가계부채·미세먼지·저출산 등 문제에 좌파 정당은 다양한 해결책 제시해 한국당도 이런 문제에 적극 나서야 트럼프식 포퓰리즘 정당으로는 권위주의·부정부패 해결 못해
로버트 켈리 객원논설위원·부산대 정치학과 교수
첫째 현안은 ‘헬조선’. 많은 학생들이 ‘명성’ 때문에 서울에 있는 학교에 가기를 원하며, 삼성 같은 대기업에 입사하기를 희망한다. 하지만 경제적인 이유로 학원 수업이나 과외를 받지 못하는 학생들에게는 어려운 일이다. 한국의 심각한 계층화는 형편이 어려운 이들에게 큰 굴욕감을 주고 있다.
두 번째는 ‘가계부채의 급격한 증가’. 부동산 시장의 투기적 성격으로 매매나 전월세를 감당하기 어려운 중하위계층과 서민들은 큰 고통을 겪고 있다. 부동산과 더불어 과도하게 높은 소비자 물가로 많은 이들이 부채를 짊어지고 있다.
네 번째는 ‘출생률 하락.’ 한국 여성 한 명이 낳는 자녀의 수가 1명 미만이다. 현대 사회에서 출생률 감소는 일반적인 현상이지만 한국은 그 속도가 너무 빠르다. 예산 부족, 말 많은 출산장려정책, 관심 받지 못하는 다문화주의 등 정부의 대응은 미적지근하다.
이 같은 문제들에 대해 좌파 정당들은 다양한 아이디어를 제시해왔다. 박원순 서울시장은 소수자와 서민에 대한 지원을 이야기 해왔고, 문재인 대통령은 재벌개혁과 부정부패 척결의 필요성에 대해 수사적으로나마 인정해왔다.
재야에서 다시 일어서기 위해 한국 우파는 바로 이 지점에 주목해야 한다. 계층 이동을 바라지만 경제적 사정이 여의치 않은 학생들을 어떤 방법으로 설득할 것인가. 가부장 사회에서 힘들게 얻은 직장을 잃지 않으면서도 자녀를 갖고 싶은 젊은 여성들에게 어떤 대안을 제시할 것인가. 참고하면 좋을 만한 네 가지 유형의 정당을 소개한다.
우선 ‘자유주의적 친시장·친세계화 정당’이다. 레이건 전 대통령 이후부터 트럼프 대통령 이전까지의 미국 공화당이나 독일의 자유민주당이 이에 해당된다. 자유한국당은 정부주도발전이 한국 경제를 옭아매지 않도록 전통적 자유주의를 지향하면서 낮은 세율과 적은 규제를 주장해야 재야에서 복귀할 수 있다. 물론 유권자들은 사회안전망, 정부제공 사회서비스 등을 선호하기에 이러한 유형은 폭넓은 공감을 이끌어내기 어렵다.
‘온건한 기독교 민주주의 정당’도 있다. 유럽의 보수들은 파시즘이 민족주의를 저해시킨 이후 교회를 중심으로 정당을 구성했다. 이러한 기독교 민주주의는 일반적 개념의 애국주의, 전통주의, 반공주의 등으로 녹아들어갔다. 다만 이처럼 모호하고 과거 회귀적인 보수주의는 다음에 말할 새로운 ‘포퓰리즘 혹은 트럼피즘(Trumpism) 모델’에 밀려나고 있다.
최근 세계적인 우파의 ‘선방’은 포퓰리즘 정당에서 이루어지고 있는데 트럼프 식으로 재편된 공화당이 가장 대표적이다. 자유한국당도 이러한 유형에 관심을 보여왔다. 홍준표 전 자유한국당 대표는 지난 대선에서 자신을 ‘한국판 트럼프’라고 홍보했다. 공통분모는 있다. 트럼프 대통령과 유럽의 포퓰리스트 지도자들은 민족주의, 중상주의, 외국인 혐오, 자주권, 이슬람 혐오 등을 강조한다. 한국에서도 예멘인 난민에 대한 극심한 혐오 반응으로 판단하건대 트럼프식 포퓰리즘은 좋은 전략이 될 수 있다.
그러나 부정적인 측면 또한 명확하다. 이들 대부분은 권위주의적이며 폭력적인 성향이 강하다. 또 포퓰리즘 정책은 무역장벽, 이민자 감소, 양적완화 등과 같이 매우 근시안적인 해결책이 될 가능성이 크다. 권위주의와 기업 부정부패를 척결하기 위해 노력하는 수출의존국가 한국에서 트럼프 식의 길을 걷는 것은 퇴보를 의미할 수 있다.
로버트켈리 객원논설위원·부산대 정치학과 교수
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Models for the Liberty Korea Party‘s Rebirth
In this space last month, I argued that the Liberty Korea Party is facing an existential crisis. The LKP is now in what American political science calls the ’wilderness‘ ¤ where a party out of power wanders in exile for a few years to reconstruct itself after a major defeat in order to become competitive again. The question is: how the LKP will come back? Will a post-Park Geun-Hye LKP speak to South Korea’s current domestic priorities, and not its own internal obsessions?
The LKP‘s last occupant of the presidency was impeached for a staggering corruption scandal, which many party voters disturbingly continue to insist was actually a communist plot. The party then got trounced in the 2017 presidential elections, and then trounced again in the 2018 local elections. Its ideology of mccarthyite anticommunism and pro-chaebol statist developmentalism is tired and has little appeal to younger and female voters.
On a host of major issues facing South Korea, the South Korean right today has little to say or is simply reactionary. South Korea needs creative thinking on issues such as:
- ’Hell Chosun‘: I see this problem regularly among the students I have taught for more than a decade at Pusan National University. Many pine to attend a school in Seoul simply for prestige. Many wish to live, work, or attend school overseas. Everyone is obsessed with working for a chaebol, Samsung above all, again because of the prestige. Those whose families do not have the resources for hagwons and tutors suffer. South Korea’s intense stratification is brutal and far too humiliating for the less well-off.
- Skyrocketing household debt: A speculative real estate market here punishes the poor and lower middle class without the resources to rent or buy. Practically everyone is in debt now because of real estate and extraordinarily high consumer prices. Seeing Costcos in Korea flooded with Koreans all the time is revelatory about just how expensive South Korea is for consumers.
- Appalling air quality: The usual excuse is that the dust comes from China, but we know now that that is not true, that much of it is home-grown from the use of coal and LNG. Everyone talks about this, but the problem has gotten much worse in my time in South Korea.
- Crashing birth rate: South Koreans are not replacing themselves. Fertility is now below one live birth per female. South Korea will start to contract demographically in less than five years. Some contraction of birth rates under modernization is typical, but South Korea‘s contraction has been extreme. The government’s response has been tepid ¤ controversial, under-resourced natalist programs; tepid multiculturalism; and vague hopes for unification with higher fertility North Koreans.
This is just a partial list of concerns which strike me as the most important domestic issues here. But one might include other obvious concerns, such as: traffic and pedestrian safety, cleaner streets, corruption, family leave, pregnancy and labor market participation, relations with Japan, the world‘s highest rate of alcohol consumption, corporate governance reform, the treatment of minorities such as immigrants or homosexuals, and so on.
In short, South Korea faces some pretty serious domestic issues where a normal political party would make interesting or at least relevant policy proposals. And to the credit of the South Korean left, its parties have floated various ideas about these concerns over the years. Park Won-Soon, the mayor of Seoul, for example, has prioritized these sorts of lifestyle issues, including outreach to minorities and the less well-off. Moon Jae-In has at least rhetorically recognized the need to discipline the chaebol and reduce corruption.
Here is where the South Korean right needs return from its exile with something interesting to say. How would it win over the votes of my students with limited resources who want to find dignity and social mobility in a stratified society? How will it speak to young women who would like to have children without losing the jobs they fought so hard to achieve in a patriarchal society?
Looking at other democracies, I see four possible models for a conservative party:
1. A libertarian, pro-market, pro-globalization party. The best examples here are the post-Ronald Reagan/pre-Donald Trump Republican party in the United States, and the Free Democratic Party in Germany. The LKP would return from the wilderness as a classical liberal, low tax/low regulation party determined to free up the South Korean economy from heavy hand of South Korea’s state-led development.
Unfortunately, this model has limited appeal. Voters like the social safety net, the state‘s provision of services, and progressive taxation. The FDP has always been a minor party in Germany, and the American Republicans have often had to cover their pro-corporate agenda with more populist policy proposals.
2. A religious party. Politically active Christians in the West have organized themselves politically for two centuries, and certainly South Korea’s Protestant groups are both politically engaged and reliable conservative voters. But South Korea is religiously quite diverse, with many Buddhists and non-religious voters. There are probably not enough conservative religious voters for this strategy, and politicizing religion would increase sectarianism in South Korea, as Protestants, Catholics, and Buddhists sought to capture the party‘s agenda.
3. Tepid Christian democracy. European postwar conservatives organized themselves around the church after fascism had discredited nationalism. This Christian democratic strand dissolved into a general patriotism, traditionalism, and anticommunism. The current LKP is somewhat like this, although it is more akin to the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan than Christian democracy in Europe. However, this vague, backward-looking conservatism is losing out to the new populist/Trumpist model.
4. Populism/Trumpism. The excitement on the global right today is around populist parties, most obviously Trump’s remaking of the Republican party. But the Brexiteers, and the National Front in France, are also well-known models, while Brazil and the Philippines have ‘Trumpist’ presidents too.
The LKP has already flirted with this model. Hong Joon-Pyo, the LKP 2017 presidential candidate, marketed himself as the ‘Donald Trump of Korea.’ There is definitely some overlap. Trump and the European populists emphasize nationalism, mercantilism, xenophobia, sovereignty, hostility to Islam, and so on. All of this would have obvious appeal to South Korean conservative voters. The sharp xenophobic response to the 550 Muslim refugees on Jeju in 2018 suggests Trumpist populism might work here.
The downside is pretty obvious though. Trump, the Brexiteers, the National Front, and the other populists are either openly racist and obviously flirting with racism. Most have authoritarian and gangsterish instincts. All have disturbing relations with Russia. Populist policy solutions tend to be pretty short-sighted ¤ trade barriers, reduced immigration, looser money. For an export dependent economy like South Korea‘s, which fought hard to free itself from both authoritarianism and corporate corruption, the Trump path would represent a step backward.
These strike me as the four most obvious paths for an LKP reconstruction. None of them fit Korean circumstances exceptionally well, but if the LKP wants to start winning again, it needs to start thinking how it might address the many pressing issues discussed above.