughtfully provided by their parents — “You will be punished by heaven soon,” said a girl in the fourth grade.

Disheartening though such outbursts may be to FTA advocates, there was one comforting sign. An assembly member, mindful of the violence that’s been known to accompany voting on controversial measures, announced he would go on a hunger strike to discourage his colleagues from violence when it came time to vote on the FTA.

He was, he said, “Deeply sorry and ashamed as the National Assembly is on course to an extreme confrontation over a ratification of the Korea-U.S. FTA.”

  Barack Obama, Free Trade Agreement, FTA a dirty word for S. Korean leftists, Lee Myung-Bak, National Assembly, Seoul Mayor Park Won-Soo, Sohn Hak-Kyu