The fading of South Korea’s pre-eminent political dynasty

SOUTH KOREANS used to joke that if the conservative Saenuri party put up a plank of wood as a candidate for election, voters in the city of Daegu would support it with gusto. Four-fifths of voters in the surrounding province of North Gyeongsang plumped for Park Geun-hye, the conservative candidate, in the presidential election that brought her to power in 2012. Until last year conservatives had swept every ballot since 1985 in Daegu, her home town. Yet when Ms Park’s approval rating sank to a record low of 4% in November amid a sensational influence-peddling scandal, it fell further still, to 3%, in Daegu.

Since revelations surfaced that Ms Park let a long-standing confidante, Choi Soon-sil, meddle inappropriately in presidential affairs, the city has held weekly demonstrations demanding that she should step down. Rumours of the influence of the Choi family over the Parks have swirled since the rule of Park Chung-hee, Ms Park’s late father and a former military dictator, who was born in the nearby city of Gumi. At the height of the rallies in Daegu, more than 100 civic organisations marshalled 50,000 protesters. That makes them the biggest demonstrations in the area in 30 years.

The National Assembly voted to impeach Ms Park in December. The constitutional court is now reviewing the charges against her before deciding whether to remove her from office or allow her to finish her term. A few, particularly elderly, locals remain unwavering in their support: a large photograph of Ms Park visiting Daegu’s main market hangs outside one of the shops in it. Its 60-something owner says people come from all over the country to buy the same model of shoe that Ms Park bought. On a recent Friday morning, business was brisk.

Most shopkeepers in Daegu, however, have removed portraits of Ms Park from their walls. When the scandal took hold, many in the city said that they “wanted to cut off the hand that had voted for her”, says Kim Hyung-ki of Kyungpook University in Daegu. Shortly before the impeachment, Mr Kim organised a public apology of over 1,300 academics, businessmen, politicians, doctors and church leaders who in 2012 had given Ms Park their “unquestioning votes” as the daughter of the dead president.

In a sense, Daegu is returning to its roots. Before Ms Park’s father came to power, it was known as the Moscow of the East because of its leftist radicalism. The first march against Ms Park started at a park that commemorates the students who led the nation’s first pro-democracy uprising, in 1960, against Rhee Syngman, South Korea’s first president.

After Park Chung-hee seized power in a coup in 1961, he stamped out those more progressive tendencies, says Kang Geum-soo of Daegu People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), a citizens’ group. Yet many still see him as a deliverer rather than a dictator. Under his rule, state-led economic development helped millions of South Koreans lift themselves out of poverty. That generation mostly reveres him, and its votes buoyed Ms Park to the presidency. Supporters held portraits of her father as they celebrated in the streets.

Yet Ms Park has been a huge disappointment for those who expected her to live up to her father’s “miracle on the Han river”. Under him, the economy grew at double-digit rates each year. He poured money into the industrial heartland of Gyeongsang, including his own home town of Gumi. But for 20 years now Daegu has had the country’s lowest economic output per person; Gumi has its highest unemployment. In legislative elections last year Daegu voted in Yoo Seung-min, an independent who has been a fierce critic of Ms Park, even when he was a Saenuri MP. Following that election, four of Daegu’s 12 MPs are now from other parties.

Ms Park launched her political career as an MP for Daegu in the late 1990s—as positive perceptions of her father’s legacy peaked. In a poll conducted in 1997, over three-quarters of respondents thought Park had been the most competent president in Korean history; only 4% opted for Kim Young-sam, South Korea’s first civilian president, who was struggling at the time with the Asian financial crisis. Carter Eckert of Harvard University notes that a visit to Park’s grave in Seoul became routine for any aspiring politician.

Large-scale projects to commemorate Park have been expanded during his daughter’s presidency. Among them is a presidential library and a separate museum in a former house of his, which recently opened in Seoul. Last month her government launched new history textbooks, which have provoked a furore for their rosy view of her father’s rule.

Tales of the late Park’s asceticism are widely circulated: he is said to have shunned air-conditioning, opening windows instead and always keeping a fly swat to hand. (All subsequent presidencies, military and civilian alike, have been marred by corruption scandals.) His birth is commemorated every November in Gumi. Schoolchildren join a procession of citizens down Park Chung-hee street, his old route to school. Bottles of makgeolli, a traditional rice wine that he drank with farmers, are tipped out under a tree where he is said to have sat reading as a child. Two years ago 98 bottles were emptied, in honour of his 98th birthday.

But only 500 fans, fewer than half the usual number, attended the celebrations in Gumi last year, when protests against Ms Park were reaching their peak. The scandal has prompted locals to question the billions of won being spent to honour Park’s legacy: in a poll conducted in June by the Gumi chapter of the YMCA, a charity, over three-quarters said too much was being spent on commemorative events. A committee set up to prepare celebrations for the 100th anniversary of his birth had planned to spend almost 3bn won on a musical about his life, but the project was scrapped after strong local opposition. A directive for local restaurants to offer menus featuring the dishes that Park ate as president was dropped after eateries complained that they were not selling.

Hwang Dae-chul of Gumi’s PSPD says some are worried about Ms Park’s scandals tarnishing the legacy of Park Chung-hee. That, he says, is because many others are already re-evaluating it. The late Park’s birthplace was burnt down in an arson attack in December; in a separate incident, his 5-metre bronze statue nearby (pictured) was defaced with the word “dictator” in red paint.

At the statue’s unveiling in 2011, Nam Yu-jin, who has been mayor of the city for a decade, said Park was “half-god, half-man”. But Park has since been downgraded: when referring to the commemoration of his birth last year, the city used the ordinary term for the event, rather than the one reserved for kings, saints and gods, as it previously had.

That saintly image is one many older supporters had hoped to rediscover in Ms Park. Some say they voted for her out of gratitude to him; others “read his political talent” into his daughter, says Mr Eckert. But now Daegu’s remorseful Park voters want to shed their over-reliance on the “Park paradigm”. For his staunchest followers and detractors—the generation that lived under him, and the generation that fought against dictatorship on the streets—his reputation is unlikely to change. For a younger generation, says Mr Eckert, the nostalgic view of the Park era they grew up with will shift to one that is both more critical and less emotional.

Ms Park would never have risen to power were it not for the enduring reverence for her father. She has left her official residence only once since her impeachment, to pay her respects at her father’s grave. That is something few politicians would do now.