Senior Citizens' Second Manifesto:
Let Us Save the Country before It Is Too Late
- We Shall Not Repeat the Follies of 1997 & 2002 in 2007 –

The Republic of Korea is haunted today by the specter of a leftist takeover that looks to be impending, if not already a reality. Key institutions that include the Blue House and the ruling Uri Party, as well as radio & television media such as KBS, MBC and SBS, have been seized by pro-North Korean, anti-American leftists of the so-called ‘386 generation,’ whose ideological convictions are suspect at best, and by others of unknown identity who seem to form a human curtain around President Roh Moo Hyun. These are the people who are leading the Republic on a path toward a leftist takeover, subsidized, ironically, by the state with the taxpayers’ money.

Clearly inspired by Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, a campaign is now rampaging throughout the land to force a U.S. troop withdrawal from the Republic of Korea. In the port city of Inchon, patriotic citizens have had to physically prevent radical, pro-North Korean leftists from bringing down a bronze statue of General Douglas MacArthur, the hero of the Inchon landing in September 1950. And, Pyongtaek, a city in Kyonggi Province selected as the site for U.S. ground troops moving from bases north of the Han River, is now virtually turning into a battleground, as bamboo stick- and iron bar-wielding pro-North Korean leftist mobs are trying to forcibly block the relocation of U.S. forces. There are even reports about pro-North Korean leftists purchasing land in Pyongtaek with funds from unknown sources to block the base relocation.

Moreover, the ‘left-leaning’ minister of justice has rocked the nation by invoking his supervisory power under Article 8 of the Prosecution Law in an extraordinary move, unprecedented in the history of the Republic, to “order” the prosecutor general “not to detain” a college professor under investigation by the police on charges of violating the National Security Law. The college professor was under investigation because of his repeated public remarks, branding Gen. MacArthur a ‘public enemy’ for his role in defeating North Korea’s invasion of the South, which the professor praised as an attempt to reunify the country, while blaming the U.S. for the division in 1945.

Many South Koreans believe that the dangerous leftward tilt of the Republic of Korea of late is largely due to the ‘North-South Joint Declaration’ of June 15, 2000, a treacherous deal that Kim Dae Jung, as South Korea’s president, cut with Kim Jong Il, his North Korean counterpart, literally bribing the northern dictator with a large amount of black money through an illegal channel provided by the National Intelligence Agency, which is supposed to act as the nation’s top intelligence watchdog against North Korea. It is unfortunately due to the “North-South Joint Declaration” of 2000 that we are now more concerned about South Korea’s possible “political insolvency,” despite its surplus economy, than about the north’s inevitable “implosion” as a failed society overcome by economic bankruptcy.

A soaring national debt is now plaguing the Roh Moo Hyun presidency. According to a figure released by government statistical authorities, South Korea’s national debt this year amounts to a staggering ₩243 trillion, an increase of 22.2% from the ₩203 trillion of last year, the equivalent of ₩5.13 million per head, an increase of 21.6% from ₩4.22 million of the last year. According to government projection, the national debt is bound to increase to ₩280 trillion in 2006, ₩299 trillion in 2007, ₩314 trillion in 2008 and to ₩326 trillion in 2009.

This trend is tantamount to driving the country into insolvency by drawing down accounts of our posterity well in advance. To make the matter worse, all national economic indicators are pointing downward in spite of the continuous rise in the amount of the national debt. While it barely manages to stay afloat for now, thanks to the semiconductor, automotive, and mobile phone industries, the national economy of the Republic of Korea as a whole is indeed in deep trouble.

It is nonchalance however, that characterizes the Roh regime’s response to the crumbling national economy and the ever-worsening popular economic difficulties. Instead, the left-leaning Roh regime, supported as it is by the pro-government television stations and anti-American and pro-North Korean quasi NGOs, continues to give top priority to the consolidation of its own political base in the hope of yet another victory in the presidential election in 2007.

On September 8, President Roh Moo Hyun met with Ms. Park Geun Hye, leader of the opposition GNP (Grand National Party) at the Blue House only to confirm that the “coalition” that he had been proposing to the opposition GNP was merely a sham. According to the explanation that he gave to Ms. Park, Roh was proposing the “coalition” with the GNP merely as a scheme to allocate a few cabinet posts to the opposition party in exchange for GNP support for a number of politically sensitive and controversial legislative measures that he had been pushing for some time.

In the meantime, the fourth round of the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue held in Beijing came to an end after adopting a six-point ‘joint statement,” allowing President Roh’s regime to blow its own trumpet over what it claimed a “triumph of (South) Korean diplomacy.” However, while it has barely managed to avoid a fiasco, the six-party process has not made an inch of progress toward a resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue. The “joint statement” became nothing but a scrap of paper even before the ink was dry.

It remains as doubtful as ever that Kim Jong Il’s North Korea has any intention at all to abandon its nuclear programs. It looks more likely that, judging by its negotiating behavior in the six-party talks, North Korea’s sole intention is to capitalize on the talks to widen the schism among the South Korean population while driving a wedge between the ROK and the U.S. It is in any case agonizing to watch the Roh administration continue to play into North Korea’s hands. In this context, it was sobering to hear a North Korean delegate say at the close of the fourth round of the six-party talks that “we are now in the same boat with South Koreans.”

Boasting as it does that, thanks to the “North-South Joint Declaration” of June 15, 2000, it has been successful in transforming President Roh’s administration into a “left-leaning pro-North Korean” regime, Kim Jong Il’s North Korea is now trying to “domesticate” South Korea’s private sector as well. It is in this context that the unseemly tug of war developing of late between North Korea and Hyundai over Hyundai’s dismissal for embezzlement of an executive known as a key person in Hyundai’s dumping of economic benefits to North Korea is now a source of concern to many South Koreans.

Many South Koreans are now angered by what they see as a strategy in which President Roh Moo Hyun and his ruling Uri Party are ready even to tolerate North Korea’s arrogance and impudence in order to win the presidential election in 2007 by gaining support from younger voters with the help of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.

After 8 years under two successive “leftist” regimes, one Kim Dae Jung’s and the other Roh Moo Hyun’s, the Republic of Korea today is no longer what she used to be, having turned into an abnormal state not only severed from her past but also internally fractured, fragmented, and disfigured. It is now therefore the obligation of the Republic’s rational civil community to rebuild their country as a normal state. There is no time to waste. It is with a sense of impending crisis that we set forth our views as follows:

First, we insist that President Roh Moo Hyun identify people of ‘pro-North Korean, anti-American and left-leaning’ orientation in government agencies, including the Blue House and the national intelligence and security communities, as well as the ubiquitous “committees,” and have them expelled from public service so that the Republic may reestablish her identity, regain international confidence, and liberate the people from a perpetual sense of uneasiness.

We deem it necessary for President Roh Moo Hyun to stop pursuing implementation of laws on “past events” and the press as well as legislation on “national security” and private schools. We urge that President Roh discontinue acts of throwing mud at Kangnam, an affluent district in Seoul, and at Samsung, one of Korea’s most successful business corporations, and stop fomenting regionalism and class hatred among the people.

Second, as it is our belief that the ‘North-South Joint Declaration’ of June 15, 2000, is flagrantly in conflict with Article 4 of the ROK Constitution that requires unification to be based on the “principles of a free democracy,” we deem it necessary for President Roh to immediately declare the joint declaration “null and void” and, consequently, halt all the inter-Korean talks as well as other north-south interactions based on the joint declaration.

It is nevertheless our belief that the two Koreas must aggressively pursue constructive and productive dialogue as well as mutual exchange and cooperation. For that purpose, we urge that President Roh’s government immediately take measures to revive and implement, the ‘North-South Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-aggression, Exchange and Cooperation’, a basic agreement concluded, and put into effect, as of February 19,1992, which has ever since remained inoperative because the north refused to implement it.

We cannot tolerate any longer the kind of economic assistance to North Korea in the form of goods, services, and cash, especially rice and fertilizer, that South Korea has been dumping away to the north on demand beyond the bounds of humanitarian assistance and without assessing need or securing transparency of delivery. Consequently, we think it necessary, in the case of any future economic assistance, to have North Korea’s needs and demands as well as transparency of delivery thoroughly evaluated beforehand by recognized specialists to make sure that aid is provided in a manner conducive to the North’s reform and opening.

We also think it necessary to have the electric power in the amount of 2 million kilowatts that the Roh Moo Hyun regime offered to North Korea to be put on hold pending an evaluation by specialists to determine whether the North really has the need and whether 200 megawatts is the right amount. Besides, giving power to North Korea is something that has to wait until North Korea actually abandons in a verifiable and irreversible manner all of its nuclear programs and returns to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Should the Roh Moo Hyun regime decide to give power to the North before the latter satisfies these preconditions, it must be made clear that the expense shall have to be born personally, and privately, by the three people responsible for the deal, President Roh Moo Hyun, Unification Minister Chung Dong Young and Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon.

Third, we deem it necessary for the Roh Moo Hyun regime to make it a matter of principle to link not only power but also any rice and fertilizer that we offer to North Korea with a corresponding improvement in the North’s human rights situation. We consider it imperative that the Roh regime put an end to the three consecutive years of abstaining in the voting on the North Korean human rights issue in the annual United Nations Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva and instead join the rest of the world in denouncing North Korea’s dismal human rights performance.

We also deem it necessary for the opposition Grand National Party (GNP) to depart from its past policy of appeasement in tandem with the ruling Uri Party and to change its policy on North Korea so as to give top priority to addressing North Korea’s deplorable human rights situation. Barring such a policy modification, the GNP should realize that it may no longer be seen as a real alternative to the Uri Party in its bid to return to power.

We urge all patriotic citizens of the Republic to throw their support to the international summit conference that Freedom House of the U.S. is planning to hold on North Korea’s human rights in Seoul in early December to ensure that it will be a success. We also urge aggressive support for a growing number of college students who are now raising their voices to express concern about human rights in North Korea.

We urge all the patriotic people of Korea to join the international community as it begins to amass evidence of North Korean crimes against humanity, including the provocation of wars, various human rights violations, and genocide by starvation, as a step toward bringing Kim Jong Il and his accomplices to the bar of justice, such as the International Court of Justice at The Hague, as the civilized world did to the officials of Nazi Germany and those of the former East Germany.

It is not our intention to ask an incumbent President of the Republic to step down during his term of office, because the Constitution provides him with a five-year term. But neither would we dissuade an exhausted incumbent President from choosing, on his own, to resign before the expiration of his term of office because again it is his constitutional right to do so. We must emphasize one thing in this regard, however. Should an incumbent President continue to disregard public opinion, trample on the Constitution, and persist in misleading the nation, the “right of resistance” remains in the hands of the people.

With the next presidential election drawing nearer, the people of the Republic are confronting an awesome choice. They should not repeat in 2007 the mistakes of 1997 and 2002. They must not allow themselves to fall prey to political populism and let mob psychology carry them away to elect the wrong person as their leader yet another time. We must make sure that, by preventing President Roh Moo Hyun’s leftist regime from being replaced by still another leftist one in 2008, we avoid being “cash cows” for North Korea in a way that helps Kim Jong Il’s heinous dictatorship muddle through indefinitely, holding not only South Korea but the rest of the world as well, hostage to North Korean nuclear blackmail.

Freedom and democracy are not free. If we are to defend our free democracy and the market-based economy to which the Republic of Korea is committed, we must be resolutely prepared to pay the price. Today in this manifesto, we are expressing our will to pay that price. We, the signers of this manifesto, are asking all patriotic citizens of the Republic of Korea, regardless of provincial origin, age, gender, occupation, status, or religious preference to join us and to also sign this manifesto in order to participate in the lofty campaign to preserve this Republic for the sake of our beloved sons and daughters and for all our posterity. [-End]