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Moving from the age of ideology to the age of pragmatism, the slogan of the Lee Myung-bak administration, is controversial on the Right. Put it abstractly, though, and the result is an endless argument without a conclusion. It would be much clearer to ask instead, "What was wrong with the past 10 years and how do we rectify it?" Presidential chief of staff Yu Woo-ik said he does not regard the past 10 years as a ¡°lost decade." But the electorate voted not for an extension of the last government but for change because a majority of them felt there was something wrong with the last decade. The Lee administration should say what it thinks was wrong with the past 10 years and whether it has the courage to put it right.
What kind of an era was the last decade? In short, it was an era of attempts to rewrite the history of the republic. Explaining them away as merely government by the ¡°incompetent Left" or "an era of ideological conflict" is too generous. Though some may feel this line of thinking is provoking another ideological conflict, it is that hackneyed leftwing ideology that most squarely opposes the pragmatism of the Lee administration.
If pragmatism is supposed to be the way to overcome that distorted view of history, we have no argument. If the new government can demonstrate a firm determination to rectify the mistakes of the past decade and lay it on the Republic's foundation, by whatever means and under whatever slogan, it will be a step forward for the country. The challenge for the Lee administration is to show that it is sincere and determined in at least a few basic matters.
The most important is our North Korea policy. When Kim Jong-il launched provocations off the west coast in the past decade, our president said we also had something to reflect on. It was a time when even as the North tested a nuclear weapon, we assumed everything will be all right so long as we keep giving aid. The Lee administration should make it quite clear how it will "pragmatically¡± free itself from this unproductive policy.
Pro-North Korea leftwingers and self-proclaimed middle-of-the-roaders politicians will ask whether that means taking a hard line and risking another war. But this is not a question of hard or moderate, but of whether or not we have recovered our sanity. No war has, after all, broken out despite the change in our government, North Korea¡¯s threats last year notwithstanding.
The second test of the Lee administration is how it will deal with textbooks that are poisoning the minds of young people, and with the hegemony of the Left in various social sectors like culture, information and communications and the media. What is Lee Myung-bak pragmatism going to do about these problems? So long as history, culture and society are conceded to the anti-pragmatic forces, pragmatism cannot thrive. This, too, is not an idle ideological dispute but a question of whether pragmatism can prevail.
The third test is what pragmatic educational reform entails. We can expect no change so long as education is held hostage by the Left and the bureaucratic groups hanging onto ministerial interests. It is by how the Lee administration deals with these issues that the public will judge if a new era has really begun. Timing is of the essence: the Lee administration must not miss this chance.
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