In the Kyôngsang provinces and Pusan City, Park won 1,586,006 more votes than Kim Dae-jung, whereas Kim Dae-jung garnered 621,906 more votes than Park in the Chôlla provinces. The difference was 964,100 votes, roughly equal to the national differential of 946,928 votes.
It is ironic that Park attempted his second Green Uprising precisely when the two largest regions were overtaken by regionalist rivalries, thus
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making his strategy of two carrots, one stick, and the modern-day politics of image making to mobilize the farmers top-down that much less effective. Not only the countryside but the entire nation became increasingly affected by the contagious politics of regionalism, in sharp contrast to the 1963 and 1967 presidential elections, when only South Ch’ungch’ông and Kyôngsang voters showed such inclinations. Park had embarked on buying rural votes with a generous economic program when a large chunk of South Korea’s rural sector, the Chôlla provinces, increasingly refused to be bought off because of their favorite son’s political ascendance.
In retrospect, the Chôlla provinces show how volatile rural sentiments could be and why Park could not take rural support for granted. The journey of the Chôlla region in South Korea’s presidential elections was as remarkable as Park’s constant switch of agricultural policy. The Chôlla region’s rural electorate endorsed Park for his efforts at rural reform in 1963, only to change sides to support the NDP’s Yun Po-sôn at the height of the agricultural squeeze in 1967. Then, in a show of regionalist preference provoked by Kim Dae-jung’s NDP candidacy in 1971, the Chôlla voters sided against Park in spite of his efforts to promote a second Green Uprising after 1968. The South Korean farmers were far from being what the advocates of yôch’onyado thought they were. Their votes were influenced more by economic calculation and regionalist identity than by cultural conformism. They even voted against Park in ever larger numbers as he increased his ability to reward with two carrots, punish with one stick, and engage in the politics of image-making through the continuous strengthening of the organizational capabilities of the MHA, MAF, NCAF, and Saema¤l Undong. The state’s institutional ability to force the farmers’ acquiescence rose in tandem with the Chôlla farmers’ increasing resistance against that state in presidential elections.
The National Assembly elections, coming only a month after the presidential election, were driven by a different dynamic. Whereas the presidential election often served as a plebiscite on Park’s leadership, the National Assembly contests again involved the particularistic economic game of clientelism. Under the system that elected “district” (chiyôkku) legislators on a simple plurality rule and that allotted 50–66 percent of listed “national” (chônkukku) seats to the political party with the largest number of votes, the DRP captured 86 district seats and 27 listed seats, while the NDP won 65 and 27, respectively. The ruling party won a comfortable majority, which ensured legislative support for Park’s economic policy, but it was 23 seats short of acquiring two thirds of National Assembly seats.
Consequently, the DRP was prevented from passing another constitutional revision to extend Park’s presidential rule. Introducing another change in
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the constitutional restriction on presidential terms would require an extra-constitutional measure, leading to Park’s decision to rely on the national referendum in 1972 (see Chapter 8). Until then, the press called the 1971
election an NDP victory because the NDP almost doubled its seats from the 1967 National Assembly elections. In reality, the 1971 National Assembly elections were a victory for the DRP as well. The ruling party was able to hold on to its majority status because the rural voters in the Chôlla provinces opted for the DRP candidates, after having voted for NDP’s Kim Dae-jung in the presidential election. The DRP won 14 of South Chôlla Province’s 17 rural districts and 6 of North Chôlla Province’s 9 rural districts. Regionalist loyalty did not stand in the way of the Chôlla voters, who wanted to vote for the DRP because they looked at the National Assembly elections as an opportunity to choose an intermediary between the village and the state bureaucracy. That goal was best served by electing DRP candidates.
The Yôch’onyado Thesis Revisited
The relationship between rural voters and the Park regime was much more complex than the prevailing views of yôch’onyado would suggest. As shown by a regression analysis of Jae-On Kim and B. C. Koh on the voting patterns of the South Korean electorate, the “explanatory power” of urbanization fluctuated greatly throughout Park’s political rule, from as high as 66 percent in the 1971 election to as low as 2 percent in the 1967 election.75 The rural electorate voted quite differently from one election to another, as the choices of the Chôlla voters show. They endorsed Park for rural reform in 1963, only to dump him in favor of the NDP’s Yun Po-sôn at the height of the agricultural squeeze in 1967. Then, enthusiastically reacting to their favorite son’s NDP candidacy in 1971, the Chôlla voters voted against Park despite his U-turn on agricultural policy. In contrast to the image of pliable and malleable farmers portrayed by the advocates of the yôch’onyado thesis, South Korea’s rural population expressed its discontent when it was discontented.
Even regionalism included some characteristics of economic voting, in addition to being wedded to the politics of identity. The farmers in the Kyôngsang provinces consistently backed Park not only out of regionalist loyalty but also because of what Albert O. Hirschman termed the “tunnel effect.”76 The tunnel effect occurs when those who have fallen behind choose not to rebel but to persevere, in the belief that they too will share the fruits of economic growth like those who have already made advances.
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The sight of frontrunners in the race to modernity does not create alienation, but rather the hope for a better future for those left behind. Kyôngsang farmers were in no better condition than Chôlla farmers, but unlike Chôlla farmers, they had relatives and friends in nearby Kumi and Ulsan, which were then rapidly becoming major industrial centers. Those in Kyôngsang believed their prosperity would one day trickle down to them as well. “We did not expect much change for us,” a farmer of North Kyôngsang Province recollected. “Was there any period when farmers were fairly treated? No. Still, since Park was from the Kyôngsang provinces, we thought there would be something for us. Isn’t there a saying, ‘We better choose red skirts if the price is same’? We thought that a Kyôngsang president would be somehow better for us than a Seoulite or Chôlla president.”77
Rural votes in National Assembly elections that had a different tone and rhythm from those of presidential elections must also be considered. The yôch’onyado occurred much more consistently in National Assembly elections than during presidential elections, but contrary to the prevalent image of the “conformist farmer,” the rural electorates’ votes for the DRP
appear to be based on a rational calculation of benefits and costs, not the conformist act of following the village elders and local bureaucrats’
wishes. Take the example of the Chôlla voters once more. In 1967 and 1971, they voted overwhelmingly against Park in the presidential elections, but backed DRP candidates by a large margin in the National Assembly elections held only a month later. Apparently they viewed the presidential election as a plebiscite to express their grievances, and the following month’s elections as a selection of the intermediary who would lobby most aggressively for the village in interministerial struggles over budget allocations. Because the assembly elections immediately followed the presidential election during the 1961–1972 period, which consistently resulted in the victory of Park, that meant backing the DRP in the National Assembly elections.
In the case of the rural voters in the Kyôngsang provinces, both regionalist loyalty and economic calculation worked in the same direction. “We voted for the DRP candidate for the National Assembly,” an interviewee recollected, “thinking that he would get o
ne more road or one more bridge for the village. What could a national assemblyman with membership in the NDP do for us? Obviously, voting for the DRP candidate does not guarantee that he will actually deliver on his election pledges. If he does not accomplish much, we can throw him out of office one way or another.
It is no accident that there has been no national assemblyman who served three or more terms in our districts. After two terms, they all fell because
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they became very unpopular.”78 Another farmer was equally cynical and mistrustful of all party politicians: “Those rascals were the same. They all were after their own selfish interests. Whoever won, what difference would it make? We voted for the one who treated us better, with the gift of a pair of rubber shoes or even a bowl of makkôlli. ” It was the DRP candidates, with the state bureaucracy’s resources, who could lure the voters with economic incentives. The same farmer reported of the NDP candidate who once pleaded with the farmers that they “drink the makkôlli the DRP
offered, but vote for NDP.” “But men are not like that,” the interviewee admitted. “In the end we voted for whoever gave or promised us economic goods, even if that meant only a bowl of makkôlli. ”79
Apparently, many of the rural population voted in accordance with their needs, expected or current. Some voted for the DRP candidate in expectation of a greater supply of local public goods, like the construction of bridges and roads. Others voted for whichever candidate provided the most immediate individual utility, like the bowl of makkôlli. They did so not only because Park’s formidable political machine, driven by the MHA, MAF, NACF, and other bureaucratic organs, bid vigorously for electoral support with the mix of two carrots and one stick, but also because the expected difference between DRP and NDP candidates was in many ways seen as minimal from the farmers’ perspective. The NDP did not differ from the DRP ideologically except on the issue of liberal democracy. More critically, the NDP remained a party of notables, without the organizational ability to develop a concrete program of policy action. Besides, the NDP saw itself as the heir to the ideals of the urban-based Student Revolution of April 19, 1960, which Park thwarted with his coup d’état the next year. Because “those rascals were the same,” it was neither unethical nor irrational for the farmers to “sell” their vote to the highest bidder. More often than not, the highest bidder was the better-financed DRP candidate.
This is not to deny that top-down mobilization occurred in the countryside for the electoral victory of Park and the DRP. Park had at his disposal a vast array of means for mobilization and used them to get votes. That power fundamentally arose from his modernization of the state apparatus, but it was also South Korea’s close-knit traditional rural society that facilitated the use of bureaucratic power on behalf of electoral mobilization.
Because of the self-contained nature of South Korea’s rural villages, DRP
organizers and state bureaucrats could easily distinguish NDP and DRP
supporters from each other. Anonymity barely existed, if at all. A villager could not meet NDP campaigners without his neighbors’ knowledge of it.
Word would soon spread of his political preference, making him vulnera-
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ble to the DRP’s revenge. The following excerpt from an interview is revealing.
I think it was 1963. My wife campaigned for an opposition candidate who was a distant relative of hers. Since she was meeting various people, every-body in the village came to know of her political work. After the election, an NACF representative abruptly told me to pay back the loans I had borrowed from the NACF. I had borrowed the money to send the kids to school in Taegu. The NACF representative knew of this all along, but suddenly asked me to pay back because I was using the loans not for farming, but for family purposes. I begged for his understanding, but one day he came over with his people and attached red tags to everything I had in the house. We could not use any of those household goods [because the red tag-attached goods were to be confiscated to pay for the loans]. I had to borrow “quick money” from private lenders at exorbitantly high interest rates to pay back the farming loans.
Eventually, I ended up losing two majigi [patches] of rice paddies.80
The farmer’s recollection is consistent with the MAF’s change in agricultural policy in 1964. To counter the rampant inflation that started in late 1963, the NACF under MAF guidance began calling in many outstanding farming loans. With his wife out of favor with the local political authorities, our interviewee had little chance of being exempt from this crunch.
However, it is also true that the same tight-knit traditional rural society provided a protective shield for some NDP supporters. Another farmer recalled: “It was not difficult to guess who voted for the NDP candidate. Everyone in the village knew each other’s business. But what could one do if his relative or neighbor voted for the opposition? Living in the same neigh-borhood with the same people throughout life and knowing everyone in the village so well, how could he dare to report NDP supporters to the local authorities? That would have made them lifelong enemies. It was out of the question for most of us to take action against NDP supporters simply because the village head asked us to do so.”81
The interviews reveal rural voters to be very different from those envisioned under the prevailing interpretation of yôch’onyado. Some South Korean farmers, like those of South Ch’ungch’ông Province in 1963 and 1967 and the Chôlla provinces in 1967 and 1971, expressed their grievances by voting for the opposition. But more often they let themselves be mobilized less because of cultural conformism than because of the payoff structure. They not only calculated the pros and cons of not supporting Park, but also took into account the expected utility to them of the DRP
versus the NDP before making their rational choice in the National Assembly elections. This strategy of survival was one the farmers had learned
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from living in a subsistence economy, where the difference between survival and starvation was very thin. Because of the fragility of rural life, most farmers tended to keep quiet about their problems until they became unbearable. Essentially embodying the “rational peasant” of James C.
Scott, the South Korean farmers preferred to minimize losses rather than maximize gains because the penalties for failure were severe.82 By contrast, in the presidential elections, not only the Kyôngsang (1963, 1967, and 1971) and Ch’ungch’ông (1963 and 1967), but also the Chôlla (1971) voters followed their regionalist instinct rather than their narrowly defined economic interests, when their regionalist favorite sons ran as presidential candidates. Otherwise, they treated the presidential election as a plebiscite on Park’s agricultural policy.
In keeping with the rational peasants’ behavior in the National Assembly elections, Park was a rational mobilizer. Knowing that the South Korean farmers tried to minimize losses rather than to maximize gains, Park equipped his rural political machine with two carrots and one stick. Park knew he could mobilize the farmers without giving them much, and he followed this instinct. When he found it difficult to pursue “balanced growth,” it was the countryside that was to bear the brunt of budget reductions, as in the 1964–1968 period of agricultural squeeze. Park tried to get the most out of the little he did for South Korean farmers. He held the National Assembly elections soon after the presidential race in order to make the villages view his DRP candidates as an attractive choice to link villagers to the state bureaucracy. When Park resorted to the policy of agricultural squeeze to propel his export-led industrialization drive, he was careful not to make the agricultural squeeze too obvious by resorting to indirect methods of forced savings, such as inflationary financing. During the election year, he also tried to prop up, however temporarily, his image as a “son of the soil” by reducing the direct outflow of resources from the countryside, while increasing direct subsidies to the rural sector.
And understanding villagers’ low expectations of any marked difference between DRP and NDP candidates in the National Assembly elections, Park had his DRP candidates focus on promising locally prized construction projects, or simply give away a pair of rubber shoes, a bowl of makkôlli, a towel, or even outright cash to secure a legislative majority.
c h a p t e r
t h i r t e e n
The Chaeya
Myung-Lim Park
South korea is known globally for its success as a state—and for good reason. Energized by Park Chung Hee’s vision and power (1961–
1979), and empowered with technocratic rationality, discretionary power, and esprit de corps, the South Korean state achieved economic hypergrowth from the top down in one generation. In the literature on developmental states, it is a rare case, having largely beaten the market in the synchronization of its chaebol partners’ massive entries into new frontiers of growth under their own brand names, product cycles, and distributive networks. Behind this widely celebrated story, however, lies another, much less known tale of the chaeya. These dissident intelligentsia seemed to face a losing battle, trying to reshape politics not from the inside but from outside South Korea’s chedogwôn, or official institutions of political rule, in the belief that moral integrity, partisan neutrality, and intellectual independence constituted their source of power and would ultimately carry the day.1 To go inside the chedogwôn to have an impact on politics and gain leverage over policy was interpreted as threatening this source of power, because it would transform the chaeya into merely another political force with vested interests in the status quo and would weaken its members’ will to resist. The chaeya gave up opportunities to develop a political party for fear of getting compromised by “dirty politics.” Yet the chaeya still had a crucial impact on South Korean politics, shaping national agendas, empowering social forces, and even laying the ground for regime change in
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