South Korean President Park Geun Hye is facing her first major political challenge since being denied a parliamentary majority last month, with the opposition threatening to block her political agenda over a song.
The flap is over who should sing a pro-democracy anthem symbolizing a bloody 1980 uprising at a ceremony Wednesday to mark the 36th anniversary of the event. The two main opposition parties, which together won a majority of seats in elections last month, demanded that everyone at the ceremony, not just a designated choir, sing “March for the Beloved.”
The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs that oversees the ceremony stuck by its refusal to elevate the status of the song even after Park adopted a conciliatory tone in a meeting with opposition leaders last week. The Minjoo Party and the People’s Party threatened to boycott cooperating with Park for her remaining 21 months in office unless her government accepts their demand.
Park’s legislative agenda hangs in the balance after rising discontent of slowing growth and growing unemployment led voters to wrest dozens of seats away from the ruling Saenuri Party in the April 13 vote.
The opposition is now in a position to thwart her legislative and policy initiatives that range from pushing for quantitative easing to passing bills to reform the labor market, boost service industries and enhance cyber-security.
The song was dropped from the official commemoration in 2009 of the uprising that killed more than 160 people in the southwestern city of Gwangju.
Public outrage forced the then Lee Myung Bak government to restore it in 2011, but it was only sung by a choir at the event and not by all the officials attending.
North Korea ‘Reference’
Gwangju is the biggest city in the southwestern province, a stronghold of voters for opposition parties, and the heartland of the democratic struggles against Park’s father Park Chung Hee and his succeeding military dictator Chun Doo Hwan.
Opponents of the song view it as a rallying cry for resistance against the establishment aligned with Park and Chun.
Supporters dismiss the allegations because the song was written in 1982 in honor of a posthumous marriage between a man who died in the uprising and a female activist who dated him before she died in 1978. Some activists liken the song to France’s national anthem “La Marseillaise” and sing it instead of South Korea’s national song at their rallies.
“The song stands at the center of a clash caused by an unfiltered view that it has to do with North Korea,” Shin at Chung-Ang University said. “Unfortunately political leaders are amplifying it rather than easing it. They’ve turned one song into a major hindrance for political symphony.”
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