Koreans are known to be past-oriented people. Indeed, we are frequently preoccupied with the past, whether glorious or dark, and remain hopelessly stuck in it. Instead of soaring into the future, we tend to regress to the past constantly. For example, we still want to hunt down the descendants of Koreans who allegedly collaborated with the Japanese colonial government during the Japanese occupation even though it happened many years ago. Our dispute with Japan on the comfort women issue seems to never end either.

Interestingly, the unique Korean sentiment seems to be highly contagious these days. For example, President-elect Trump declared, “Make America great again,” strongly evoking nostalgia for the good old days when America was rich and powerful, and predominantly white. China announced it was rebuilding the Silk Road, aiming to restore her glorious past through it. China churns out movies and television dramas about its heroes, both ancient and modern, and broadcasts them all over the world. In some Chinese historical movies, Chinese soldiers wear armor similar to that of Roman soldiers, implying that ancient China was as mighty as Rome. By voting for Brexit, the United Kingdom too expressed a wish to go back to a glorious age, when UK was a powerful empire. Japan is no exception to this trend. The Abe administration clearly wants to make Japan a strong nation once again, maximizing its extreme rightwing policy.

However, you cannot go back to the past, as much as an old man cannot return to his youthful days. Neither can we change the past. What is done cannot be undone. If you are obsessed with the past, you will have no future and will be doomed. Many people have advised us to break free from the chain of the past. For example, Amit Ray says, “If you want to fly on the sky, you need to leave the earth. If you want to move forward, you need to let go the past that drags you down.” Eleanor Brown writes, “There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future.” Instead of going back to the past, therefore, we should move on toward the future. The past is nothing but a mirror that reflects our present and future.

The specter of the past will surely ruin our future, if we cannot overcome the dark shadow of the past. For example, the Korean government is now paralyzed mainly because our political leaders, whose mental clock is stuck in the ‘60s and ‘70s, have tried to turn the nation back to the past. If our opposition leaders had the same mentality, Korea’s future would be grim and bleak as well. The last thing the Korean people want to see is an avatar of one of our past presidents. Instead, we desperately and urgently need an able leader with a fresh vision for the future of Korea, not a caricature of our past presidents. We need a leader who has an international sensibility, and a global mindset. We need a future-oriented leader, not a past-oriented one. We need an open-minded, magnanimous leader who can embrace the two extremes in our society, neutralize the polarity, and bring about reconciliation and peaceful co-existence. And we need a competent, diplomatic leader, who can rescue Korea from the crossfire of China, Japan and the States by skillfully negotiating with them.

We no longer want a political leader who drags us into the labyrinth of the past. We no longer want a political leader who is so full of grudges, complexes and psychological issues that he uses his chair for personal vendetta. We no longer want a political leader who is surrounded by his own factional clans and tries to purge his political dissidents. Neither do we want a political leader who, once again, forces the heads of governmental institutions to resign so he could appoint his own men regardless of their expertise or abilities. If he does that, he is doing exactly the same thing he has criticized as the previous government’s incompetence and corruption. Unfortunately, however, history tells us that any new political leader who disguises himself as a savior will repeat the same folly and put people in misery again, only in the opposite direction this time. We should break free from the vicious circle once and for all.

It would be naive to believe that a new government will bring a bright future automatically. Politicians only seek power. In his dystopian novel “1984,” George Orwell writes, “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested in power, pure power.” Our only hope, then, is to have a great leader whose immediate concern is not obtaining power, but leading the nation in the right direction because we now live in an age of unprecedented crisis. 

By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. He can be reached at sukim@snu.ac.kr. -- Ed.