Political spring does not arrive by itself

Politicians fight in the derogatory language of hate without any time-off period in their ring.

Lim Jong-juThe author is the political news editor of the JoongAng Ilbo. Spring weather can be unpredictable. It tempts with warm breezes and fresh blooms and then suddenly snaps with chilly winds again. We are not the only ones at its whim. The spring in northern Germany where I had been some decades ago was volatile. Germans then complained about the ever-changing spring weather.

Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, center, gestures to draw support for the opposition’s candidate representing a district in Busan on Mar. 15, ahead of the April 10 parliamentary elections. [SONG BONG-GEUN]

The political climate in Seoul was more freakish than the weather in the spring 44 years ago, as portrayed in the blockbuster movie “The Day” that drew 13 million viewers. “There is a Chinese saying that the spring seems to have arrived, but it’s not the real spring. You can catch a cold and even die from pneumonia if you take off your winter coat too soon,” Kim Jong-pil told his political archrivals Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung on Feb. 25, 1980, following the brief democratic period after the assassination of strongman Park Chung Hee, his uncle-in-law he had helped in his military coup and rise to power in 1961. In his New Year’s writing that year, Kim Jong-pil wrote, “Flowing water does not fight to go ahead.” What season of turmoil and avarice did the political veteran foresee?

A poetic and figurative speech or expression leaves much room for interpretation. It can bear fruit when the audience or reader understands what the author meant to say. The roses with which men woo their women on White Day (an Asian Valentine’s Day for men to give gifts to women) can blossom into greater love and beckon spring days in their life. According to German philosopher and decisive thinker on hermeneutics Hans-Georg Gadamer, a new horizon can open up by understanding today’s world through the questions and answers posed in traditional context. The enlightenment from cracking an enigma cannot be reached through plain, rash thinking.

Such deep understanding is necessary to interpret the meaning behind a Zen interview. The truth can suddenly be revealed when one quietly and deeply looks into the hidden meaning between words. One pupil plagued with leprosy pleaded his teacher of Buddhism in ancient China to rid him of his sin. His teacher told him to find and bring his sin to him. His pupil answered that he could not find his sin anywhere, no matter how deeply he examined. Then the Zen master told him, “Your sin has been cleansed.” The pupil realized his sin existed only in his mind and was awakened.

Wit and humor used to prevail in American politics before democracy was marred by Trumpism. A canny and fluent speech often lightened and gave life to a political scene brimmed with conflicts and clashes. Actor-turned-president Ronald Reagan once said, “My golf-loving friend Bob Hope asked me what my handicap was, so I told him — the Congress.” Former senator and defeated presidential candidate Bob Dole wrote “Great Presidential Wit: Laughing (Almost) All the Way to the White House,” a book on bipartisan political humor, as he found that without humor, the “sword” in the battlefield of politics can be fatal.

It would be a luxury to expect such humor in Korean politics. Politicians fight in the derogatory language of hate without any time off to sit in their corner. There is little room for wit, humor or craft in their sarcasm. The mechanism of democracy that brings forth an agreement through compromise has long stopped working. A journey toward new politics through the understanding of different horizons has become a pipe dream.

Slanderous and negative campaigning has only made matters worse. Those failing to win candidacy to run in the April 10 parliamentary elections rant out their grudge without restraint, even bringing back decades-old controversies to the scene.

What comes after the election is more worrisome. The deep and wide chasm in politics looks irreparable. The root of the political misery must be removed. The electoral system that fixates the bipolar party system and the deformative representative system through the breed of satellite parties must be fixed. The rivalling parties need to promise political reform as soon as the next National Assembly is formed, and authorize the overhaul into an independent body. Without showing such will, the promise also can evaporate as vain rhetoric. Spring in politics does not arrive easily.