Tit for Thae

By Jason Lim

One of the most amazing pieces of news coming out of April 15 general election in South Korea wasn't that the ruling party won a super majority. Rather, it was that Thae Yong-ho, the most famous of North Korean defectors, won a seat in Gangnam, the richest district in Seoul.

Let that sink in for a bit. A former North Korean official ― North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom ― who came to South Korea in 2016, managed to win a seat in the National Assembly for the opposition party that got decimated in the overall election.

In fact, Thae won in a landslide. Once again, a former official from a "communist" country will be representing the richest district in all of Korea for the conservative United Future Party (UFP) that has traditionally been all about fire and brimstone when it comes to North Korea. The poetic irony is too rich not to indulge in for a little while.

Well, I say all power to Thae and South Korea's democracy. Thae seems to be an intelligent, well-spoken person with plenty of international experience and policy chops. Working for North Korea couldn't have been easy. If Thae could thrive under those circumstances, he will certainly be a credit to the Korean government, whichever party he belongs to.

Having said that, Thae's election clearly shows that the long-standing ideological divide on the Korean Peninsula between democracy/capitalism and communism/socialism is finally dead. While die-hards may still practice red-baiting verbal jujitsu, society has moved on. The old ideological binary is no longer salient. Thae's election proves that once and for all.

The richest folks in South Korea apparently felt comfortable with a former North Korean representing their interests in the Assembly. They overwhelmingly felt that Thae was one of them. And they are absolutely right.

Thae was one of the elite in North Korea, he was educated in the best schools, speaks three languages fluently, worked as a diplomat, lived in a major international city, married into an aristocratic family, and raised their children with all the privileges that his circumstances could offer, including the best colleges in the Western World.

If you had read an anonymized version of Thae's bio, you would have thought that he certainly had the bona fides for Gangnam. With over $1.5 million in officially reported wealth that he managed to garner in three short years, Thae is a shining example that South Korea's capitalism works. If wealth is a religion, Thae is an enthusiastic convert going off on his mission to proselytize.

In short, the elite of South Korea picked a fellow member to be their voice, illustrating clearly that the new binary that is the overarching framework that organizes Korean society is one between the haves and have-nots.

This shouldn't come as a surprise. This binary has been driving the underlying Korean narrative for a while. In fact, just before the COVID-19 maelstrom, the biggest news in Korea was the Oscar triumph of "Parasite"; Korea achieved its highest honor in film via a movie that dealt with the divide between the rich and poor.

"Hell Joseon" was another recent and still ongoing phenomenon in which the young vociferously voice their discontent against a society dominated by a wealthy class that views them as interchangeable commodities to be treated as paycheck-hungry shirkers who only want to do the bare minimum, or robots that can be ordered to produce a high-performance for their masters.

In prior generations, the have-nots at least had hopes of rising up the economic ladder to be a part of the wealthy class. Today, that hope is gone, replaced by the growing despair and resentment at the haves who flaunt and hoard but, seemingly, can't be touched.

The incredible outpouring of outrage at former Justice Minister Cho Kuk is another case in point. That his high school daughter allegedly managed to do a student internship at a medical lab and be listed as the primary author on a paper that was published in a respected medical journal was a sign that Cho was a have who was only pretending to be a champion of the have-nots.

The fact that a rich girl used her parents' connections to receive a leg up in getting into a prestigious university was a painful reminder that the liberal vs. conservative divide was a false front for the real divide between the privileged and the ordinary.

With COVID-19, this divide is about to get even starker. Around the world, there has been pushback against the rich and famous playing "suffering" while "imprisoned" inside their mansions or yachts with all the luxuries they can handle, while people go hungry and are fearful of the painful uncertainties of tomorrow.

While Korea has managed to come together as a people during this crisis for now, COVID-19 will undoubtedly highlight the depth of the fault line as time passes and challenge (or tempt) the country's leadership on how to best deal with an altogether different type of intra-Korean division.