The 586 Activists Who Called for Abolishing Vested Interests Have Become Parasitic Elites in Our Society

An apartment without rebar? It sounds like the kind of story that would appear in an overseas oddities column from some distant developing country, or something one might have heard only in the era before the collapse of Seoul’s Sampoong apartment building. And yet this is what is making headlines in South Korea right now, in the 21st century.

Rebar was omitted in 15 apartment complexes built by LH. What is even more astonishing is the details. In the underground parking garage of the Yangju Hoecheon A15 complex, for instance, all of the shear reinforcement bars that should have gone into the flat plate slab were missing. The reason was that no one had even calculated how much shear reinforcement was needed in the first place. It was a comprehensive failure spanning design, construction, and supervision. What on earth is happening in South Korea in 2023? At the Cabinet meeting on August 1, President Yoon Suk Yeol said that the vested-interest “cartel” in the construction industry must be smashed without fail. On that day, he again declared that the Yoon administration is an anti-cartel government, making the identity of his administration unmistakably clear.

“Cartel” (Kartell) is a word of German origin. It refers either to a form of monopoly created when firms in the same industry enter into agreements on prices, output, sales channels, and the like for the purpose of restricting or easing competition, or to the agreement itself. It differs from a trust in that the independence of each firm is maintained.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s attacks on vested-interest cartels did not begin suddenly. Starting with the solar power cartel in September of last year, he moved to dismantle the labor-union cartel by insisting during the truckers’ union strike that there would be absolutely no negotiations. After that, by calling subsidies to civic groups political subsidies and halting them, he blocked the civic-group cartel at its source. More recently, beginning with the inclusion of “killer questions” in the CSAT mock exams, he has been fully digging into the private education cartel. Collusive ties involving large sums of money between some teachers and private academies have already been uncovered, and additional investigations are still under way to reveal the full extent of the matter.

Vested-interest cartels, a chronic disease pervasive throughout our society

As President Yoon has declared, the Yoon administration is clearly pursuing an anti-cartel course. His attacks on cartels did not begin after he took office. In fact, they had been unfolding consistently from much earlier. The starting point was the Cho Kuk scandal: the professors’ cartel.

Professors abused the trust society had placed in them by helping one another’s children gain admission to schools. Chung Kyungshim, a professor at Dongyang University, forged a commendation certificate, and Pusan National University’s medical school awarded a scholarship to Cho Min, the daughter of Cho Kuk, then a professor at Seoul National University. In fact, his son, Cho Won, is even more astonishing. When applying to Yonsei University graduate school, he submitted a certificate showing internship activity at the Seoul National University Public Interest and Human Rights Law Center, but there was in fact no record of any actual internship activity.

At the time, the head of the Seoul National University Public Interest and Human Rights Law Center was Han Inseop, a fellow professor with Cho Kuk at Seoul National University Law School. It was revealed that solicitation on behalf of Cho Won’s admission had been made to Yonsei professors through Shin Wookhee, a professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Seoul National University. The admissions scoring sheet for Cho Won, which should have been kept for four years, was conveniently(?) lost, leaving it a mystery whether Yonsei professors gave fraudulent scores because of such solicitation. Disciplinary proceedings are now under way against 75 faculty and staff members in connection with the matter. Cho Kuk, who had proudly touted his background in the 586 activist movement, thus became one shattered fragment of the professors’ cartel.

After taking office, when corruption in the Moon Jae-in administration’s solar power program was uncovered in September of last year, President Yoon identified it as a “cartel.” And here appears Hur Inhoe, a godfather of the 586 activist movement. Hur Inhoe, who had served as student body president at Korea University in 1985, was the chairman of the Committee for the Struggle for National Unification, Democracy, and People’s Liberation, the student activist group known as “Sammin투,” and is a leading elder figure of that activist generation.

Through the solar power company Green Dream Cooperative, Hur Inhoe received subsidies for solar power projects and enjoyed preferential treatment such as being awarded work, facts confirmed through the Board of Audit and Inspection’s audit. Whether Hur Inhoe’s outwardly noble activist work actually won democracy is impossible to know, but it is clear that he won subsidies and special favors. How many more members of the 586 activist movement were involved in the solar power business is anyone’s guess.

Labor unions are also one of the principal stages for the 586 activist generation. Minister Won Hee-ryong, who has been fiercely battling the construction union while calling it “construction thugs,” was himself an ardent activist from the Seoul National University Law School class of 1982 who had thrown himself into the labor movement at the time. Minister Won ran night classes for female workers in Guro and even disguised himself as a worker to gain employment at a metal factory in Incheon.

Recently, an organizing director of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions provided a North Korean operative with the KCTU’s internal network ID and password, and a certain former vice chair of the KCTU Metal Workers’ Union is accused of trying to establish subordinate organizations within the Metal Workers’ Union headquarters and elsewhere under instructions from North Korea. Labor unions have become a stage not only for the 586 activist generation but also for the pro-North faction.

The private education academy sector is also a less well-known stage for the 586 activist generation. As Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Eui-kyeom acknowledged, many from the 586 activist generation moved into the private education market. Democratic Party lawmaker Chung Cheong-rae was active in Seochongryeon, an organization under Jeondaehyup, and later opened a cram school where he taught elementary and middle school students.

A representative figure of the 586 activist generation, Yoo Si-min has steadily published books for students, including Yoo Si-min’s Special Lecture on Essay Writing and A World History Read Backwards. Min Kyungwoo, once an NL pro-North activist and secretary-general of the Pan-National Alliance for Korea’s Reunification, but now ideologically converted, also ran a math academy starting in 2012. The private education cartel today has deteriorated into a vested-interest cartel that does not simply teach more studying but pays current teachers large sums of money in exchange for receiving killer questions.

If one follows the vested-interest cartels that President Yoon seeks to break apart, before long one encounters members of the 586 activist generation at every turn. These are the very people who once denounced the industrialization generation as vested interests and cried out for the abolition of entrenched privilege.

“Democracy” and “down with dictatorship” were slogans for dismantling the entrenched privilege of the industrialization generation. But throughout society, they had become a dark “shadow” called “cartels,” living parasitically as the very vested interests they had criticized.

The event in which these parasitic shadows came to occupy the master’s place over the host was the launch of the Moon Jae-in administration. On the 30th, former President Moon boasted that during his administration there was not a single case of corruption involving money or valuables at the Blue House. Given the gate scandals and cartels now coming to light, that remark by former President Moon is nothing short of absurd.

It is not that there was no corruption during the Moon Jae-in administration; rather, the Moon administration deliberately looked away instead of rooting out corruption. Indeed, it became a society in which crimes committed by the 586 activist camp were treated as though they were not crimes at all; a society in which the parasitic shadows no longer even needed to hide; a society in which, regardless of whether the host—South Korea—lived or died, those wearing the stylish mask of “activists” hid in the shadows and gratified their own desires. In that way, the dark shadows of the 586 activist movement made themselves the masters of the host.

The key word repeatedly used here, “cartel,” has now become, beyond any doubt, an arrow piercing through President Yoon Suk Yeol’s perception of reality and his vision of South Korea’s future. What could be more difficult than trying to cut a shadow with a sword? But if it were easy, it would hardly be a task worthy of something a president must accomplish.

President Yoon Suk Yeol was born in 1960. (His university entrance year was 1979, one year too early to be part of the 586 generation.) He was the People Power Party’s presidential candidate who sang “There Will Never Be Another Such Person” in tribute to former President Roh Moo-hyun. Having lived in the same era as the 586 activist generation, he knows their beginnings all too well, and he has also witnessed the sordid behavior of figures such as Hur Inhoe, a patriarch of the 586 activist movement once jailed for unpaid wages, and KCTU officials involved in espionage activities. What remains for President Yoon, then, is the mission given to him as president: the awareness that the spirit of the age now demands an end to the “dark shadow” of the 586 activist movement.

Youngseob Won, Editorial Board Member of Future Korea and Attorney at Law

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Original title: 기득권 철폐 외치던 586 운동권, 우리 사회 기득권으로 기생

Author: Young-seop Won

Date: 2023-08-09

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=25941