[Reportage column] Start by getting rid of the opposition party

The Sewol Tragedy People’s Committee holds a press conference in Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, to announce their opposition to the ruling and opposition parties’ compromise on the special Sewol Law, and call for increases in the special committee’s powers of investigation and prosecution, Aug. 8. (by Kim Tae-hyeong, staff photographer)

The political opposition’s compromise on special Sewol Law only worsens the pain of victims’ families seeking truth

By Kwak Byong-chan, senior editorial writer

We were in front of the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-shin in Gwanghwamun Square, and the weather was sweltering at the tail end of the monsoon season. Twenty-five days into his hunger strike, Yu-min’s father was skin and bones.

Aug. 7 was the day the opposition party gave its support to the imitation special Sewol Law. The floor leaders of the ruling and opposition parties had agreed to set up a special fact-finding committee that can hardly be expected to find any facts, let alone carry out a criminal investigation or prosecute anyone.

While the floor leaders shook hands and smiled broadly, the bereaved families were passing out fliers urging for the truth to be revealed and for the passage of the real special Sewol Law. People were taking turns holding pickets at each corner of the intersection and asking passersby to sign the petition.

Some of Korea’s largest protestant organizations - including the Presbyterian Church of Korea, Gi Presbyterian Church and the Korean Methodist Church - were holding a joint prayer meeting in front of the statue of King Sejong to support the legislation of the special Sewol Law. There were no conservatives and progressives here, no right-wing and left-wing. They were all praying for God to make them one body. They prayed for God to keep them from speaking falsehood, to help them bring about justice, and to prevent them from shedding the blood of the innocent.

Next to Yu-min’s father, a monk named Dochul was in the 13th day of his hunger strike. The singer Kim Jang-hoon, who has been on a hunger strike for four days, was giving hugs to pedestrians and asking them to take interest in the issue.

People from all walks of life were doing a one-day hunger strike, a day of vacation that will remain in their memories. There were priests from the Catholic Priests' Association for Justice, nuns from religious orders, pastors with Christian Social Action, members of the Jung To Society, teachers from the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU), professors with Professors for Democracy, artists with the Association of Folk Artists, members of the Yonsei Alumni Association for Democracy, representatives from the Incheon Women’s Association, parents from the Association of Parents for True Education, members of the Haja Center, and workers from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), and others.

There were even Korean-Americans who had come all the way from Houston carrying petitions demanding the legislation of the special Sewol Law that would guarantee the powers of investigation and prosecution.

What all these people are fighting against is the immense corruption of the people who have a monopoly on power, money, the media, and information. After the concert was over and quiet had fallen over the tents, the square was a heart-breaking and lonely battlefield. All that they had to give was their bodies, their poor lives. They put their lives on the line as they confronted the deep-rooted evils of South Korea, to make a country that is safe for the children playing around the fountain, and for everyone living there.

The thing that was holding them back was a system of power, and at its head the Blue House, beyond the gates of Gwanghwamun. The irresponsible, inept, and cunning powers that be and corporations that care about nothing but profits were joined by the nepotistic media.

It was a historical irony that this unfair fight was being watched by the statue of Yi Sun-shin, who himself stood alone against a huge Japanese fleet at Myeongnyang Strait, off of Korea’s south coast.

The people were confident. The Sewol ferry may have been sunk by greed and incompetence, but how could the truth be submerged? How could the wailing of parents who lost their children be forgotten? How could the world ignore the tears of these righteous people? If there is a God and if justice exists, if there is an opposition party that shares the people’s pain, how could the pleas of the wailing parents be ignored? This is why one member of the bereaved families said the following words after completing her testimony at the joint prayer meeting: “We’re not going to give up. We’re going to keep pursuing the truth until our dying day. Please stay with us. Thank you.”

But just then breaking news began to scroll across the electronic display of one media outlet. “Settlement reached on the special Sewol Law,” the message said. “We are furious. We are furious,” the host at the small concert at Gwanghwamun said and was silent. The parents of the second-year students from class three, who were on duty that day, were crying on the inside.

How lonely and devastated they must have felt to see the opposition party - which they had believed was on their side - retreat with its tail between its legs! The New Politics Alliance for Democracy and its floor leader Park Young-sun agreed to the fake special Sewol Law, saying that they were unable to resist the overwhelming power of the ruling Saenuri Party (NFP).

The reason that the bereaved families were asking for the enactment of the special Sewol Law was simple. They wanted to investigate the Blue House, the government, the National Assembly, intelligence agencies, the prosecution and the police, prosecute wrongdoers, identify problem areas, and devise alternatives in order to make the country safe.

This would basically be impossible with a special prosecutor recommended by the ruling party and appointed by the president. A parliamentary investigation that ended in political bickering between the ruling and opposition parties would not be sufficient. That’s why the bereaved families wanted a fact-finding committee that they were participating in to be given the authority to carry out an investigation.

When former president Lee Myung-bak was president-elect in early 2008, the special prosecutor for the BBK corruption case joined Lee for an expensive meal of seolleongtang at Samcheonggak instead of investigating him. Lee was suspected of being the real owner of the corrupt investment firm.

In the compromise reached by the ruling and opposition parties, the procedure for recommending and appointing the special prosecutor is the same as before. Although the bereaved families will supposedly participate in the fact-finding committee, they are merely a paper tiger, since they lack the authority to start an investigation.

The Blue House, the National Intelligence Service, and the prosecutors don’t bat an eyebrow when the National Assembly wields its power of parliamentary investigation. What chance is there that they will cooperate with an investigation by the fact-finding committee? The committee is likely to do little more than shuffle around already existing documents.

It is truly absurd to see the floor leader of the opposition party blabber on about her brave decision after surrendering like this on the issue of the special Sewol Law. During the Fifth Republic, the opposition Democratic Korean Party and the Korean National Party were called the second and third strings of the Democratic Justice Party, the ruling party at the time. (Those parties were only nominally opposition - all the prominent political opponents at the time, including Kim Dae-jung, were excluded.)

The opposition party today swarms with lawmakers who only care about keeping their position; party leaders with a hero complex are absorbed in petty power struggles, party members view the unhappiness of the people as little more than an election strategy and then ignore it or make compromises after the election is over. How is this different from the second and third strings of the Democratic Justice Party in the 1980s?

If the opposition party only serves as the drain down which the powers that be pour a distorted and diluted version of the people’s heartbreaking grief, righteous anger, and just demands, what is the point of having an opposition party? Doubts about why the opposition party exists are turning into the thought that there is no reason to have one at all.

The following Biblical passage was written on the tent where the priests were on their hunger strike: “Do you mean to correct what I say, and treat my desperate words as wind?” (Job 6:26). First, it’s time to get rid of the opposition party.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]