36 The Economist February 26th 2022
Asia
SouthKoreaK-popular
J
udged against his own high standards
Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s outgoing
president, is a failure. He took office in May
2017 in a snap election after Park Geun-hye,
his predecessor, had been jailed for corrup-
tion and abuse of power. There had been
months of protests against Ms Park and the
discredited political class; Mr Moon cam-
paigned on a platform of social, political
and economic renewal. He promised to
end the cosy links between politics and big
business and create an egalitarian econ-
omy. He would move the president’s office
from the leafy outskirts to central Seoul, be
in constant dialogue with citizens and end
self-dealing and partisan strife. Moreover,
he would bring an era of peace to the Kore-
an peninsula by making overtures to Kim
Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator.
With just over two months left of Mr
Moon’s single five-year term, none of this
has come to pass. The president remains
ensconced in his palace in Seoul’s north-
ern hills. He has pardoned Ms Park and pa-
roled Lee Jae-yong, the heir of the Samsung
empire, from whom she accepted bribes.
Other leaders of conglomerates have beenreassured of their firms’ central place in
the economy. Ordinary citizens are strug-
gling with unaffordable housing and a
continuing shortage of jobs for the young.
Partisan squabbling and mudslinging en-
dure; indeed, they dominate the campaign
to elect Mr Moon’s successor. North Korea,
meanwhile, has expanded its arsenal of
missiles and nuclear warheads and blown
up the North-South liaison office in the de-
militarised zone between the two Koreas.
Yet when it comes to how Mr Moon is
likely to be remembered, all this may mat-
ter less than it first appears to. South Korea
has weathered the covid-19 pandemic
more successfully than any other rich
country, at least partly thanks to his gov-
ernment. Mr Moon’s tenure also coincidedwith a huge jump in South Korea’s global
cultural clout. And he has, in a quiet way,
strengthened his country’s still-young de-
mocracy and begun to make life a little less
stressful for its people. All that explains
why he is likely to leave office as the most
popular president in South Korea’s demo-
cratic history. Depending on the pollster
and the type of survey, between two-fifths
and just under half of all voters say they ap-
prove of the president, though less than a
third say the same of his party.
Mr Moon is likely to be remembered
chiefly for the way he shepherded South
Korea through the pandemic.Although it
is currently suffering a surge in covid-19
infections from the Omicron variant, it
still has the second-lowest number (after
New Zealand) of confirmed deaths from
the disease relative to population of any
country in the oecd, a club mostly of rich
countries. Two years in, South Koreans are
chafing under ongoing curfews and social-
distancing rules, but they have not had to
endure lockdowns or overwhelmed hospi-
tals. Nor has the country’s economy suf-
fered on the same scale as much of the
world. gdpreturned to pre-pandemic lev-
els early last year, grew by 4% in 2021 and is
predicted to grow by 3% in 2022.
That was not Mr Moon’s achievement
alone. Reforms to public-health systems
after a disastrous outbreak of mersin 2015
help explain the bureaucracy’s nimble re-
sponse to the pandemic. South Korea set
up testing, tracing and isolation systems
much faster than other rich countries. ItSEOUL
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