The results of the last presidential and legislative elections were an expression of a public feeling that the old Left can accomplish nothing. Some of the young people, housewives, men in their 40s and self-employed businessmen who fill Taepyeongno Street now perhaps shared that feeling at the time. But having seen the initial blunders of the Lee government and the behavior of the conservatives once in power, they saw the limits of the new government and were unimpressed. The mighty Internet mobilized a modern kind of wandering tribe at a stroke. We cannot analyze these events with the old Left vs. Right dichotomy of the analog age. The old Left, to be sure, is bent on bending the popular movement to its purposes, but it will be difficult to pin down.

The government’s problem is the misconception that by assuming power it holds the whole country as if by magic in its hands. A government does not sustain itself on compelling force alone; it needs a hold on the hearts and minds as well. Unless you command supremacy in middle and high schools, colleges, theaters, movie houses, bookstores, mass media, portals, exhibition halls, advertising, free papers, churches, temples, women's circles and shopping malls, a command of the presidential office and the legislature is hollow. Had it fully recognized this, the Lee government wouldn't have made the personnel decisions it did and acted in this arrogant manner as if it had won power all by itself.

The old Left, with its lingering hold on society and culture, is refusing to admit that it lost power overnight despite its prodigious strength. The camp of Park Guen-hye, who said, "Both I and the people were deceived," will find it difficult to trust Lee Myung-bak. And traditional conservatives regard Lee's pragmatism as a confusion of identity. Pure new rightists, meanwhile, who pride themselves on having overturned the dark dynamics of the past five years, don’t feel that their hopes have been fulfilled by being given a handful of seats in the National Assembly. Some old Grand National Party lawmakers, too, are vexed that their seats were not reserved at important national events. That means three layers of opposition for President Lee; the Left, bolting middle-of-the-roaders, and breakaway supporters.

It remains to be seen if the wandering tribes will immediately back down when the Cabinet and presidential staff are reshuffled. Their beef, as it were, is no longer with U.S. beef but with Lee himself: they want him out. And it is far from clear whether Lee’s “pragmatism” is up to the challenge. So what to do? Like Pope Leo when he dissuaded Attila from invading Rome with the apparition of St Peter himself hovering above him, one might ask: although Lee Myung-bak the man has committed blunders, is it appropriate to demand that the president of Korea resign?

A revolution, once started, tends to eat its children. That cannot be the only way forward. Would it not be better to content ourselves with this limited resistance, and allow Lee to correct his blunders, for the sake of the republic's constitutional order?