And that is something we need to be watching very, very closely. If we believe that conservative principles work and liberal principles destroy nations, and if current trends in America continue, we're going to see America go the way of Europe while Asian nations turn into the economic, political, and military tiger assuming the role currently held by the United States.
I also find it very interesting that in Asia, which is anything but a bastion of women's rights, the newly elected president of South Korea is female and the new head of China has a wife who is a two-star general in the Chinese Army. Did the spirit of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin decide to cross the Pacific Ocean since their ideas are apparently unwelcome in America? Having a strongly conservative female president of South Korea is going to have major effects in South Korea, even more so than a liberal female president would because lots of conservative men will grudgingly go along with her when they would fight a liberal woman, and I happen to think promoting women's rights in Asia is a good thing.
This is not an unmixed victory, however. As Twotone put it:
5 posted on Wed Dec 19 2012 13:08:08 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time) by Twotone: “And having had a dictator for a father, it probably wasn’t good training for her, or for the So. Koreans.”
Park Geun-hye’s father definitely did not have clean hands. He was an authoritarian ruler, and that is putting it gently. Some would call President Park Chung-hee a military dictator. Nobody on Free Republic would want any president of the United States, even in time of war, doing the things he did. Persecution, silencing, exile, torture, and even execution of his opponents may have been necessary — harsh measures are sometimes unavoidable under harsh conditions — but we would not and should not tolerate in America the tactics that President Park used to maintain control of his country.
I personally know some of the targets of President Park's wrath. These are not liberals by any definition of the word; these are conservative Korean Presbyterian church leaders who said the sorts of things that men like D. James Kennedy or Francis Schaeffer would say. President Park issued orders that effectively ended their ministry and forced them to emigrate to the United States. Let's just say President Park's Buddhism did not endear him to everyone in the Christian community in Korea, with which he had an ambiguous relationship. President Park was a conservative, he valued conservative Christians who supported the government and encouraged what Park considered to be good moral conduct and personal self-discipline, which are certainly important Buddhist and Confucian values as well as Christian values, but he had very little tolerance for any dissent against his policies. President Park typically silenced or exiled conservative Christians who objected to his policies rather than taking the stronger steps he used against liberals suspected of Communist or socialist sympathies, and for that, Christians in South Korea probably should be grateful.
However, we need to be very careful not to judge Korea by Western standards. President Park Chung-hee ruled as an authoritarian dictator who severely persecuted his opponents out of fear — legitimate fear — that the North Korean Communists would use any perception of governmental weakness to sow serious instability and perhaps overthrow his anti-Communist regime. On the other hand, he's significantly responsible for the development of South Korea into what it is today, and possibly even for its continued existence as a separate country.
What I don't know is how much Park Geun-hye has distanced herself from her father's policies and practices. Does she believe that her father's policies were needed at the time but no longer appropriate now that South Korea has developed into a modernized democratic state? That's certainly the image she wants to convey, and if that's what she really believes, I respect that position.
Or does she believe that ends justify the means, and economic development with a strong military and orderly society are the goal to be pursued regardless of what methods are used to accomplish that goal? If so, she doesn't have a commitment to popular rule and is an advocate of democracy only because she knows it works. That would make her no different from the Chinese rulers, whose goal is economic development, an orderly society, and military strength, and who view democracy as dangerous.
We have lots of questions but not a lot of answers.
The bottom line, however, is President Park's election was probably the best under the circumstances. She'll take a hard line against Communism and in favor of economic development and capitalism, and that is a good thing.
She has publicly apologized multiple times for the actions of her father.