That’s not to say their debate is over. Like countless other families, the Lees are hashing out divergent political views ahead of the most significant presidential race in South Korea’s short democratic era. In the run-up to the Dec. 19 election, Koreans are arguing over kimchi, shouting at their televisions and lobbying undecided relatives. Unlike the last presidential contest in 1997, which took place against the backdrop of a financial crisis, this election season arrives amid robust economic growth and widespread prosperity. In a nation forged on hardship, good times have turned Koreans’ electoral choice into a philosophical question: is this the moment to hand power to a generation that learned about the Korean War in history books and thinks poverty means having just one credit card? Or should the elders hold on for another half decade? “Lee’s people are logical and realistic. Roh’s are emotional and idealistic,” says Ham Sang Deuk, a political scientist at Korea University in Seoul. “Never in the world’s election history have candidates differed so distinctively.”
Never, at least, in South Korea. Roh, a left-leaning former human-rights lawyer with little experience on the national stage, promises to “break the old political paradigm” by ending regionalism and stamping out pork-barrel politics–a message he sends to his youthful supporters mainly on the Internet. Lee, in stark contrast, courts a core constituency comprising war veterans, well-heeled urban professionals and staunch anti-communists. He’s a stiff political don who has led the conservative Grand National Party since the mid-1990s. Not surprisingly, the two disagree on just about every-thing. The electorate, in turn, has polarized along generational lines. According to a Joong Ang Ilbo poll conducted last month, Roh is twice as popular with voters in their 20s but lags Lee in every demographic older than 50.
Age, to be sure, hasn’t fully blurred Korea’s old divisions. The struggle between rich and poor rages on, while a traditional rivalry between the GNP’s conservative power base in the southeast and the progressive Millennium Democratic Party’s southwestern stronghold makes regionalism an important force again this year. That said, today’s debate is fiercest within–not between–families. “I’ve changed everyone’s vote but my father’s,” boasts 27-year-old Roh supporter Kim Ae Kyung. “We do have some arguments, but all my kids will support Lee,” predicts a retired war veteran in Seoul. One of them will certainly be disappointed once the votes are counted.
Lee, the banker, stands on the edge of a demographic bubble that could swing the election in Roh’s favor. Conservative by appearance and profession, he nonetheless represents a generation of voters under 40 that yearns for change. His political awakening began when he witnessed the 1980 Kwangju uprising, Korea’s equivalent of China’s Tiananmen massacre. The clash pitted pro-democracy students and civilians against coup leader Chun Doo Hwan’s crack troops. Several hundred civilians died in the fighting, and Lee witnessed some of the bloodshed. “From that time forward I hated the military government,” he says. Later, at university, Lee’s education provided an antidote to the anti-communist propaganda he’d had in grade school. And it’s shaping how he’s looking at this year’s presidential race. “Lee Hoi Chang is basically pro-U.S., pro-big business. Roh seeks national sovereignty and rights for workers,” says the banker. “Looking at our history, we’ve been swayed too much by superpowers. This is the moment to seek our independence.”
Roh embodies the break with tradition many young voters seek. He gained prominence defending labor activists, a stand that attracted labels like “radical” and “Red” that still stick today. In the past Roh has called for the removal of some 37,000 American soldiers stationed in the South. Although he now says they should stay, he still actively courts the anti-American vote and has capitalized on last month’s acquittal of two U.S. servicemen who accidentally crushed two Korean girls with their armored vehicle in June. He also favors engagement with North Korea despite Pyongyang’s newly disclosed uranium-enrichment program and threat to reactivate a nuclear power plant suspected of once being part of a weapons program. Aboard his campaign bus last week, he told NEWSWEEK he lacked “clear evidence that they are developing a nuclear weapon,” adding: “I don’t believe the problem can be solved by pressuring North Korea.”
Lee Gang Yul, 66, calls South Korea’s younger generation, including candidate Roh and his own son, the banker, “naive and sometimes blind.” Now semiretired, the elder Lee fought in the Korean War and, like his son, forged his political views amid violence. He was just 15 when Kim Il Sung’s armies invaded the South in 1950. “I had to hide in the mountains for 15 days. The only food I had was rice powder. That our family survived was pure luck,” he says.
After the war, Lee made a career in the civil service. Like many in his generation, he accepted the social contract offered after Gen. Park Chung Hee seized power in a bloodless 1961 coup: authoritarian social controls in exchange for rapid industrialization. And his politics still betrays a nostalgia for simpler times: “I admire the young generation’s bravery, but they could destabilize society.”
Lee Hoi Chang is comforting to anyone who yearns for the past. He represents a conservative ruling elite that held power during decades of authoritarian rule until dissident politician Kim Dae Jung won the Blue House five years ago. Lee narrowly lost that election and has spent the past five years leading the GNP’s opposition to Kim’s “Sunshine Policy” of engagement with North Korea. He takes a hawkish line on Pyongyang and views a strong U.S. military presence in Korea as essential for peace. “In this election we are looking at a competition between stability and instability, and a competition between rational change and radical change,” he said recently in a meeting with foreign journalists.
In truth, the competition is as much socioeconomic as political. South Korea’s warring generations disagree on just about everything having to do with lifestyle and money. Necessity forced the elders to be frugal and cautious. Their main life goal was to amass enough won to buy a house and educate their children. As a result, about half of all South Koreans under 40 attended college, an experience that’s made them smarter, more employable–and significantly less Confucian. They’re avid consumers, great fans of foreign fashion and travel lovers, all vices in their parents’ eyes. Worse, the kids often play on credit. To them, how to spend money is as important as how to make it, and the priorities they set–buying cars before they own homes, say–sometimes shock their parents.
Now this younger generation feels empowered. It is justifiably proud of its role in toppling military rule in the late 1980s with massive pro-democracy demonstrations. The so-called 386 Generation (meaning people in their 30s, educated in the ’80s and born in the ’60s) is committed to social change. Its members champion labor reform, lead the women’s movement and orchestrate the country’s ongoing IT revolution. In contrast, the elders believe in fate more than will, which is perhaps a natural outcome of their helplessness during the Japanese occupation and Korean War.
With the race virtually deadlocked, observers expect the campaigning will get nasty. Already, Lee is under attack for his judicial record in the 1980s, for his father’s “collaboration” with Japanese colonizers fifty years ago and because his sons avoided military service in the 1990s after being diagnosed as underweight. (Radical dieting is a common draft-dodging method in South Korea.) Roh’s opponents portray him as a pro-North Korea, anti-U.S. diplomatic neophyte who is too radical to be handed power. They point out that his father-in-law was a convicted North Korean sympathizer. And as standard-bearer of the ruling MDP, Roh is under fire for the corruption scandals that have marred Kim’s presidency. “The other side is trying to use anti-Kim sentiments against us, and as long as people buy it, it’s a liability,” concedes one of Roh’s strategists, adding: “Unfortunately, the older people buy it.”
Even if the youngsters don’t, one question remains: will enough of them vote to carry Roh over the threshold? A month ago Kim Young Rae, an expert on Korean politics at Ajou University, predicted they wouldn’t. “The trend among the youth is indifference,” he said. “Two years ago [during the parliamentary election] they were very active in the campaign to blacklist corrupt candidates. But they see that there’s been no change, so their indifference has deepened.” Kim’s forecast: “Unless something unexpected happens, Lee will win.”
Unexpected events have put Roh back in the race. First he inherited support from another youth-oriented candidate, Hyundai heir Chung Moon Jung, who dropped out last month. Then anti-American protests erupted, playing to his reputation as a dove. But the unexpected can swing both ways. Pyongyang’s nuke threat, days after its shipment of Scud missiles to Yemen became public, makes Lee’s tough line on the North look wise and may buoy his support in the final stretch.
Whatever the outcome, the election will be a hot topic when the Lees gather in Kwangju for a family vacation at the end of the month. “We’ll talk about it, I’m sure,” says the younger Lee. And, given how deep Korea’s generational divide runs, so will the rest of the country.
