By Cho Hee-kyoung
With less than a hundred days remaining until the next presidential election, the two major political parties are in a race to recruit top talent to their campaigns. For the two major parties trying to appeal to the undecided voters, a key theme is diversity. The governing party tries to signal how different it is to its former self by recruiting someone who is cut from a very different cloth to the average party politician.
A typical politician in Korea is a 55-year-old male graduate of an elite university with a law, media or business background. Thus attracting top female talent is a priority for both major parties. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has even chosen as their recruitment keywords: "Youth, Women and Science."
Initially, the DPK seemed to have struck gold in their appointment as co-campaign chair, of Cho Dong-youn, a young professor in her 30s who graduated from a military academy, served in Iraq, completed a master's degree at Harvard Kennedy School and is an expert in the aerospace industry to boot. She has even given birth to two sons! In short a superwoman with sterling credentials.
Not to be outdone, the opposition People Power Party (PPP), the main opposition, appointed to the position of co-campaign strategy chair, Lee Soo-jung, a well-known forensic psychologist and a long-time campaigner for women and children's rights who was named in 2019 by the BBC as one of the most influential and inspirational women around the world. The two women's appointments happened to be announced on the same day, and trouble started not long after that.
First came a social media post by Choi Bae-geun, a left-leaning economics professor and an advocate of a basic income policy who has an important strategy role in the DPK campaign, that simply juxtaposed photographs of the two women side by side with the question: "[What is] The Difference?"
Without any explanation, the only difference visible was that one was a photograph of a young woman with smooth skin and jet-black hair and the other of a much older woman with graying hair and skin that showed wrinkles and age spots. Choi later claimed that he wanted to highlight the policy preferences and the values held by the two, but if that had been his intention, it went over the heads of most people who suspected ageism tinged with sexism instead.
Such inappropriate comparisons were not limited to the DPK. Kim Byong-joon, a 67-year-old conservative politician who was recently appointed to lead the PPP's campaign, amid much controversy, compared Cho, a star recruit of the DPK, to a pretty brooch on a military uniform. When asked if he would have made the same comparison regarding a man, he said women are not the only ones who wear brooches.
Kim must know some extremely fashion-conscious men, because I personally have yet to come across any man who has professed a partiality to brooches, whether on military uniforms or otherwise. He then claimed that as a feminist with two daughters, he was surprised that people believe only women wear brooches and accessories. Kim obviously does not realize what it is to add insult to injury.
But we are not done yet. Within the conservative party, there were some who were not happy with Lee Soo-jung's appointment because to young Korean men in their 20s and 30s, she has come to personify feminism. The party chair, Lee Jun-seok, whose unexpected election to the top post was largely due to support from this particular demographic group, was particularly vehemently opposed to her and made it publicly known.
Others even alleged that she had been appointed because her husband is a close friend of Yoon Suk-yeol, the conservative presidential candidate. This can only be described as a blatant effort to deny her agency, and denigrate her expertise and credentials. It is difficult to imagine the same thing being said of a male appointee ― that he only secured the post thanks to his wife's connections.
To cap it all off, Cho ended up tendering her resignation only three days after her appointment. In the nastiest way possible, the paternity of her younger child was questioned by a notorious social media outlet. Cho is a divorced single parent who has acknowledged marital troubles ― her former husband is remarried with a new family of his own.
Since her resignation, Cho has issued a statement that her second pregnancy was the result of a rape that occurred more than a decade ago while she was still in the military. She could not report the crime (no surprise given the prevailing military culture) and she made the difficult choice to bear the child.
One can only applaud her courage and forbearance, but the fact is that she and her family's fundamental human rights have been ruthlessly trampled upon in a deliberate attempt to sabotage her politically; and it succeeded.
Instead of condemning this gross violation of Cho and her family's basic rights and protecting them, the DPK simply sat back and said they would act according to how the people responded to this news. This is not leadership but cowardly populism. Who will win next year's presidential election is very much in the dark but one thing is crystal clear: As long as the political parties continue in this way, there will be more and more alienated voters.
Cho Hee-kyoung (hongikmail@gmail.com) is a professor at Hongik University College of Law.
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A typical politician in Korea is a 55-year-old male graduate of an elite university with a law, media or business background. Thus attracting top female talent is a priority for both major parties. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has even chosen as their recruitment keywords: "Youth, Women and Science."
Initially, the DPK seemed to have struck gold in their appointment as co-campaign chair, of Cho Dong-youn, a young professor in her 30s who graduated from a military academy, served in Iraq, completed a master's degree at Harvard Kennedy School and is an expert in the aerospace industry to boot. She has even given birth to two sons! In short a superwoman with sterling credentials.
Not to be outdone, the opposition People Power Party (PPP), the main opposition, appointed to the position of co-campaign strategy chair, Lee Soo-jung, a well-known forensic psychologist and a long-time campaigner for women and children's rights who was named in 2019 by the BBC as one of the most influential and inspirational women around the world. The two women's appointments happened to be announced on the same day, and trouble started not long after that.
First came a social media post by Choi Bae-geun, a left-leaning economics professor and an advocate of a basic income policy who has an important strategy role in the DPK campaign, that simply juxtaposed photographs of the two women side by side with the question: "[What is] The Difference?"
Without any explanation, the only difference visible was that one was a photograph of a young woman with smooth skin and jet-black hair and the other of a much older woman with graying hair and skin that showed wrinkles and age spots. Choi later claimed that he wanted to highlight the policy preferences and the values held by the two, but if that had been his intention, it went over the heads of most people who suspected ageism tinged with sexism instead.
Such inappropriate comparisons were not limited to the DPK. Kim Byong-joon, a 67-year-old conservative politician who was recently appointed to lead the PPP's campaign, amid much controversy, compared Cho, a star recruit of the DPK, to a pretty brooch on a military uniform. When asked if he would have made the same comparison regarding a man, he said women are not the only ones who wear brooches.
Kim must know some extremely fashion-conscious men, because I personally have yet to come across any man who has professed a partiality to brooches, whether on military uniforms or otherwise. He then claimed that as a feminist with two daughters, he was surprised that people believe only women wear brooches and accessories. Kim obviously does not realize what it is to add insult to injury.
But we are not done yet. Within the conservative party, there were some who were not happy with Lee Soo-jung's appointment because to young Korean men in their 20s and 30s, she has come to personify feminism. The party chair, Lee Jun-seok, whose unexpected election to the top post was largely due to support from this particular demographic group, was particularly vehemently opposed to her and made it publicly known.
Others even alleged that she had been appointed because her husband is a close friend of Yoon Suk-yeol, the conservative presidential candidate. This can only be described as a blatant effort to deny her agency, and denigrate her expertise and credentials. It is difficult to imagine the same thing being said of a male appointee ― that he only secured the post thanks to his wife's connections.
To cap it all off, Cho ended up tendering her resignation only three days after her appointment. In the nastiest way possible, the paternity of her younger child was questioned by a notorious social media outlet. Cho is a divorced single parent who has acknowledged marital troubles ― her former husband is remarried with a new family of his own.
Since her resignation, Cho has issued a statement that her second pregnancy was the result of a rape that occurred more than a decade ago while she was still in the military. She could not report the crime (no surprise given the prevailing military culture) and she made the difficult choice to bear the child.
One can only applaud her courage and forbearance, but the fact is that she and her family's fundamental human rights have been ruthlessly trampled upon in a deliberate attempt to sabotage her politically; and it succeeded.
Instead of condemning this gross violation of Cho and her family's basic rights and protecting them, the DPK simply sat back and said they would act according to how the people responded to this news. This is not leadership but cowardly populism. Who will win next year's presidential election is very much in the dark but one thing is crystal clear: As long as the political parties continue in this way, there will be more and more alienated voters.
Cho Hee-kyoung (hongikmail@gmail.com) is a professor at Hongik University College of Law.
