Too Bad For The Next President
by Kim Dae-joong
Chosun Ilbo
December 1, 2001

One look at the horrific loss of W150 trillion in public funds ("gongjeok jageum") and one begins to feel sorry for the next president. The debris from Kim Dae-jung-style reform awaits the country's next leader, and yet it is unclear whether the men scurrying to position themselves as presidential candidates know how much of a financial and social burden might be required to deal with the problem, making them look foolish to the point you have to feel sympathy.

The government of the man who once advertised himself as "a president that is ready" is coming to a close, and in its wake it is leaving numerous incomplete tasks begun out of pure ambition, a desire to rank up the formal accomplishments, and arbitrary moves to change the country's basic framework. This has hurt various Korean social classes in a way that will be difficult to heal.

Of course much about the problems originated in the previous government, but President Kim is leaving the country with some W150 trillion in potential debt. Of this, 25% has been recovered, but the rest is probably lost forever. The next government will have to pay W25 trillion every year starting in 2003. If it is unable to pay this off and has to issue long-term bonds, eventually this would cost more than W6 trillion a year in interest alone. Thanks to the Kim Dae-jung government's misdeeds in the process of forcing the integration of the health insurance systems, and the aftermath of the move to rearrange the professional jurisdictions of doctors and pharmacists, there is nothing left in finances for health insurance.

The deficit in this area will be around W2 trillion by the end of the year, and next year it will require an additional injection of more than W3 trillion, but who knows where it is going to come from.

Every time he opened his mouth, President Kim talked about reform at state-owned corporations, but the effort in that area has all but been forfeited and left to the next government, which will risk having serious problems if it becomes scared of the unions and politicians. The financial burden that will come with opening the rice market will also leave formidable problems. Add to this the rapid increase in welfare spending resulting from 'law on the guaranteeing of basic subsistence,' which President Kim has pushed so hard for.

The various programs hastily pursued in the name of 'education reform' have seriously bruised Korean education. In an effort to decorate Korea with the trappings of a fully developed country, they forced along a policy requiring classes not to exceed 35 students each, and besides the more than W5 trillion spent on this already, the emergency teacher hunt and fly-by-night classroom construction campaign has left a very negative aftertaste. The boastful policy claims that 'having a single skill will get you into university' produced numerous students with no concrete direction, and the education 'equalization' program only intensified the gap between the rich and the poor. They spent W1.40 trillion on the BK21 project, but the country's professors are more lax than ever before. The decision to recognize the right of Jeon Gyo Jo teachers to engage in union activities on school campuses and the retirement age fiasco has put the educational community in conflict with itself.

Even when it comes to North Korea policy; so much money was spent along the way, and yet last year's summit was, in the end, all about appearances. As if this was not enough, this government has essentially sacrificed a world-class company, Hyundai, in its efforts with the North. Only now has President Kim said that he is leaving the post June 15th declaration on the Korean peninsula to the next government. He calls for 'leadership that can take a deep breath,' but it sounds like an excuse for the impatience and less-than-upfront approach taken up to now.

Now the problem becomes whether the task of resetting the clock to the pre-Kim Dae-jung era, or restoration to the country's former state will be dealt with seriously by the next government, and, since this will happen to some degree, the question also becomes one of how great the financial and social burden is going to be. To some degree, President Kim has been so obsessed with his political accomplishments and in being remembered in history, so much so that he has ignored questions of how much a given policy will cost and how to do effective economics. He wanted to be remembered as a 'great' man, even if it cost a little. It is the people's money we are talking about, however, and all policies, however nice they may be, must be economically sound.

On top of all of this, while in office President Kim has ignited serious ideological conflict among the people. Because he employed that old method of creating forces to oppose those who form obstacles, our society no longer considers people with opposing views as people with opposing view, but rather as enemies. The next president's tasks will include not only dealing with the financial mess, but perhaps the greatest task will be healing the wounds left by Kim Dae-jung.

The next presidential election will be about an alternative to the ways of Kim Dae-jung. It will have to be about the cost of undoing of the problems he's created, and it will have to be a time during which we debate how to go about healing the wounds. The choice the people make must be the result of such a debate.