S. Korean candidate in late dictator dad's shadow
FOSTER KLUG, Associated Press
Updated 4:56 a.m., Friday, November 2, 2012
FILE - In this Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012 file photo, Park Geun-hye, presidential candidate of the ruling Saenuri Party, burns incense in front of the tomb of her father and former authoritarian President Park Chung-hee at National Cemetery in Seoul, South Korea. Park attempts to become the country's first female president and keep the government in conservative hands in the Dec. 19, 2012 election. She has been in the public eye longer than either of her rivals and is a skilled political operator, but she is also hounded by her late father Park Chung-hee's complicated legacy, which continues to divide many South Koreans. KOREA OUT Photo: Newsis / AP
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Carrying a bouquet of flowers, South Korean presidential candidate Park Geun-hye stepped forward to honor one of the martyrs in her country's long struggle for democracy. A protester threw himself at her feet.
"How dare you come here?" the man shouted, sitting between Park and a statue of activist Chun Tae-il. Chun's 1970 labor protest suicide is seen as an expression of dissent against the rule of Park's father, the late president and longtime dictator Park Chung-hee.
As cameras flashed, Park Geun-hye stood with an awkward smile frozen on her face. Then she left.
That August confrontation sums up a huge challenge for Park as she attempts to become the country's first female president and keep the government in conservative hands in the Dec. 19 election.
She has been in the public eye longer than either of her rivals and is a skilled political operator, but she is also hounded by her father's complicated legacy, which continues to divide many South Koreans.
He is revered for steering South Korea to economic and diplomatic power with a hostile North Korea at its doorstep. And he is loathed for what rights groups call a long history of torture, unlawful executions and other abuses of power.
Park Chung-hee has been dead for more than 30 years, since his intelligence chief shot him down during a 1979 drinking party. But he has proven the biggest stumbling block to his daughter's campaign.
In July she said her father's 1961 coup was "the best choice in an unavoidable situation." Critics slammed the statement as a defense of her father's overthrow of a democratically elected government.
Some also saw later comments as an unwillingness to renounce a 1975 court ruling that handed death sentences or long prison terms to 23 people opposed to her father. The charges are widely seen as rigged, and the Supreme Court in 2007 cleared the eight who were executed, ruling their confessions came after torture.
She has since apologized to victims of her father's authoritarian rule and has visited memorials to activists. Liberals, however, have called her efforts political theater and insist that she follow through on her pledge to "heal" victims' pain.
Her conflicted feelings about her father "make up the soft underbelly of the conservatives' campaign" to stay in power, said Tom Coyner, a business development consultant and an author who has written about South Korean political matters. "Her opponents already smell blood."
Without her father's looming specter, the 60-year-old Park would seem to be in a confident position.
She served five terms in the legislature and earned the nickname "Queen of Elections" for her ability to win tight races. She only narrowly lost in presidential primaries five years ago to current conservative President Lee Myung-bak, whose single term ends in February.
Many older South Koreans have fond memories of watching Park grow to womanhood in the presidential Blue House, first as a dutiful daughter and then, after an assassin killed her mother, as her father's stand-in first lady.
She is running against two relatively new political faces. Independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo is a popular software magnate and former university professor with charisma but little political experience. Liberal candidate Moon Jae-in is a first-term lawmaker and former close aide to late President Roh Moo-hyun.
Polls show Park ahead in the three-way race, but some surveys show her trailing if Ahn and Moon settle on a single opposition candidate — a move that many expect.
Park's inability to strike the right balance on her father is seen as one of the few things unifying a splintered opposition.
"She needs to convince people that she is almost on the same wavelength with them on the historical wrongdoings perpetrated by her father," said Jun Kye-wan, a political commentator and head of a Seoul-based private political institute. "It's difficult, but it lies at the core of doubts about her."
