Sounds to me like the president has a multitude of skeletons in her closet, through which she's being blackmailed. Or perhaps she's just a puppet, under someone else's control all along.
Maybe I'm just overly cynical, but I'm not too surprised to hear stories like this. Our political process is just so dysfunctional, that I don't think it's possible for a normal, worthy leader to actually win the election. The only way to get to the top is to sell out your integrity in one way or another.
We wonder why our leaders are so morally bankrupt, when really, our process is explicitly designed to weed out anyone who isn't.
But bringing it up here diminishes the absurdity of this case. This line stood out to me: "Her corruption was not self-interested at all. If anything, her corruption was self-sacrificing in favor of Choi Soon-sil."
Park Geun-hye has not used her powers for her own sake. She allowed herself to be humiliated in ways large and small, and eventually destroyed her own administration, for someone else's petty convenience. It is completely out of line with even a cynic's portrait of a selfish and power-hungry politician.
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
This is an intellectually lazy and overly cynical view of human nature. The reason politicians seem so terrible is not that they were the dredges of human morals and character to begin with, but because a) power corrupts, b) the stronger the light you shine, the worse every flaw looks.
Do you ever make mistakes in your job? Things that, in hindsight, were non-optimal? Of course you do! And in most jobs that's not a big deal, but when you're a head of state, even a slight error in judgment can get you torn to pieces in the press. And since positive news isn't news, most of what anyone hears about a given president will likely be bad, so inevitably you've mostly heard bad things about what a president (or national-level politician) has done in the past. Hence, everyone seems terrible.
It's meant to be a bit of dark humor. Sometimes the folly of humanity (including much of what you bring up) can make us cynical, angry, or depressed. Being able to have a laugh at those troublesome aspects of human nature is one way some of us can find a bit of a respite.
I realize it's meant to be somewhat humorous, but I also think it's meant to be taken seriously; or at least, there are a lot of people with exactly the viewpoint espoused in that quote.
This is where Jesus comes in: We must get everyone mature and not be greedy.
Also my favorite, Epicurus: Epicureanism: Having enough wealth that is enough to get you your Freedom is enough. More that that won't make you happy. Instead you'll need two more things: Friends and "time for Self understanding".
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This and positively probably Marxism (maybe not revolution, but effective destruction of big corp capitalists is a must). After capitalism is destroyed. The first two paragraphs I wrote will be needed.
Just a result of the ruling class being so tiny and geriatric that the public is left voting for the children and wives of ex-rulers. These people have few redeeming qualities when compared to people outside of that class.
After a string of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton[?], we in USA can cast no stones. It's not as though a Trump win today would give one any hope on this measure; Ivanka and Donnie Jr., at least, are each just another popular reality show away from high political office.
Ask A Korean is a really good blog if you remain interested in the country. I follow Korean issues less now than I once did, but the author has a nice style and is willing to deal with Korean/American issues complexly.
How is the Korean media in comparison to say the US or UK? Are they pretty objective, or more in the vein of the US, UK media where its very tabloidish?
The newspapers/TV are plain, if somewhat conservative. However, South Korea has an internet culture that makes America look a decade behind, for better or worse; people get massive amounts of information from social media and citizen journalists, which is one of the reasons a story this weird is stirring up so many conspiracy theories and speculation.
> How much do people actually believe the sinking of the Sewol was a human sacrifice of hundreds of children to honor a cult founder?
I've encountered this belief in the wild. Let's put it this way, my impression is that a lot of Koreans feel there's something fishy about the Sewol case (one of my engineer friends was involved with data recovery from the cellphoens collected from victims, and has expressed similar sentiments). I doubt there's a strong belief in this specific scenario, but there's a lot of distrust that jibes with it - it's more a "can't rule it out at this point", perhaps? Overall there's probably more "casual Sewol truthers" than 9/11 truthers, for a comparison.
> How likely is it that that's actually true?
Haven't the faintest. My own mind tends to assume incompetence above all other causes for disaster, but maybe it's a line of inquiry someone should have a look at.
Is this "8 Goddesses" cult thing legit, or is yet another paranoid conspiracy theory meme? It's really hard to tell as someone who doesn't speak Korean. there's just little bits of info leaking out, mostly just talking about Choi Soon-Sil.
Dunno. The facts on the ground are that Choi's father became an ordained priest in '75 (reportedly he paid handsomely for his ordainment and didn't actually complete theological studies) and set up his own Christian-Shamanistic church. Commentors describe him as having been mostly interested in political gain and using his cult as a means to do so. It's unclear in what capacity his daughter has actually continued to do so. One of Korean's Shaman associations has publically distanced itself from both of them this week, effectively calling them self-appointed charlatans.
Basically, cults do exist in Korea, and cults and political leadership have been involved with each other. Whether there's a grand conspiracy I can't say.
I'm no fan of religion myself, but in fairness it's important to note that "Shaman" & co are sort of a trigger word for a Western audience, invoking images of the barbarians at the gates - that's our Christian cultural-historic bias at work (I'm originally from Germany). This conflict actually plays out in Korea as well, owing to a large percentage of Christians among the population (how that came to be is in itself a fascinating topic). But really it's just a tree of folk religions. The problem here is how easily it's invoked by cult schemes, I guess.
I'm not really on top of the whole Megalian thing (and not familiar with the case you mentioned). While it's true that the gender conflict in Korea is trending tenser in general (it was interesting to watch how the Gangnam Station murder results in lots of semi-related venting), I think Megalian is about as fringe as /r/redpill or something. It's not something average Koreans are aware of or that comes up during normal conversation.
I've heard mention that this cult is somehow related to the Moonies cult that Americans are more familiar with, is there any merit to these claims? I can't find much connection between this and the Moonies in terms of current activities and maybe I'm not looking for the right terms in Korean but it seems like a very tenuous or circumstantial relation, if any. I don't understand why it would even matter if they're connected either.
Watching Korean politics growing up I thought what was happening was basically the equivalent of Western tabloid media, but I'm not sure where the absurd starts anymore.
Well ... I guess I feel a little bit better knowing that today in The US we'll elect a rationally corrupt president instead of an irrationally corrupt president.
As an European, I sure hope the "rationally" corrupt president won't be elected. I fear that under her leadership chances for a war with Russia would increase and WW3 is not something I look forward to. If a war would happen because of US's interests in Crimea, we would take the hits.
I wasn't predicting the outcome of the election other than I'm expecting one of the major party candidates to be elected. What I'd really like is the opportunity to vote for someone I respect, trust and can follow. It seems politics seems to weed out those candidates in favor of the ones that will win at any cost.
People always seem to want a "decent" candidate but it always seems to me that even decent candidates get vilified. For example I personally respect Obama a lot (even if I don't agree with him on everything) but some people literally thought that he was the antichrist.
Best not to discourage Westerners from returning a salvo of commentary, don't you agree? Especially considering that most of us don't have editorial access to the news pages that our countrymen read.
Putin hasn't been trying to increase his sphere of influence, unlike the US and the EU. Putin seems more interested in keeping up the status quo, which to me is a more preferable situation.
Think about it - how would the US like it if Russia would station it's armies in Mexico or perhaps do military practice in this country?
Note that the US has army bases all across the world and instability in many countries has been caused by US policy. Policy which seems to be guided mainly by business interests:
Wait, you don't consider entering Crimea to be increasing his sphere of influence? Even if you consider that justified, surely it's still expansionist?
Crimea was already solidly within that sphere, covered as it is by Russian military installations. It would be nice if the rest of Ukraine could enjoy the benefits of self-determination, but it isn't clear that increased USA involvement is the best way to achieve that.
Yes, the cultural differences are massive. In South Korea, if a politician gets involved in shady side-dealings, people march out in the streets by the thousands to demand their immediate resignation.
In the US, the same behaviour will actually help you get elected (the corporations who own you will make sure of it). What Hillary Clinton did is the textbook representation of everything that has gone wrong in our society over the past 10 years.
I think Trump is horrible as well but if I was American I'd vote for him anyway out of protest.
Lots of people have questions about the nature of the cult that the president seems to be connected with. In South Korea, just like any country, there's an entire spectrum of minor splinter "cults" along the entire spectrum of available religions. Korea has a surprisingly rich and complex religious landscape ranging from ancient folk practices (often translated as "Shamanism" in Korea) to various Buddhist sects to various flavors Christianity (the current religious majority), Confucian practices and so on. All have deep historic, political and social roots and between the cracks of the formal practices, tons of cults, syncretism, and other practices flourish.
For example, it wouldn't be at all unusual for somebody to go to a very formal church on Sunday, attend a Buddhist funeral on Thursday, and go out with friends on Saturday to visit a "fortune teller" before going on a blind date who would supply fortunes based on ancient folk practices. The average person might not even be aware that they are crossing various religious boundaries.
For reasons I haven't quite understood, there's also a cultural acceptance that many people wish to become religious leaders of some sort. It's often manifest in members of the majority Christian churches becoming ministers at very high rates and forming their own minor churches. Korea is littered with churches of all sizes. In general this happens in the formal church structure but it's not uncommon for splinter groups to spin out rapidly as well with various modified beliefs or teachings or even forming syncretic cults of some flavor.
To give you an idea of how intense religion can be in Korea, it's the only known country to have self converted to Christianity and established an internal proselytizing mechanism before missionaries showed up in the country.
Cults are not really accepted in South Korea, most people still look at them as out of the norm, and cult members to be out of the norm, hence the public reaction to the President's connection to a cult.
For anybody interested in the shamanistic folk traditions in Korea, I can highly recommend the movie "The Wailing" (2016) as an both a great movie, and contains several brilliantly filmed scenes of some intense shamanistic practices that I've heard described as "deeply authentic"
As a Korean, it infuriates me to see a Korean president who genuinely seems to be incapable of making rational decisions with the country's interest at heart.
Choi Soon Sil (lovingly called Choi SIRI by the people we'll call her CSS) comes from some Korean shaman society.
CSS's father was a leader of some shaman cult and claimed that he could speak to Park Geun Hye's mother who was assassinated by a North Korean agent.
The Choi family grew very close to Park Geun Hye, and it was presented that they used their closeness to the First Lady (Park Geun Hye took the role after her mother's death) for profiteering and corruption.
After the assassination of Park Chung Hee (Park Geun Hye), President Chun Doo Hwan, a loyal disciple of the deceased president, exiled CSS's father.
It is alleged that President Chun Doo Hwan's corruption revelation was orchestrated by CSS to avenge her father.
In an economy dominated by a handful of family dynasties, it seems that in order to continue this asymmetrical system that puts so much burden on the Korean people, president's office and the people surrounding it are almost certainly likely to peddle influence which Chaebol (Korean word for conglomerates) gladly pay large amount of sums for (since the return on investment by paying off a Korean politician is massive - you could win military contracts, license for monopoly etc.).
This system is now beginning to show cracks. People have completely lost trust in the system.
There's even rumours of a military coup, how ironic, that the current president whose father overthrew the first Korean president Rhee with a coup, is now expecting one herself.
Yeah, I've seen too much of this with my mother's abuse of my father, and she lost both her parents to assassination, vs. his losing his father to an accident.
In all the cases I know of, at least if early enough, this sort of loss really messes up a surviving child.
Maybe I'm just overly cynical, but I'm not too surprised to hear stories like this. Our political process is just so dysfunctional, that I don't think it's possible for a normal, worthy leader to actually win the election. The only way to get to the top is to sell out your integrity in one way or another.
We wonder why our leaders are so morally bankrupt, when really, our process is explicitly designed to weed out anyone who isn't.