Lee Jun-seok, PPP party leader doesn't control anything

US media and leadership circles are celebrating the prospect of having the young Harvard alumnus, Lee Jun-seok, in a position of political power in South Korea. The reality is that the young media savvy demagogue has never won a political election, having failed three times to get elected to the National Assembly. The media personality Lee came to be selected for leadership of the so called "People's Power Party" ( 국민의 힘당 ) due to the conspicuous failures of prior conservative political leaders such as Na Kyung-won and Hwang Kyo-ahn to inspire the public. In the not too distant past Hwang was associated with the failed administration of the impeached former president Park Geun-hye. Na and Hwang both are linked to conservative presidential candidate Yoon Seok-yeol coverups which this blog has described in prior posts.* Additionally, Na is linked to college admission and paralympics corruption on behalf of her daughter which Yoon, allegedly, may have played a role in covering up.

*See: Yoon clings to Hwang Kyo-ahn for his survival, 4.1.20, https://civilizationdiscontents.blogspot.com/2020/04/yoon-clings-to-hwang-kyo-ahn-for-his.html; and, South Korea's Top Prosecutor Embroiled in Family Scandals, Is Yoon Seok-yeol obstructing prosecution of Na Kyung-won? 3.15.20. https://civilizationdiscontents.blogspot.com/2020/03/is-yoon-seok-yeol-obstructing.html

(Source- 언론 알아야 바꾼다 youtube 7.12) 36 year old Lee Jun-seok at a PPP party gathering.

Lee Jun-seok, the youngest person to lead a major political party, came to forefront because he appeals to poorly informed, bigoted young males in South Korea. This demographic from 18 to 30 years of age voted for conservative candidates by an overwhelming margin in the recent off cycle elections to select the mayors of Seoul and Busan. One leader from the so called "old order" on the conservative side is Kim Mu-sung. Kim is a long time conservative politician in the National Assembly. He, like several of the old order politicians are tainted, fairly or unfairly, with the pro-Japanese label. Kim's father was a notorious collaborator with the Japanese during WWII, actively supporting the war effort on behalf of the Japanese colonial administration. In keeping with the old Korean saying "ten thousand years is not too long to avenge a grudge," Kim's family history renders his personal prospects as a presidential candidate problematic. Kim is suspected to be the power behind Lee Jun-seok. The Bareun Dang, (Righteous Party) founder, Yoo Seung-min, is also believed to be a Lee supporter. Both Kim and Yoo, are former presidential hopefuls.

Lee Jun-seok, as a computer science type, was groomed by powers on the right. He was patronized by former President Park Geun-hye. His public persona is portrayed as a (Korean Andrew Yang or South Korea's own Ahn Chul-su) type of technocratic elite, falsely labeled as a "liberal conservative." Lee, for all of his political promotion by the right, serving in various party committees and roles, actually has very little academic understanding of history or politics. His business experience, aside from garnishing some lucrative government subsidies early in his career, isn't that extensive according to his critics. Lee's lack of hands-on polical experience is evident in a series of gaffes he committed in the last several days. Most visible in South Korea was a well publicized meeting with the democratic party leader, Song Yeong-gil, in which Lee agreed to a proposal for pandemic disaster relief payments to be distributed to the public. Less than two hours later the proposal was repudiated by the PPP assembly floor leader. Lee had to be told publicly that it wasn't his role to make agreements on behalf of the opposition party in the National Assembly without prior consultation and deliberation among party representatives in the National Assembly.

(Source- 시사건건 7.14) Pundit Hol Seu-yong's program shows a cartoon depicting Lee Jun-seok, as a child on a tricycle, while the PPP floor leader in the National Assembly rebukes the democratic party leader for taking advantage of a child, and ripping up the inter-party agreement on universal cash payments to pandemic strapped citizens.

Lee went on to make other public gaffes which are being covered mostly in South Korean opposition media sources. His misogyny manifested once again in a proposal to eliminate the Department of Women and Families in the South Korean government. While Lee claimed his proposal is aimed at reducing social discord concerning women's rights, the actual effect is exactly the opposite, fueling the social culture wars, the red meat of the South Korean "il be" misogynist movement on the internet, that Lee Joon-seok represents. This constitutency of angry young males might be compared to US "deplorables.*"

* Lee Jun-seok- a "deplorable" play for disaffected younger male voters, 6.13.21, https://civilizationdiscontents.blogspot.com/2021/06/lee-jun-seok-deplorable-play-for.html

One prospect that has US and Japanese observers salivating is that Lee wants to also dismantle the Unification Ministry in South Korea which according to him, has no role in the South Korean government and has never accomplished anything. One has to wonder whether Lee ever studied his own nation's history or how well informed he is. It's almost as if his script was written in Washington, D.C. It was reported in one online South Korean media source, but not in the English language version of conservative Korean newspapers, that Lee said, that just as Taiwan and the PRC would never unite, neither would North and South Korea. Another is taking a stance critical of China. Lee has identified the "democracy movement" in Hong Kong, (a US-UK sponsored movement), with the Korean democracy movement, particularly that which opposed the Chun Du-won dictatorship. This is an absurd correlation that Joshua Wong, the Hong Kong separatist leader, has also made. The error being, that the US sponsored a series of three brutal dictatorships in South Korea, that the democracy movement opposed. The US supports the violent separatist movement in Hong Kong as part of its divide and conquer strategy against the PRC. SCMP recently reported that Lee actually participated in Hong Kong protests in 2019. Worse, he has raised the Hong Kong issue publicly in a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to Seoul. This is a red flag in terms of who may be pulling Lee Jun-seok's puppet strings.* Is he just an opportunist? According to CGTN, the Chinese media source, PPP officials have tried to walk back some of Lee's ill considered remarks concerning China. According to the Joongang Ilbo account, Lee claimed in an explanation to be speaking "for the Korean people."

Lee Jun-seok, South Korea’s youngest ever party leader, vows to confront China’s ‘cruelty’, including policies in Hong Kong, SCMP, 7.12.21, https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3140718/lee-jun-seok-south-koreas-youngest-ever-party-leader-vows.

Lee Jun-seok, is cut from the same cloth as other US acclimated imperial proxies in Asian history. Western media again are creating a falsely based credibility for an incompetent demagogue. Because Lee has been educated at a US institution (Harvard) and speaks English, he shares the exploitable features of a character like the Japanese Baron Kentaro Kaneko, (Yale) with whom Teddy Roosevelt laid the foundation for the US and Japanese Pacific empires and WWII. Other similar figures in the history of US-Asian relations are T.V. Soong, (Harvard), and Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Mai-ling Soong, Wesleyan) in Nationalist China, whose family corruption led the Chinese Nationalists to defeat.* Syngman Rhee was another US proxy in South Korea with little political legitimacy by the end of WWII, who established with US support, the first South Korean dictatorship. Rhee and his cadre of Japanese trained Korean generals couldn't wait to instigate the final battle in the civil war in Korea and thought they would win with US support.* The US cultivation of figures like Lee Jun-seok gives Americans a false impression of the state of affairs in Asia, and is conducive to a harmful, undue and dangerous US influence over the internal affairs of its nominally sovereign ally.

*See the accounts in The China Mirage, The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia, James Bradley, and The Korean War, a History, Bruce Cummings; also, The Hidden History of the Korean War, 1950-1951, I.F. Stone.