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Bursting Onto the World Scene
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14887 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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10 / 1988 |
2,857 Words |
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Stephen Kirby
Stephen Kirby is dean of the politics department at the
University of Hull in Great Britain. |
The 24th Olympiad marks the most decisive shift in power relations on the Korean peninsula since the close of the Korean War in 1953. It confirms the supremacy of the South in matters political, economic, and diplomatic. There are myriad beneficial Olympic spin-offs for Seoul, which regards hosting the Games as a priceless opportunity to show the world its national strength and remarkable 25-year progress, and that it has become a fully industrialized and developed nation. Other benefits include the chance to display Korea's culture, stimulate further economic development and world trade, boost tourism, and develop national pride.
The $3.2 billion investment made by the South Korean government is regarded as well spent, given that the Games will produce an estimated $10 billion worth of international publicity broadcast by some 10,000 media personnel to an audience of more than 2.5 billion worldwide.
But is not just publicity that Korea will garner; the Olympics will have a fundamental impact on South Korea's internal political and economic affairs. As President Roh Tae Woo said in his February 1988 acceptance speech, the Games will allow "Korea to burst on to the world scene" in diplomatic as well as economic terms. There is much to suggest that his prediction will become reality.
The internal politics of South Korea have already been radically--most experts say permanently -changed by the heady surge of national pride and the close scrutiny of the international media engendered by the Olympics. Moves towards democratization over the last two years have capitalized on the reluctance of former President Chun Doo Hwan and Roh to use massive force to suppress dissent, knowing that bad international publicity might jeopardize the Olympics--a fact that opposition groups in Korea have not been slow to exploit. The opposition's greatest gain came in June 1987, when massive street demonstrations demanding free presidential elections, a free press, and the release of political prisoners brought the deeply unpopular Chun to the point of calling out the military to quell the riots. In a dramatic television broadcast on June 29, however, Roh (then Chun's protégé and the ruling party's candidate for the presidency) conceded all the opposition demands and set in train what has amounted to a quiet political revolution.
The extent of change is a matter of record. Roh is the first popularly elected president whose victory did not rely on large-scale ballot rigging, and his inauguration in February 1988 was the first voluntary and
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