South Korea’s outgoing president, Moon Jae-in, came to power with grand promises of peace with the North and an “equal and just” society in the South, but five years later failed to deliver, analysts say.
Talks between Washington and Pyongyang, brokered by Moon, collapsed and North Korea again tested long-range missiles. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said last week that his country is strengthening its nuclear arsenal “as fast as possible.”
Domestically, Moon’s key housing policy failed, his landmark anti-discrimination legislation never materialized, and leading figures in his party were embroiled in bribery and sex scandals.
Frustration with his rule galvanized a right-wing opposition to the brink, analysts say, and led to conservative Yoon Suk-yeol being narrowly elected in March and becoming the next president on May 10.
“Moon’s main legacy will be Yoon’s election as president,” Gi-Wook Shin, a sociology professor at Stanford University, told AFP.
Yoon, an outspoken anti-feminist and right-wing security hawk, is the antithesis of Moon, and his threats of preemptive strikes against North Korea have already succeeded in undoing much of his predecessor’s attempts at rapprochement with the North.
In any case, Moon’s diplomacy had already collapsed, and Kim had recently hinted at a threat to use his nuclear weapons, Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute told AFP.
historical achievements
However, Moon’s tenure was marked by historical events: in 2018 he became the first South Korean president to give a speech to the North Korean public.
“I propose that we completely end the past 70 years of hostility and take a big step towards peace to become one again,” Moon told a packed stadium in Pyongyang, which gave him a standing ovation.
He is the only South Korean president to have met three times with his North Korean counterpart. And he was a mediator in the historic summits between then US President Donald Trump and Kim. But all these efforts collapsed in 2019.
Pyongyang has since branded Moon a “meddlesome broker,” destroyed a Seoul-funded joint liaison office on the border, and in March test fired an ICBM at full range for the first time since 2017.
In addition, satellite images indicate that the North is preparing to resume its nuclear tests.
Moon “gave North Korea too much credit” in terms of compromise and peacebuilding, according to Soo Kim of the RAND Corporation.
“Kim has shown us that he cannot be convinced to give up his weapons in any way since his own survival depends on them,” the analyst told AFP.
“It is difficult to say whether Moon’s legacy with North Korea will have any impact on inter-Korean relations,” he added.
Unkept promises
The outgoing president came to power after his predecessor was ousted in a scandal that included academic favors for the daughter of a presidential adviser.
In his inaugural address in 2017, he promised that “opportunities will be equal. The process will be fair and the result will be correct.”
But one of his advisers, Cho Kuk, was involved in a bribery scandal and Moon was seen as being too easy on him.
The Moon government competently managed the Covid-19 pandemic, but its housing policies failed, according to June Park, a political economist at Princeton University.
His repeated attempts to combat inequality have only deepened it, with apartment prices in the capital rising 120% since Moon came to power.
His policy of raising taxes on multiple homeowners made no economic sense, according to Park.
As a result of Moon’s housing policy, life for the average South Korean has become “palpably more difficult,” said Sharon Yoon, a professor of Korean studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Still, Moon’s popularity remains strong in South Korea, with an approval rating of 44%, nearly double that of many other presidents at the end of their terms.
But his failures have disappointed his supporters and propelled opposition conservatives, Vladimir Tikhonov, a professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo, told AFP.
“It was a presidency with many promises at the beginning, but few promises kept at the end,” he added.
